Can your roof provide your electrical needs? - The growth prospect of building-integrated photovoltaic

Author

Guha, Subhendu

Author_Institution

United Solar Ovonic, Troy, MI, USA

fYear

2005

fDate

3-7 Jan. 2005

Firstpage

12

Lastpage

16

Abstract

There has been an unprecedented growth of photovoltaic market in the last five years. Industry analysts estimate the world market to exceed 15 GW in 2020. Which are the technologies that would dominate the market then? In this paper, I shall outline the growth prospect for the thin film amorphous silicon technology developed at United Solar. The roll-to-roll approach for production lowers manufacturing cost; the flexible products can also be easily integrated with the roof. A marketing strategy has been developed where alliances have been made with roofing contractors or roofing material manufacturers to sustain the growth. The superior performance of the product and the new sales strategy have resulted in a 100% growth in sales volume from 2003 to 2004. Future plans for expansion will be discussed.

Keywords

amorphous semiconductors; building integrated photovoltaics; elemental semiconductors; marketing; renewable energy sources; semiconductor thin films; silicon; United Solar; building-integrated photovoltaic; manufacturing cost; photovoltaic market; roll-to-roll production approach; roofing contractors; roofing material manufacturers; thin film amorphous silicon technology; Amorphous silicon; Building integrated photovoltaics; Electrical products industry; Flexible manufacturing systems; Manufacturing industries; Marketing and sales; Photovoltaic systems; Production; Semiconductor thin films; Solar power generation;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2005. Conference Record of the Thirty-first IEEE

ISSN

0160-8371

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8707-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2005.1488059

Filename

1488059