Sensitivity analysis of materials availability for terawatt PV deployment

The road map for cost competitive large-scale PV deployment is ever changing and with PV grade poly silicon prices averaging 16 U$D/kg and companies focusing on using less materials the cost effectiveness of readily available materials for solar cell applications should be revisited. In this work we analyze to which extent the extraction cost of the absorber layer material plays a role in the overall cost of generating electricity, taking into account the potential for light trapping and the non-power producing component costs. Our calculations show that nearly all presently used materials have fundamental cost and availability potential which are well below a level at which material availability is a dominant consideration. Instead, constraints on parameters such as the amount of copper for wiring or substrate material for module fabrication become dominant issues.