Dec 17 2009
A new market research report “Solar Cell (Photovoltaic) Equipment Industry Report, 2009” is now available in the catalogue of Reportlinker.com. Many solar cell manufacturers have reduced the price of solar cells due to acute drop in the price of polysilicon. The reduction in the prices of solar cell has led to fall in the earnings of solar cell manufacturers. But the output is maintained is same as in 2008.
A total investment of about RMB40 million to RMB 50 million is required for the production of 25MW polysilicon solar cells. The production starts from 100MW in China and the investment reaches to about RMB220 million from which 70% is used for equipment. The money required for PECVD equipment is considered to be the highest as it accounts for 30% of equipment investment.
An investment of RMB450 million to RMB500 million is required for a 25MW production line of amorphous silicon thin-film solar cells. For this investment, 70% will be used toward the PECVD equipment, which has the highest proportion of 65-70%. The global solar cell equipment market is valued at US$4.96 billion for this year out of which PECVD’s share is 33%.
Applied Materials Company is the leading company in the PECVD segment and it is strong in the area of amorphous silicon thin-film solar cell equipment. Successful and outstanding results have also been produced by Manz, a company that specializes in automation. The achievements by these two companies project increasing growth in the solar cell market.
China possesses the most number of solar cell manufacturers in the world. Chinese solar cell equipment industry is facing a steady growth in the production of polysilicon solar cells and is also trying to gain success in the field of amorphous silicon thin-film solar cells. Eight types of equipment for the production of solar cells can be manufactured in China out of which six plays a leading role in the production lines in China and the remaining two shares equally with the imported equipment. The six solar cell production equipment consists of plasma etcher, diffusion furnace, low-temperature drying oven, PSG equipment and cleaning/flocking machine. Fast Sintering Furnace and Tubular PECVD are the remaining two equipment. The equipment that are still dependent on import includes automatic sorter, flat PECVD and automatic screen printer.
Source: http://www.reportlinker.com/