Price, however, remains the spoiler, with disparities in cost threatening to grow larger as conventional c-Si and market overcapacity continue to eat away at thin-film’s annual market share, which is forecast to slide from about 9% in 2013 to 7% by 2017.
Solar Frontier, which next month breaks ground on its fourth CIGS module plant in Japan — the 150MW Tōhoku factory — is bucking the trend, having shifted to an energy-provider model, rather than functioning solely as a module supplier.
