Most Thin Film Photovoltaics Companies To Fail

A venture capitalist says most thin film photovoltaics (PV) advances fail in the transition from the lab to manufacturing due to yield problems and other manufacturing problems. (thanks James Bowery)

The reality, according to Neal Dikeman, partner with VC firm Jane Capital Partners, is that only one or two thin-film projects have brought product to market in 30 years, and it's a US $100M-$200M dollar up-front investment "just to play the game and see if your product really works." Silicon Valley investors have mistakenly bet on "really great teams" while the technology is still at a science experiment stage, he argues  investors are beginning to realize this, he thinks, and that the industry is sitting on the back end of about 5-10 years of US $100M bets. "We're going to see a bunch of write-offs coming up," he warns.

Dikeman argues that very few of the thin film PV start-ups have succeeded in getting a good thin film PV production process operating at large scale. So First Solar is really an outlier.

Dikeman expects the entrance of semiconductor equipment manufacturing suppliers such as Applied Materials and Oerlikon will help matters. If these companies can work out processes and equipment for doing thin films PV manufacturing then a lot more companies will be able to get into the business of thin film PV manufacturing.