THE COMMERCIALIZATION OF AMORPHOUS SILICON-BASED PHOTOVOLTAICS

Amorphous silicon-based photovoltaics is undergoing a period of signif icant change as new multijunction technology starts to move into the m arketplace. These new a-Si multijunction solar cells exhibit stabilize d conversion efficiencies of over 10%, and the manufacturing costs sho uld be less than $1/W(p) as new large-scale manufacturing plants come on line in the next few years. The advent of these low-cost, high perf ormance PV modules should lead to the rapid growth of a number of exis ting and emerging markets for photovoltaics.