Featured Pakistan to start producing solar energy panels in one and half year: Fawad

[The Accountant]

that was a loaded question.

Phenomenal decrease had to do with volume of panels coming out of china. Low hanging fruit in US is already picked. now they are moving to rest of the world. there are no large scale commercial outside of Silicon.

U might be right as i acknowledge i am not the expert on the subject. However back to original question is it possibile for Pakistan to manufacture solar panels at home ? Its a complicated process but possibility is not far fetched. Is it ?

 

[cricketrulez]

U might be right as i acknowledge i am not the expert on the subject. However back to original question is it possibile for Pakistan to manufacture solar panels at home ? Its a complicated process but possibility is not far fetched. Is it ?

very far fetched. no one is going to invest for wafer line in Pak. too many hurdles and the payoff is too far away and not that great.

 

[Paul2]

I doubt Pak makes any solar panels. The economy of scale in china has obliterated everyone else in the world. This is just plain fluff news. At the Wafer level, the price is at $0.05/Watt. At the panels level is its $0.15/Watt. Wholesale price is $0.3-0.5/Watt. Good luck beating that.

Sadly, but true.

Nobody can equal Chinese companies in making high end cells so cheap, and there is no incentive to making low-end cells costing $0.04/W, when you can get 25% more efficient cells for roughly 25% more money.

Achieving 15% efficiency with simplest monocrystalline cells was damn easy, achieving 20% efficiency at the cost not breaking your back is damn hard.

 

[Paul2]

Modern solar panel are of plastic and not silicon

No. This is not correct. Silicon is still there.

 

[Paul2]

Silicon is used make most solar cells. Raw material comes from the correct types of sands. Its abundant all over the world. Its very energy intensive to make solar cells. This is important tech to be doing R&D in.

Sand is only used to make metallurgical silicon. Semiconductor silicon is made of purest quartz deposits. The purer the quartz, the less you need electricity to remove impurities.