Solar Power Plants are gaining more and more popularity as a renewable energy sources systems and on of the main questions here is: What will be the prices of Photovoltaic Panels in 2009? Some comments on this topic from Solar Energy Professionals can be read below:

Daniel Tomlinson

Senior Associate of Business Development at Ascent Solar:

Low quality supply from China $1.80 to $2.20 (FOB)

Thin Film modules factory gate from $1.90 to $2.20, however I would not be surprised to see First Solar go lower.

Px factory gate $2.40 to $2.80

Cz factory gate $2.60 to $3.00

Existing contract prices may be higher than spot putting pressure on customers to renegotiate contracts.

Price for small volumes or through a distributor will be 8% to 15% higher.

Ranges are my guesstimates

John Foreman

Solar Energy Systems Design & PV Research Associate at CENTRIA & EnergyPeak:

Flexible thin-film PV, now finally ready for the "lime-light", is also being massively scaled, which should shift the PV market from a sellers market to a buyers market in the next 1-2 years.

So while some traditional PV Panel contracts dried up this year (Spain, others), causing this temporary oversupply, it will correct, and the polysilicon shortage will still keep prices somewhat high… until thin-film PV is more widely vetted and accepted – which will force competition to drive PV price lower $/W.

However, in the next 1-2 years several (now mature and well engineered) 2nd generation thin-film PV modules will start rolling off factory floors, including Ascent’s, and then we will finally see grid-parity prices start to become a reality. PV Panel makers only thin-film competition was from the a-Si regime, and it has/will take a good while to overcome the PV Panel "bias" that existed initially, and to educate the public over the desirability of thin-film integrated directly into roofing, commercial construction materials, or practically any other product that needs power.

This will force PV panel producers to become far more creative and competitive in terms of their designs, material use, and mechanical integration methods. Also, price ($/W) will continue to drop in Solar, as conventional energy runs dry, and things get more competitive.

Justin Hoysradt

VP of Sales and Marketing – Solar Energy Sales

Low quality cells & modules will be greatly affected because of over supply. Also some US and International incentive programs are beginning to focus on AC side production to determine the incentive benefit. Thin film for utility scale deployment will come down, First Solar has publicly stated they are way over supply. I think it was about 10 megawatts per dealer in inventory…

Hopefully there will be some strong energy policy reform in the US to put some pressure on power producers and polluters to reduce their carbon footprint through the installation of Renewables like solar and wind.

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