crystalline cell developed several years ago. The market price has risen slightly higher than expected. In the near future, it is expected that the semicrystalline cell will be substituted for the single crystal cell and after that, the amorphous Si cell will take the place of the semicrystalline cell. In that case, it is the premise that the reliability problem - one of the weak points of the a-Si cell - should be settled and an improvement in conversion efficiency should be achieved almost equal to that of crystalline-type solar cells. Around the year 2000, the production capacity of solar cells will be more than 10 GW world wide and commercial solar cells will be coexistent with the crystalline-type cells with high efficiency and a-Si cells with lower cost. In all cases, it is supposed that a-Si cells will be the market leaders and then the cost of crystalline and a-Si cells will be several hundreds of yen per watt and under ¥100 per watt, respectively. Cost Analysis of Terrestrial Use Solar Cells The relationship between cost and production quantity of semicrystalline terrestrialuse solar cells is shown in Fig. 2 as relating to two factors, substrate materials and others. The cost of the substrate Si materials occupies the larger part. In the case of small production scales, it is especially notable. This is the reason why the repayment rate on plant investment for producing SOG Si raw materials is very effective. On the other hand, taking the case of amorphous solar cells shown in Fig. 3, the rate of material costs is small and the other costs are mostly the depreciation of equipment and the operational costs in the deposition process. As mass production grows in scale, the material cost rate of amorphous Si cells increases, and will ultimately become about half of all a-Si cell costs.
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