Abu Dhabi sets thin film solar alight with $2bn investment

Masdar PV, the solar photovoltaic arm of the Abu Dhabi government-backed Masdar clean tech initiative, yesterday announced it is to invest $2bn in building up manufacturing capacity for thin film photovoltaic modules.

Under the programme, the company will initially invest $600m in building two manufacturing facilities, one in Germany and a second in Abu Dhabi, designed to deliver a combined annual production capacity of 210MW. It will then aim to scale up further through capacity expansion and the opening of new plants, with a view to reaching one gigawatt of annual production by 2014.

Masdar chief executive Dr. Sultan Al Jaber said the move represented one of the largest single investments in the solar sector yet made and marked a major "milestone" in Abu Dhabi's plans to become a cleantech hub.

"Abu Dhabi is a global energy leader, so it makes sense to engage these new energy technologies and become a leader in alternatives," he said. "[This investment] will not only establish Masdar as a major global PV player, but will be the first high-tech semiconductor nano-manufacturing facility of its kind in the entire region."

The company said that the new thin film manufacturing plants would also play a major role in bringing down the cost of solar energy to a level where it is competitive with grid power.

The new plants plan to use large scale manufacturing equipment capable of processing "ultra-large" 5.7 metre squared glass substrates, which Masdar PV claims are eight times larger and five times more powerful than current market leading alternatives.

The company said that the thin film modules will also require just one per cent of the "expensive semiconductor material", such as silicon, used in conventional crystalline PV cells – a factor that will further lower the cost of the panels and should limit supply constraints.

Dr. Winfried Hoffmann, president of the European Photovoltaic Industry Association, welcomed the investment, hailing it as a potential "game-changer" for the global market. He said that the introduction of new manufacturing capacity would help not only meet booming demand for the technology but help open up potential new markets around the Middle East where the combination of a sunny climate and high levels of capital should make the technology particularly effective.

The initiative marks Masdar's second major push into the solar energy sector this year, following the launch in March of a joint venture with Spanish engineering group Sener to develop and operate concentrated solar power plants in "sunbelt" countries.