A model to analyze strategic products for photovoltaic silicon thin-film solar cell power industry

Abstract

With natural resource scarcity and environmental protection, the use of renewable energy has become a promise for offering clean and plentiful energy. Photovoltaic (PV) solar cell is one of the emerging renewable energy applications; however, it suffers a large difficulty in high production cost with low conversion efficiency currently. Hence, an urgent pressure to upgrade technology and to formulate product strategy is evident in the solar cell power industry. In order to prosper PV silicone solar cell power industry, the paper develops a conceptual model, which is composed of a fuzzy analytic network process with interpretive structural modeling and benefits, opportunities, costs and risks, to help analyze suitable strategic products. The empirical study shows that the conceptual model can effectively and precisely handle such a complicated problem and can lead to an outstanding performance result.

Introduction

Photovoltaic (PV) solar cells are semiconductor devices that transfer sunlight directly into electricity by converting the energy of the light to electrons in the atoms of the cell. The converting process is called the PV effect, and it is done without the use of either chemical reactions or moving parts [1]. With the policies of many countries in promoting the PV solar cell industry, the industry has grown tremendously, and the global production capacity of silicon solar cell increased from 52 MWp in 2000 to 4.60 GWp, 6.3 GWp, 9.1 GWp, and 12.0 GWp in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, respectively [2], [3]. Even though PV systems can offer cleaner and plentiful energy, the major obstacle they face is that their energy cost is still too high [4]. The most commonly used solar cell today is made from crystalline silicon, but the main trend of solar cell industry is toward the PV silicon thin-film solar cell because of its potential reduction of production costs, low material consumption, lower energy consumption and a shorter energy payback time [5]. The crystalline silicon material and energy consumption for making a PV silicon thin-film solar cell is only 1/10 of that for a traditional solar cell. However, solar radiation conversion efficiency (currently less than 12%), product stability (different absorption rates for lights with different wavelengths), and lifetime (deformation after extensive sun exposure) for PV silicon thin-film solar cells all need to be enhanced [6], [7], [8]. In addition, thin-film technologies also face a wide range of problems from the lack of knowledge of basic material properties, the availability issues of production technologies to the legal concerns about patent infringements and the possible market perspectives. Compared with Japan, US or Europe, Taiwan government has an urgent pressure to formulate product strategies because its technologies are still behind those countries and its initial investment costs are very high. However, Taiwan has a great potential since its production capacity in semiconductor, flat panel display (FPD), and conventional PV solar cell industries, which are highly related to this emergent market, all have large shares in the world's markets. Accordingly, a plan to design product strategy for PV silicone thin-film solar cell power industry in Taiwan is necessary. In addition, firms within a manufacturing network are forced to integrate and collaborate with each other in order to develop new strategies, capacities and capabilities in a global competitive environment [9]. Thus, in this study, the product strategy will be considered from the perspective of a PV silicone thin-film solar cell power industry.

Product strategy involves decisions about target market, product mix, project prioritization, resource allocation and technology selection. With a tremendous degree of complexity and uncertainty, multiple strategic products are usually selected to increase the possibility of having a few successful projects [10]. In essence, it is a set of strategic decisions to ensure that the right markets and products are pursued [11]. To facilitate the prosperousness of the PV silicone solar cell power industry, this paper develops a conceptual model, using fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) with interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and benefits, opportunities, costs and risks (BOCR), to help analyze suitable strategic products for the thin-film solar cell power manufacturing network.

In this paper, the characteristic analysis of PV silicone thin-film solar cell power industry is considered in Section 2. A conceptual model to help devise appropriate product strategies from the perspectives of a large firm in the manufacturing network is introduced in Section 3. In order to incorporate the opinions and the expertise of decision makers, a FANP with ISM and BOCR for product strategy analysis is constructed in Section 4. A practical investigation of a large firm in the solar cell power industry is examined in Section 5. Some conclusion remarks and discussions are provided in the last sections.