At the first practical workshop of PV Experts, the overriding conclusion reached was that smaller German photovoltaic manufacturers in particular, will only be able to compete in the global marketplace through greater cooperation amongst themselves, material manufacturers, mechanical engineers and other industry participants.
The pressure on costs for European and German solar module manufacturers is enormous. This became clear during the course of the workshop.
In contrast to their Chinese competitors, these photovoltaic manufacturers are often not fully integrated, and thus have to master quality requirements and the processes of adjusting their production to new materials and machines with a "smaller profit margin," as Alexander Blauärmel of Aleo Solar, for example, reports.
Therefore, an important possibility when it comes to surviving the competition consists in better cooperation and greater exchange of experience with suppliers, as well as more intensive cooperation between the module manufacturers themselves.
The workshop of PV Experts provided several practical thoughts to this end, for instance, in the area of encapsulation materials during the workshop discussions it became clear that optimization of the encapsulation for module wiring boxes is also required.
Material manufacturers such as Lanxess and module manufacturers like Solon now plan to exchange more ideas and information in this area, as Nande von Aken, Director Production Engineering at Solon SE and Michael Herrmann, Manager Technical Service at Lanxess Deutschland GmbH declared, as a result of the workshop.
A further practical step is the establishment of a purchasing and sales syndicate for smaller German and European module manufacturers.
PV Experts now plans to advance this idea in a concrete manner, "also in order to ensure the survival of our own customers," said Thomas Schmidt.
Watch out for the July edition of pv magazine, which will address the subject in more depth.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.