Cost analysis of two silicon heterojunction solar cell designs

Research and Development of Silicon Heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells has seen a marked increase since the recent expiry of core patents describing SHJ technology. This paper investigates the production costs associated with two different SHJ cell designs investigated within the FLASH programme, a Dutch research programme focusing on SHJ solar cells. We performed life cycle costing and common economic analysis to quantify the production costs (€/W p). One of the aims of the research programme is to decrease production cost by substituting expensive materials and processing steps. We found the analyzed designs to have slightly different production costs: 0.35€/Wp for a 'standard' SHJ cell, compared to 0.34€/Wp for a new SHJ cell design in which the indium-tin-oxide TCO is replaced with abundant materials. Sensitivity analysis showed the results to be especially sensitive to changes in wafer (and thus silicon) prices. Further research will be conducted for other SHJ cell designs developed in the FLASH programme.