Estimating the manufacturing cost of purely organic solar cells Joseph Kalowekamo 1 , Erin Baker * 220 Elab, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA Received 22 September 2008; received in revised form 2 February 2009; accepted 5 February 2009 Communicated by: Associate Editor Sam-Shajin Sun Abstract In this paper we estimate the manufacturing cost of purely organic solar cells. We find a very large range since the technology is still very young. We estimate that the manufacturing cost for purely organic solar cells will range between $50 and $140/m 2 . Under the assumption of 5% efficiency, this leads to a module cost of between $1.00 and $2.83/W p . Under the assumption of a 5-year lifetime, this leads to a levelized cost of electricity (LEC) of between 49¢ and 85¢/kWh. In order to achieve a more competitive COE of about 7¢/kWh, we would need to increase efficiency to 15% and lifetime to between 15–20 years. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Cost; Purely organic solar cells; Photovoltaics 1. Introduction In this paper we assess the potential of organic solar cells (OSC) to reduce the cost of photovoltaic (PV) electric- ity. We estimate materials, processing and overhead costs to estimate the manufacturing costs; we then fold in effi- ciency to estimate the module cost; and finally convert that into a levelized electricity cost (LEC). We find that there is a great deal of uncertainty about the capital costs of OSC, leading to manufacturing costs ranging from $48.80 to $138.90/m 2 . Assuming efficiency of 5% and a 5-year life- time leads to module costs between $1.00 and $2.83/W, and LEC between 49¢ and 85¢/kWh. But assuming 15% efficiency and 20-year lifetime leads to LEC between 7¢ and 13¢/kWh. We perform sensitivity analysis and find that the most sensitive parameters are substrate cost and cell efficiency. We discuss what technological characteristics could lead to a LEC on the order of 5¢/kWh, a cost that would make solar competitive with conventional sources of electricity generation such as coal. 1.1. Motivation Silicon-based PV is still relatively expensive, and to this end, efforts have been made to develop potentially less expensive thin-film solar cells (TFSC) which may have purely inorganic materials, such as amorphous silicon, cad- mium telluride, and copper–indium–diselenide or contain organic materials as an essential part of the device (Dai et al., 2004). In principle, these TFSC have the potential to reduce material cost and lower manufacturing costs through simplified design and processing techniques that are not available to crystalline inorganic semiconductors. The production of organic-based PV using industrial screen printing has demonstrated the possibility of produc- ing in the order of 1000–100,000 m 2 on a process line per day while production of the same solar cell area based on silicon typically takes 1 year (Krebs et al., 2007). Given that the materials costs are low enough, the cost reduction due to printing techniques can be enormous for organic 0038-092X/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.solener.2009.02.003 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 413 545 0670. E-mail addresses: jkalowek@gmail.com (J. Kalowekamo), edbaker@- ecs.umass.edu (E. Baker). 1 Principal Energy Officer, Department of Energy, Renewable and Alternative Energy Division, P/Bag 309, Lilongwe 3, Malawi. Tel.: +1 265 1 770688. www.elsevier.com/locate/solener Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Solar Energy xxx (2009) xxx–xxx ARTICLE IN PRESS Please cite this article in press as: Kalowekamo, J., Baker, E., Estimating the manufacturing cost of purely organic solar cells, Sol. Energy (2009), doi:10.1016/j.solener.2009.02.003