Schott plans to reinforce its position among the world leaders in thin film technology. This new plant, with a cost of 75 million euros and 180 workers is a good sign of the company's aspirations.
Schott's has become Europe's largest thin film factory to date, although Solar Global-Isolux Corsán, a Spanish project, will open a larger plant with 40 MW of capacity by mid 2008.
On top of that, Hungary's Genesis Solar is building another thin film plant in Cádiz (Southern Spain) with an associated investment of almost 150 million euros, which could possibly be ready before the end of 2009, thus becoming Europe's largest by then.
Thin film is one of the most promising technologies due to lower costs than conventional solar PV technology. At the moment the obstacles for this technology are being the need to have larger areas for construction (as thin film is less energy-intensive) and also financing difficulties (as banks do not know this technology that well and sometimes are hesitant to finance thin film projects). While the former obstacle will remain unsolved in the coming years, the latter is showing good prospects for the future, with some of the best-known thin film manufacturers already sold out for the coming months.
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