Technical and socio-economic assessment for a Si-based low-cost solar cells factory in West Africa

As the cost of silicon-based solar cells has been decreasing sharply in recent years, photovoltaic (PV) systems have dramatically increased their attractiveness in many countries and in mall power systems. This increase of attractiveness can be objectively described in terms of grid parity reached in many areas around the world and a substantial improvement for accessing to electricity without subsidies in places where the power supply is intermittent or, simply, is not offered. One of such places around the world where power supply is limited is West Africa. On the other hand, as the PV industry is maturing and the production capacity is increasing, it is expected that PV companies will place new factories close to markets in highly solar irradiated developing countries, where the demand will grow in the near future. In this work a technical and socio-economic assessment of silicon-based low-cost solar cells produced in a manufacturing factory located in West Africa is exposed. The cost of the solar cells, in terms of USD/W-p is obtained for different West African countries and compared to the production costs of a similar factory operating in China but exporting the cells to West Africa. A sensitive analysis of the final cost of the solar cells varying the cost of key input parameters (mainly labor, electricity, silicon contract price, investment and logistic costs) into a defined range is also exposed. The cost of the solar cells produced is integrated with other sensitive parameters for business competitiveness in a synthetic indicator which offers a ranking of the ten more favorable countries for the location of this PV factory. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.