Economically Sustainable Growth of Perovskite Photovoltaics Manufacturing

Abstract

•Flexible perovskite modules manufactured for 3.3–0.53 $/W in a 0.3–1,000 MW/yr range•Minimum investment of >$1 billion required for profitability when selling at $0.40/W•Existing silicon manufacturer would grow at a faster rate by co-investing in tandems•Technoeconomic modeling of energy technology versus scale to establish route to market We show how technoeconomic modeling of cleantech products versus scale can be an important tool in assisting a more rapid uptake of new energy technologies that often struggle to leave the lab. Our analyses highlight potential routes to market for perovskite photovoltaics and the possibility to sustainably grow a photovoltaics manufacturing company even in markets with higher labor rates. More generally, although technoeconomic modeling has proven to be a useful tool for assessing cleantech industries as they are and the long-term potential of new technologies once they reach scale—we encourage other cost modelers to quantify the impact of economies of scale during manufacturing growth to help in the search for viable and sustainable market on-ramps for their technologies. The significant capital expense of photovoltaics manufacturing has made it difficult for new cell and module technologies to enter the market. We present two technoeconomic models that analyze the sustainable growth of perovskite manufacturing for an R2R single-junction technology and a perovskite-silicon tandem module, focusing on the impacts of economies of scale and average selling price on profitability. We establish a cost range of $3.30/W to $0.53/W for flexible modules manufactured in factory sizes ranging from 0.3 MW/year to 1 GW/year. In addition, we model the cost to manufacture a tandem module consisting of a single-junction perovskite cell stacked in 4-terminal configuration onto a silicon cell and show how an existing manufacturer can grow at a faster rate by co-investing in tandems. Our analyses highlight potential routes to market for perovskite photovoltaics and the possibility to sustainably grow a photovoltaics manufacturing company even in markets with higher labor rates. The significant capital expense of photovoltaics manufacturing has made it difficult for new cell and module technologies to enter the market. We present two technoeconomic models that analyze the sustainable growth of perovskite manufacturing for an R2R single-junction technology and a perovskite-silicon tandem module, focusing on the impacts of economies of scale and average selling price on profitability. We establish a cost range of $3.30/W to $0.53/W for flexible modules manufactured in factory sizes ranging from 0.3 MW/year to 1 GW/year. In addition, we model the cost to manufacture a tandem module consisting of a single-junction perovskite cell stacked in 4-terminal configuration onto a silicon cell and show how an existing manufacturer can grow at a faster rate by co-investing in tandems. Our analyses highlight potential routes to market for perovskite photovoltaics and the possibility to sustainably grow a photovoltaics manufacturing company even in markets with higher labor rates. To mitigate the impacts of climate change, tens of terawatts of solar power must be deployed over the next decades.1Haegel N.M. Atwater H. Barnes T. Breyer C. Burrell A. Chiang Y.M. De Wolf S.D. Dimmler B. Feldman D. Glunz S. et al.Terawatt-scale photovoltaics: transform global energy.Science. 2019; 364: 836-838Crossref PubMed Scopus (221) Google Scholar With 500 GW of photovoltaics (PVs) installed globally to date, silicon photovoltaics remains the incumbent technology with its cost now at 0.25 $/W and declining capex.1Haegel N.M. Atwater H. Barnes T. Breyer C. Burrell A. Chiang Y.M. De Wolf S.D. Dimmler B. Feldman D. Glunz S. et al.Terawatt-scale photovoltaics: transform global energy.Science. 2019; 364: 836-838Crossref PubMed Scopus (221) Google Scholar The rapid growth of installed photovoltaics continues to surprise even the experts, but for solar power to become the primary source of electricity globally, a large-scale and truly global manufacturing base is required that will not be able to rely on one region or technology. In light of this, perovskite photovoltaics offer a strong alternative photovoltaic technology with the potential for extremely low manufacturing costs through solution processing that could compete with silicon. However, new cleantech technologies have historically struggled to scale-up,2Dave S.H. Keller B.D. Golmer K. Grossman J.C. Six degrees of separation: connecting research with users and cost analysis.Joule. 2017; 1: 410-415Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (10) Google Scholar,3Huang K.J. Li L. Olivetti E.A. Designing for manufacturing scalability in clean energy research.Joule. 2018; 2: 1642-1647Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (7) Google Scholar with their capital intensity resulting in long timelines for commercialization that are incompatible with traditional venture capital funding models,4Correa-Baena J.-P. Hippalgaonkar K. van Duren J. Jaffer S. Chandrasekhar V.R. Stevanovic V. Wadia C. Guha S. Buonassisi T. Accelerating materials development via automation, machine learning, and high-performance computing.Joule. 2018; 2: 1410-1420Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (148) Google Scholar that lead to lower success rates for cleantech startups compared to software and medical ventures.5Gaddy B.E. Sivaram V. Jones T.B. Wayman L. Venture Capital and Cleantech: the wrong model for energy innovation.Energy Policy. 2017; 102: 385-395Crossref Scopus (71) Google Scholar In this paper, we use bottom-up cost modeling to explore economically sustainable strategies for one new cleantech innovation, solution-processed perovskite photovoltaics, to scale-up and enter the mature solar power market. Our goal is to help illuminate one or more pathways that could enable this groundbreaking technology to successfully scale-up and navigate the journey from lab bench to market.6Kim D.H. Whitaker J.B. Li Z. van Hest M.F.A.M. Zhu K. Outlook and challenges of perovskite solar cells toward terawatt-scale photovoltaic module technology.Joule. 2018; 2: 1437-1451Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (113) Google Scholar, 7Bruening K. Dou B. Simonaitis J. Lin Y.-Y. van Hest M.F.A.M. Tassone C.J. Scalable fabrication of perovskite solar cells to meet climate targets.Joule. 2018; 2: 2464-2476Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (32) Google Scholar, 8Thomas V.J. Maine E. Market entry strategies for electric vehicle start-ups in the automotive industry – lessons from tesla motors.J. Clean. Prod. 2019; 235: 653-663Crossref Scopus (19) Google Scholar The path to market success is not clear—today’s leading PV module manufacturers drive down prices by producing modules at the GW/year scale, largely in regions with low labor costs. As a result, it is difficult for new entrants to compete with established PV manufacturers on price. Thus many seek to commercialize their products in growing alternative markets such as the Internet of Things (IoT) applications, building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), telecommunications, vehicle integrated, and others where higher margins are possible.9Reese M.O. Glynn S. Kempe M.D. McGott D.L. Dabney M.S. Barnes T.M. Booth S. Feldman D. Haegel N.M. Increasing markets and decreasing package weight for high-specific-power photovoltaics.Nat. Energy. 2018; 3: 1002-1012Crossref Scopus (82) Google Scholar, 10Kantareddy, S.N.R., Peters, I.M., Mathews, I., Sun, S., Layurova, M., Thapa, J., Correa-Baena, J., Bhattacharyya, R., Buonassisi, T., and Sarma, S.E.. Perovskite PV-powered RFID: enabling low-cost self-powered IoT sensors. IEEE Sensors J.. 20, 471–478.Google Scholar, 11Mathews I. Kantareddy S.N.R. Sun S. Layurova M. Thapa J. Correa-Baena J.-P. Bhattacharyya R. Buonassisi T. Sarma S. Peters I.M. Self-powered sensors enabled by wide-bandgap perovskite indoor photovoltaic cells.Adv. Funct. Mater. 2019; 29: 1904072Crossref Scopus (52) Google Scholar, 12Wojciechowski K. Forgács D. Rivera T. Industrial opportunities and challenges for perovskite photovoltaic technology.Sol. RRL. 2019; 3: 1900144Crossref Scopus (36) Google Scholar Here, we show that such strategies can enable a sustainable route to scale, allowing perovskite manufacturing companies to leverage higher prices in alternative PV markets to overcome the capital intensity barrier for new cleantech products, and reach significant scale before entering the wider solar power market.13Haegel N.M. Margolis R. Buonassisi T. Feldman D. Froitzheim A. Garabedian R. Green M. Glunz S. Henning H.M. Holder B. et al.Terawatt-scale photovoltaics: trajectories and challenges.Science. 2017; 356: 141-143Crossref PubMed Scopus (248) Google Scholar It is worth noting the growth of First Solar, where a number of years after its initial founding, the company scaled its manufacturing capacity from 6.5 MW/year to over 1 GW/year between 2004–2009 at a compound annual growth rate of 180%.14First Solar First Solar Annual Report.http://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReportArchive/f/NASDAQ_FSLR_2009.pdfDate: 2009Google Scholar,15First Solar First Solar Annual Report.http://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReportArchive/f/NASDAQ_FSLR_2006.pdfDate: 2006Google Scholar As outlined in Figure S1 in the Supplemental Information, this contributed to module manufacturing costs dropping from $2.94/W to $0.83/W, i.e., 22% per year, over the same period—although the influence of wider market conditions at the time cannot be ignored, where significant investments in photovoltaics manufacturing led to module price declines across the industry. As an alternative growth strategy, it may be possible to take advantage of the large silicon manufacturing base by manufacturing perovskite-silicon tandems presenting a distinct opportunity to leverage the sizable market share of silicon, while significantly boosting device efficiency relative to single-junction modules. The fabrication of perovskite-silicon tandems is well established with efficiencies exceeding 25% in the laboratory.16Duong T. Wu Y. Shen H. Peng J. Fu X. Jacobs D. Wang E.-C. Kho T.C. Fong K.C. Stocks M. et al.Rubidium multication perovskite with optimized bandgap for perovskite-silicon tandem with over 26% efficiency.Adv. Energy Mater. 2017; 7: 1700228Crossref Scopus (367) Google Scholar,17Sahli F. Werner J. Kamino B.A. Bräuninger M. Monnard R. Paviet-Salomon B. Barraud L. Ding L. Diaz Leon J.J.D. Sacchetto D. et al.Fully textured monolithic perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells with 25.2% power conversion efficiency.Nat. Mater. 2018; 17: 820-826Crossref PubMed Scopus (862) Google Scholar However, there are challenges to making a cost-effective perovskite-silicon tandem. Generally, sub-cells that have similar single-junction efficiencies and areal cell costs are most likely to produce a cost-effective tandem device.18Peters I.M. Sofia S. Mailoa J. Buonassisi T. Techno-economic analysis of tandem photovoltaic systems.RSC Adv. 2016; 6: 66911-66923Crossref Google Scholar This is a difficult balance for perovskite-silicon tandems since they feature two technologies with very different manufacturing approaches, with perovskite deposition being a solution-based process that potentially combines very low-cost materials with low capex, while silicon solar cells are potentially more capex-intensive to manufacture. We expand our analysis and explore the financial viability of perovskite-silicon solar cells, modeling the potential for perovskite-silicon tandems to lower the cost of PV and to enable faster manufacturing growth for existing manufacturers. In the rest of this paper, we model how the module manufacturing cost for a perovskite startup decreases with increasing scale and the subsequent sustainable growth rates that can be achieved. We begin in Perovskite Manufacturing Costs versus Scale by developing a bottom-up technoeconomic model of solution-processed flexible perovskite photovoltaic modules and calculate the minimum sustainable price versus manufacturing scale. In Sustainable Growth of Perovskite Manufacturing, we use this cost model to analyze the potential growth rates for perovskite photovoltaic module manufacturing companies as a function of their size and the average price they obtain for their products, to understand how perovskites can gain traction and significant market share. We continue by estimating the capital investment levels required to establish profitable companies of different scales in various markets. In Sustainable Growth of Silicon-Perovskite Tandem Manufacturing, we model the cost to manufacture a tandem perovskite module consisting of a single-junction perovskite cell on glass stacked in 4-terminal configuration onto a passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC) silicon bottom cell using existing cost models available in the literature and analyze the prospective growth of an existing silicon manufacturing company that invests in tandems. While recent technoeconomic analyses established minimum sustainable prices for perovskite photovoltaic modules on glass of $0.30/W–$0.70/W, these studies limited their analysis to larger factory sizes of 100 MW and greater.19Chang N.L. Yi Ho-Baillie A.W.Y. Basore P.A. Young T.L. Evans R. Egan R.J. A manufacturing cost estimation method with uncertainty analysis and its application to perovskite on glass photovoltaic modules.Prog. Photovolt: Res. Appl. 2017; 25: 390-405Crossref Scopus (141) Google Scholar,20Song Z. McElvany C.L. Phillips A.B. Celik I. Krantz P.W. Watthage S.C. Liyanage G.K. Apul D. Heben M.J. A technoeconomic analysis of perovskite solar module manufacturing with low-cost materials and techniques.Energy Environ. Sci. 2017; 10: 1297-1305Crossref Google Scholar To address the question of the cost of small-scale manufacturing, we develop a cost model for a perovskite PV module factory versus scale, building on work by Chang et al.,21Chang N.L. Ho-Baillie A.W.Y. Vak D. Gao M. Green M.A. Egan R.J. Manufacturing cost and market potential analysis of demonstrated roll-to-roll perovskite photovoltaic cell processes.Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells. 2018; 174: 314-324Crossref Scopus (93) Google Scholar and assess the module manufacturing costs considering economies of scale. We evaluate the cost of producing perovskite modules in the U.S. using a single roll-to-roll printing line with a maximum production capacity of 3.6 MW/year, up to 1 GW/year and 278 printing lines, considering the realistic impact of scale on costs including material prices versus purchase volume, US labor costs, and facility costs. In this study, we focus on the manufacture of flexible single-junction modules as opposed to modules on glass or perovskite-on-silicon22Bush K.A. Palmstrom A.F. Yu Z.J. Boccard M. Cheacharoen R. Mailoa J.P. McMeekin D.P. Hoye R.L.Z. Bailie C.D. Leijtens T. et al..23.6%-efficient monolithic perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells with improved stability.Nat. 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We develop a bottom-up cost model for a roll-to-roll solution processing perovskite photovoltaic module manufacturing facility, which is summarized here and outlined in detail in the Experimental Procedures section. Our modeled cell structure is based on structure D in21Chang N.L. Ho-Baillie A.W.Y. Vak D. Gao M. Green M.A. Egan R.J. Manufacturing cost and market potential analysis of demonstrated roll-to-roll perovskite photovoltaic cell processes.Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells. 2018; 174: 314-324Crossref Scopus (93) Google Scholar which is a combination of lower-cost active layer materials with a low-cost metallization scheme. We note that many other perovskite solar cell structures could be considered close to commercialization, but given our goal of evaluating the impact of capex on sustainable growth, we focus on this cell structure and use its comprehensive cost model description and leave it to others to assess their particular technology in a similar way. The manufacturing cost model includes the materials consumed and tool depreciation following a step-by-step process required to produce the module structure outlined in Figure 1A. The seven steps involved comprise: the purchase of indium-tin-oxide-coated polyethylene terephthalate (PET-ITO), laser pattering of the ITO layer, slot-die coating of (1) the perovskite absorber, (2) ZnO nanoparticles, and (3) the hole-conducting PEDOT:PSS layer, screen-printing of a Ag back contact, encapsulation in barrier foils using a laminator, cutting and contacting, and a final module testing step. Additional costs considered include the cost to purchase the buildings and facilities, labor for tool operations, tool maintenance including capital and labor expenses, facility and tool electricity usage, R&D expenses and selling, and general and administrative expenses (SG&A). Specific values are provided in the Experimental Procedures section. To model the impact of increasing production scale, for all materials used, quotes for material costs versus purchasing volume were obtained. The purchase volumes used were the amount (kg, L, or m2) of materials required for 3 months of manufacturing, i.e., it was assumed materials adequate for 3 months of manufacturing were purchased at once and stored on site before use. The economies of scale for purchasing the manufacturing tools of a 10% reduction in price for every doubling of purchase volume was assumed.21Chang N.L. Ho-Baillie A.W.Y. Vak D. Gao M. Green M.A. Egan R.J. Manufacturing cost and market potential analysis of demonstrated roll-to-roll perovskite photovoltaic cell processes.Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells. 2018; 174: 314-324Crossref Scopus (93) Google Scholar,26Nemet G.F. Beyond the learning curve: factors influencing cost reductions in photovoltaics.Energy Policy. 2006; 34: 3218-3232Crossref Scopus (474) Google Scholar Our model considers manufacturing lines that are in use 24 h a day for 365 days per year and the minimum annual production for one printing tool is 3.6 MW/year. When modeling annual productions of less than this value, we use the capex value to purchase one printing line and the required facility size. Other costs we adjust for scale include the portion of revenues spent on R&D, which we assume reduce from 20% for small-scale manufacturing of 1 MW/year to 5% once a scale of 1 GW/year is reached. The SG&A is assumed to be reduced from 12% to 8% across the same range—we note the current percentage of revenues spent on R&D by today’s top 12 PV companies is ∼2%, and SG&A is ∼11%.27Woodhouse M.A. Smith B. Ramdas A. Margolis R.M. Crystalline silicon photovoltaic module manufacturing costs and sustainable pricing: 1H 2018 benchmark and cost reduction roadmap.https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/72134.pdfDate: 2019Google Scholar The factory is assumed to suffer from 5% downtime for maintenance and repairs, while a final module efficiency of 18% and a PV industry standard weighted average cost of capital (WACC) of 14% was used to calculate the cost and minimum sustainable price (MSP) in $/W across all scales. We use a module efficiency of 18% to reflect the potential for this technology rather than the current state of the art where flexible single-junction perovskites have demonstrated efficiencies of over 19% but scaling such high efficiencies to module level is yet to be demonstrated.28Jung H.S. Han G.S. Park N.-G. Ko M.J. Flexible perovskite solar cells.Joule. 2019; 3: 1850-1880Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (160) Google Scholar As summarized in Figure 1B, the modeled MSP for perovskite solar panels manufactured on plastic film range from $3.30/W for a small-scale annual production of 0.3 MW/year to $0.53/W for an annual production capacity of 1 GW/year (values are provided in Table S1 in Supplemental Information). At small scales of less than 3 MW/year, when one printing tool is purchased but underutilized, there is a relatively even distribution of cost contributions from capex, variable costs, R&D, and SG&A. As the scale of production increases to 10 MW/year, the cost of manufacturing decreases to $0.80/W and less, with material costs contributing most. The results show that for solution-processed photovoltaics, a relatively low manufacturing cost can be achieved at relatively small scales owing to the low capex contribution of R2R tools to the final module cost. Given that at all scales, the variable or material costs make up the largest portion of the final module costs, it is worth considering these in more detail. Figures 1C and 1D show the step-by-step cost contributions from two ends of the manufacturing scale, 3 MW/year (1 printing line is utilized 80% of the year) and 1 GW/year. In both cases, a significant contribution to cost is the purchase of the three plastic foils used in the module manufacturing including the initial PET-ITO substrate and 2 layers of encapsulating barrier foil. It should be noted than $0.53/W is not low enough to sell into the residential or utility-scale photovoltaic markets at a profit given recent module prices have been in a $0.20–$0.40/W range,29pvXchange Trading GmbHPrice Index.https://www.pvxchange.com/en/price-indexDate: 2019Google Scholar however, given our model is limited to one cell type and its associated cost of materials, we expect some advances in technology will reduce the projected costs for R2R perovskites before they reach GW-scale production. Our model outlines that research into these “advances” should focus on driving down the cost of materials including TCO-coated substrates, metal contact deposition, and barrier foils in combination with intrinsic perovskite materials stability. This section makes clear the importance of a combined optimization of the technical, manufacturing, and economic aspects of perovskite photovoltaics to enable scale-up. Given the number of assumptions involved in an analysis like this, we conduct a sensitivity analysis on MSP for some key assumptions and costs and present the results in Figures 1E and 1F. Figure 1E presents results from a sensitivity analysis for a 3 MW/year annual production and Figure 1F presents the results from a sensitivity analysis for a 1 GW/year annual production considering a 30% decrease or increase in module efficiency, labor cost, and materials purchasing frequency with the price of each material scaled accordingly when they are purchased in larger or smaller volumes, prices for all materials used, prices for barrier foils only, prices for PET-ITO films only, and the costs to purchase all required tools. It is clear that, given the higher portion of the manufacturing costs attributed to variable costs as compared to capex depreciation, changes in the price of materials have a greater impact on module MSP than increases in tool costs. A 30% decrease in module efficiency also increases MSP significantly given that 30% less Watts are now produced per unit cost, re-emphasizing the importance of increasing the efficiency of currently demonstrated perovskite solar cells manufactured by high-throughput methods. In terms of reducing the MSP of this technology, it is clear that any technology that can reduce the cost of materials can have a significant impact with a 30% reduction in the cost of all materials reducing the MSP from $1.02/W to $0.83/W for the 3 MW/year production capacity and $0.534/W to $0.44/W for the 1 GW/year production capacity. Having established a range of costs for perovskite manufacturing versus scale, in this section, we calculate the sustainable growth rate of a perovskite PV company versus its scale and the average selling price (ASP) of its products. The growth rate calculation follows the method in30Needleman D.B. Poindexter J.R. Kurchin R.C. Marius Peters I. Wilson G. Buonassisi T. Economically sustainable scaling of photovoltaics to meet climate targets.Energy Environ. Sci. 2016; 9: 2122-2129Crossref Google Scholar and outlined in the Experimental Procedures, where the portion of operating profits not used to pay for R&D and SG&A is assumed to be spent on purchasing new capex equipment and facilities to expand manufacturing capacity. We note this is one particular definition of sustainable growth where a company or industry relies on its level of profitability rather than the injection of additional equity to grow organically. Long-term expansion can also be sustained by raising capital through equity or debt or under certain market conditions, but we do not discuss these here. For this analysis, average selling prices for photovoltaic products that range from 0.3–10 $/W were considered, representing the possible values across a wide range of PV markets from utility-scale systems to unmanned aerial vehicles.9Reese M.O. Glynn S. Kempe M.D. McGott D.L. Dabney M.S. Barnes T.M. Booth S. Feldman D. Haegel N.M. Increasing markets and decreasing package weight for high-specific-power photovoltaics.Nat. Energy. 2018; 3: 1002-1012Crossref Scopus (82) Google Scholar It is assumed the additional benefits of perovskites beyond efficiency and cost such as flexibility and integrated manufacturing would enable the technology to compete with silicon and other incumbent technologies in high-value markets and obtain the ASPs described. Figure 2 outlines the sustainable growth rate of a perovskite manufacturing facility versus its scale and the average price products are sold for, assuming growth would not be constrained by demand (the size of each high-value market and the possible problem that these market sectors are not sufficiently large to absorb the output of the factory is an important consideration we discuss in the next section). For production capacities of under 1 MW/year where manufacturing costs are typically >1 $/W, larger average selling prices are required for profitability and growth—it should be noted, however, that these prices are available for products that can be adapted to niche PV markets for drones and IoT nodes. For the R2R process, we have modeled, the minimum sustainable price drops below 1 $/W as the factory scales up, reaching a minimum of 0.53 $/W at a scale of 1 GW/year. The growth rates for medium-sized companies of 10–100 MW/year are positive for average selling prices of >1 $/W. Growth rates of 100% and greater are readily achievable for average selling prices obtainable in alternative PV markets and show that perovskite manufacturing can be compatible with venture capital funds who typically look for growth opportunities with return on investments equivalent to ∼100% year-on-year growth. We use growth in production capacity as a comparison for different R2R perovskite manufacturing facilities and highlight this 100% growth benchmark as a dashed line in Figure 2. We see that for perovskite manufacturers to reach >100% growth requires significantly different levels of ASP, as a function of production capacity. A small-scale (1–10 MW/year) factory must secure a minimum 1.5–3 $/W ASP for their products, while larger factories must sell for at least 1 $/W and the largest modeled (1 GW/year) must sell for 0.72 $/W. This value is around double the typical price currently obtained for photovoltaic modules in the grid-connected residential, commercial, and utility PV markets. Combining our bottom-up cost model versus manufacturing scale, and sustainable growth calculator, allows us to compare the different funding options for a perovskite photovoltaics manufacturing startup. As a first step, we analyze the level of equity investment required to build a company that sustainably sells mass market solar modules at $0.40/W. First, as we have shown that our particular module structure has an MSP of $0.53/W when manufactured at 1 GW/year, we also model a second case where, given the impact higher cost items such as the ITO-PET film and barrier foils have on the final module cost, we assume that new technologies will be sought to enable the cost of materials to reduce to 80% and 70% of their current costs—a requirement for the cost of roll-to-roll manufacturing of perovskite solar modules to be less than $0.4/W at all scales we investigate. With these additional cases for variable costs, we calculate the level of capital investment to establish a manufacturing facility versus its profitability or operating margin, as outlined in Figure 3A (note we exclude the initial startup R&D expenses used to develop the technology in the lab). Given current material costs, our results show that operating margins much less than 0% can be expected for a manufacturing facility with a capacity of 100 MW/year up to 1 GW/year. Considering cases where variable costs are lower, the operating margin of a 1 GW/year factory with variable material costs of 80% of current values is ∼1% and requires an upfront capital investment of $165 million. If variable costs reduce to 70% of current values, the minimum scale required to operate with a positive operating margin is 202 MW/year, setting the minimum investment in capital items (tools, eq