Abate acknowledged that both First Solar and Chinese crystalline silicon solar producers are formidable competitors.
First Solar makes the most efficient thin film panels, SunPower makes the most efficient crystalline silicon panels.
All of the technologies will be compared against a set of traditional crystalline silicon panels also on site.
Instead of traditional crystalline silicon solar panels, it will be using thin film solar, which uses elements other than silicon.
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Its technology is less efficient than CIGS and crystalline silicon, but First Solar can make it in huge volumes for cheap.
If crystalline silicon or other thin-film technologies compete with cadmium telluride on costs, buyers might opt to avoid First Solar's toxicity.
And while amorphous silicon can be turned into crystalline silicon by heating it, the high temperature required causes plastic to melt.
Making flexible circuitry is difficult because logic circuits are traditionally made of transistors etched into a crystalline silicon wafer, which is rigid.
The panels are various new thin-film technologies that Chevron thinks could cost less than current thin film technologies or traditional crystalline silicon solar cells.
Recently, Texas businesses signed six agreements worth half a billion dollars in exports to China, including cotton, crystalline silicon solar cells and photovoltaic generation systems.
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It has an inherent competitive advantage due to its use of Cadmium Tellurium (CdTe) in its panels instead of crystalline silicon (polysilicon) used by almost all its competitors.
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"We do not envision a realistic scenario in which crystalline silicon modules would be able to achieve cost levels that enable competitive pricing, " he said in a recent call with investors.
While thin-film solar panels have lower efficiencies than conventional crystalline silicon panels like those found on residential rooftops, they could be produced at a cheaper cost, especially when silicon prices rise.
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But then came a 50 percent fall in the price of conventional crystalline silicon photovoltaic modules as Chinese manufacturers rapidly ramped up production and many CIGS companies backed off their earlier optimistic projections.
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In the lab Cigs has a maximum solar conversion efficiency of 20.2%, better than the 16.5% of a thin-film technology that kicks the pants off the traditional crystalline silicon panels on price per watt of capacity.
The company has licensed several patents from America's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where a team led by Paul Carey devised a clever way to turn amorphous silicon into the crystalline kind without high temperatures.
The problem, however, is that the silicon layer is amorphous, rather than crystalline.
Though less efficient at converting sunlight into electricity than conventional crystalline photovoltaics, CIGS cells are essentially printed on glass or flexible metal and use a minimum amount of expensive silicon.
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