Ascent Solar (ASTI) is announcing this morning that it has achieved greater than 9.5% efficiency for its thin film, flexible Copper, Indium, Gallium, Selenide (CIGS) integrated solar modules.

Lawrence Kazmerksi, Executive Director at NREL, said, “This is significant. Many doubted that a thin-film CIGS solar cell-on-plastic technology could be possible. Ascent Solar not only achieved this, but they now have confirmed efficiencies at NREL on fully integrated, monolithic prototype modules near 10%. This appears to be a substantial leap toward realizing high-performance, inexpensive thin-film solar photovoltaics.”

First Solar (FSLR) which uses a cadmium telluride technology for its thin film applications has said it achieves around 10.5% efficiency for its panels.  The bulkier, more traditional polysilicon based panels achieve a much higher rate of efficiency .. Sunpower has demonstrated solar cell efficiencies of over 20%.