Decision Making Framework for Photovoltaic Cell Technologies Using Six Sigma

The fast pace of technology and business innovation in the renewable energy sector can make it difficult to thoroughly evaluate competing technologies, often because incontrovertible data is lacking or obscured by speculation, hype, and vaporware claims. Thus an impartial and comprehensive tool is needed to analyze qualitative and subjective parameters. This paper proposes the use of Six Sigma as a quantitative method suitable for evaluating emerging technologies in the solar and other renewable energy markets and will demonstrate how the Six Sigma tools of the Fishbone Diagram, Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Priority Matrix can be applied to analyze photovoltaic cell technologies. Market data is shown to confirm the results of the Six Sigma analysis.