payback period has been reduced to about 2-4 years http://www.worldenergy.org/publications/survey_of_energy_resources_2007/solar/723.asp

Publications
Survey of Energy Resources 2007

Solar Photovoltaic Systems (PV)

Photovoltaic conversion is the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity with no intervening heat engine. As indicated above, photovoltaic devices are rugged and simple in design and require very little maintenance. Perhaps the biggest advantage of solar photovoltaic devices is that they can be constructed as stand-alone systems to give outputs from microwatts to megawatts. That is why they have been used as the power sources for calculators, watches, water pumping, remote buildings, communications, satellites and space vehicles, and even megawatt-scale power plants. With such a vast array of applications, the demand for photovoltaics is increasing every year. In 2005, over 1 700 MWp of photovoltaic panels were sold for terrestrial uses and the market is growing at a phenomenal rate: about 35% per year worldwide (Fig. 10-9 ).

In the early days of solar cells in the 1960s and 1970s, more energy was required to produce a cell than it could ever deliver during its lifetime. Since then, dramatic improvements have taken place in their efficiency and manufacturing methods. The energy payback period has been reduced to about 2-4 years, depending on the location of use, while panel lifetime has increased to over 25 years. The energy payback period of multijunction thin-film Concentrating PV is projected to be less than one year. As mentioned above, the cost of photovoltaic panels has come down. The current US$ 3/W cost of solar panels results in system costs of US$ 5-7/W which is very high for on-grid applications. Perhaps however, these dollar costs do not adequately portray the true environmental value of solar PV systems. Even at an energy payback period of 3 years and a lifetime of 25 years, the return on energy investment is more than 8:1 and return on CO2 avoidance is more than 6:1.

The limits imposed on the efficiency of solar cells due to band gap can be partially overcome by using multiple layers of solar cells stacked on top of each other, each layer with a band gap higher than the layer below it. The efficiency would increase with the number of layers. However, for this concept to work the thickness of each layer must be extremely small; this has been achieved by the development of Thin-Film PV technologies. Some of the materials being developed for thin-film solar cells include cadmium telluride (CdTe), copper indium diselenide (CIS), copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS), gallium arsenide (GaAs) and indium phosphide (InP). Of these, CdTe and CIS are receiving the most commercial attention at this time. Multijunction thin-film solar cells give even higher efficiencies when exposed to concentrated sunlight. Therefore, a great deal of commercial attention is being focused on Concentrating Photovoltaics or CPV.

The current state of solar cell development is illustrated in Fig. 10-10 . While crystalline and polycrystalline silicon solar cells dominate today's solar industry, the rapid rise in efficiency vs time (experience curve) of the multijunction thin-film cells makes this a particularly attractive technology path.

Under concentrated sunlight, multijunction (GaInP/GaAs/Ge [germanium]) solar cells have demonstrated efficiencies twice (39.3%) that of most silicon cells. This means that, in sunny areas, a multijunction concentrator system can generate almost twice as much electricity as a silicon panel with the same cell area. The concentrating optics focus the light onto a small area of cells, reducing the area of the solar cells by a factor of, typically 500-1 000 times. The reduced cell area overcomes the increased cell cost. The cell cost is diminished in importance and is replaced by the cost of optics. If the cost of the optics is comparable to the cost of the glass and support structure needed for silicon flat-plate modules, then the cost per unit area can remain fixed while the electricity production is essentially doubled. Thus, in high direct insolation locations, multijunction concentrator technology has the potential to reduce the cost of solar electricity by about a factor of two. The efficiency is a moving target; today's triple-junction cell efficiency is nearly 40%. Thus it may be reasonably extrapolated that multijunction cells may reach 50% efficiency in the future.

The biggest advantage of solar PV systems is that they can provide from a few watts to hundreds of megawatts. Development of flexible thin-film PV panels (Fig. 10-11 ) makes them ideal for integration in building design. In this way, they can utilise the solar exposure provided by the buildings and therefore not use any extra land.



The energy payback period has been reduced to about 2-4 years, depending on the location of use, while panel lifetime has increased to over 25 years. The energy payback period of multijunction thin-film Concentrating PV is projected to be less than one year. As mentioned above, the cost of photovoltaic panels has come down. The current US$ 3/W cost of solar panels results in system costs of US$ 5-7/W which is very high for on-grid applications. Perhaps however, these dollar costs do not adequately portray the true environmental value of solar PV systems. Even at an energy payback period of 3 years and a lifetime of 25 years, the return on energy investment is more than 8:1 and return on CO2 avoidance is more than 6:1.


The energy payback period has been reduced to about 2-4 years, depending on the location of use, while panel lifetime has increased to over 25 years. The energy payback period of multijunction thin-film Concentrating PV is projected to be less than one year. As mentioned above, the cost of photovoltaic panels has come down. The current US$ 3/W cost of solar panels results in system costs of US$ 5-7/W which is very high for on-grid applications. Perhaps however, these dollar costs do not adequately portray the true environmental value of solar PV systems. Even at an energy payback period of 3 years and a lifetime of 25 years, the return on energy investment is more than 8:1 and return on CO2 avoidance is more than 6:1.


The energy payback period has been reduced to about 2-4 years, depending on the location of use, while panel lifetime has increased to over 25 years. The energy payback period of multijunction thin-film Concentrating PV is projected to be less than one year. As mentioned above, the cost of photovoltaic panels has come down. The current US$ 3/W cost of solar panels results in system costs of US$ 5-7/W which is very high for on-grid applications. Perhaps however, these dollar costs do not adequately portray the true environmental value of solar PV systems. Even at an energy payback period of 3 years and a lifetime of 25 years, the return on energy investment is more than 8:1 and return on CO2 avoidance is more than 6:1.