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For many years, photovoltaics (PV) have seen exceptional rates of growth, 30-40% per year. When the PV industry began, the dominant markets were off-grid for remote sites, but more recently, grid-connected arrays have been important, and currently, growth seems to be in building-integrated and novel applications. This new technology study from Smithers Pira guides you through future markets and applications for this technology over the next five years to 2013. It takes an in-depth look at PV technology to date, disruptive technologies, commercial applications and the competitive landscape.
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- The future of photovoltaic systems to 2013
- Technology developments and their barriers
- Suppliers, integrators and end users of PVs
Contents
Introduction
- Scope
- objectives
- Methodology
Technology Overview
- Solar radiation
- Solar position
- Beam, diffuse and reflected radiation
- Optimum orientation for fixed arrays
- Shading
- Solar simulators
- PV material properties
- Material bandgaps
- Absorption of solar irradiation
- Cell efficiencies by material and time
- Refining of silicon
- Silicon growth
- Czochralski monocrystalline
- Multi crystalline casting GTSolar, PVCrystalx, BP Solar
- Cutting wafers from ingots and boules
- Thin cells
- Packing density - Cell area into modules.
- Monolithic vs assembled modules
- Generalised procedure for cutting monolithic modules
- Examples of materials used for solar cells
- Crystalline silicon
- Back-contacted solar cells
- Sunpower
- PinUpModule (PUM) ECN/Solland
- MWT - Fraunhofer
- Advent
- Heterojunction: e.g Sanyo HIT
- Selective emitter/buried contacts LGBC: e.g BP Solar Saturn
- Day4Energy
- Ribbon: e.g. Evergreen/EverQ, RWE Schott
- EFG (Edge-defined Film Growth)
- Sliver cell
- Why thin film devices are in stripes
- Thin films
- Thin film loss analysis
- CdTe: e.g. First Solar (expecting 12% by 2012), Primestar, Calyxo, Antec, Sunovia (BP Solar)
- CI(G)S: e.g. Wuerth, Global Solar, MIASOLE, NANOSOLAR, HELIOVOLT, ISET, SOLOPOWER
- CSG: Crystalline Silicon on Glass
- Spheral - are they still going?
- GaAs: Space
- Micromorph Tandem: e.g. Oerlikon, Kaneka, Applied Materials
- Concentrators (ISFOC)
- 3rd Generation
- Dye
- Organic
Technology Barriers
- Cost - still high $/Wp
- Energy payback time
- Lifetime
- Maximum grid penetration (<20%)
- Inverters or 12V systems and problem of islanding
- Variability
- Mounting
- Connection to grid
- Fire
Disruptive Technologies
Commercial Applications
- Technology challenges in buildings, ion-grid, etc
Competitive Landscape
- Major suppliers, integrators and end users