Prospects of Photovoltaic Technology
Zhenguo Li
Abstract
Photovoltaic (PV) solar energy is essential for achieving our low-carbon development and carbon-neutral society. Monocrystalline silicon (c-Si) cell is currently the mainstream and most promising PV. Thanks to the evolution of several important technologies in the past decade, the efficiency and cost of c-Si cells have shown dramatic increase and reduction, respectively. In the next 5-10 years, through further cell optimization based on our deeper understanding on the cell efficiency loss, the c-Si cell efficiency is approaching 27∼28%, while c-Si based tandem cells with efficiency surpassing 30% is likely to appear in the market. Meanwhile, to overcome the challenges induced by the intrinsic characteristics (i.e., regional intermittence and randomness) of PV and achieve a high PV proportion in the entire energy system, technologies that integrate PV with other renewable energies, energy-storage units and green hydrogen will undergo a rapid development.