L R AS Published on Saturday 4 April 2020 - n° 316 - Categories:various sectors
How to classify the different PV technologies?
The development of PV technology over the past decades should be seen as an evolutionary process, rather than the constant emergence of new generations of equipment, according to Dutchman Win C. Sinke. He states
that there are no new product generations in the solar industry.
The complex landscape of existing and commercially available PV panel technologies consists of all crystalline silicon technologies.
A second generation consists of thin-film technologies such as cadmium-telluride (CdTe), copper-indium-gallium-selenium (CIGS) and amorphous or microcrystalline silicon (aSi or μcSi).
The third generation includes all thin-film and other innovative technologies that exceed the Shockley-Queisser (SQ) limit, which the first two generations were unable to cross.
For twenty-five years it was believed that wafer-based crystalline silicon was a thing of the past. It has always been developed and strengthened its former position.
SinkeThe future success of solar energy will require interaction between the different photovoltaic technologies. The introduction of thin films of crystalline silicon in the form of high-quality passivation will be a key factor in the future success of solar energy.s heterojunction technologies. Efficient tandems cannot be achieved without using thin-film processes. « Only by merging products from the first two generations will it be possible to identify the best solutions for the third".
"Technological families develop because new generations arrive and older generations leave," he explains. "Moreover, families overlap and even merge. »« This third category will be more effective in explaining why photovoltaic technologies rarely become obsolete, but end up disappearing, says Sinke, because he believes they follow a more complex evolutionary path.
PV Magazine of 3 April
Editor's note The technological progress on crystalline silicon is remarkable. It does not seem that the same evolution has been affecting thin films for the last two or three years. On the other hand, significant progress has been made on perovskite and tandem cells, which are an evolution of silicon cells.
