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Next 5-10 year? Will the costs come down? How much?
Joel Jean
Co-author of MIT Future of Solar
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That said, solar PV accounted for only ~1% of our total electricity consumption
last year, so there's clearly a lot of headroom left.
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With PV technologies, it's really hard to predict what will be the long-term
winner.
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[brightsourceenergy.com ]
Global CSP deployment today is lower than PV deployment by about 2 orders
of magnitude. As for the future, CSP will become more and more important as
penetration of solar and wind increases, because it can potentially overcome
the natural intermittency of those resources (discussed further below) using
built-in thermal energy storage (on the time scale of 4-8 hours).
Solar Fuels
Sunlight can catalyze chemical reactions that use water and CO2 to produce
liquid or gaseous fuels (e.g., hydrogen, methane, various alcohols and
hydrocarbons). These "solar fuels" have a unique role in a future low-carbon
energy economy, since they could help decarbonize transportationespecially
by air and sea, where electric-powered transport may be impractical. Solar
fuels could also become a key energy storage technology for counteracting solar
intermittency.
All that said, solar-to-fuels technology is far from provenmy MIT colleague
Bob Jaffe would say that there are many "tooth fairies'" worth of fanciful
technological advances that still need to be made to get solar fuels to market at
competitive cost.
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Intermittency
In most places on Earth, sunlight isn't always available. Some of the variations
in available solar energy are predictable or deterministic (e.g., diurnal and
seasonal cycles and local climate), while others are unpredictable or stochastic
(e.g., cloud cover and weather).
When solar is deployed at large scale (several percent of total electricity
generation) on a given grid, electricity markets will likely change significantly.
After a solar PV system is installed, it costs almost nothing to operate. Zerovariable-cost generation means that solar energy will be used whenever it's
available (i.e., when the sun is shining). PV will thus replace fossil-fueled
generators (i.e., coal and gas) with the highest variable costs, reducing
marginal electricity prices.
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References
[1] J. E. Trancik and D. Cross-Call, Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47, 66736680.
[2] M. Z. Jacobson, Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148-173.
[3] U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), 2014.
[4] MIT Future of Solar Energy Study, 2015, in preparation.
[5] J. Jean et al., 2015, submitted.
*Just to be clear, the views expressed here are my own. My opinions are
informed by my involvement in the MIT Future of Solar Energy Study but
dont necessarily reflect the final conclusions of that study. I encourage you to
read the report when it's released later this year (and others) and come to
your own conclusions about the future of solar.
**Feel free to use the figures in this answer for educational purposes. Figures
without citations are my own, and proper attribution is appreciated.
Solar PV FAQs
Does a solar panel produce more energy than it takes to manufacture it? In
other words, is the energy payback time (EPBT) shorter than the lifetime of
the panel?
YES! A typical silicon PV module today produces as much energy as it took to
manufacture it in less than 2 years (<1 year for CdTe), and continues to
operate with minimal efficiency loss for at least 25 years.
I hear solar cells can only convert 15% (or 20%) of incoming sunlight into
electricity. Why are solar cells so inefficient? I mean, my body can convert a
Big Mac into useful energy at 25% efficiency. Why cant you scientists do
better?
Physics is tough to beat. Thermodynamic limits (see Shockley-Queisser limit)
cap the ultimate efficiency of typical solar cells based on a single material at
~31%. Using multiple materialsas in multijunction or tandem cellsboosts
the theoretical maximum efficiency (e.g., to ~49% for 3 junctions). Some
exotic approaches (e.g., carrier multiplication, hot-carrier collection, and
intermediate band cells) can theoretically bypass the Shockley-Queisser limit,
but none has yet achieved practical efficiency gains.
But in the end, we dont really care about efficiency anyway; we care about the
cost of energy [$/kWh]. Photosynthesis is on the order of 1% efficient at
converting sunlight into chemical energy, yet the U.S. still tries to grow corn to
make ethanol. That said, its worthwhile to work on improving the efficiency of
solar cells because higher efficiencies can decrease module and system costs.
Why are production PV modules so much less efficient than record cells in the
lab?
Intrinsic scaling losses: Scaling from small cells (~1 square centimeter) to
large modules with multiple interconnected cells (~100 square centimeters)
incurs physical scaling losses. Electrons must travel farther, increasing resistive
losses. Shadowing from electrodes reduces the available light. Longer wires in
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