Terawatt-scale photovoltaics: Trajectories and challenges
Coordinating technology, policy, and business innovations
Abstract
The annual potential of solar energy far exceeds the world's total energy consumption. However, the vision of photovoltaics (PVs) providing a substantial fraction of global electricity generation and total energy demand is far from being realized. What technical, infrastructure, economic, and policy barriers need to be overcome for PVs to grow to the multiple terawatt (TW) scale? We assess realistic future scenarios and make suggestions for a global agenda to move toward PVs at a multi-TW scale.
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References and Notes
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Published In
Science
Volume 356 | Issue 6334
14 April 2017
14 April 2017
Copyright
Copyright © 2017, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Published in print: 14 April 2017
Acknowledgments
This paper was informed by the Terawatt Workshop convened in Freiburg, Germany, by the Global Alliance of Solar Energy Research Institutes, March 2016. The authors thank P. Basore for contributions to workshop organization, D. Gwinner for editorial support, and L. Hornbecker for contributions to manuscript preparation. We acknowledge D. B. Needleman and H. Laine for contributions in preparing data and references for the second figure. National Renewable Energy Laboratory's portion of this work was completed under U.S. Department of Energy contract no. DE-AC36-08-GO28308; partial financial support for preparation of the manuscript was provided by the National Center for Photovoltaics Director's Fund.
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- Nancy M. Haegel et al.
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- Terawatt-scale photovoltaics: Transform global energy, Science, 364, 6443, (836-838), (2021)./doi/10.1126/science.aaw1845
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Problems of photovoltaics solar energy
Nancy M. Haegel and et al., described challenges of photovoltaics (1). However, they must depict the obstacles or disturbances of photovoltaics for advancing photovoltaics research. Piled snow / sands / dusts / stains / debris / leaves, and aging dramatically degrade power production of photovoltaics solar panels. In slicing process silicon ingots for photovoltaic cells, we lose a half of the silicon ingots as industrial waste. Semiconductor factories need 'clean' manufacturing environments and are expensive to build & maintain. Excessive heat from sunlight severely reduces the solar panel's production of power. Huge energy is consumed for fabricating silicon ingots and solar cells. There are other issues (2):
1. Installing solar panels on a house is expensive and requires experienced people. These systems used fixed solar panels since alignment systems are too expensive for the average homeowner.
2. Giant solar farms have been built in desert regions and have reduced the installation cost since a larger economy-of-scale is created. But these large, inexpensive tracks of lands are found far from cities where the power is needed. Expensive transmission lines are needed to bring the power to a distant market.
References:
1. Nancy M. Haegel and et al., Terawatt-scale photovoltaics: Trajectories and challenges, Science 14 Apr 2017: Vol. 356, Issue 6334, pp. 141-143
2. http://www.solarpoweristhefuture.com/problems-with-solar-energy.shtml