CONFERENCE REPORT I ADVANCES IN PHOTOVOLTAICS
Optimism reigns in solar circles Insights into the future growth of the solar market, development of a large scale PV
production line from a university research laboratory project and technologies to boost cell efficiency all featured at the recent Advances in Photovolatics conference hosted by the Institute of Physics in London. Conference co-organiser Zoe Barber of Cambridge University’s Materials Science and Metullurgy Department reports.
D
espite turbulent times for investors in solar power, the picture that emerged at the one-day Advances
in Photovoltaics gathering was of a buoyant, optimistic industry, with technology performing ahead of predictions on many counts. Although there is continued pressure for increased efficiencies and reduced costs, it was noted that there is great potential to deliver on these fronts: In addition to further economies of scale due to ramping up of volume production, there are many exciting possibilities for future technologies, and many parameters to tune.
As well as discussion of the market and the position of PV against other power sources, there were reports on technological achievements, and intriguing pointers to the potential for really significant advances. Delegates also learned about the demands for characterisation methods and the problems in making true comparisons between different device performance.
The meeting kicked-off with a presentation from Martin Green, the internationally renowned academic from the University of New South Wales. Green set the scene with an overview of
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current market trends, a summary of where the exploitation of PV technology has got to, and where we can expect it to go.
During the last decade, PV’s position within the growing low- carbon technology market has gone from one of virtual insignificance to a significant contributor. Green illustrated that wind energy has been growing strongly, but PV is catching up and will probably overtake it in the next decade. In Australia, this has been encouraged by arguably overgenerous feed-in tariffs, leading to a large uptake of domestic-based PV modules. These are typically 3 kWp systems that provide homeowners with around half their required power usage. In Sydney about 8 percent of homes have these fitted.
Green pointed out that large arrays are also being deployed around the globe, with up-take relatively high in the US and Germany. These are set to compete with wholesale conventional power generation some time soon. Goals for PV uptake vary greatly from country to country, given variable climates, but the overall figure for Europe is a 12 percent PV power contribution by 2020. In the UK, the aim is to deploy 2 GW by the end of this decade.
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