The Economic Competitiveness of Renewable Energy: Pathways to 100% Global Coverage

Chapter 8

Future Technology Development

8.1 General Remarks on Future Technology Developments

Having seen the power of Price Experience Curves it is interesting, based on the state of the art of technology as of today, to look at how the different technologies will most probably develop in the coming years. Whenever there is the possibility for scaling up, adding new processes, switch to new and more cost efficient materials, increasing the efficiency and more, there is a high chance that prices will follow the respective Price Experience Curve with increased cumulative volume; and do not forget what was said in the past about the further development of well-known products – like semiconductors, flat panel displays, architectural glass and many more – which proved to be much too pessimistic.

8.2 Photovoltaics

8.2.1 PV Product Portfolio

In the late 1990s I proposed a potential development for the various PV technologies in terms of module price development versus module efficiency which is shown in Figure 8.1. It was already described that for energy production purposes the lower efficiency modules must have a lower price compared to the ones with higher efficiency in order to compensate the higher BOS and installation cost. The range in relative prices is shown for the different technologies for 2010 in the upper band, starting with Thin-Film technologies, then crystalline Silicon modules and on the right the high efficiency concentrating systems.

Figure 8.1 Further development ...