Development Direction and Trend Analysis of Future Solar Cells

With the development of renewable energy, solar energy has become one of the most potential new energy. As the core part of solar power generation, solar cell is a key link in the development and utilization of new energy. However, due to high cost and low efficiency, there are still many bottlenecks in the development of solar cells. This paper analyzes the current situation and existing problems of solar cells, and discusses the development direction and trend of solar cells in the future.

Introduction

Solar cell is the core part of solar power generation, which has the advantages of high conversion efficiency, small size, light weight and no pollution to the environment. However, due to high cost and low efficiency, solar cells can not reach the level of commercial applications. In this paper, the development status and problems of solar cells are analyzed, and the development direction and trend of solar cells in the future are proposed.

Development of photovoltaic industry

According to the statistics of the photovoltaic industry association, the output of photovoltaic modules in China will reach 101.6GW in 2019, up 47.4% year-on-year; and the output of monocrystalline silicon rods and silicon wafers will reach 86.9GW and 64.6GW respectively, up 38.9% and 15.6% year-on-year. By the end of 2019, the cumulative installed capacity of our country has reached 281.6GW, and the cumulative export capacity has reached 95.5GW. However, it is worth noting that in 2019, our country’s photovoltaic module exports declined, exports only 17.7GW, down 25.9%.

Application Status of Solar Cells

Solar cells are the core of the solar power system and account for about 60% of the total cost of the photovoltaic system. The performance of solar cells directly determines the power generation efficiency of the whole photovoltaic system, and also determines the life and economy of the whole photovoltaic system. According to statistics, the global photovoltaic installed capacity in 2019 was 445GW, up 35% year-on-year, including China’s new photovoltaic installed capacity of 137GW, up 90%. Since 2020, the global new energy market continues to warm, overlapping governments have issued various support policies, is expected to the future global photovoltaic installed capacity will continue to grow rapidly. From January to October 2020, China added about 30.58GW of photovoltaic units, an increase of 71.0% over the same period last year. It is expected that the total installed capacity will exceed 200GW.

Problems in Photovoltaic Industry

At home, the development of the solar energy industry by the national policy support and protection, the rapid expansion of industrial scale, become one of the most dynamic emerging industries. However, due to the high cost of photovoltaic products and insufficient domestic market demand, the photovoltaic industry has been unable to get rid of the situation of “feeding on the weather”, especially in recent two years, European and American countries levy high anti-dumping tariffs on our photovoltaic products, which makes domestic photovoltaic enterprises in trouble. In addition, the rapid development of photovoltaic industry also exposed some problems: unstable product quality, backward technology, backward manufacturing technology.

Development Direction and Trend of Photovoltaic Industry

In the future, the development of the PV industry will further change from scale to quality, pay more attention to technological progress and cost reduction, and realize the transformation from scale to scale and high-end, thus promoting the development of the industry towards high quality. Technology innovation is the first driving force leading the industrial development, and the photovoltaic industry will pay more attention to collaborative innovation and integrated innovation. In addition, photovoltaic power generation applications, will further promote the distributed photovoltaic power generation, photovoltaic power generation to the large-scale transformation of new and renewable energy. In addition, the construction of industry standards will also accelerate the promotion to improve the international influence of the photovoltaic industry.