Development Prospects of Solar Cells

The application of solar cells has entered the industry, commerce, agriculture, communications, household appliances and public facilities from the military and aerospace fields, especially in remote areas, mountains, deserts, islands and rural areas to save cost of transmission lines. But at this stage, its cost is still very high, and it needs to invest tens of thousands of dollars to generate 1kW of electricity, so large-scale use is still economically limited.
Photovoltaic cells sold on the market are mainly produced from monocrystalline silicon. Due to the high energy consumption of monocrystalline silicon battery production, some experts believe that the existing monocrystalline silicon battery production consumes more energy than the solar energy captured during its life cycle, which is worthless. The most optimistic estimate is that it will take about 10 years before the solar energy obtained by using monocrystalline silicon cells can be greater than the energy consumed by its production. The single crystal silicon is obtained by reducing the quartz sand and pulling the single crystal after melting. The production process consumes a lot of energy, produces many toxic and harmful substances, and causes serious environmental pollution. Foreign countries have transferred it to China for production. There are large production lines of monocrystalline silicon and monocrystalline silicon cells in various parts of my country.
However, we do not master the photovoltaic cell production technology. Although the production technology of monocrystalline silicon photovoltaic cells is very mature, it is still developing, and various other photovoltaic cell technologies are also emerging. The cost and photoelectric conversion efficiency of photovoltaic cells are still far from the real market, and the photovoltaic cell market mainly depends on financial subsidies from governments of various countries. Subsidies for photovoltaic power generation in the European market are as high as more than 1 yuan per kilowatt-hour. In the future, in order to make large-scale application of photovoltaic cells, the efficiency and production cost of photovoltaic cells must be continuously improved. In this process, production technologies and products will be continuously updated. Its replacement cycle is short, only 3-5 years. Photovoltaic cell production enterprises have a large investment and a long payback cycle. Due to rapid technological updates, if domestic enterprises do not master the technology and update the technology in time, they will be eliminated soon and may not be able to recover their investment.
However, in the long run, with the improvement of solar cell manufacturing technology and the invention of new photoelectric conversion devices, the protection of the environment and the huge demand for renewable and clean energy in various countries, solar cells will still be the most efficient way to use solar radiation energy. The practical method can open up broad prospects for the large-scale utilization of solar energy in the future.