The price of PVmodule in about 15 years is 1/10, whereas the price of PV systems is halved [1], it implies that the impact of PV modules on the cost of the whole systems is decreasing more and more. As a consequence does it make any sense to find solutions to reduce the active phovoltaic surface, as it happens in concentration PV systems?
[1] Photovoltaic (PV) Pricing Trends: Historical, Recent, and Near-Term Projections, Technical Report DOE/GO-102012-3839 • November 2012
I'd say that the relevant number to look at is the LCOE (Levelized cost of electricity, in $/kWh) rather than the installation cost (in $/W). This NREL study only consider instalation costs. In brief, installation cost does not consider how good is the installation in terms of productivity along the time. On the other hand, LCOE takes into account the plant production along all its life (25 years, including O&M costs) in a specific location (with a specific DNI). If you look at this metrics you may find that CPV is already more profitable than conventional PV in locations with a high enough DNI. Besides, the learning rate for CPV seems to be higher (LR of ~20%) than in PV (LR of ~14%) so CPV is expected to reach competitive LCOEs in an increasing number of locations. I reccomend the reports from GTM Research to find more detalied information on this topic.
This is an excellent question. The idea behind CPV was to replace (then) expensive PV modules by (then) cheap optical concentrators. Things are not going well for the CPV industry because what was true then is not necessarily the case anymore. The price of PV modules still continues to drop, so that it is the Balance of System (BOS) price that becomes a limiting factor. In the case of CPV, the BOS costs are important, and may even increase in the future.
Additionally, CPV is geographically a niche market because it requires a very high solar resource in DNI, whereas PV can be installed almost anywhere on Earth. The same thing is true of CSP, but at least it has the advantage of thermal storage.
I would say that, unless there is new disruptive inventions in CPV to lower costs, its future looks gloomy.
Thank you for your contribution. I agree with you. I would like just to add two considerations:
1) CPV: there are different technical solution High, medium and low concentration systems, so probabily they deserve different considerations about their future.
For example I am running a research on low concentrating systems, based on the use of flat mirrors, in this case also the new technology of distributed dc/dc is exploited (I have attached a paper presented at ICAE 2013 Conference, South Africa)
2) CPS (you PVT systems) solve an important problem, that is the availability of enought space for both PV and thermal systems, for instance in an urban context.
Paper on low concentration systems with distributed dc/dc converters.
In my view, low-concentration PV is also of limited potential: it is geographically a niche market (since it requires high DNI), and its BOS costs are higher than conventional PV.
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