Increasing efficiency and expanding manufacturing capacity play complementary roles in reducing costs for tandem perovskite/silicon metal halide photovoltaic modules, according to researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Each cost lever can play a similar role, depending on the manufacturer’s ability to scale up and improve module performance.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy's laboratory, most s manufactured today are based on single-junction silicon solar cells. By pairing silicon with another solar cell material, such as metal halide perovskites (MHPs), creating a tandem, NREL said manufacturers could create a module that can convert more sunlight into electricity than using silicon alone.
This tandem technology is still in its early stages, and there are several options being pursued to integrate MHPs and silicon, with many unknowns in of cost and performance. To address this gap, the researchers built a manufacturing cost model that combines lab processes with existing equipment and supply chains to compare different possible approaches at scale.
They examined a variety of methods for building a tandem module and compared the sensitivity of manufacturing costs to the materials used to make device layers, production equipment costs, factory location, and other factors. The factors they found to impact manufacturing costs most significantly were factory throughput and efficiency.
“One of the questions this paper answers is: what is the value of this efficiency,” said Jacob Cordell, lead author of the paper.Techno-economic analysis of perovskite/silicon tandem solar s”, which appears in the journal Joule. “A key finding is that a 2,5% absolute efficiency gain in a module provides the same reduction in cost per nominal capacity as doubling the size of its factory,” he noted.
Using DCAM (Detailed Cost Analysis Model), which is now publicly available, the researchers were able to test several scenarios, including any changes in cost that result from locating factories in different parts of the world and different types of manufacturing incentives.
NREL Highlights Opportunities for Manufacturing Perovskite s
By making this model available, companies and researchers can use this baseline to investigate how different processes and materials will impact costs. This model does not address the energy production or lifetime of these modules, which are active areas of research.
Starting with a baseline model in which a manufacturer makes 25 percent efficient s in the United States with an annual production capacity of 3 GW, the researchers performed a simultaneous comparison of manufacturing efficiency and output to determine how module cost would change as nominal power generation capacity increased. “This shows the power of research to improve device efficiency and reduce module cost per watt,” Cordell said.
The journal article, co-authored by Michael Woodhouse and Emily Warren, noted that efficiency is a dynamic variable for predicting the cost of tandem modules because many other variables have changed and will continue to change to achieve the efficiency and durability levels required for commercially viable PV modules.
According to NREL, tandem s must have an efficiency of at least 25 percent to be price-competitive with other photovoltaic technologies. The next steps toward commercializing perovskite/silicon tandem modules, according to the lab, are to improve the reliability of the technology in the field and scale the high-efficiency device area to full module sizes while maintaining performance.
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