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Finding universal rules for efficiency enhancing layers in thin film PV

寻找薄膜光伏增效层的通用规则

基本信息

批准号：
EP/K005901/1
负责人：
Ken Durose
金额：
$ 44.15万
依托单位：
University of Liverpool
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2013
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2013 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FK005901%2F1
关键词：
Finding universal rules efficiency enhancing

项目摘要

1 PV market and the challenge for new technologiesIt remains the case worldwide that solar photovoltaic electricity (PV) has yet to reach parity with grid connected power generation. Although there have been significant price reductions in recent years, these have only partly been driven by genuine improvements in volume manufacturing methods. The recent price crash is due to overproduction in China - it has lead to the market price being less than the cost price - a fundamentally unstable situation that must soon see a market correction. The market position is further complicated by the fact that most of the international sales are driven by government subsidy regimes that are aimed at stimulating the solar industry. In the UK, the Feed In Tariff has increased the industry from 3000 to 25000 jobs - and indeed has created such market expansion that it has had to be curtailed. In the longer term, PV must become genuinely cheaper - and it is the aim of our research work to achieve this by making significant improvements to the cost effectiveness of new technologies.2 Capacity for cost reduction and the drive to more sustainable thin film PVIt should be mentioned that even modest sounding improvements in efficiency are very significant: for a 10% efficient solar cell, an increase of +1% to 11% will result in a 9% reduction in the specific cost ($/Wp). This means that for a company selling 1GWp of modules at $0.5 per watt, with a turnover of $500m, there is a saving of $45m.In recent years, the intrinsically cheaper 'thin film' solar cells have reached market, but the technology, and market position, are far from secure and mature. While the present day leaders, CdTe and Cu(InGa)Se2 (CIGS) are doing well, holding about 10% of the market, significant challenges remain. The products are changing dynamically - the technology development is far from complete, and there is pressure to increase efficiency and reduce costs. Moreover, in the medium term future, when the thin film PV industry grows to 50 -100 times its current size, the cost and availability of some of the raw materials used will become limiting. New, low-cost, sustainable PV materials must be found. Since the development of PV devices is historically slow - half a percent improvement per year - the search has started that could influence the future of solar electricity in 20 years time.3 Step change in understanding of efficiency improving layers in thin film PV.In this work we are seeking to make a step change in the understanding of a method of improving the efficiency of thin film PV devices. The method is based on including an 'extra' layer into the device structure, that being a transparent but highly resistive layer. Paradoxically this improves the efficiency of the cells by increasing their open circuit voltages and fill factors, while in principle one might have expected a decrease due to the additional series resistance. At present there is no consensus in the literature as to how this benefit comes about, although it has been seen to work in a wide range of disparate technologies, including thin film CdTe, GIGS and silicon. The aim of this proposal is to make a wide-ranging and thorough investigation of this effect, using CdTe as an exemplar for the study. Our objective is to discover the universal rules of operation that will allow the improvements to solar cell performance to be understood. The benefit of this will be that, if successful, we will be able to recommend changes to current industrial practice that will slash costs and hence promote the solar PV manufacturing industry. More importantly, the same benefits may be applied to new materials in PV, and this would give a boost to the emerging UK effort in these new and sustainable materials. The work is therefore timely, in that it would bring understanding based advances to a field where the UK lead research has the capacity to make an impact on future technology.

1光伏市场和新技术的挑战在全球范围内，太阳能光伏发电（PV）尚未达到与并网发电同等的水平。虽然近年来价格大幅下降，但这只是部分地受到批量生产方法的真正改进的推动。最近的价格暴跌是由于中国的生产过剩-它导致市场价格低于成本价格-这是一个根本不稳定的局面，必须很快看到市场调整。由于大部分国际销售是由旨在刺激太阳能行业的政府补贴制度推动，市场状况进一步复杂化。在英国，馈入关税使该行业的就业岗位从3000个增加到25000个--事实上，它创造了如此大的市场扩张，以至于不得不加以限制。从长远来看，光伏必须真正变得更便宜-我们的研究工作的目标是通过显著提高新技术的成本效益来实现这一目标。2降低成本的能力和推动更可持续的薄膜光伏应该指出，即使是听起来微不足道的效率提高也是非常重要的：对于10%效率的太阳能电池，增加+1%至11%将导致比成本（$/Wp）降低9%。这意味着，对于一家以每瓦0.5美元的价格销售1GWp组件、营业额为5亿美元的公司来说，可以节省4500万美元。近年来，本质上更便宜的“薄膜”太阳能电池已进入市场，但技术和市场地位还远未安全和成熟。虽然目前的领导者CdTe和Cu（InGa）Se 2（CIGS）表现良好，占据了约10%的市场份额，但仍然存在重大挑战。产品是动态变化的-技术开发远未完成，并且存在提高效率和降低成本的压力。此外，在中期的未来，当薄膜光伏产业增长到目前规模的50 - 100倍时，所使用的一些原材料的成本和可用性将受到限制。新的，低成本的，必须找到可持续的光伏材料。由于光伏器件的发展历史缓慢-每年改进0.5%-研究已经开始，这可能会影响20年内太阳能发电的未来。3对薄膜PV中效率提高层的理解的步骤变化。在这项工作中，我们正在寻求对提高太阳能电池效率的方法的理解的步骤变化。薄膜PV器件的效率。该方法基于在器件结构中包括“额外”层，该层是透明但高电阻的层。偶然地，这通过增加电池的开路电压和填充因子来提高电池的效率，而原则上人们可能已经预期由于附加的串联电阻而降低。目前，在文献中没有关于这种益处如何产生的共识，尽管已经看到它在广泛的不同技术中起作用，包括薄膜CdTe，GIGS和硅。本提案的目的是对这种效应进行广泛而彻底的调查，使用CdTe作为研究的范例。我们的目标是发现操作的普遍规则，这将使太阳能电池性能的改善得到理解。这样做的好处是，如果成功的话，我们将能够建议改变目前的工业实践，这将降低成本，从而促进太阳能光伏制造业。更重要的是，同样的好处可能适用于光伏新材料，这将推动英国在这些新的可持续材料方面的努力。因此，这项工作是及时的，因为它将为英国领导的研究有能力对未来技术产生影响的领域带来基于理解的进步。