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Implementation Status of Concentrated PV and Concentrated Solar Power Technologies
Frost & Sullivan, March 2009, Pages: 85
This Frost & Sullivan research service titled Implementation Status of Concentrated PV and Concentrated Solar Power Technologies provides a technology overview of concentrated photovoltaics (CPV) and concentrated solar power (CSP) technologies, their implementation status, trends, and prospects. It also lists key global research and developments and patents to give an insight into notable activities. CPV can be categorized into three groups: high-concentrating photovoltaic (HCPV), medium-concentrating photovoltaic (MCPV), and low-concentrating photovoltaic (LCPV), while CSP includes parabolic trough, solar tower, dish concentrator, and linear Fresnel systems.
Technology Overview
Improvements in Technology Heat up Market for CPV and CSP
CPV’s and CSP’s potential to enable utility-scale power generation opens up great opportunities for both technologies in solar energy. While CPV technology relies on concentrating light onto silicon cells or high-efficiency, multi-junction cells, CSP directs light onto receivers to generate thermal energy. 'CSP technologies, particularly parabolic troughs, are ahead of the curve in utility-scale power generation, with high growth expected in the next few years – particularly in the Southwest United States and Spain,' says the analyst of this research. 'Solar tower technology is also expected to play a major role in the power generation industry.' Being a relatively new technology, CPV’s efficiencies will improve to allow it to graduate from small-scale plants to medium-scale plants within the next few years and to large-scale plants in the long term. The rising efficiencies of multi-junction cells and optics for CPV will also catapult both technologies into the large-scale energy generation league.
Despite their technology advancements, CPV and CSP need to prove their commercial viability for them to be successful. The lack of regulatory and policy signals to support renewable energy has hampered the installation of these technologies. Inadequate transmission capacities and the need for large capital investment are expected to restrain CSP technology’s uptake, while demonstrating reliability and achieving manufacturing economies of scale are likely to be CPV’s main adoption barriers. Technology developers can look to overcome these issues by increasing manufacturing capacities and volumes. The movement toward larger installations could accelerate the growth of CSP and CPV technologies and bring costs down. They can leverage the high-throughput, low-cost, and efficient manufacturing techniques used in other industries to enable large-volume production of the systems. 'The automotive headlights, electronics, solid-state lighting, and disk drives industries can enable large-volume production of CPV systems,' notes the analyst. 'Meanwhile, CSP technologies can be mass produced using the spare capacity of automotive plants, which may be considerable in the near future for the troubled industry.'
The influx of participants in the CPV segment has introduced a plethora of technologies and designs to the industry but has also intensified competition to an extent where several companies have had to drop out or consolidate. To stay ahead of the competition in such a scenario, technology developers need to differentiate themselves by achieving reliability, increasing system efficiencies, and lowering costs. 'Decreasing levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of CPV technologies over the next three to five years can be expected as system efficiencies could reach up to 30 percent due to efficiency increments in tracking systems, optics, and multi-junction cells,' observes the analyst. 'For CSP, new opportunities and markets exist for equipment manufacturing such as mirrors, receivers, and steam turbines and chemical producers for heat transfer fluids.'
Technologies
The following technologies are covered in this research:
CPV:
- High concentrating photovoltaic (HCPV) - operate at or near 100 suns
- Medium concentrating photovoltaic (MCPV) - operate at 5 to 100 suns
- Low concentrating photovoltaic (LCPV) - operate at less than 5 suns
CSP
- Parabolic trough
- Solar tower
- Dish concentrator
- Linear Fresnel systems
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