Commercially massproduced solar cells for terrestrial applic

Commercially mass-produced solar cells for terrestrial applications have always had lower generating efficiencies than the best laboratory fabricated cells. Discuss the reasons for and the effects of the differences in approaches and processing techniques between the two environments, and explain why these lead to such different levels of performance.

Solution

The mass-produced solar cells, as any other mass-produced product, are meant to be fabricated lowering the cost. In mass production a little variance in the cost of production (i.e. could be literally cents of a dollar), could mean thousands or millions of dollar loss.

\"Under laboratory conditions and with current state-of-the-art technology, it is possible to produce single crystal silicon solar cells close to 25% efficient. However, commercially mass produced cells are typically only 13-14% efficient. The overriding reason for this difference in efficiency is that the research techniques used in the laboratory are not suitable for commercial production within the photovoltaic industry and therefore lower cost techniques, which result in lower efficiency, are used.\"

So, to lower the prices some quality has to be sacrificed (i.e. using cheaper materials, simplier processes, etc).

\"Solar cell research continues to improve the efficiency of solar cells, with targets aimed towards the currently accepted limit of 25-30%. Efficiency results for commercially produced solar cells lag some years behind efficiency results for laboratory produced cells. However, it is estimated module efficiencies over 20% could be produced commercially. For a given module cost, more efficient modules are also more cost effective because fewer additional costs (such as lade area, wiring costs, etc.) are needed to generate the same amount of power.\"

Conclusion: it\'s implicit that the best laboratory fabricated cells are not the ones that are sold to the masses. If you want a product to be sold to the masses, it has to be cheap, and to be cheap it must have a lower quality.

I think this is enough to answer your question