Halfway to solar energy systems 100% efficiency?

Solar energy starts to conquer the world's RES market – constantly dropping prices and growing efficiency arouse interest of common people. Subsidies have also a great impact on decisions about purchase solar installation, but maybe in the near future – they won't be even needed any longer?

Rapidly growth

No matter which sector of solar industry we will pick - we can see how dynamic development it is experiencing. We wrote a lot about standard PV technology outlooks in previous articles, so this time we would like to say a few words about HCPV* technology. According to expert's word (for example - IHS technology) we should expect a really strong trend in development of this industry branch, mainly in relation to still rising efficiency. Let's take look at a short overview of this issue:

January 31, 2012, „HCPV efficiency of 33.9 percent reached”:
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/hcpv-efficiency-of-339-percent-reached_100005623/#axzz2wJHOOIfG

September 30, 2013, „NEW RECORD FOR HCPV SOLAR MODULES” (max 37,1%):
http://pvsolarreport.com/blog/item/890-new-record-for-hcpv-solar-modules

Latest info from March 7, 2014, „HCPV cell efficiency to rise from 40-42% to 45% by 2017, driving system efficiency towards 40%”:
http://www.semiconductor-today.com/news_items/2014/MAR/IHS_070314.shtml

As we all can see – efficiency of HCPV technology is growing by few percents each year. In this case no one will be surprised, when until 2017 their efficiency will reach between 45 to 50 percent (as outlooks suggest and scientists claim), that they could reach even greater performance. Comparing to standard PV technology with efficiency less than 35 percent conversion – it looks really promising. The only obstacle on victorious march of HCPV is price – still much higher than standard PV (which severely falls down between 2012 and 2013). „History likes to repeat” - the proverb says. The same rule applies to PV market. Nowadays prices of HCPV are much lower, than in last years (down 25.8% from $3.54 per watt in 2012 and to $2.62 per watt in 2013. IHS predicts that they can fall to $1.59 by the end of 2017) and they are still decreasing. Even now this technology can already compete with standard PV (in countries, where solar insolation is very strong), according to their LCOE performance. Will they dominate the whole market? It will depend on what else standard PV panels can offer us.

Recent plans

Nowadays there are many plans to increase the use HCPV technology by 2017 in many regions of the world, such as: South Africa, Saudi Arabia, South America (mainly Chile), USA, Middle America (mainly Mexico) and they are going exceed today use of this energy source for the planet by hundreds percents. Conclusion is simply and comforting: we are experiencing now another great impact of solar energy for the rescue of Earth and we are given a possibility to change our attitude and way of obtaining energy.
HCPV* - High Concentrated Photovoltaic