Photovoltaics: what future can we expect for Europe?

In photo­vol­ta­ics, what dif­fer­ences are there between offers oth­er than on price?

It is true that, in terms of tech­no­logy, the sol­ar pan­el industry is cur­rently char­ac­ter­ised by a cer­tain homo­gen­eity. Most play­ers use poly­crys­tal­line or quasi-mono­crys­tal­line sil­ic­on tech­no­logy, imple­men­ted in dif­fer­ent architectures.

This does not mean that there is no innov­a­tion, but rather that innov­a­tion has so far fol­lowed an incre­ment­al logic. The improve­ments are non­ethe­less sig­ni­fic­ant over time, both in terms of per­form­ance and cost. Con­cern­ing the per­form­ance of devices: the first pan­el prop­er, developed in 1954 by Bell Labs (forty years after the first tests of sil­ic­on photo­vol­ta­ic cells), had an effi­ciency of 6%. A few years ago, it was 13 or 14%, and today a good pro­por­tion of the sol­ar pan­els on the mar­ket have an effi­ciency of around 20%.

The cost of sol­ar pan­els has fallen by 80% in ten years for good, and bad, reasons.

As for the cost of pan­els, it has fallen by 80% in ten years, for good and bad reas­ons: the good reas­ons are tech­no­lo­gic­al pro­gress and the scal­ing up of the energy trans­ition. The bad reas­ons are massive sub­sidies, par­tic­u­larly in Ger­many, which instead of help­ing European industry to take off have led to indus­tri­al over­ca­pa­city and a price war in which only a few Chinese man­u­fac­tur­ers have been able to sur­vive; they now exert an over­whelm­ing dom­in­a­tion over the mar­ket. Today, price is the main cri­terion, well ahead of per­form­ance, both for installers of photo­vol­ta­ic parks and for private individuals.

Does this mean that the game is up for the European industry?

No, for at least three reas­ons. The first is that the mar­ket is boom­ing, and there is room for new play­ers. We do not yet have the final fig­ures for 2022, but in 2021, accord­ing to the Inter­na­tion­al Energy Agency, world photo­vol­ta­ic energy pro­duc­tion increased by 179 TWh (i.e. + 22%), a record, to exceed 1000 TWh. This growth is driv­en by the Chinese mar­ket, fol­lowed by the US and the EU.  Accord­ing to the United Nations Net Zero scen­ario, an annu­al sol­ar PV pro­duc­tion level of about 7400 TWh will have to be reached in 2030. Start­ing from the cur­rent 1000 TWh, this implies an aver­age pro­duc­tion growth of about 25% per year dur­ing the peri­od 2022–2030.

In this huge mar­ket, pro­duc­tion in China will remain dom­in­ant, and we must look closely at what is hap­pen­ing in the US. But the growth of the European mar­ket will also be very import­ant, which opens up pro­spects for European play­ers to get back into the race because – this is the second reas­on – we are enter­ing a phase of matur­ity of sev­er­al tech­no­lo­gic­al innov­a­tions which, without being dis­rupt­ive in the strict sense of the word, con­sti­tute decis­ive accel­er­a­tions, with truly new technologies. 

The most prom­ising are the ‘tan­dem’ cells that com­bine sil­ic­on and per­ovskite. This makes it pos­sible to bet­ter exploit the sol­ar spec­trum, adding ultra­vi­olet light to vis­ible light and infrared light (well cap­tured by sil­ic­on). Such tech­no­logy shifts the the­or­et­ic­al bar­ri­er that pre­vi­ously placed the max­im­um effi­ciency at just over 29%. It is now around 40%. In the labor­at­ory, we are already going very far: last Septem­ber, Dutch research­ers suc­ceeded for the first time in cross­ing the 30% effi­ciency threshold. Indus­tri­al­isa­tion is in sight: the IPVF, which brings togeth­er the strengths of many play­ers (includ­ing EDF, TotalEn­er­gies, the CNRS and the Ecole Poly­tech­nique), is going to install the first pro­duc­tion line in Alsace using this sil­ic­on-per­ovskite tan­dem tech­no­logy with its indus­tri­al part­ner, Vol­tec Sol­ar. Europe is there­fore at the fore­front of this break­through tech­no­logy, both in research and development.

A third reas­on is that while the com­mod­it­isa­tion of sol­ar pan­els will con­tin­ue, with stand­ard­ised products, we are now also wit­ness­ing the devel­op­ment of a mar­ket with much more var­ied applic­a­tions, driv­en by a logic of dif­fer­en­ti­ation. I will give you three examples. The first is agrivol­ta­ics, with semi-trans­par­ent pan­els that make it pos­sible to optim­ise the asso­ci­ation between crops and pan­els on shades. Here we are deal­ing with fine adjust­ments, as close as pos­sible to the mar­ket, needs and weath­er con­di­tions: com­mer­cially and indus­tri­ally, there is room for dif­fer­en­ti­ated products, sup­por­ted by play­ers cap­able of provid­ing a service.

The second example is sol­ar energy on vehicles. Today, this is a niche, with a few examples in the pleas­ure boat industry (the chal­lenge: turn­ing off the engine without turn­ing off the air con­di­tion­ing and the fridge). But the rise of elec­tric cars is cre­at­ing a massive need for solu­tions to cool the vehicle when it is sta­tion­ary or, con­versely, to keep the bat­tery warm so as not to lose per­form­ance in winter. Sol­ar energy is a good can­did­ate: man­u­fac­tur­ers and equip­ment sup­pli­ers have pro­jects in the pipeline.

Encour­aged by well thought-out reg­u­la­tions, indus­tri­al play­ers will extend the value chain to the last part of the life cycle: recycling.

Third example: sol­ar pan­els are good for build­ings, but they are not very eleg­ant. A mar­ket for sol­ar tiles is emer­ging, which again will devel­op accord­ing to more loc­al needs (not all tiles are the same, there are region­al dif­fer­ences) and on the basis of aes­thet­ic qual­ity, from niches that will grow. Here again, there is room for agile and loc­al play­ers. Recently, we have seen the devel­op­ment of photo­vol­ta­ic tiles with a design very close to that of tra­di­tion­al tiles. 

Apart from these niche mar­kets, which are set to expand, can we ima­gine game changers that would change the situ­ation for the European industry? 

Yes, par­tic­u­larly in the logic of the European Green Deal, which com­bines indus­tri­al policy and eco­lo­gic­al require­ments. In terms of photo­vol­ta­ic pan­els, European stand­ards and reg­u­la­tions have so far paid little atten­tion to the life cycle issue. How­ever, this will become increas­ingly import­ant. Two points in par­tic­u­lar could make a dif­fer­ence: the first is the amount of energy con­sumed (and CO2 emit­ted) to man­u­fac­ture a pan­el. At present, the “energy return” of pan­els is not very good: a photo­vol­ta­ic mod­ule has to run for about two to three years to com­pensate for the energy needed to man­u­fac­ture it. Moreover, those man­u­fac­tured in China have a car­bon foot­print that is not very trace­able, and prob­ably not very good. A reg­u­la­tion emphas­ising this dimen­sion would change the situation.

In the same spir­it, anoth­er aspect of the life cycle is likely to become more import­ant: recyc­lab­il­ity. This could encour­age a form of cir­cu­lar eco­nomy, as soon as, encour­aged by well thought-out reg­u­la­tions, indus­tri­al play­ers extend the value chain to this last part of the life cycle. Here again, it is at the region­al level – that of the EU – that this integ­ra­tion between industry and ser­vices will be most relevant.

Richard Robert