Your daily dose of photovoltaic technology developments and solar news

This article will look at what trends can be gleaned from patent application publication figures of the past decade in the sector of PV technology. The study looks at the number of patent applications in PV technology published worldwide between 1999 and 2008. The data will show in which regions and countries patent protection is being sought. The figures are taken from patent documentation databases developed by the European Patent Office (EPO) and Japan Patent Office or databases used worldwide and available at the EPO, and they are retrieved mostly using patent classification schemes. The article also provides a brief overview of the role of the EPO and what companies, researchers and individual inventors should keep in mind when applying for a European patent.

Despite over 30 years of unprofitability, being viewed as too expensive and in many cases, unattractive, the PV industry has also enjoyed over 30 years of strong growth. Though granted, in the past, this growth was often from a much smaller base than the gigawatt levels experienced today, it is still an impressive achievement. Table 1 provides a history of PV industry growth from 1978 to the present. The data in Table 1 is based on what was sold into the global market to the first point of sale, eliminating double shipment (sales) of technology.

In 2008, the global PV market reached 5.6GW and the cumulative PV power installed totalled almost 15GW compared to 9GW in 2007. Spain represented almost half of the new installations in 2008 with about 2.5GW, followed by Germany with 1.5GW additional connected systems. USA confirmed its trend with 342MW newly installed PV systems, followed by South Korea which registered 274MW of PV installations over the year.

The continued tight supply and high cost of polysilicon, coinciding with the growth in demand for solar energy, has been a key catalyst for the rapid adoption of thin-film technologies in the last two years. Although the technology has been in development for over 15 years, it is only now that thin film has emerged as a viable low cost-per-watt alternative to conventional crystalline silicon cells.

Standards have traditionally been used in other industries, especially semiconductor, to increase efficiencies and reduce costs. This article will illustrate these efforts, as well as acting as a call for participation to become involved in SEMI’s standardization developments for PV. Four active task forces have been initiated to tackle these muchneeded standards for the PV industry, namely, the Analytical Test Methods Task Force; the PV Equipment Interface Specification Task Force; the PV Gases and Chemical Purity Task Force; and the PV Facilities Task Force.

Three buzzwords dominate the discussion about the future of the photovoltaic market in the U.S. right now: ITC (investment tax credit), credit crunch, and Obama. All three have the potential to shape how the solar industry will look in the next decades.

In the few years since the PV cell and module manufacturing industry first hit the radar, the identities of the winners and losers in the race to supply equipment have started to emerge. While some companies can genuinely claim to have been involved in the solar industry for some time, the majority are relatively new on the scene. This is hardly surprising, as the explosive growth in demand spurred any company with matching competences into action.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has now been passed, and there is much talk about what this will actually mean for the solar industry. The final version of the stimulus bill amounts to US$789, which will be the government’s most expansive economic rescue package since The Great Depression, even after the cuts.

News of credit crunch woes filtering down the lines over the past few months has instilled a sense of frugality in all industry sectors. While the credit crisis has indeed affected the PV industry, German banks, investors and creditors have claimed that the financing of small PV systems in the private sector seems not to be endangered.

The photovoltaic industry was once, and for quite some time, the unappreciated renewable technology. Perceived as too expensive without subsidies to reduce the price of ownership, and sometimes as an energy choice primarily for environmental zealots, the industry has continued, nonetheless, to grow at a compound annual rate of 34% over the past 30 years.