Quo Vadis Photovoltaics 2011

Since more than 10 years photovoltaics is one of the fastest growing industries with growth rates well beyond 40% per annum. This growth is driven not only by the progress in materials and processing technology, but by market introduction programmes in many countries around the world and the increased volatility and mounting fossil energy prices. Despite the negative impacts of the economic crisis in 2009, photovoltaics is still growing at an extraordinary pace and had an extraordinary year with a doubling of production and market in 2010. The open question is what will happen in 2011 and the years to come as the situation is dominated by huge manufacturing overcapacities and an increasing unpredictability of poly support. How can the PV industry accelerate their cost learning to ensure another 10 to 20 years of sustained and aggressive growth necessary to make PV to one of the main pillars of a sustainable energy supply in 2030. Despite the fact, that globally the share of electricity from photovltaic systems is still small, the share of PV electricity at local level can already now be above 30% of the demand at certain times of the year. Future research in PV has to provide intelligent solutions not only on the cell, but also on the module and the system level in order to permit the continuation of a rapid growth of photovoltaic electricity in order to deliver 5 to 10% of electricity in 2020.JRC.F.8-Renewable Energy (Ispra