Cost Evaluation of Photovoltaic Energy Systems

Abstract

We estimated costs of large-scale photovoltaic energy systems for both polycrystal silicon cells and amorphous silicon cells. The three scales of their annual production evaluated were 10MW, 10³MW and 10⁵MW. For the polycrystal silicon cells, module cost and total system cost of 10MW were ¥344/W and ¥548/W, respectively. On the other hand, for the amorphous silicon cells module cost and total system cost were ¥476/Wand ¥790/W, respectively. Further reduction in these costs is expected by both the progress of technology development and the effect of expansion of the cell production scale. Module production cost and total system cost at the annual production scale of 10⁵MW were ¥109/W and ¥233/W for the polycrystal silicon cells, respectively, and ¥69/W and ¥210/W for the amorphous silicon cells, respectively. In addition, power generation cost of the PV energy systems estimated from the module cost at the annual production scale of 10⁵MW ranged from ¥23/kWh to ¥ 29/kWh for the polycrystal silicon cells and from ¥21/kWh to ¥ 26/kWh for the amorphous silicon cells. These results showed that PV energy systems would be cheap enough to be competitive with existing power plants in the future.