The application of solar cells has entered the industrial, commercial, agricultural, communication, household appliances and public facilities sectors from the military and aerospace fields, especially in remote areas, mountains, deserts, islands and rural areas, in order to save expensive transmission lines. However, at this stage, its cost is still very high, and it needs to invest tens of thousands of dollars to generate 1kW power, so large-scale use is still economically limited.
Photovoltaic cells sold on the market are mainly produced from monocrystalline silicon. Due to the large energy consumption in the production of monocrystalline silicon cells, some experts believe that the existing monocrystalline silicon cell production energy consumption is greater than the solar energy captured in its life cycle, which is worthless. The most optimistic estimate is that it will take about 10 years for the solar energy obtained by using monocrystalline silicon cells to be greater than the energy consumed by their production. Monocrystalline silicon is obtained from quartz sand after reduction and melting. The production process consumes a lot of energy, produces a lot of toxic and harmful substances, and causes serious environmental pollution. Foreign countries have transferred it to China for production. Large scale monocrystalline silicon and monocrystalline silicon battery production lines all over China.
However, we do not know the production technology of photovoltaic cells.
Although monocrystalline silicon photovoltaic cell production technology is very mature, it is still developing, and other photovoltaic cell technologies are also emerging. The cost and photoelectric conversion efficiency of photovoltaic cells are still far from being truly market-oriented. The photovoltaic cell market mainly depends on financial subsidies from governments of various countries. The subsidy for photovoltaic power generation in the European market is up to more than 1 yuan per kilowatt hour. In the future, in order to make photovoltaic cells widely used, we must constantly improve the efficiency and production cost of photovoltaic cells. In this process, production technology and products will be constantly updated. Its renewal cycle is short, only 3-5 years. Photovoltaic cell production enterprises have large investment and long payback period. Due to the rapid technology update, domestic enterprises, if they do not master the technology and update the technology in time, will soon be eliminated and may not be able to recover the investment.
However, in the long run, with the improvement of solar cell manufacturing technology and the invention of new optical electric conversion devices, the protection of the environment and the huge demand for renewable and clean energy in various countries, solar cells will still be a more practical method to use solar radiant energy, which can open up broad prospects for mankind to use solar energy on a large scale in the future
