太陽光発電システムの現状と展望

摘要

化石エネルギーの枯渴に対する懸念に始まり，その後の温室効果ガスによる地球温暖化問題，東日本大震災における電力供給問題など，環境エネルギー問題は社会における最重要課題として絶えず認識されてきた。その中で，クリーンで再生可能である自然エネルギ一の活用技術に関しては，環境エネルギー問題の解決策の一つとして常に世界規模で開発が進められてきた。%Recently, photovoltaic (PV) power generation has attracted much attention with the background of environmental and energy issues such as global warming and exhaustion of fossil fuels. In Japan, PV has been spread rapidly and widely with aggressive support from the feed-in tariffs. The installed capacity of PV has reached about 36 GW at the end of September in 2016. On the other hand, PV systems need to be connected to a power grid in order to securely utilize solar power because the PV output drastically fluctuates in accordance with weather conditions. This results in various problems such as degradation of power quality in a power system. Furthermore, cost reduction and maintenance requirement of PV become increasingly visible as serious issues for PV to play a role in future power system. In this review, current situation and latest trends of PV in Japan are surveyed from the viewpoint of system technologies, and their future perspectives are also mentioned.