Assessment of Cadmium Sulfide Photovoltaic Arrays for Large Scale Electric Utility Applications.

摘要

A procedure is described which yields nominal cost and performance objectives for any solar cell material employed in noncentrating photovoltaic central stations with horizontal arrays,as functions of powerplant capital cost and structure and wiring costs. Results obtained based on subsystems cost and performance parameters judged to be realistic imply that economically competitive utility central station applications will probably require cell conversion efficiencies of 12% or greater and cell costs near one dollar per square foot. Recent results with Cu2S/CdS cells suggest that these objectives may be achievable,with the higher efficiencies probably the more difficult to attain. The analysis shows that the structure and wiring costs are likely to be of the same order of magnitude as cell costs in competitive power-plants.