Scientists from Switzerland's EPFL and the Toyota Motor Corporation have prepared a detailed analysis of the projected costs of designing and operating a 100 MW perovskite solar cell production line in various locations, taking under consideration factors like labor and energy costs as well as all materials and processing. The team found that perovskite PV could be cost-competitive with other technologies even at much smaller scale, but noted that this still depends on the tech proving its long-term stability, and impressive achievements in research being successfully transferred to commercial production.
While perovskite materials have been repeatedly demonstrating their potential for low-cost, high-efficiency solar energy with lower energy fabrication compared to silicon PV technology, there are still many different possibilities regarding the form these commercial products could take, and the materials they could contain - with more than one option that could prove commercially viable.
The team in this work designed one possible process for the production of single-junction perovskite modules. They modeled all of the associated costs for manufacturing and installation of modules produced on a 100 MW production line based on their processes.
They described the production line and modeling in full in their work - the group compared various material and processing options and found that a tin-oxide electron transport layer coupled with silver paste electrode would yield the lowest production cost and energy consumption, of the options compared in the study.
The group also calculated the minimum sustainable price, levelized cost of energy, and energy payback time for various locations. On the manufacturing side, they noted significant regional differences in the cost of processing glass, while their energy cost and payback calculations were largely affected by different land, labor and energy costs between regions, as well as climate conditions for installation.
The model predicts that a 100 MW perovskite production would require approximately 5.6 kWh of electricity per square meter of module. Based on installation in sunny locations such as Spain or Egypt, it could achieve an LCOE between $0.03/kWh and $0.04/kWh, reaching energy payback in a little over six months.