Economic viability of thin-film tandem solar modules in the United States

Sofia, Sarah E.; Mailoa, Jonathan P.; Weiss, Dirk N.; Stanbery, Billy J.; Buonassisi, Tonio; Peters, I. Marius

doi:10.1038/s41560-018-0126-z

Title: Economic viability of thin-film tandem solar modules in the United States

Journal Article · Mon Apr 30 00:00:00 EDT 2018 · Nature Energy

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0126-z· OSTI ID:1579842

Sofia, Sarah E. ^[1]; Mailoa, Jonathan P. ^[1]; Weiss, Dirk N. ^[2]; Stanbery, Billy J. ^[3]; Buonassisi, Tonio ^[1]; Peters, I. Marius ^[1]

Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
First Solar Inc., Santa Clara, CA (United States)
Siva Power, Santa Clara, CA (United States)

Tandem solar cells are more efficient but more expensive per unit area than established single-junction (SJ) solar cells. To understand when specific tandem architectures should be utilized, we evaluate the cost-effectiveness of different II–VI-based thin-film tandem solar cells and compare them to the SJ subcells. Levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) and energy yield are calculated for four technologies: industrial cadmium telluride and copper indium gallium selenide, and their hypothetical two-terminal (series-connected subcells) and four-terminal (electrically independent subcells) tandems, assuming record SJ quality subcells. Different climatic conditions and scales (residential and utility scale) are considered. We show that, for US residential systems with current balance-of-system costs, the four-terminal tandem has the lowest LCOE because of its superior energy yield, even though it has the highest US per watt (US W^–1) module cost. For utility-scale systems, the lowest LCOE architecture is the cadmium telluride single junction, the lowest US W^–1 module. As a result, the two-terminal tandem requires decreased subcell absorber costs to reach competitiveness over the four-terminal one.

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Research Organization:: Stanford Univ., CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office

Grant/Contract Number:: EE0004946; EE0006707; EEC-1041895

OSTI ID:: 1579842

Journal Information:: Nature Energy, Vol. 3, Issue 5; ISSN 2058-7546

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 54 works

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