From solar outlier to 1TW a year: New report tips stunning perovskite progress

A new analysis from Rethink Energy has concluded that perovskite solar will become a serious contender in global PV manufacturing by the end of this decade before accounting for 85% of the industry’s output by 2040 with close to 1TW of production each year.

Perovskite has been a key focus of global solar research and development for years, dangling the potential for remarkable further cost-reduction through solution-based and low-temperature fabrication.

According to the UNSW the efficiency rate of perovskite solar cells has jumped from below 4% to over 25% in only a decade, but their commercialisation is hampered by concerns about their stability and durability.

In their Global Perovskites Forecast 2023-2040, Bristol-based Rethink Energy says getting over these hurdles and transitioning perovskites into a “viable force” in solar will likely still take another two to three years.

But by the second part of this decade, progress will really start to take off.

By 2026, Rethink Energy expects global perovskite manufacturing output to pass the 2GW mark, before escalating quickly to 10GW in 2027 and 100GW by 2030. From there, they will boom to around 1TW per year by 2040.

Rethink energy forecasts that by 2040, over 90% of solar manufacturing by 2040 will be perovskites “in one form or another” including 1,040GW of manufacturing from 1,615GW of production capacity.

Where will this stunning growth come from?

Four key companies – Microquanta, GCL Perovskite, Utmolight, and Oxford PV – have now commissioned 100MW pilot lines, while the report tracks 42 new and upcoming perovskite manufacturers. Unsurprisingly – as with much of the renewable energy industry – China’s dominance in this sector is clear.

Though many of the short- and medium-term projections for perovskite manufacturing output announced by these companies is expected to take longer to reach fruition than current claims, the good news is that the technology is improving solar generation.

“The products coming from these production lines are higher efficiency than ever, and crucially this includes at the full scale of cells and modules, not just test cells,” said Rethink Energy.

“They are racking up long lifespan ratings, with some already verified according to international standards (Microquanta’s α module obtained IEC61215 and IEC61730 in April), and the very first modules have even been shipped on a very small scale.”

Importantly – and a demonstration of the pending commercialisation of perovskite solar PV – mainstream solar manufacturers are now committing to perovskites.

First Solar and GCL System Integration have respectively acquired and established perovskite subsidiaries, while LONGi has been posting world record results for heterojunction-perovskite tandem cells, and Q Cells has announced a $102 million production line investment.