Journal ArticleDOI
Review on life cycle assessment of energy payback and greenhouse gas emission of solar photovoltaic systems
TLDR
In this article, the authors examined the sustainability and environmental performance of PV-based electricity generation systems by conducting a thorough review of the life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of five common photovoltaic (PV) systems, i.e., mono-crystalline (mono-Si), multi-crystaline (multi-Si) multi-Si, amorphous silicon (aSi), CdTe thin film (CdTe) and CIS thin film, and some advanced PV systems.Abstract:
This paper aims to examine the sustainability and environmental performance of PV-based electricity generation systems by conducting a thorough review of the life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of five common photovoltaic (PV) systems, i.e., mono-crystalline (mono-Si), multi-crystalline (multi-Si), amorphous silicon (a-Si), CdTe thin film (CdTe) and CIS thin film (CIS), and some advanced PV systems. The results show that, among the five common PV systems, the CdTe PV system presents the best environmental performance in terms of energy payback time (EPBT) and greenhouse gases (GHG) emission rate due to its low life-cycle energy requirement and relatively high conversion efficiency. Meanwhile, the mono-Si PV system demonstrates the worst because of its high energy intensity during the solar cells’ production process. The EPBT and GHG emission rate of thin film PV systems are within the range of 0.75–3.5 years and 10.5–50 g CO 2 -eq./kW h, respectively. In general, the EPBT of mono-Si PV systems range from 1.7 to 2.7 years with GHG emission rate from 29 to 45 g CO 2 -eq./kW h, which is an order of magnitude smaller than that of fossil-based electricity. This paper also reviews the EPBT and GHG emission rates of some advanced PV systems, such as high-concentration, heterojunction and dye-sensitized technologies. The EBPT of high-concentration PV system is lower, ranging from 0.7 to 2.0 years, but the CO 2 emission rate of dye-sensitized PV system is higher than the ones of other PV systems at the moment. The LCA results show that PV technologies are already proved to be very sustainable and environmental-friendly in the state of the art. With the emerging of new manufacturing technologies, the environmental performance of PV technologies is expected to be further improved in the near future. In addition, considering the existing limitations in the previous LCA studies, a few suggestions are recommended.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Life cycle assessment (LCA) of electricity generation technologies: Overview, comparability and limitations
TL;DR: In this paper, a critical review of 167 case studies involving the life cycle assessment (LCA) of electricity generation based on hard coal, lignite, natural gas, oil, nuclear, biomass, hydroelectric, solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind was carried out to identify ranges of emission data for GHG, NOx and SO2 related to individual technologies.
Journal ArticleDOI
Photovoltaic solar energy: Conceptual framework
TL;DR: In this paper, the state of the art of photovoltaic solar energy through a systematic literature research, in which the following themes are approached: ways of obtaining the energy, its advantages and disadvantages, applications, current market, costs and technologies according to what has been approached in the scientific researches published until 2016.
Journal ArticleDOI
Beyond methylammonium lead iodide: prospects for the emergent field of ns2 containing solar absorbers
TL;DR: This review looks beyond MAPI to other ns2 solar absorbers, with the aim of identifying those materials likely to achieve high efficiencies, and discusses the ideal properties essential to produce highly efficient solar cells.
Journal ArticleDOI
Types of Solar Cells and Application
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors studied different types of solar cells and their applications and showed that nearly all photovoltaic energy conversion uses semiconductor materials in the form of a p-n junction.
Journal ArticleDOI
Greenhouse gas emissions from renewable energy sources: A review of lifecycle considerations
TL;DR: In this paper, a comprehensive review of the current understanding and estimates of life cycle GHG emissions from a range of renewable electricity and heat generation technologies was carried out and 79 studies involved the life cycle assessment (LCA) of renewable energy technologies.
References
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The Revision of ISO Standards 14040-3 - ISO 14040: Environmental management Life cycle assessment Principles and framework - ISO 14044: Environmental management Life cycle assessment Requirements and guidelines
Journal ArticleDOI
Improvement and validation of a model for photovoltaic array performance
TL;DR: The five-parameter model is of interest because it requires only a small amount of input data available from the manufacturer and therefore it provides a valuable tool for energy prediction, and could be improved if manufacturer’s data included information at two radiation levels.
Journal ArticleDOI
Modeling daylight availability and irradiance components from direct and global irradiance
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the latest versions of several models developed by the authors to predict short time-step solar energy and daylight availability quantities needed by energy system modelers or building designers.