Impact of Cell Technology, Installation Types and Scales on Energy Evaluation Metrics of PV Systems
Abstract
We evaluate the impact of system installation types, cell material and tracking strategies on the evaluation metrics of PV systems such as energy payback time (EPBT), return factor (ERF) and CO2 emissions offset. As candidate power producing systems we consider a range of PV cell materials, different tracking strategies, as well as concentrating photovoltaic. We conclude that utilizing existing structures significantly reduces the energy payback time of flat-plate PV. High-efficiency concentrating PV installations yielded the shortest EPBT, the highest ERF and the largest life-cycle CO2 offsets. Considering the use of land, we find that a greater life-cycle energy return and carbon offset per unit land area is yielded by locally-integrated non-concentrating systems.