Economic Competitiveness of III-V on Silicon Tandem One-Sun Photovoltaic Solar Modules in Favorable Future Scenarios

Tandem modules combining a III–V top cell with a Si bottom cell offer the potential to increase the solar energy conversion efficiency of one-sun photovoltaic modules beyond 25%, while fully utilizing the global investment that has been made in Si photovoltaics manufacturing. At present, the cost of III–V cells is far too high for this approach to be competitive for one-sun terrestrial power applications. We investigated the system-level economic benefits of both GaAs/Si and InGaP/Si tandem modules in favorable future scenarios where the cost of III–V cells is substantially reduced, perhaps to less than the cost of Si cells. We found, somewhat unexpectedly, that these tandems can reduce installed system cost only when the area-related balance-of-system cost is high, such as for area-constrained residential rooftop systems in the USA. When area-related balance-of-system cost is lower, such as for utility-scale systems, the tandem module offers no benefit. This is because a system using tandem modules is more expensive than one using single-junction Si modules when III–V cells are expensive, and a system using tandem modules is more expensive than one using single-junction III–V modules when III–V cells are inexpensive.