Advances in solar photovoltaics: Technology review and patent trends

Abstract

Against the pressing challenges of climate change and fossil fuel depletion, renewable energy sources such as solar photovoltaics (PV) are considered a clean and sustainable alternative. PV technologies have grown into a substantial field of research and development through large stocks of scientific publications and patents. Besides cell technologies, the balance of system (BoS) components such as panels, electronics and energy storage form an important research area. The present article studies the development of the PV technological system using patent indicators. It is composed of three parts: First, it defines the system by thoroughly reviewing the various cell and BoS technologies. Second, it introduces a novel methodical approach for identifying its relevant patents. In that sense, the paper contributes with an accurate inventory of international patent classes for PV system. Finally, the geographical, organizational and technical trends over the past six decades are analysed along with a review of the most influential inventions. The analysis shows that 95% of the PV patent applications are filed by inventors from seven countries: Japan, Korea, China, USA, Germany, Taiwan, and France. Most patents are filed by companies and related to thin-film and crystalline-silicon cells as well as panel encapsulation and supporting structures. The analysis reviews the quantity, quality and technological specialization within countries' patent profiles. It further provides an overview of the technological landscape and freedom-spaces available for manufacturers.

The short-term costs of local content requirements in the Indian solar auctions

“…Patent data were collected from the Indian Patent Database using web scraping methods (Python package Selenium), as the patent office does not offer an application programming interface (API). We employ a typology from a recent, comprehensive review of international patent classification (IPC) terms and their correspondence to PV system components published in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 49 . This typology covers 284 distinct IPC codes in seven groups: cells, panels, electronics, energy storage, monitoring/testing, devices and combined.…”

“…The solar PV category 'combinations' refers to innovations that cannot be neatly sorted into either BoS or cells but combine both elements. We employ a typology from a recent, comprehensive review of IPC terms and their correspondence to PV system components published previously49 . This typology covers 284 distinct IPC codes in seven groups: cells, panels, electronics, energy storage, monitoring/testing, devices and combined.…”

Revealing Technology Innovation, Competition and Cooperation of Self-Driving Vehicles From Patent Perspective

“…where TN is the number of transnational patents in enterprise i, including patent applications filed at the European Patent Office (EPO) and international patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) [38], [39].…”

A Review of the Recent Development of Photovoltaic/Thermal (PV/T) Systems and Their Applications

“…Solar photovoltaics (PV) is a power system which comprises a sequence of interconnected components that work together to convert sunlight energy into electricity, utilise the generated energy, store it, or invert it (Shubbak, 2019). This technology has been one of the pioneering renewable technologies over the decades.…”