A new market research report from IDTechEx has found that the organic photovoltaics (OPV) market is projected to hit $630 million by 2022, growing more than 1300% from the $4.6 million it’s at today.
The report summary notes: “OPVs bring the following attributes to the market: (a) excellent form factor, (b) good performance under indoor lighting conditions, (c) low capital expenditure, and (d) potentially very low energy production costs using printable plastics. Based on these value propositions, OPVs will not only target existing markets, but will also enable new ones, which existing solutions may not have been able to address.”
OPVs have downsides as well, of course. “The efficiency levels are low, despite the fact that the active semiconductor can be synthesised from many different molecular and polymeric materials. The lifetime is in the order of days if the device is exposed to ambient conditions and existing commercial encapsulants can extend it only to 2-3 years. The constituent materials are still in low-volume production and therefore command high prices.”
So, while OPVs aren’t likely to dominate the solar market, it’s expected they grow a decent niche for themselves.
Check out the report, Organic Photovoltaics Technologies, Players and Forecasts 2012-2022, or report summary for more.
Image Credit: University of Arizona (via this CleanTechnica article)
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