Surprisingly numerous improvements led to dramatically cheaper photo voltaic panels
by Adam Zewe | MIT Information
Boston MA (SPX) Aug 13, 2025
The price of photo voltaic panels has dropped by greater than 99 % because the Nineteen Seventies, enabling widespread adoption of photovoltaic techniques that convert daylight into electrical energy.
A brand new MIT research drills down on particular improvements that enabled such dramatic price reductions, revealing that technical advances throughout an online of numerous analysis efforts and industries performed a pivotal function.
The findings may assist renewable power firms make simpler R and D funding selections and assist policymakers in figuring out areas to prioritize to spur progress in manufacturing and deployment.
The researchers’ modeling strategy reveals that key improvements typically originated exterior the photo voltaic sector, together with advances in semiconductor fabrication, metallurgy, glass manufacturing, oil and fuel drilling, building processes, and even authorized domains.
“Our outcomes present simply how intricate the method of price enchancment is, and the way a lot scientific and engineering advances, typically at a really fundamental stage, are on the coronary heart of those price reductions. A number of information was drawn from totally different domains and industries, and this community of information is what makes these applied sciences enhance,” says research senior creator Jessika Trancik, a professor in MIT’s Institute for Information, Methods, and Society.
Trancik is joined on the paper by co-lead authors Goksin Kavlak, a former IDSS graduate pupil and postdoc who’s now a senior power affiliate on the Brattle Group; Magdalena Klemun, a former IDSS graduate pupil and postdoc who’s now an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins College; former MIT postdoc Ajinkya Kamat; in addition to Brittany Smith and Robert Margolis of the Nationwide Renewable Vitality Laboratory. The analysis seems in PLOS ONE.
Figuring out improvements
This work builds on mathematical fashions that the researchers beforehand developed that tease out the results of engineering applied sciences on the price of photovoltaic (PV) modules and techniques.
On this research, the researchers aimed to dig even deeper into the scientific advances that drove these price declines.
They mixed their quantitative price mannequin with an in depth, qualitative evaluation of improvements that affected the prices of PV system supplies, manufacturing steps, and deployment processes.
“Our quantitative price mannequin guided the qualitative evaluation, permitting us to look carefully at improvements in areas which can be laborious to measure because of an absence of quantitative knowledge,” Kavlak says.
Constructing on earlier work figuring out key price drivers – such because the variety of photo voltaic cells per module, wiring effectivity, and silicon wafer space – the researchers performed a structured scan of the literature for improvements prone to have an effect on these drivers. Subsequent, they grouped these improvements to determine patterns, revealing clusters that decreased prices by enhancing supplies or prefabricating parts to streamline manufacturing and set up. Lastly, the workforce tracked business origins and timing for every innovation, and consulted area consultants to zero in on essentially the most important improvements.
All instructed, they recognized 81 distinctive improvements that affected PV system prices since 1970, from enhancements in antireflective coated glass to the implementation of absolutely on-line allowing interfaces.
“With improvements, you possibly can all the time go to a deeper stage, all the way down to issues like uncooked supplies processing methods, so it was difficult to know when to cease. Having that quantitative mannequin to floor our qualitative evaluation actually helped,” Trancik says.
They selected to separate PV module prices from so-called balance-of-system (BOS) prices, which cowl issues like mounting techniques, inverters, and wiring.
PV modules, that are wired collectively to kind photo voltaic panels, are mass-produced and might be exported, whereas many BOS parts are designed, constructed, and offered on the native stage.
“By analyzing improvements each on the BOS stage and inside the modules, we determine the several types of improvements which have emerged in these two elements of PV know-how,” Kavlak says.
BOS prices rely extra on comfortable applied sciences, nonphysical parts resembling allowing procedures, which have contributed considerably much less to PV’s previous price enchancment in comparison with {hardware} improvements.
“Typically, it comes all the way down to delays. Time is cash, and if in case you have delays on building websites and unpredictable processes, that impacts these balance-of-system prices,” Trancik says.
Improvements resembling automated allowing software program, which flags code-compliant techniques for fast-track approval, present promise. Although not but quantified on this research, the workforce’s framework may help future evaluation of their financial impression and comparable improvements that streamline deployment processes.
Interconnected industries
The researchers discovered that improvements from the semiconductor, electronics, metallurgy, and petroleum industries performed a serious function in lowering each PV and BOS prices, however BOS prices had been additionally impacted by improvements in software program engineering and electrical utilities.
Noninnovation elements, like effectivity positive aspects from bulk buying and the buildup of information within the solar energy business, additionally decreased some price variables.
As well as, whereas most PV panel improvements originated in analysis organizations or business, many BOS improvements had been developed by metropolis governments, U.S. states, or skilled associations.
“I knew there was so much occurring with this know-how, however the range of all these fields and the way carefully linked they’re, and the truth that we are able to clearly see that community by way of this evaluation, was fascinating,” Trancik says.
“PV was very well-positioned to soak up improvements from different industries – due to the proper timing, bodily compatibility, and supportive insurance policies to adapt improvements for PV functions,” Klemun provides.
The evaluation additionally reveals the function larger computing energy may play in lowering BOS prices by way of advances like automated engineering assessment techniques and distant website evaluation software program.
“By way of information spillovers, what we have seen thus far in PV could actually simply be the start,” Klemun says, pointing to the increasing function of robotics and AI-driven digital instruments in driving future price reductions and high quality enhancements.
Along with their qualitative evaluation, the researchers demonstrated how this technique may very well be used to estimate the quantitative impression of a specific innovation if one has the numerical knowledge to plug into the price equation.
As an example, utilizing details about materials costs and manufacturing procedures, they estimate that wire sawing, a method which was launched within the Eighties, led to an general PV system price lower of $5 per watt by lowering silicon losses and growing throughput throughout fabrication.
“Via this retrospective evaluation, you study one thing priceless for future technique as a result of you possibly can see what labored and what did not work, and the fashions will also be utilized prospectively. Additionally it is helpful to know what adjoining sectors could assist help enchancment in a specific know-how,” Trancik says.
Transferring ahead, the researchers plan to use this technique to a variety of applied sciences, together with different renewable power techniques. Additionally they wish to additional research comfortable know-how to determine improvements or processes that would speed up price reductions.
“Though the method of technological innovation could look like a black field, we have proven that you could research it identical to another phenomena,” Trancik says.
This analysis is funded, partly, by the U.S. Division of Vitality Photo voltaic Energies Know-how Workplace.
Analysis Report:“Nature of innovations affecting photovoltaic system costs”
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