ABSTRACT

Quality is extremely important to make the photovoltaic (PV) systems “bankable,” that is, acceptable for long-term investment. The global production of PV modules in 2000 was 250 MW and in 2009 was 8,000 MW, a 31-fold increase in the production in 10 years. The meteoric rise of the utilization of PV started. The seriousness of PV’s entry into the global electricity generation market can be seen from the price of the produced electricity, which became very competitive with other generation methods. In 2015, the price of the PV-produced electricity, for example, in southern Spain was 5 US cent/kWh and in Germany 8 US cents/kWh. A big advantage of PV over these systems is that it could be decentralized, which means it could be used at the location where it was needed, and no transmission lines were necessary. A PV system can be installed locally avoiding the cost of a power line.