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Nature of innovations affecting photovoltaic system costs — Europe PMC PMID:40788879

Source: Europe PMC (en)
Original: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/40788879
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0320676
License (as archived): CC0-1.0
Archived: 2026-10-06T09:43:55.700Z
SHA-256 of the archived text: 98233f3b8f472f8b60a13211f6334e42efe7ec0252217052fa177e8f3606c4ae
Stable URL of this page: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_e59e6fe724ef

How to cite

Nature of innovations affecting photovoltaic system costs — Europe PMC PMID:40788879 — Europe PMC (en), https://europepmc.org/article/MED/40788879 (CC0-1.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_e59e6fe724ef (Metraipolis archive dc_e59e6fe724ef, sha256 98233f3b8f472f8b60a13211f6334e42efe7ec0252217052fa177e8f3606c4ae)

BibTeX

@misc{dce59e6fe724ef,
  title = {Nature of innovations affecting photovoltaic system costs — Europe PMC PMID:40788879},
  howpublished = {Europe PMC (en)},
  url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/40788879},
  note = {License CC0-1.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_e59e6fe724ef; sha256 98233f3b8f472f8b60a13211f6334e42efe7ec0252217052fa177e8f3606c4ae},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC0-1.0. Attribution: Europe PMC (en), https://europepmc.org/article/MED/40788879. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

Innovations improve technology costs through various kinds of engineering advancements, including changes to materials choices and device or process designs. Understanding how these innovations relate to cost change can reveal aspects of the process of technology evolution, yet developing such understanding is often not possible with a strictly quantitative approach due to data limitations. In this paper we develop a hybrid quantitative-qualitative framework for relating specific innovations to cost change by using the variables in a quantitative technology cost change model as an organizing principle. We demonstrate this framework by applying it to the cost decline in photovoltaic (PV) systems over the last five decades. This framework generates new understanding of a set of innovations that contributed to PV modules' sustained cost decline and the more modest trends observed in balance-of-system (BOS) costs. The results show the great diversity of innovations that affected PV costs, drawing on wide-ranging fields of expertise within scientific research and practice. We find that there are differences in the characteristics of innovations that reduced the cost of PV modules compared to innovations influencing BOS costs. Numerous module innovations reduced costs by advancing manufacturing tools and processes that improved material quality. Many BOS innovations reduced costs through a combination of component design changes, integration, automation, digitalization, and standardization. Overall, most innovations in our sample affected PV hardware. However, some also target 'soft technologies' such as task durations through innovations like fast-track permitting, which require improved collaboration and process streamlining. This framework also provides insight into the nature of knowledge spillovers between technologies. Both module and BOS hardware innovations show the benefits of PV's position within an 'ecosystem' of continuously advancing technologies in many industries, in particular semiconductors and electronics, and also point to the importance of public institutions for accelerating testing, permitting, and training.

Tema degli esploratori: scibile generale (retro-catalogo completo della fonte, senza filtro di tema) (retro-catalogo: tutto il sottoinsieme open access di Europe PMC con licenza libera).
Pubblicazione: PloS one, 2025 (prima pubblicazione 2025-08-11).
Identificativi: PMID 40788879 · PMCID PMC12338801 · DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0320676.
Descrittori MeSH principali: Solar Energy; Inventions.
Pagina: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/40788879 — https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320676. Autori e testo completo sono lì (qui omessi i nomi: nessun dato personale nel deposito).
Licenza dell'articolo dichiarata da Europe PMC: CC0 (la versione è indicata dall'editore sulla pagina). Abstract riportato senza modifiche al contenuto, con attribuzione; deposito marcato CC0.
Letto il 2026-10-06T09:43:20.189Z tramite l'API REST ufficiale di Europe PMC (EMBL-EBI), nel rispetto del robots.txt e del crawl-delay.