Fig. 2. Progress of the amorphous silicon solar cell efficiency as of December 1982. An example of the remarkable advance in the amorphous semiconductor technology. photovoltaic industry. The growth rate has continued to be 100% for the last several years. On the other hand, the worldwide gross output of solar cells is estimated to be about 20 MWp in FY 1983 and expected to grow by 60% per year until it reaches to 400 MWp in 1990. Furthermore, in the year 2000, about 10 GWp of solar cell is thought to be manufactured (14). Of course the necessary condition for the realization of this growth will be technical innovations as mentioned before. It must be noted that even in 2000 we can hardly obtain the amount of solar cells sufficient for 15 GW SPS. SOME EXAMPLES OF SOLAR CELL APPLICATIONS The DOE has reported a conceptional diagram of the development of solar cell application as shown in Fig. 3 (15). NEDO's demonstrative application systems can
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==