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The solar energy flux reaching
the Earth’s surface represents a few thousand times the
current use of primary energy by humans. The potential of
this resource is enormous and makes solar energy a crucial
component of a renewable energy aimed at reducing the global
emissions of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
Nevertheless, the current use of this energy resource
represents less than 1% of the total electricity production
from renewable sources. Even though the deployment of
photovoltaic systems has been increasing steadily, the solar
technologies still suffer from some setbacks that make them
poorly competitive on an energy market dominated by fossil
fuels: high capital cost, modest conversion efficiency, and
intermittency. From a scientific and technical viewpoint,
the development of new technologies with higher conversion
efficiencies and low production costs is a key requirement
for enabling the deployment of solar energy at a large
scale. This paper summarizes the state of the research in
solar technologies with high potential for large-scale
energy production.
Keywords: Solar energy, photovoltaic, greenhouse, technology
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