Recent Achievements in Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic Energy Applications

Abstract

This paper deals with the overview of the recent worldwide achievements and applications concerning to the solar thermal and photovoltaic (PV) technologies. Both, the technical and environmental issues are to be presented and discussed.
The worldwide situation is mainly analysed based on the recent development shown intensively at the Solar World Congresses organized by the International Solar Energy Society, and also by the ISES-Europe Unit. Moreover, the most recently published books in this topic served also a basic source to the overview statements.
The main area of solar thermal energy use covers the solar domestic hot water systems, the combined systems, the large-scale systems, the swimming pool collectors, the solar district heating systems, the process heat and the solar thermal assisted cooling systems.
The most important standpoints of the PV manufacturing and applications are as: increasing trend in energy mix, decreasing cell and module prices, cell efficiency does not increase so fast, competition between different technologies, multi-Gigawatts applications, widening feed-in tariff system. Due to the growing market demand of solar photovoltaic applications, several new issues came to the light, transparency and extra size of modules, application of new technologies.
Examples are shown for both solar thermal and photovoltaic application possibilities.