EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Life cycle assessment of a micromorph photovoltaic system

Mirko Bravi, Maria Laura Parisi, Enzo Tiezzi and Riccardo Basosi

Energy, 2011, vol. 36, issue 7, 4297-4306

Abstract: In this paper the results from a in-depth life cycle analysis of production and use of a novel grid-connected photovoltaic micromorph system are presented and compared to other thin film and traditional crystalline silicon photovoltaic technologies. Among the new thin film technologies, the micromorph tandem junction appears to be one of the most promising devices from the industrial point of view. The analysis was based on actual production data given to the authors directly from the PRAMAC Swiss Company and it is consistent with the recommendations provided by the ISO norms and updates. The gross energy requirement, green house gas emissions and energy pay-back time have been calculated for the electric energy output virtually generated by the studied system in a lifetime period of 20 years. A comparative framework is also provided, wherein results obtained for the case study are compared with data from literature previously obtained for the best commercially available competing photovoltaic technologies. Results clearly show a significant decrease in gross energy requirement, in green house gas emissions and also a shorter energy pay-back time for the micromorph technology.

Keywords: Photovoltaic; Thin film; Life cycle assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544211002611
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:36:y:2011:i:7:p:4297-4306

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2011.04.012

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:36:y:2011:i:7:p:4297-4306