One of the best ways to gauge the growth of Dye Sensitized Solar Cells, or DSSC's, in terms of technology would be to use the quarterly Clean Energy Patent Growth Index (CEPGI), published by Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti P.C., that tracks the number of patents that were earned for different clean energy technologies such as fuel cells, solar cells, hydroelectric and biofuels. These reports show the activity of each sector per quarter since 2002.
According to the CEPGI report released on March 10,2010, the number of solar energy patents in general has increased by 60% from the year before to reach numbers near its value for 2003, as shown below1. Although there are a lot fewer solar patents in comparison to fuel cells, technologies are expected to highly increase and surpass the decreasing wind technology. Further analysis also shows that the United States plays a large role in these advancements by producing nearly half of these patents while Japan trails behind by making almost one third2.
When comparing the different generations of photovoltaics in specific, the first generation technology has showed the highest levels of efficiency resulting in a large flux of scientists entering the field but decrease in the number of patents may indicate dwindling of the technology itself3. Second generation technology has been reported to “[have] shown a fairly consistent decline through almost the entire period of [the] tracking”4. Third generation technology in general has been stably increasing in patents.
DSSC's are included in this promising 3rd generation of PV technologies. many important technical progresses have been made already. The current DSSC technology can provide unique features the regular SI cells cannot offer. However, the progresses are made in a gradual manner, among which it is hard to predict how fast or smooth this transition may be. For example, it took over twenty years for someone to solve the problems of how to improve various characteristics of the electrode and the cathode, but now that they have been found, there will surely be a huge increase in its application.
In my point of view, in 10-15 years, DSSC's will hopefully become a standard component of a residential hose. Or, it may still remain as a hobby of some scientists. many factors will play into the commercialization of this technique, similar to what happened to silicon cells. Some of these factors include politics, economy, strategy and technique. For example, some expensive technologies became commercialized, while other less expensive ones failed. For the latest progress in technique, you can refer to websites for larger scale companies such as Dye-Sol or 3G Solar.
1. "002a All Sectors by Year - 2009." Clean Energy Patent Growth Index. Web. 05 Apr. 2010. .
2. "204 World Solar 2009." Clean Energy Patent Growth Index. Web. 05 Apr. 2010 <http://cepgi.typepad.com/ .a/6a00e5502e87bf88330120a91b4c85970b-popup>.
3. "Solar008 1st Gen." Clean Energy Patent Growth Index. Web. 05 Apr. 2010 <http://cepgi.typepad.com/ .a/6a00e5502e87bf8833012876b54fac970c-popup>.
4. Clean Energy Patent Growth Index. Web. 05 Apr. 2010 <http://cepgi.typepad.com/heslin_rothenberg_farley_/>.
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