IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - June 2020 - 24

into one module as an example of a
powerful approach to address some
challenges in the emerging distributed
smart solar markets.

Transitioning From Solar
Deployment to Integration

By the close of the last
century, the golden
age of power electronics was in full swing,
fueled by a surge of
R&D activities.

During the past 20 years, PV deployment has reached unimagined levels
of penetration. Given the ever-in creasing reduction of PV system costs,
expanding global and environmental
concerns and regulations, and mounting governmental and venture capital investment, one may
argue that the past two decades can be dubbed as an era of
PV deployment, reaching an unfathomed level of integration. The end of the 20th century saw the advent of technologies that harvested and converted the sun's unlimited
energy, offering the possibility of inexhaustible and inexpensive power sources. However, solar energy's enormous
potential is restricted by the intermittent nature, disreputability, scalability, and cost of solar-based storage technologies. New regulations require that storage be included in
the PV mix. This is why we expect that the next era will
be all about power electronics and energy integration,
as illustrated in Figure 1. The PV cost (modules only) has
dropped significantly, by almost 90% from a decade ago.
We can see a clear correlation between PV module prices
and the amount of global PV generation and installation.
We believe that the future grid will be a smart inverter-dominated network. Integrated solar generation coupled with storage, Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, and advanced monitoring
and control will become the backbone of the modern grid. The

The Past (2010)

field of power electronics will witness a
boost in innovative power electronics
applications. New trends in R&D activities are expected to grow to support
future designs of modular and smart
power-processing circuits. This will
open the door to new emerging entrepreneurship and market opportunities.

The Promise of Storage

Today, the promise of storage may be
received with skepticism by many in
the technical and business communities. Many correctly argue that since the invention of the battery in 1800 by Alessandro Volta, the quest for improved battery technology has not stopped. Gradual improvements have
been made since then, but serious R&D activities for batteries
started only when PV penetration became problematic for the
power grid and commercialized electric and hybrid vehicles
turned profitable. As a result, electrical storage efficiencies
are significantly improving, while prices are falling, a trend
that is expected to continue. The Electric Power Research
Institute issued a forecast that Li-ion battery packs will drop
to one-quarter of their current price by 2022 [9].
The initial promise of storage was to address the challenge of intermittency, balancing supply and demand
issues, and effectively taking surplus energy for later use.
Today, the power electronics community is called upon to
help address several challenges, such as:
1) increasingly stringent grid requirements
2) the need to integrate high-power semiconductor devices
3) the drive for lower-cost energy with high efficiency
and reliability

The Present (2020)

The Future (2030)

Deployment

Integration
PV Module Prices
US$2-3/W

US$0.3/W

US$0.23/W

Global PV Generation
10-Plus TWh

300-Plus TWh

2,000-Plus TWh

Global PV Installations
10-Plus GW

300-Plus GW

1,000-Plus GW

FIG 1 The transition from PV system deployment to power electronics and energy storage integration.

IEEE POWER ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE

z June 2020

IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - June 2020

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