According to market projections by IDTechEx, the market for dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) will slowly grow to over $130 million by 2023.

 

Although initial products are aimed towards indoor and portable applications, starting out with chargers and solar bags with wireless solar keyboards demonstrated more recently, the end game for DSSCs is the ability to have these largely inexpensive solar cells incorporated into much bigger installations. For that purpose, development work is being undertaken in order to produce prototypes and demonstrators of DSSCs being utilised in applications such as bus shelters, steel roofing and others such as facades, semi-transparent windows etc.

 

 

 

Source: IDTechEx

 

DSSCs represent, together with organic photovoltaics (OPVs) the third generation of solar technologies which are expected to usher a new era of added functionality and lowered costs, adding to the overall value proposition of solar power generation. In the short term, incumbent technologies will outperform emerging solar cell platforms, both in terms of performance and cost structure due to economies of scale achieved. Hence, developers of DSSCs will need to identify niche markets that will allow for seeding further growth in later years. Although, as with all emerging technologies, cost benefits are not necessarily immediately obvious due to low volume production, it is of interest to adopters, technology developers but also equipment and materials providers to closely follow the developments in this space in order to be able to better understand the way the market for DSSCs is growing and the impact these solar cells will have on the market for sustainable energy generation.

 

The main issues that DSSC technologies have to solve relate to performance limitations: in lifetime and efficiency. There is a clear handicap in best performance achieved by DSSCs when compared to technologies that have been under development for longer and have achieved much better efficiency levels. On the other hand and on a more positive note, it's also obvious that the performance gap with amorphous Silicon, one of the incumbent technologies, has closed dramatically in recent years, especially in indoor applications. It is thus, important to identify the best fitting initial applications for DSSCs, as the first ones to target in order to achieve faster commercialization.

 

The market sectors for which forecasts are given in this report are divided into:

 

The automotive sector seems to be taking off slowly, being one that is more stringent in terms of requirements of lifetime and efficiency performance from solar technologies, leading to just a few million dollars in market value by 2020.

 

 

Source: IDTechEx

 

On the other hand, in other portable electronics, especially for indoor applications and with a multitude of different applications expected to be developed in the next few years, a $5 million in market share is expected by 2017, which is expected to grow 6-fold by 2023.

DSSC companies, materials and equipment companies, other PV companies (thin film PVs, c-Si, OPVs) in order to understand competition from DSSCs. Potential adopters/integrators that can understand the markets that can be addressed when utilizing DSSC technology.

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