This is resarch paper of international business class.

I need literature review.

I need each section for 7~10 lines in ms word.

(total 25~30 lines)

I attached the 2 files.

1. explain about literature review

2. our current paper

 

This is research paper of my class. I need to write my literature review. I need to add 3 things below. You can read my paper. You can read our paper then you may get idea.

 

The main area we are lacking in is that we have a good foundation to tell an interesting story about solar power, however we don't have a foundation underneath it.  In other terms we have the story, but we lack the vocabulary and the model so that we can say why it really matters.  He suggested we look at adoption theory and then apply that to our case study of PV cells.  The history sections need to talk about PV in terms of the adoption theory model we pick as much as possible

 

 

 

Write a literature review section about adoption models and how we arrived at our chosen model(7~10 lines)

Write a section for the literature review detailing the history of PV cells.  Talk about it in terms of our adoption model as much as possible(7~10lines)

Write a section for the literature review talking about current issues in PV cells.  Once again talk about it in terms of our model as much as possible(7~10 lines)

Be careful about citation ( you need to follow citation we did for paper)

Ex) been changing in recent years.  (Mints, 2011)

I need all resources( not allowed internet source, you may find articles, data can be from internet)

Ex) Mints, Paul (2011) ‘Solar PV, CSP and CPV – Smoke and Mirrors’ Renewable Energy Focus U.S., January/February 2012  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photovoltaic Cells: A Case Study of Technological Advance

 

 

 

 

                                                                           Abstract

This study explores the nature and many intricacies of the burgeoning solar power industry.  We will be examining in particular, the changing market for photovoltaic cells.  The purpose is to determine how technological advances and a rapidly growing market can affect supply, demand, and production costs.  Research into renewable energy sources, more specifically solar power, is of vital importance due to the fact that fossil fuels will eventually run out.  No matter what innovations may occur in prolonging the use of these fuels, they are a limited resource and will end.   Thus research into renewable energy sources transcends normal business research and becomes research for the future of mankind.  Solar power is at a crossroads with greater efficiency and innovations occurring at a rapid rate.  Photovoltaic cells in particular are experiencing rapidly diminishing costs with grid parity expected in the near future.  Several of the major players in the global industry are China as the leading producer of photovoltaic cells, as well as Germany and the United States as important markets for these cells.  We examined how technological changes and rapid growth within these countries affect the global supply, demand, and costs of the photovoltaic cell marketplace, as well as how they affect the evolution of the market as a whole.  Methods used include the analysis of secondary qualitative data as well as the analysis of specific indicators related to the supply, demand, and costs of photovoltaic cells.  By conducting this study we hope that we can present a compelling case study that shows how a new technologically advanced product matures and grows.

 

Keywords: Solar Power, Solar Industry, Renewable, Photovoltaic Cell, PV Cell, Supply, Demand, Production, Costs, Technology, Technological advance

 

JEL Classification: F50 –General International Relations and International Political Economy

O30 – General Technological Change; Research and Development;   Intellectual Property Rights

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

Solar Power is an area of ever-increasing importance.  Unlike most commonly used methods of energy production it is a renewable source, eliminating the possibility that supply constraints could affect energy production.  More importantly, it is clean and using it to produce energy will not damage the environment in the same way that gas or coal will.  It is also an area of dynamic change.  The price of solar panels is falling, likewise the efficiency is increasing; solar energy becomes more effective every year.  The marketplace is rapidly changing due to both the rapid pace of technological advances, as well as to the changing nature of the market itself.  The purpose of this paper is to examine supply, demand, and production costs through the lens of a rapidly growing marketplace and a high degree of technological innovation.  We hope to present a compelling case study that shows how the two forces of a growing market, and technological innovation can affect the supply, demand, and costs of an technologically advanced product.  

 

Literature Review

Solar energy production is an energy source that either directly or indirectly uses the sun for energy.  Solar power has many advantages; chief among them being that it is a renewable resource and that is also has lower carbon dioxide emissions than other forms of energy production.  (Marques, Fuinhas, 2012)  There are several different types of solar power.  One is called concentrated solar power (hereby referred to as CSP).  CSP uses mirrors to focus the sun’s rays onto a heat-transfer material.  This material creates steam which is then used to power a turbine to generate electricity.  (Jennings, 2009)

 

An alternative to CSP is photovoltaic panels.  (Hereby referred to as PV, PV cells, or PV panels)  Unlike CSP, which indirectly converts sunlight to energy, PV cells convert sunlight directly into energy using the photoelectric effect. (Beck, 2006)  This allows efficiencies approaching 32%. (Green, 2010)  One major advantage of PV cells is that they are highly modular.  In other words, you can put a group of them on the roof of your house, or you can build a massive large scale installation capable of powering entire cities.  (Beck, 2006) 

There are limitations to PV cells however.  One of these limitations is that although PV cells can still produce some level of power during overcast conditions, they cannot produce power at night.  Thus some alternative form of power generation or storage is needed (Beck, 2006)  Another limitation is that the relative price of solar cells to other forms of power generation can significantly higher, although this has been changing in recent years.  (Mints, 2011) 

Government policies have the ability to either help or hinder the growth of renewable energy sources.  In fact, the major goal of solar power development is to reach the point where it can compete with conventional energy sources without government assistance.  This point is called grid parity.  The irony in this goal is that when solar power achieves grid parity, it will be competing against energy forms that receive government assistance.  (Keating, 2012)  This has led to many in the solar community to call for the repeal of all subsidies related to power generation.  (Keating, 2012)  According to António Cardoso Marques and José Alberto Fuinhas in their excellent article “Are public policies towards renewables successful? Evidence from European Countries” public policies in favor of solar power have proven to be effective in the past and are expected to remain effective in the future.

 

 

Methodology

In order to complete our research and adequately answer our research question we will need to collect information based on how our several major factors have changed over time.  We will be utilizing secondary data and looking for various facets of information from these sources in order to collect our information.

Production 

Production is a key area by which we can judge the growth of the PV cell industry.  Production represents the supply side of the photovoltaic marketplace.  We will attempt to aggregate our production data by the country or region in which the solar PV cells were produced.   In this way we hope that we can see patterns in how production has changed since the inception of solar PV panels.  

One interesting issue that is raised by the available production data is which form should the data be presented in?  Several of the methods simply use the amount of units or shipments of PV cells.  This is a fairly straightforward method although it can be misleading because large solar cells that are capable of producing large amounts of energy are rated on the same level with small consumer-grade solar panels.  With this situation in mind a more reliable measure may be the production capability of the PV panels produced.  This information is usually presented in terms of Megawatts, a unit of measurement equivalent to one million watts.  In this way we can present an accurate picture of the true production across time and geography.

 

 

 

 

Technological Advances

How to measure the rate and location of technological advances presents another interesting problem.  Innovation is something that has traditionally been problematic to measure at best.  After all how do you measure how technological advances spread through geographies?  One common measure that may be applicable is the amount of patents issued in a respective country or region.  In this situation we would be specifically measuring patents in solar and PV technology.  This approach has several advantages; chief among them is the relative ease of finding data on patents.  The big disadvantage of this approach is the questionability that patents actually represent true technological advances.   After all, many patents are issued for innovations that are derivative of other patents and many important innovations are never patented.  Furthermore there is the problem of patent laws varying widely between international locations.

A possible alternative to using patents to measure technological advances is to use firm’s research and development expenditures into PV cells and solar technology.  This data can then be aggregated by country and region.  This has the advantage of directly representing where technological development is occurring and also gives us a ratio level variable that we can most certainly draw interesting conclusions from.  The disadvantage of this method is the relative unavailability of research and development data.  Much research and development occurs internally within a company that may or may not be required to report it.  When considering the fact that different nations will almost certainly have different rules regarding this, the approach becomes even more difficult. Both systems of measurement for this have severe issues, therefore we may experience some limitations on the conclusions we can draw from the diffusion of technological innovation.

Costs

Costs represent another problem very similar to the problems already discussed.  The cost of producing solar panels is usually highly proprietary information of a single firm.  It would be extremely difficult and outside the scope of this paper to develop a reliable measure based solely upon a firm’s internal costs.  A possible alternative is to research input costs for solar panels and how they have changed over the years.  By charting the changes in market prices charged for the various input materials needed for solar cells we can gain an idea for firm’s internal costs may be changing.  This method does require the assumption that a firm’s cost structure depends in a great deal on the price of its input materials.  This may be a questionable assumption when looking at a single firm, but across an industry it should be a safe assumption.  Thus one method we will examine in order to compare costs across space and time is by examining the changing input costs.  

Another possible method of measuring the changing nature is to examine how the dollar per watt ($/W) has changed as solar panels have matured.  Dollar s per watt is an easy measure to calculate, it is simply the dollar cost of installing solar panels divided by the amount of watts rated to be output by the installation.  (http://thesolarreview.org/2009/10/16/pv-fast-facts/)  This measure has the advantage of being quick to calculate and easy to understand.  It also takes the manufactured costs directly into account as well as the cost of actually installing the solar panels.  This is important both because it measures the manufactured costs well but also the costs to install the cells, which is often overlooked.  Another advantage of using this method is that it is directly comparable with the concept of grid parity, as well as extremely easy to compare to other forms of energy.  These are several of the methods that we may use to examine the changing costs of solar PV panels.

Demand

Demand is thankfully one of the easier variables that we will attempt to measure.  Unlike the previous records the amount of solar capacity purchased and installed can be tracked and recorded fairly easily.  We will attempt to use several methods in order to track demand across the development of solar cells.  The first method is to use import and export patterns.  This data has the advantage of being readily available, however, as with previous methods it has the disadvantage of having its data typically recorded in either number of units, or number of shipments.  Thus there is o difference when comparing the scale of two photovoltaic installations; a small residential unit is equivalent to a large industrial install. 

The second method that can be used to track demand across both geography and time is using the number of new installations set up per year.  Once again however, this has the disadvantage of not showing the different scales of solar cells.  A more appropriate measure may be to use the amount of megawatts installed per year.  This information has the advantage of taking into account difference in scale, as well as being relatively easy to obtain.  Thus, if possible this will be our preferred method of measurement.  

Once we have our data collected we plan to aggregate it by country and/or region of origin.  After completion of that step we plan to carefully examine it to see what patterns may emerge as solar cells become more pervasive.

 

 

 

 

 

References

 

Beck, Frederic (2006) ‘Photovoltaics Renewable Energy Fact Sheet’ Environmental and Energy Study Institute, Obtained through http://www.ases.org

 

 

Martin A. Green, Keith Emery, Yoshihiro Hishikawa & Wilhelm Warta (2010) ‘Solar Cell Efficiency Tables (version 36)’ Wiley InterScience, Obtained through http://www.interscience.wiley.com

 

Keating, Tim (2012) ‘Death to PV Subsidies’ Photovoltaics World, February 3, 2012

 

António Cardoso Marques, José Alberto Fuinhas (2012) ‘Are public policies towards renewables successful? Evidence from European countries’ Renewable Energy, An International Journal, Jan 31, 2012

 

Mints, Paul (2011) ‘Solar PV, CSP and CPV – Smoke and Mirrors’ Renewable Energy Focus U.S., January/February 2012  

 

Reel, Monte (2006) ‘Brazil's Road to Energy Independence’ Washington Post Foreign Service 

Sunday, August 20, 2006

 

Runci, Paul PNNL (2005) ‘Renewable Energy Policy in Germany’, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Technical Lab Report PNWD-3526

 

Zweibel, Ken. (2009) “The Solar Review. In PV Fast Facts” Obtained through  http://thesolarreview.org/2009/10/16/pv-fast-facts/.