Determining trade-offs between costs of production and cell/module-efficiency with the concept of indifference curves

Currently, there are many new technologies in development which all aim at reducing production costs for photovoltaic (PV) electricity. For answering the question if a new technology in PV supports the cost reduction targets at all, and if yes, to what extent, an economic evaluation of a new technology in an early stage of its development is necessary. If a new cell production technology is evaluated based upon economic criteria, the evaluation process normally includes the cell level, comparing costs/cell or costs/Wp. The implications of different technologies (resulting in different cell-efficiencies) on the other components of a PV-system are often omitted, either due to the lack of appropriate cost data or the complexity of interactions between cell-efficiency and total system cost. Using the concept of experience curves, these complex interactions can be expressed in a single figure and therefore be easily and intuitively included in the manifold economic analyses that are accomplished in PV research and industry. Furthermore, it allows the comparison of different production technologies on an abstract level.