Photovoltaic solar technologies: a review of different alternatives and applications

Progress in photovoltaic (PV) technologies has been spectacular in the latest years, both from the point of view of science but also from industry. Solar PV based on silicon or cadmium. Telluride have lowered the prices below 0.5 c$/Wp¹ in mass production, which were a dream just 10 years ago. As a result, cost of solar energy has dropped far below grid parity and in many cases even below the prices offered by conventional fossil-fuel sources of energy. Similar evolution has been seen for other clean sources of energy like wind, what opens the promising perspective of a future driven mainly, if not fully, by renewable energy. This provides Human Kind the possibility of covering world energy needs predictions, +30% in 2040, while having a limited impact on earth environment and climate. New technologies such Dye Solar Cells and Perovskite Solar Cells are among the few which have the possibility to keep the path for continuing decreasing price of solar panels, mainly thanks to the low cost of the materials and processes needed in their fabrication. The performance differences between these and present technologies will establish the applications in which each of them. May be used, while the speed at which they become mature for common use will determine their ability to be competitive in a market dominated by very large companies. In this work, the present understanding of the physico-chemical properties of dye and perovskite solar cells, which are the points that are need to improve to enhance their performance and how to evaluate them from the electrical point of view have been studied