For most of its commercial life, solar power has been shaped by the limits of one material. Crystalline silicon is efficient, durable and cheap, but it is also heavy, rigid and opaque. And as cities and industry push to cut emissions, roofs strong enough to carry heavy silicon modules are running out. That makes weight, flexibility and transparency almost as important for the next wave of solar as cost per watt.
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IDTechEx has now published “Perovskite Photovoltaics 2027–2037: Technologies, Markets & Trends,” a ten-year outlook on a technology that has spent the last decade swinging between record lab results and doubts about whether it can be made at scale. According to the report, perovskite is splitting into several commercial tracks, each with its own economics, competitors and timelines.
Tandems on top of silicon
The most visible track is the perovskite-silicon tandem. These cells have repeatedly broken efficiency records in the lab, and they are the most likely route into the mainstream rooftop and ground-mounted market. Here, a perovskite layer sits on top of a silicon cell and lifts its efficiency, at a time when silicon on its own is close to its practical limit.
Whether tandems succeed commercially depends on some unglamorous engineering questions, and IDTechEx points to four in particular. The first is scaling up from small lab cells to large modules made at high speed, without losing performance. The second is yield and cost, since production has to keep up with silicon on price. The third is the supply chain, from substrates and transparent conductive films to the active layers. And the fourth is sustainability, including recycling and the lead in perovskite cells.
These questions have been around for years, but pilot production has reached a scale where real answers are possible, and where it should become clear whether perovskite can move from the lab to the factory.
New surfaces for solar
According to the report, the bigger commercial shift is taking place in smaller, less visible markets. While tandems chase efficiency records, single-junction and flexible perovskites are opening up new markets. These lightweight cells can be applied to light plastic films or glass, and their transparency can be adjusted, so they could turn everyday surfaces into power generators.
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The clearest early market is commercial roofing. Many warehouses and factory buildings have large roofs that cannot carry the weight of silicon panels and their racking. Lightweight perovskite modules could make these roofs usable for solar, without taking up any new land.
Agri-PV is another fit, as the amount of light passing through the modules can be adjusted to suit the crops below. The same goes for vehicle-integrated PV (VIPV) and roadside noise barriers. And at the smallest scale, indoor perovskite cells could power sensors and other Internet of Things devices, replacing disposable batteries. The report’s application map even extends to space and aerospace.
Forecasts by market and technology
To cover this variety, the report breaks the market into segments. Its forecasts for 2027–2037 give both capacity in MW and market value in US dollars, across nine application areas and three technologies: double-glass single-junction perovskite, perovskite-silicon tandem and flexible perovskite. It also looks briefly at related uses such as LEDs, photodetectors and X-ray detectors, which share production know-how with solar.
For investors and developers, this means looking at perovskite as several separate opportunities, each with its own route to market. Companies that choose the right technology for each application, whether flexible, single-junction or tandem, stand the best chance of success. And the surfaces that silicon never reached – from warehouse roofs to greenhouse glazing to the inside of a sensor – may be where perovskite finds its first really big markets. (hcn)
