Good morning everyone, I’m I-ting,LIU In the next five minutes, I’ll explain the

challenges and prospects of solar cell briefly.

So let talk about the challenges.
First, etching is an important treatment when we manufacture the core of solar
cell.
In order to etch silicon, much strong acid solution and strong alkali solution and
organic solvents are used, the step consumes a large number of clean water and also
pollutes water and soil environment.
Second, for the current popular solar cells we use, their efficiency for generating
electricity is only about 20%.
And the biggest factor is weather condition, for example, convective cloud and bad
air quality make the efficiency of solar cell in Taiwan is even lower than some
temperate countries like Japan and Germany.
In fact, the emission of carbon dioxide from solar cell is more than that by other
types of renewable energy sources.
And the trickiest problem why solar cell can not get popular is that the cost of it
is still much higher than fossil fuel energy at this moment.
Third, the average service life of a solar cell is about 20 years, which making the
recycle of solar cell become a serious issue.
There are six main layers in a solar cell,
the aluminum frame and glass are easy to be recycled, however, the precious metals
in the core of solar cell are difficult to be take out and purify because of the
encapsulant cover on the both sides of it.
Even in Europe, people remove the encapsulant by burning it, which not only making
lot of toxic volatile gas like carbon monoxide, but also oxidizing the silicon
solid, making them hard to be reused again.

But don’t worry, the advantages of solar cell are much greater than the challenges.
Apart from the common advantages such as clean, quiet and environmental friendly,
there are many prospects of solar cell that you may not ever heard.
As for the prospects of solar cell in Taiwan, we have outstanding research
technology and technical personnel, especially in the core technology of solar cell
about semiconductor.
Also, though the land area in Taiwan is seemly too small to set up enough solar
cell power plant, in fact, we have quite large area of land which is subsiding and
we can also use the abandoned farmland as the base of solar energy power plant.
The most important prospect is that, solar energy is the best way to satisfy the
urgent need to increase energy independence at this critical moment because it
doesn’t need any consumable material.
There are two obvious prospects of solar energy in global.
First, due to the instability in the Middle East which caused oil crisis before and
in order to satisfy the target of UN climate change conference in Paris that we
have to control the rising temperature in two Celsius degrees, the demand of
renewable energy will be higher and higher.
The other prospect is that, thanks to the advance of technology nowadays, more and
more innovative technologies of solar cell are being creative to improve the
disadvantages of it.

In sum up, although many obstacles we may face to when we are developing this new
technology, we are always able to overcome them by our intelligence.