Overview of the Photovoltaic Technology Status and Perspective in Turkey

Abstract

The Republic of Turkey, located in Southeastern Europe and Southwestern Asia (that portion of Turkey west of the Bosporus is geographically part of Europe). Nowadays, Turkey with its young population and growing energy demand per person, its fast growing urbanization, and its economic development, has been one of the fast growing electrical energy markets of the world for the last two decades. Unfortunately, Turkey's energy is largely dependent on foreign countries and the country's energy is imported spending billions of dollars each year. On the other hand, the effects on global and environmental air quality of pollutants released into the atmosphere from fossil fuels in electric power plants provide strong arguments for the development of renewable energy resources. Solar energy is one of the best available among renewable energy sources. There are possess many advantages of solar energy such as relativity, viability, silent, non-polluting, little maintenance, suitable for remote site application, not require any fuel and independent from electricity network. Turkey has advanced a great deal in the generation of electricity from solar energy because of much higher solar energy potential than lots of developed countries on solar energy applications. This study is taken into account that overview of the photovoltaic technology status and perspective in Turkey and the contains of photovoltaic power systems utilization and potential status in the world, energy consumption and demand in Turkey, geographic description of the solar energy in Turkey, PV industry current and potential status in Turkey, solar energy legislation framework in Turkey. R&D status of photovoltaic industry in Turkey, future strategy of PV industry in Turkey, current and future status photovoltaic power systems economics in the world. Also, this paper on the basis of this subjects is analyzed the SWOT of Turkey's photovoltaic industry, its advantages, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.