Solar photovoltaic power generation is the use of solar cell technology, photons make electrons jump, forming a potential difference, and light energy is directly converted into electrical energy to generate direct current. The most important difference between them lies in the different energy storage methods. Energy storage is of great significance to make up for the intermittence of solar power generation and improve the peak shaving ability of power grid. Because photovoltaic power generation directly converts light energy into electric energy, its remaining energy can only be stored by batteries, and its technical difficulty and cost are far greater than that of solar thermal power generation, which only needs heat storage. Therefore, compared with photovoltaic power generation, one of the most important and obvious advantages of solar thermal power generation is that it is easy to store excess energy to realize continuous and stable power generation and peak shaving power generation.
Solar photothermal and solar photovoltaic power generation have their own advantages and disadvantages, and each has its own application fields. The scale of photothermal power generation is relatively large, and the scale of photovoltaic power generation is relatively small, which is suitable for families and residential quarters. , including the combination with buildings. Therefore, the application scope of the two is not exactly the same. Solar photothermal power generation is mostly used for centralized power generation, and solar photovoltaic power generation is mainly used for distributed power generation. Solar photothermal and solar photovoltaic have their own advantages and development prospects, and they are not in direct conflict. Where solar power generation develops well, there should be both photothermal power generation system and photovoltaic power generation system, so they are complementary in the long run. In the future, both of them will play the role of the future world energy consumption pattern.