The use of silver causes annual costs of approx. 3 billion USD for the solar industry and accounts for 10% of the price for a solar module. Currently, about 15% of the silver mined annually worldwide is already used for solar cell production. Since the production capacity for solar cells is growing exponentially by 20-30% per year and other technologies (e.g. electromobility) are also increasingly using silver, massive supply bottlenecks for silver are to be expected in the coming years.

The supply of silver for the electrical contacts of the solar cells will be the biggest problem for the necessary growth of the solar industry already in 2-4 years and thus become the bottleneck for the entire energy transition.

PV2+, a spin-off from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems founded in 2022, has developed a patented solution to replace silver with copper for solar cell contacts. This not only secures the supply of raw materials for the solar industry, but also makes solar cells more cost-effective and sustainable.