Adaptable photovoltaics are becoming a strategic energy layer across infrastructure—on Earth and beyond
Perovskite solar technology is rapidly transitioning from laboratory promise to real-world deployment across an expanding range of scenarios—from industrial rooftops and cultural landmarks to vehicles and, potentially, outer space.
Recent deployments by Wuxi, China–based perovskite developer UtmoLight across utility-scale, distributed, and building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) signal a broader industry inflection point. Solar power is no longer confined to ground-mounted plants; it is evolving into a configurable energy layer embedded throughout the built environment.
As terrestrial energy systems face growing constraints around land, grids, and environmental impact, the frontier is widening. In orbit, the rapid expansion of low-Earth-orbit (LEO) communications and the early emergence of space-based data centers are reshaping the energy equation. In both domains, perovskite PVs, enabled by flexibility, tunable transparency, low mass, and high theoretical efficiency, are becoming strategically significant.
From demonstration to deployment
UtmoLight’s perovskite solutions have now been validated across several flagship projects in China, spanning a wide spectrum of applications:
- The National Photovoltaic and Energy Storage Demonstration Platform in Daqing, validating centralized, utility-scale performance under real operating conditions.
- Public and commercial landmarks, including the Wuxi Symphony Concert Hall, showcasing BIPV integration with architectural aesthetics.
- Industrial facilities operated by China Huadian Corporation, validating reliability, durability, and output in distributed industrial rooftop installations.
Daqing is China’s oil capital and a twin city of Calgary, Canada; Wuxi is China’s only UNESCO-listed “City of Music.” The platform in Daqing, developed by State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC), is China’s first national-level outdoor testing, validation, and demonstration base for photovoltaics and energy storage.
UtmoLight’s 1 MW, 0.72 sqm perovskite photovoltaic modules have been deployed at the Daqing Base Phase III Project since January 2025. After one year of operation under harsh conditions, including snow and extreme temperature swings, the modules delivered consistently stable power, achieving an average performance ratio (PR) near 100%. This month, its 1 MW, 2.81 sqm perovskite photovoltaic modules, produced on its GW-scale production line, were selected for the Daqing Base Phase IV Project.
The projects listed above span centralized generation, distributed systems, BIPV, and innovative public buildings. Collectively, they demonstrate that perovskite technology can meet sharply divergent technical, economic, and design requirements within a single technological framework.
This versatility underpins what industry participants increasingly describe as perovskite’s scenario innovation capability. Unlike crystalline silicon, perovskite photovoltaics can be customized in form factor, colour, transparency, and mechanical flexibility without fundamental changes to the underlying cell architecture.
One technology, multiple application scenarios
The commercial value of this adaptability becomes clearer when viewed through scenario-specific requirements:
- Utility-scale power plants prioritize relentless reductions in levelised cost of electricity (LCOE).
- BIPV applications demand long-term safety, durability, and seamless architectural integration.
- Vehicle-integrated photovoltaics (VIPV) require lightweight, flexible modules compatible with vehicle electrical and structural systems.
- Space photovoltaics optimize primarily for power-to-weight ratio, radiation tolerance, and resilience under extreme thermal cycling.
Most photovoltaic technologies are optimized for one or two of these dimensions. Perovskites, by contrast, offer a much broader design space—positioning them not merely as incremental improvements, but as enablers of entirely new application markets.
In the context of space, the near absence of water and oxygen effectively bypasses the two main factors that limit the stability of perovskites on Earth, creating an ideal environment for the material to achieve its full performance and durability potential. Moreover, in orbit, sunlight is unattenuated by the atmosphere, with minimal shadow periods and no seasonal day–night cycles, resulting in solar radiation over eight times more intense than on Earth and stably available 99% of the time.
Space-based energy economics: a structural break
This divergence is most pronounced in space. According to Starcloud (formerly Lumen Orbit)’s 2025 white paper, a 40MW-class terrestrial data center typically incurs more than US$100 million in electricity, cooling, water, and backup-power costs over a decade, with total expenditure approaching US$167 million. By contrast, modelling suggests that deploying modularised data-center infrastructure into orbit, powered by space-based solar arrays, could reduce ten-year total costs to approximately US$8.2 million.
The driver is physics rather than finance. In sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) at altitudes of 600–800 km, annual solar exposure exceeds 8,300 hours, compared with roughly 1,500–2,000 hours for most terrestrial solar installations. Electricity generation becomes near-continuous, while heat dissipation—one of the most binding constraints for ground-based data centers—becomes largely passive.
As global data-center infrastructure begins to extend from Earth into near-Earth orbit, energy provision shifts from a grid-optimization issue to an orbital design issue, placing photovoltaics at the core of system architecture.
Shifting technology choices in space
Historically, gallium arsenide (GaAs) cells have dominated space photovoltaics due to their high efficiency and radiation resistance. However, scalability is constrained by high cost, limited supply chains, and complex manufacturing processes.
Flexible GaAs solar wings typically require around 2–2.5 sqm per kilowatt, based on a specific power of 400–500 W/m², with combined materials and manufacturing costs of approximately US$150 per watt—roughly half of which resides in the cell itself. As satellite constellations scale in both number and power demand, GaAs increasingly becomes a system-level cost bottleneck.
Launch economics are decisive. SpaceX’s reusable rockets have reduced launch costs to roughly US$1,400–1,800 per kilogram, enabling the use of lower-cost, heavier crystalline silicon. By contrast, China’s commercial launch costs, typically US$6,000–10,000 per kilogram, have traditionally favoured higher power-to-weight technologies such as GaAs.
This equation is now shifting. As launch costs fall and satellite deployments accelerate, the optimization metric is moving from “watts per kilogram” to “watts per kilogram per dollar.” Under this framework, silicon heterojunction (HJT) and perovskite-based technologies are becoming increasingly competitive.
The rise of HJT and perovskites in orbit
As a result, material innovation is increasingly shaping the next generation of space power systems. Several technical developments underpin this transition:
- Ultra-thin HJT silicon wafers, produced at thicknesses of 60–110 μm, significantly reduce mass while enabling flexible form factors.
- Germany’s NexWafe has secured 250 MW of space-related HJT contracts using 70 μm wafers.
- US-based Solestial has achieved continuous production of 60 μm HJT cells and is advancing perovskite–HJT tandem architectures with efficiencies approaching 30%.
At the system level, space photovoltaics are shifting from rigid Z-fold arrays to roll-out structures, which deliver higher power-to-mass ratios but require thin, flexible cells—further favouring HJT and perovskite technologies over conventional crystalline silicon.
Market momentum and policy signals
The strategic implications are substantial. SpaceX has articulated a vision of “AI satellites powered by space solar,” targeting annual deployment of up to 100 GW through Starship-enabled launches of roughly one megaton of satellites per year. In parallel, China has submitted 2025 filings to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) covering more than 200,000 satellites, signalling comparable long-term ambitions.
As reusable launch technologies mature, analysts estimate that the global space photovoltaics market could reach hundreds of billions of US dollars by 2030, positioning it among the highest-barrier and fastest-growing segments of the solar industry.
Perovskite economics: from promise to cost curve
Beyond space, perovskite’s commercial case rests on a clear cost-reduction trajectory. With theoretical efficiency limits well above those of crystalline silicon, mature perovskite modules in the 2–3 sqm format are projected to achieve approximately 26% front-side efficiency and 25% total-area efficiency. Industry roadmaps suggest:
- At GW-scale production, perovskite module costs could fall to approximately US$110–140/kW.
- At the 10-GW scale, costs may decline further to roughly US$70–80/kW, materially below current crystalline silicon benchmarks.
These reductions are driven by equipment iteration, materials optimization, and efficiency gains, without reliance on the high-temperature, energy-intensive ingot processes required for silicon.
Industry consensus is converging around a “single-junction foundation, tandem breakthrough” strategy, in which mature, cost-controlled single-junction perovskite technology establishes manufacturability and long-term reliability at scale, while perovskite–silicon tandem cells build on that foundation to push efficiency frontiers for premium applications such as space, vehicles, and dense urban environments.
Strategic implications: a systems-level shift
The rise of space photovoltaics is not a single-industry story, but the result of a broader convergence across energy systems, launch capacity, orbital infrastructure, and AI-driven data-center demand. As energy generation decouples from terrestrial grids and land constraints, photovoltaics emerge as a strategic enabler of new digital and industrial architectures.
For perovskites, the challenge now lies in execution: extending long-term outdoor validation, standardizing products and testing methodologies, strengthening supply chains, and co-developing specialized equipment and processes. AI-driven materials discovery and process optimization are increasingly viewed as critical accelerators.
If successful, perovskite photovoltaics could do far more than lower costs. They have the great potential to reshape where and how energy is generated—and ultimately to extend infrastructure beyond Earth itself, laying the foundation for a genuinely multi-planetary human future.