Solar concentration, solar resource utilization, and sustainability

With mass production of solar panels and industrial learning bringing the cost of solar electricity below 2¢/kWh in many parts of the world, the question is increasingly asked: what research is left to do in solar energy? Cheap photovoltaics with large-scale battery storage on the horizon, so the argument goes, are about to solve all of our energy problems, so why should we bother ourselves with anything else? The invisible hand of the market is now in control, and will guide us to a sustainable solar future. This manuscript seeks to cast a bit of doubt onto this looming consensus and argue that there is still work to be done in ensuring a maximally sustainable solar future. Drawing on ongoing projects on building-integrated photovoltaics, agricultural photovoltatics, and photovoltaic-thermal systems, we will demonstrate how the emerging PV paradigm falls short of its greenest possible form, and illustrate potential technological solutions based on solar concentration to more fully realize this potential.