Evaluation of the technological trend in the solar cell industry based on patent data

Monitoring technological advancements aids governmental authorities and companies in tracking the trends in investment areas or those they intend to invest in. Patent data stands out among the commonly utilized datasets during the monitoring of technological advancements. In order to track the technological developments in solar panels, patent data consisting of patents related to solar panels was analyzed. For the analysis, the patent dataset was downloaded, and a series of preprocessing steps, including text preprocessing, TF-IDF, term frequency, and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) were applied to identify the topics. Subsequently, classification was conducted based on the total number of patents and the Years Before Breakout (YBBO) values of the identified topics. The performed classification is related to the level of technological advancements. Finally, evaluations were made regarding the trends in solar panel technologies based on the classes to which the topics belong. The aim of the study is to demonstrate which areas in solar panel technology are no longer popular, which areas are heavily utilized in the sector, and which areas are at the developmental stage. By examining the results of the study, governmental authorities and companies can conduct investment monitoring regarding the future of solar panels. Additionally, by using the method employed in this study with different databases, insights can be obtained about the development of technologies associated with the respective database.