Part of it is that high-performance solar cells require single-crystal silicon or gallium arsenide. The purification process for semiconductors is extremely energy intensive. The device fabrication processes are resource and energy intensive as well. But yes, storage is also a huge problem (especially for winter heating, etc.)
I’m surprised at these EROI figures: that solar PV is producing energy at very low levalised cost but utterly pathetic EROEI fails the sniff test. A quick scoot through Wikipedia finds a methodological argument (comments on https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544213000492?via%3Dihub).
Part of it is that high-performance solar cells require single-crystal silicon or gallium arsenide. The purification process for semiconductors is extremely energy intensive. The device fabrication processes are resource and energy intensive as well. But yes, storage is also a huge problem (especially for winter heating, etc.)