I didn’t want everyone getting overly excited about the news of yet another breakthrough in solar cell efficiency, so I tried to temper your reaction by prefacing this post with a more accurate title. As many of you already know, solar power is extremely inefficient when it comes to the amount of sunlight converted into electricity. The average solar photovoltaic panel used for electricity production is around 15% efficient give or take a percent or two depending on the quality of the panel. This means only 15% of the sunlight hitting the panel actually gets converted into electricity. This is the reason numerous panels are need to supply even a fraction of the power needed for many homes, businesses, factories, etc.
When Less Than 50% Is Extremely Efficient
Though readily available solar cell technology in the marketplace has changed very little in the last thirty years, many advances have been made in the lab when it comes to the next generation of solar cells and their efficiency/output capability. It was announced today that yet another advancement has been made on the ’solar cell efficiency front’ by a team of scientists from the University of New South Wales in Australia.
The advance came in the form of a multi-cell combination solar cell that is able to convert 43% of the sunlight that hits it into electricity (the previously held, and recently achieved record for solar cell efficiency was 42.7%). This incredible efficiency is achieved by the development a silicon cell optimised to capture light at the red and near-infrared end of the spectrum. The cell is able to convert up to 46 per cent of light into electricity. When combined with four other cells, each optimised for different parts of the solar spectrum, the five-cell combination converted 43 per cent of the sunlight into electricity.
Yes. It’s all very technical, but perhaps the development team’s leader Professor Martin Green can better describe the breakthrough:
“Because sunlight is made up of many colours of different energy, ranging from the high energy ultraviolet to the low energy infrared, a combination of solar cells of different materials can convert sunlight more efficiently than any single cell.
Unfortunately, Not The Game Changer We’ve Been Looking For
So now we won’t have to put 20 panels on our house to generate 60% of our energy needs right? Wrong. This new solar cell has only been tested in the lab and and the non-silicon cells are still too expensive for almost any potential use. So while still a breakthrough, this new combo solar cell will most likely remain a focus of research rather than a model for production.
The Good: A huge advancement in solar cell efficiency by almost tripling the current efficiency levels of most PV cells in the marketplace today.
The Bad: Has only been tested under lab conditions. Even if real world application testing confirms lab findings, the non-silicon aspects and complexity of the solar cell make it unattractive for any sort of wide-scale usage and applications.
The Bottom-Line: A exciting discovery tempered by its current lack of real world viability and practicality
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