New solar cells break efficiency record – they could eventually supercharge how we get energy from the Sun
By Sebastian Bonilla, Associate Professor of Materials, University of Oxford.
Excerpt: ...surge in solar is fuelled by two key developments. First, scientists, engineers and those in industry are learning how to make solar panels by the billions. Every fabrication step is meticulously optimised to produce them very cheaply. The second and most significant is the relentless increase in the panels’ power conversion efficiency – a measure of how much sunlight can be transformed into electricity. The higher the efficiency of solar panels, the cheaper the electricity. This might make you wonder: just how efficient can we expect solar energy to become? And will it make a dent in our energy bills? Current commercially available solar panels convert about 20-22% of sunlight into electrical power. However, new research published in Nature has shown that future solar panels could reach efficiencies as high as 34% by exploiting a new technology called tandem solar cells. The research demonstrates a record power conversion efficiency for tandem solar cells....