Magic solar milestone reached: UNSW claims 25 percent solar cell efficiency title
October 23, 2008
University of New South Wales ARC Photovoltaic Centre of Excellence has reported the first silicon solar cell to achieve the milestone of 25 per cent effiency.
The UNSW ARC Photovoltaic Centre of Excellence already held the world record of 24.7 per cent for silicon solar cell efficiency. Now a revision of the international standard by which solar cells are measured, has delivered the significant 25 per cent record to the team led by Professors Martin Green and Stuart Wenham and widened their lead on the rest of the world.
Centre Executive Research Director, Scientia Professor Martin Green, said the new world mark in converting incident sunlight into electricity was one of six new world records claimed by UNSW for its silicon solar technologies.
Professor Green said the jump in performance leading to the milestone resulted from new knowledge about the composition of sunlight.
"Since the weights of the colours in sunlight change during the day, solar cells are measured under a standard colour spectrum defined under typical operational meteorological conditions," he said.
"Improvements in understanding atmospheric effects upon the colour content of sunlight led to a revision of the standard spectrum in April. The new spectrum has a higher energy content both down the blue end of the spectrum and at the opposite red end with, dare I say it, relatively less green."
The recalibration of the international standard, done by the International Electrochemical Commission in April, gave the biggest boost to UNSW technology while the measured efficiency of others made lesser gains. UNSW's world-leading silicon cell is now six per cent more efficient than the next-best technology, Professor Green said. The new record also inches the UNSW team closer to the 29 per cent theoretical maximum efficiency possible for first-generation silicon photovoltaic cells.
Dr Anita Ho-Baillie, who heads the Centre's high efficiency cell research effort, said the UNSW technology benefited greatly from the new spectrum "because our cells push the boundaries of response into the extremities of the spectrum".
"Blue light is absorbed strongly, very close to the cell surface where we go to great pains to make sure it is not wasted. Just the opposite, the red light is only weakly absorbed and we have to use special design features to trap it into the cell," she said.
Professor Green said: "These light-trapping features make our cells act as if they were much thicker than they are. This already has had an important spin-off in allowing us to work with CSG Solar to develop commercial 'thin-film' silicon-on-glass solar cells that are over 100 times thinner than conventional silicon cells."
ARC Centre Director, Professor Stuart Wenham said the focus of the Centre is now improving mainstream production.
"Our main efforts now are focussed on getting these efficiency improvements into commercial production," he said.
"Production compatible versions of our high efficiency technology are being introduced into production as we speak."
The world-record holding cell was fabricated by former Centre researchers, Dr Jianhua Zhao and Dr Aihua Wang, who have since left the Centre to establish China Sunergy, one of the world's largest photovoltaic manufacturers.
"China was the largest manufacturer of solar cells internationally in 2007 with 70 per cent of the output from companies with our former UNSW students either Chief Executive Officers or Chief Technical Officers", said Professor Green.
Source: University of New South Wales
Dec 11, 2009 |
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They're nearly 100% efficient (take that human scientists!) and they even take care of the CO2 problem for us!
Go hug a tree.™
No. Plants only convert 0.2% to 8% (depending on the plant and which scientist you ask) of solar energy into usable energy.
Still I hope they are also working on ways of improving the collection of solar energy even if it does not involve silicon.
Why limit ourselves silicon solar panels when by broadening our horizons we open the door to much higher efficiencies?
Hmm... You are correct. I apologize, I was remembering some article I had seen a while ago toting that figure, but it appears that either I misunderstood it or the reporting wasn't all that spectacular.
Here's some more info on it (which might explain where the 100% figure came from):
From: http://www.life.u...isit.htm
LMFAO....just try to deploy those arrays on those "vast areas of land" and see how quickly the kooks crawl out of the wood work. You won't even have to file any official paperwork. Just let it get out that you're THINKING of doing something like that and all the NIMBY, Sierra Club, "save the flavor of the month species" people will have 100 friend to the court briefs filed and they won't stop until they get it appealed to the 9th circuit which will promptly grind into the dirt any plans you had to do with any land...especially if it's public land...
In the past several months I've noticed alot of articles showing advancements in cheap, durable, thin solar panels.
Here is one example. There are several others but I was too lazy to look them all up -.-
http://www.physor...388.html
If thin solar panel tech could be manufactured to be durable and cheap enough to be used in construction materials they could take a big chunk out of peak load. Efficiency wouldn't matter if they were cheap enough to form into shingles or as a skin on siding.
$/watt and storage technology is definately what will drive implementation of massive solar farms. However, researching low efficiency/cheap/practical solar panels for the masses could make its own contribution and shouldn't be over looked.
cheap, they are doing quite the
opposite: making them more
complex ( = expensive by
definition!) Were available space
for arrays be limiting, yes,
complexity is needed. But space
IS available ... 9th circuit
be damned!
Cheaper solar cells isn't very useful unless installation and storage/transmissions similarly becomes cheaper.(swap storage for maintenance in case of solar thermal)
Solar doesn't need to be stored in "Grid-tied" systems and would relieve a lot of the dependency on transmission. People will make energy where it's needed (or relatively close to it. )