As you probably know, using solar panels is a great way to generate electricity with benefits to the environment due to their green energy and lack of emissions when running.
Nowadays, many companies from all around the world are working on new solar technology that could further boost the adoption of renewable energy. In September 2018, startup working with Oxford University called Oxford PV, received $3 million from the U.K. government in order to find new material to make solar cells.
On 25th of December 2018, U.S. company Swift Solar got $7 million to find a technology that can use new materials of solar cells and bring it into the market.
Let’s have a look at the efficiency of solar panels we already have.
According to https://www.greenmatch.co.uk the most efficient are monocrystalline panels (pure silicon) which efficiency stands at 27%.
Perovskite cell – the new photovoltaic tech, uses hybrid organic-inorganic lead or tin halide-based material as the layer. It offers better efficiency in the conversion of light to electric power at a lower cost than existing technologies.
“Perovskite has let us truly rethink what we can do with the silicon-based solar panels we see on roofs today,” said Sam Stranks, one of the co-founders of Swift Solar, in a Ted Talk. “Another aspect that really excites me: how cheaply these can be made. These thin crystalline films are made by mixing two inexpensive readily abundant salts to make an ink that can be deposited in many different ways… This means that perovskite solar panels could cost less than half of their silicon counterparts.”
Perovskite was incorporated into solar cells in 2009 by Japanese researchers but firstly was not efficient and suffered from lacked stability. It means that it wasn’t really used in manufacturing.
Luckily, over the past nine years researchers have improved both the stability and efficiency that these solar cells generate.
Oxford PV is now working on solar cells that could reach the efficiency of conversion at 37%.
I personally think that idea of Perovskite is really promising and deployed into everyday functioning can be a great step into sustainable world.
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=2ccar3uqWsw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perovskite_solar_cell
https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2014/11/how-efficient-are-solar-panels
It looks great! Promising prospectives, but if someone figured out a place to store energy produced this way, it would be a real breakthrough. I feel we’re going in the right direction with this, even though the sustainability also depends on latitudinal extension the panels are placed in. Green energy can be the future if we go in this direction.
How do you perceive polish goverment’s approach to green energy? Because on the last UN climate summit in Katowice we found out that polish politicians are completely indifferent to terrible forecasts connected with carbon dioxide.
Maybe let’s not talk about Polish politicians because it might be a long conversation ;). My approval for these solar panels was just general, I didn’t go into details with specific countries and their approach to green energy. Especially in Poland, the idea might not be taken so seriously and may not be implemented so quickly unless awareness of carbon dioxide emissions and global warming changes dramatically. So unfortunately, Polish approach may not be so positive.