The University of Oxford has made an extraordinary discovery in the field of solar panels.
It has succeeded in miniaturising these elements to such an extent, that scientists believe it will soon be possible to cover all buildings, infrastructure and street furniture with this material, without the need for conventional solar panels.
Image credit: Martin Small.
A group of physicists at the university have created an ultra-thin film, one tenth the thickness of a human hair. Despite this, it has an unusual ability to convert the sun’s energy into electricity.
Perovskite, the ‘miracle’ material that is making photovoltaic cells ever smaller and more efficient, is the key to it all. The resulting film is so thin that it can be used to coat everything from cars to building facades.
The most important finding is that this material has a certified energy efficiency of 27%, which, while still below that of perovskite-silicon double-junction cells, equals that of conventional top-quality silicon-based solar panels.
However, the researchers are confident that it won’t be long before they can increase this level of efficiency. “In just five years of experimenting with our stacking or multi-junction method, we have raised the energy conversion efficiency from 6% to more than 27%, close to the limits of what single-layer photovoltaic cells can achieve today.
” We believe that, over time, this method could enable photovoltaic devices to achieve much higher efficiencies, above 45%,” explained Shuaifeng Hu, team leader from Oxford’s Department of Physics.
Such developments paint a hopeful picture, in which one could even envisage the disappearance of conventional panels as we know them today, to be replaced by a generalised covering of all types of buildings and outdoor objects.
Even vehicles could be covered with this material and thus generate energy!
Meanwhile, a company linked to Oxford University has begun marketing a perovskite film with 24.5% efficiency, thus initiating the industrial manufacture of perovskite in Germany.
New efficiency record: 34.6%
Just a few days ago, news broke of a new efficiency record of 34.6% for a perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell. Such a feat has been achieved by a group of researchers funded by Longi, a Chinese consortium specialising in solar panels.
This finding, the results of which have been published in the journal Nature, makes it possible to significantly increase the use of sunlight falling on solar panels, making them smaller and more efficient.
Image credit: Martin Small.
This is a major achievement, because the 34.6 % efficiency breaks the theoretical limit of conventional silicon cells, which was 33.7 %. The most efficient silicon panels currently available only have an efficiency of 25.2%.
Study reference link: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2024-08-09-solar-energy-breakthrough-could-reduce-need-solar-farms
