New Solar Cells Boast Markedly Higher Efficiency

When I ran into a colleague from the National Renewable Energy Lab at Intersolar (huge solar convention) a few years ago, he told me that one of his top priorities was the development of perovskite as a substrate for high efficiency solar panels. Here’s a short blurb on the subject from the American Energy Society:

Silicon solar cells are cheap, readily available, resilient, and dominate solar panel manufacturing supply chains. However, it is possible that perovskite solar cells are technically superior. Perovskite is a calcium titanium oxide (CaTiO3) that can be used as a photovoltaic solar cell. They are affordable and flexible, and they are capable of exceeding 30% efficiency – about double the efficiency of silicon solar cells and very close to the Shockley-Queisser maximum limit of 33% efficiency. It is also possible to combine perovskite cells in stacks to reach 86.8% maximum efficiency; even a more modest three-layer cell-stack can achieve 50% efficiency. However, perovskite is unstable at high temperature and degrades in the presence of moisture. For those who remember VCRs, AES expert Member John Gibson at Tudor, Pickering & Holt suggests a comparison: silicon solar cells are “VHS,” and peroveskite solar cells are “Beta.”