Perovskite Solar Photovoltaic Panels

Back in 2010, I interviewed a gentleman at NREL (the National Renewable Energy Laboratories) as part of my first book, Renewable Energy–Facts and Fantasies.  A ran into him a few years later at the Intersolar show in San Francisco and asked him about NREL’s current focus.  

It was as if we were characters in The Graduate, where Ben (Dustin Hoffman) receives that famous one-word piece of life advice (“plastics“)–only this time, it was “perovskites.”  These minerals of a certain crystal structure appear to be on their way to replacing silicon as the go-to substrate for solar PV.

Here’s a press release to the effect that Energy Materials Corp. (EMC), a global company that specializes in high-speed manufacturing of solar panels, has signed a joint development agreement with Corning Inc, to bring “low-cost, high-performance perovskite solar photovoltaic panels and products to market.”