SOLAR CELLS JUST GOT BETTER !

     

     Solar cells have long been known to achieve a sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiency of 24%. That’s not enough to cut it for most industrialized nations. This week, a press release reports that engineers from Australia have beaten that record with their new solar cell configuration.

     Dr Mark Keevers and Professor Martin Green at the University of New South Wales have constructed a new solar cell that a has an efficiencies up to 44% beaten the current record. Their new configuration makes use of a 28-cm²  four junction mini module. The cell collects sunlight, a prism splits up the rays into bands that are processed by each of the four junctions, absorbing the most energy out of sunlight.

      The previous record was held by the US Company Alta devices. At the 24% efficiency, their cells are built on a 800-cm² surface area. This is obviously an big difference than what it utilized by the Australian technology.

Theoretically, these particular four-junction modules have a limit of 53% in efficiency, what more could be achieved if they scaled it to Alta’s surface area?

Green asserts that the technology is moving at an unexpected pace, explaining that studies have shown that a 35% efficiency of solar cells that use unconcentrated light will be achieved by 2050. While the researchers certainly made history with their technology, it is unlikely that this will go into commercial production, but i do think this is a step in the right direction but for now lets keep our fingers crossed !