Making solar cells more efficient is an obvious win for green energy.
It means more electricity from the same number of panels and the same amount of sunlight – and scientists are working hard to take on the challenge.
Now a team from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia has achieved a record level of efficiency with what's known as a 'tandem' solar cell: one that combines two different materials. Several materials can work in solar panels, each with its own properties and characteristics. They vary in efficiency, cost, and how easy it is to build them into solar panels reliably and at scale.In this case, the KAUST researchers combined the more common and cheaper crystalline silicon material with the more efficient but less reliablematerial to hit an efficiency level of 33.2 percent – up from the previous record of 32.5 percent for this particular type of cell.
That might seem like a relatively small percentage gain, but it's not when you extrapolate it across millions of solar panels and years and years of sunshine. Of course, this isn't yet ready for commercial use, but you get the idea. Efficiency is measured as a power conversion efficiency , where 100 percent would mean all the available sunlight is converted into electricity, with nothing lost.
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