Solar energy collection is one of the fastest-rising renewable energy sources in the world. Many US homeowners have seen the benefits of solar energy and have saved thousands from traditional energy generation.
The technology train for solar panels has yet to stop because it continues to keep progressing in leaps and bounds. Let's learn about these three top recent developments in solar technology here.
Ultra-Efficiency Solar Cells
New solar cell and panel designs report a maximum of 39.5% solar panel efficiency. This is more than 14% higher than the average top performing panel at 25%. While these solar panels may require natural light conditions to perform well, they're a huge leap in solar panel production.
Nighttime Solar Energy Collection
Solar energy available during the night is a game-changer in many ways. It will revolutionize the industry by allowing round-the-clock energy collection. Night solar energy collection will use special photovoltaic designs that can collect surrounding heat radiating in the earth's crust.
Perovskite Photovoltaic Cells
Silicon is the go-to solar cell material for many applications, but perovskite might soon usurp it because of its availability and efficiency. Perovskite cells also have a long-term lifespan of 30 years, which is 10 years more than the average solar cell.
You can read more about these recent solar panel developments from AZO Cleantech's excerpt below.
Solar Cell Efficiency
Solar cells – the photovoltaic components in solar panels that convert sunlight into electricity – are becoming more efficient every year. However, scientists continue to research solar cell efficiency to make them capable of producing more electricity in the same conditions as their less efficient counterparts.
A team at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently highlighted a record solar cell efficiency of 39.5% under natural light conditions.
The cell’s efficiency and simple design make it particularly well suited for highly area-constrained applications, where a small panel generates a lot of electricity (such as in future aircraft).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkvZ3XG0Axc
It is also applicable in low-radiation space applications, where there is less energy in the sun’s rays than there is on Earth. Here, the cell still achieved a conversion efficiency of 34.2%.
The study, published in 2022 in the journal Joule, demonstrated the record-breaking efficiency with an inverted metamorphic multijunction (IMM) architecture developed by NREL.
The efficiency was achieved after scientists investigated quantum wall solar cells and manipulated multiple 2D layers. Scientists embedded a quantum wall cell into an IMM device with three junctions each tuned for different wavelengths of the solar energy spectrum.
Solar Power At Night
Radiated energy from the sun heats the planet’s crust substantially in the day. However, energy is generally lost to the atmosphere and cold surrounding space.
In new research published in the journal ACS Photonics, a team of photovoltaics engineers at UNSW Sydney, Australia, demonstrated a successful test run of their new device, capable of converting this thermal energy into electricity.
A power generating device called a thermo radiative diode was used, which operates with infrared energy in a similar way to night vision goggles, but scaled up.
Commercially Available Perovskite Solar Cells
Perovskite was first put to use in a solar cell in 2009. The University of Manchester scientists in the UK released details of a new record-breaking perovskite cell in 2016.
Perovskite crystals are approximately one-fifth more efficient than silicon when converting the sun’s energy into electricity. However, the first perovskite-based panels were prohibitively fragile and had a short operable lifetime. (Continue reading here to learn more)
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