Looks like the world record for solar cell efficiency has been broken again.

From a ScienceDaily.com article….

Physicist Bram Hoex and colleagues at Eindhoven University of Technology, together with the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, have improved the efficiency of an important type of solar cell from 21.9 to 23.2 percent (a relative improvement of 6 per cent). This new world record is being presented on Wednesday May 14 at a major solar energy conference in San Diego.

The efficiency improvement is achieved by the use of an ultra-thin aluminum oxide layer at the front of the cell, and it brings a breakthrough in the use of solar energy a step closer.

A six percent increase doesn’t sound like that much really, but when you consider the potential to reduce the cost and physical footprint of a major array of solar panels by six percent it could easily amount to a serious difference in price(could be millions of dollars for a large project), both in the space needed and the materials.

The improvement is due, at least in part, to the addition of an ultra-thin layer of aluminum oxide on the front of the solar cell. The negative charge of the extra layer basically traps energy from escaping and being wasted.

This is great news for consumers too, since the more efficient solar panel technology gets, the cheaper it is to make at the consumer level. It also means that smaller panels could be used to get the same energy as less efficient panels, which means more effective, more compact, and cheaper solar powered products, which is excellent.

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From Solar Daily…

Sunovia Energy Technologies and EPIR Technologies announce the development of new solar cell materials that Sunovia and EPIR believe will rival the most efficient multi-junction solar cell performance in existence today at significantly less cost.Sunovia and EPIR plan to accomplish this by uniquely combining the most prevalent photovoltaic (PV) semiconductors in the market today, cadmium telluride (CdTe) and silicon (Si), into a breakthrough multi-junction solar cell that leverages the economies of scale and manufacturing infrastructure that is associated with these materials.

Looks like the next-gen solar technology is finally starting to break out into the world. About time! Hopefully this sort of progress towards high-efficiency, low-cost solar tech will push more people and/or businesses to look into ways to use solar energy now, and in the near future as even better technology becomes available.

I’ve noticed that these days I’ve been “hoping” a lot about the future progress of solar energy and the technology involved, and thankfully some of those hopes seem to be finally coming to a head. Between this new tech, nanosolar, and the other next-gen solar technologies, it’s looking more and more like I should playing the stock market…..oh….and of course it doesn’t hurt that it’s great for the environment either.

What I’d LOVE to see though, is more government involvement in projects regarding solar tech. Not funding or grants (government subsidizing of energy technology is a big part of our current oil crisis…), but actually implimenting the technology and helping to make people aware of the options. Very few people I talk to have ever heard just how easy it is to switch at least some of their energy use to a solar-powered source of some kind, and it annoys me when I hear things like “I live in too cloudy and area” or any of the common misunderstandings of just how solar-power can work in different situations. There are exceptions of course, but a lot of the time people underestimate the potential for solar-power in their homes.

Getting new technology like this out into the public’s view is a good step…..but there is so much more that could be done.

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