Solar photovoltaïc (also known as PV or solar cells) is the subject of numerous researches around the world. Indeed, Earth receives so much energy from its star that the potential is simply tremendous.
Accounting for less than a percent of our energy consumption, scientists around the world want to make solar an affordable energy source that will bring cleaner electricity to the masses.
Today’s article will present with you a selection of the best and most promising technologies that may well end up one day on your own house’s roof.
Australian scientists broke the world record for the efficiency of silicon solar panels reaching the threshold of 25 percent. This was achieved by a better understanding of the composition of sunlight.
These advances could be brought soon to your door (or roof for instance) quite soon as commercial production is beginning. Read out more.
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A brand new coating for solar panels might soon help them in retaining more photons, thus enabling them to create more electricity. With this new technology solar cells could absorb nearly all photons, instead of two thirds currently.
Brought to you by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (United States), this might well change soon the whole solar industry. Read out more.
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Silicon panels suffer from a big issue : silicon is relatively expensive. An alternative to this is dye-sensitized cells (aka Gräztel cells). Less efficient than silicon ones, they could benefit quite soon from recent researches carried out by Chinese and Swiss scientists.
Other advantage of these panels: they can be flexible, which could increase their potential use. To learn out more on this, please refer to the original article.
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Sharp – the world leading manufacturer of solar panels with a whopping 28 percent of market shares – created a technology halving production costs of solar panels.
Production of these cheaper solar panels already begun in Japan. Read out more on this on the original EcoGeek post.
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TreeHugger summed up all these photovoltaïc technologies and associated researches (as well as many others) in a brilliant article.
Called 15 Photovoltaics Solar Power Innovations You Must See this article will finish to convince you that solar will play a much bigger role in the near future.
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All these great news shouldn’t make us forget that solar isn’t perfect. Remember: no energy source really is (except energy efficiency). Indeed, a new research reported by CleanTechnica that the production of thin film solar panels release Nitrogen Triflouride (NF3), a greenhouse gas 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Albeit the quantities are for the time being quite small, they are due to double each year. However, alternatives exist, but they are more expansive. Read out more.
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I hope you liked this selection. Be sure that I will keep you updated with the latest news and researches of this most promising industry. So for this and for much more, stay tuned !