Re: Solar energy news and discussion
Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2024 5:21 pm
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Solar cell efficiency may get a bump from bumps. New research suggests that building tiny domes into the surface of organic solar cells could boost their efficiency by up to two-thirds, while capturing light from a wider angle.
Solar cells are usually flat, which maximizes how much of the surface is exposed to sunlight at any given time. This design works best when the Sun is within a certain angle, so the panels are usually tilted between 15 and 40 degrees to get the most out of the day.
Scientists have toyed with other shapes for the surface, including embedding spherical nanoshells of silica which trap and circulate sunlight to allow the device to capture more energy from it. For the new study, scientists at Abdullah Gül University in Türkiye ran complex simulations of how dome-shaped bumps might boost organic solar surfaces.
Uppsala University is the new world record holder for electrical energy generation from copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cells. The new world record is 23.64% efficiency. The measurement was made by an independent institute, and the results are published in Nature Energy.
The record results from a collaboration between the company First Solar European Technology Center (formerly known as Evolar) and solar cell researchers at Uppsala University.
"The measurements that we have made ourselves for this solar cell and other solar cells produced recently are within the margin of error for the independent measurement. That measurement will also be used for an internal calibration of our own measurement methods," says Marika Edoff, Professor of Solar Cell Technology at Uppsala University, who is responsible for the study.
The previous world record was 23.35% (Solar Frontier, Japan), preceded by 22.9% (ZSW, Germany). Uppsala University has held the record before, the first time being in the 1990s in the research collaboration Euro-CIS.