Solar energy news and discussion

[wjfox]

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Researchers train AI to produce solar cells from perovskite in record time
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-11-ai- ... skite.html
by Will Wright and Iain Strachan, RMIT University

Researchers in Australia have harnessed AI to produce solar cells from the mineral perovskite in just a matter of weeks, bypassing years of human labor and human error to optimize the cells.

Study lead author Dr. Nastaran Meftahi, from RMIT University's School of Science, said teams of researchers worldwide were racing to make perovskite cells, which were cheaper than silicon, and thanks to recent advances, now stable enough for long-term commercial use.

"Until now, the process of creating perovskite cells has been more like alchemy than science. Record efficiencies have been reached, but positive results are notoriously difficult to reproduce," she said. "What we have achieved is the development of a method for rapidly and reproducibly making and testing new solar cells, where each generation learns from and improves upon the previous."

Members of the Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science based at RMIT, Monash University and Australia's national science agency CSIRO have removed human error from the equation in rapidly innovating solar cells with AI. Using data generated by the team's system, Meftahi, Dr. Andrew Christofferson and Professor Salvy Russo from RMIT developed a new model of machine learning.

The findings are published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials.

With a multimillion-dollar automated system for solar cell manufacturing being built by Dr. Adam Surmiak at Monash University, the model will be capable of predicting huge volumes of promising chemical recipes for new perovskite solar cells.

Surmiak and Professor Udo Bach at the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics and CSIRO will lead this new facility, which is currently under construction.

[wjfox]

The world’s largest single-site solar farm just came online

Michelle Lewis | Nov 17 2023 - 11:30 am PT

The United Arab Emirates has launched the Al Dhafra solar farm – now the world’s largest single-site solar farm – ahead of COP28.

The 2-gigawatt (GW) solar farm is 22 miles (35 km) from Abu Dhabi and features almost 4 million bifacial solar panels. It will power nearly 200,000 homes and eliminate over 2.4 million tonnes of carbon emissions annually.

It created 4,500 jobs during the peak of the construction phase, and the solar panels were installed at an average rate of 10 megawatts (MW) a day during construction.

Al Dhafra was jointly developed by Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar), Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (TAQA), French power company EDF Renewables, and Chinese solar developer JinkoPower.

TAQA owns 40% of the project, and Masdar, EDF Renewables, and Jinko Power each own 20%. The solar farm will supply power to Emirates Water and Electricity Company (EWEC) following a 2020 power purchase agreement.

https://electrek.co/2023/11/17/worlds-l ... olar-farm/

[wjfox]

Solar module prices may reach $0.10/W by end 2024

NOVEMBER 27, 2023

Solar module prices may approach the threshold of $0.10/W by the end of 2024 or eventually in 2025, according to Tim Buckley, director of Australia-based think tank Climate Energy Finance (CEF).

“This would be nicely ahead of Dr. Martin Green’s $0.10/W by 2030 forecast made three years back,” he told pv magazine, adding that he came to this conclusion after estimating that new annual PV additions may reach between 600 GW and 1 TW already by the end of this decade. “I am very bullish on the rate of global growth in solar installs over the next few years. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has reminded everyone of the need for supply chain and energy security, particularly in terms of imported energy reliance.”

Buckley also noted the likely new climate accord by Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden, might see a formal call for a tripling of renewables capacity globally by 2030.

“At a time of massive capital investment cost blowouts, to be able to invest in deflationary solar is a massive global boon that will provide cost of living pressure relief as well as improved energy security,” he said.

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/11/27/ ... -end-2024/

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24/7 solar towers could double energy output
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-12-sol ... utput.html
by Peter Grad , Tech Xplore

If you want to improve the output of solar energy systems, why not also run them at night? That's the question researchers in Qatar and Jordan addressed as they successfully devised a system that promises to more than double energy output of current solar power stations.

By combining two concepts—a solar updraft system and a cooling downdraft structure—researchers designed a model that could generate 753 MWh of energy annually. That's enough to power roughly 753 homes for about five weeks or 1,500 60-watt light bulbs nonstop for a year.

The origins of the system, referred to as Solar Tower Power Plant, go back to 1982 when Spanish engineers constructed a chimney-like tower with a mechanical turbine at its base. Air within the tower was warmed by absorbing solar radiation, similar to a greenhouse. As the air heated, it created an updraft that rose and activated wind turbines that in turn generated electricity.

That model was not widely adopted, mainly due to the enormous structural size that required massive acreage. It was also quite costly.

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[firestar464]

Ok then WHY ARE WE STILL USING FOSSIL FUELS IF THEY ARE MORE EXPENSIVE?

[weatheriscool]

Ok then WHY ARE WE STILL USING FOSSIL FUELS IF THEY ARE MORE EXPENSIVE?

Because we prop fossil fuels up with our tax dollars worth trillions of dollars yearly worldwide.

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Silicon heterojunction solar cells with 26.4% efficiencies fabricated using scalable deposition techniques
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-12-sil ... ncies.html
by Ingrid Fadelli , Tech Xplore

Solar technologies are helping to reduce carbon emissions and are set to continue contributing to the mitigation of climate change. One type of solar technology found to be promising for future photovoltaic applications is silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells.

SHJ solar cells have numerous advantageous properties, including high power conversion efficiencies, lean and low-temperature processing, and low temperature coefficients. Nonetheless, most high-efficiency SHJ photovoltaics developed so far rely on expensive and non-scalable fabrication processes, which ultimately limit their large-scale deployment.

Researchers at Suzhou Maxwell Technologies Co. Ltd., Soochow University, New South Wales University and Dalian University of Technology recently developed new SHJ solar cells using more affordable and scalable fabrication processes. Their proposed solar cells, presented in a paper published in Nature Energy, were found to attain power-conversion efficiencies of up to 26.4%.

"The commercial success of high-efficiency SHJ technology remains impeded by challenges in the cost-effective translation to a production environment of several process steps, especially for a high transparent window-layer deposition and low-cost metallization," Prof. Xinbo Yang, co-author of the paper, told Tech Xplore.

"For the first challenge, great research efforts have been devoted to replacing conventional doped a-Si:H by doped hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si:H), or its alloys with oxygen (nc-SiOx:H) and carbon (nc-SiC:H) to reduce parasitic absorption and series resistance."