home
> News
> Breakthrough in solar efficiency by UNSW team ahead of its time
Breakthrough in solar efficiency by UNSW team ahead of its time
May 6, 2013
Breakthrough in solar efficiency by UNSW team ahead of its time
Australian scientists have found a way of hugely increasing the efficiency of solar panels while substantially reducing their cost. The University of New South Wales researchers have come up with improvements in photovoltaic panel design that had not been expected for another decade. The breakthrough involves using hydrogen atoms to counter defects in silicon cells used in solar panels. As a consequence, poor quality silicon can be made to perform like high quality wafers.
The process makes cheap silicon “actually better than the best-quality material people are using at the moment”, the head of the university’s photovoltaic center of excellence, Professor Stuart Wenham, said. Silicon wafers account for more than half the cost of making a solar cell. “By using low quality silicon, you can drastically reduce that cost.”
At present, the best commercial solar cells convert between 17 to 19 percent of the sun’s energy into electricity. UNSW’s technique, patented this year, should produce efficiencies of between 21 and 23 percent.
Read more at The Sydney Morning Herald.
category : Topics
