Home > ARENAWIRE > TRAC-king solar innovation in Australia’s clean energy transition
Research and development projects funded by ARENA are making major strides in solar innovation to make the technology the backbone of the country’s clean energy transition.
In 2023, ARENA announced its Ultra Low-Cost Solar (ULCS) vision. The vision outlines how solar – already the world’s cheapest form of energy generation – must be even cheaper still to support and enable the renewable energy transition. 
That same year, ARENA funded 13 projects from three Australian universities under ARENA’s Transformative Research Accelerating Commercialisation (TRAC) program to explore solutions.  
A total of $41.5 million in grant funding was awarded to researchers at The University of New South Wales (UNSW), The Australian National University (ANU) and The University of Sydney (USYD) to find efficiencies, advancements and innovation that could drive down the cost of solar even further. 
These projects have made significant progress over the past 2 years, bringing the ULCS vision closer to reality.  

Aiming to create efficiencies and maturity in inspection methods, UNSW has been working on a new contactless testing method to speed up test processes for multijunction solar cells. Multijunction cells have more complicated, multilayered structures than single-junction cells – which currently dominate the solar photovoltaic (PV) market. While current use of multijunction cells is niche and mainly used in high-end applications, demand for this type of solar cell could boom over the next decade if costs can become competitive with the incumbent cell technology.   
Current methods to test multijunction cells are hands-on and time consuming. The new method under development reduces the hands-on reading of the solar cells and improves the analysis and optimisation of the testing process.  
The advancements will increase the production pace of multijunction cells, which is critical as scale and demand rises.  
Another of UNSW’s projects is doing world-leading work to improve PV efficiency, yield and operation and maintenance cost reductions.  
The project’s focus is on the delivery of better modelling for PV technology through advanced modelling techniques to unlock efficiency improvements. Small improvements can lead to billions in annual savings given the scale of deployment of solar PV over the coming decades.   
So far, the new modelling techniques are showing promising results. They have been able to improve electrical modelling for solar cells to efficiently absorb sunlight and convert it to electricity at a rate above 26%.  
The project team has also developed a global modelling technique for the degradation of solar cells through data such as operation temperature, humidity and ultra-violet (UV) exposure.  
As the scale and speed of solar production increases worldwide, so does the demand on precious metals like silver. Finding an alternative is key to bring down costs as silver is finite, costly and resource intensive.   
UNSW is seeking solutions to this through the trial of silver free and silver “lean” pastes for cells and modules. Promising results of solar cell efficiency have been achieved so far with the use of the pastes.  
Another UNSW project is working on the development of a more environmentally friendly solar cell, which has already demonstrated record efficiencies.  
The new design promises to reduce environmental impact using more abundant, less toxic materials – a significant step toward more sustainable and scalable production. 
A core focus of realising the ULCS vision is significantly reducing the cost of commercial scale production.  
ANU is investigating the use of highly efficient yet cost effective materials, perovskite and silicon, to scale up solar cell production. Promising results around light absorption, stability and stress testing have been demonstrated in the project.  
The project team has outlined a clear pathway forward with plans to improve cell efficiency even further. This demonstrates a strong potential for commercial scale production.  
Another project by UNSW aims to show that singlet fission technology can significantly improve the efficiency of silicon solar cells – which are close to reaching the efficiency ceiling using current technology. 
Singlet fission is a molecular process that splits an energy packet of light into two, increasing the amount of potential energy that can be converted. Current technology can convert about 30% of the sun’s energy – this technology could bring that up to 60%.  
Interim reports are promising, providing strong findings that show a way forward to build on and improve existing PV technology, without starting from scratch.  
Operation and maintenance of solar PV plants and farms is a critical but costly endeavour. 
Currently, we rely heavily on human power to deploy, maintain and repair solar panels. Automation of these processes has been identified as a key solution to drive down the cost of solar PV. 
A challenge in the maintenance of solar panels is projecting how fast they will degrade in the field.  Currently, testing is done in factories and is time consuming and expensive.  
To address this, UNSW is developing an automated decision-making platform that can integrate into solar farm monitoring systems to predict degradation rates.  

The project has developed a framework to better quantify module degradation. If successful, this can be translated into a software product to increase efficiency of module degradation testing, which can improve long term solar farm performance.   
Another project is known as ‘The Daytime Inspection Solutions for Advanced Operation and Maintenance of Solar Farms’. The idea is to use drones and AI-driven technology to monitor, inspect and report back on a solar farm’s operations.   
Automation of this process could drastically reduce the manual labour associated with traditional monitoring of solar PV farms and reduce operating costs overall. The project has seen some exceptional results so far and is now seeking to move into its commercialisation phase. 
We’re seeing remarkable progress already in this suite of TRAC projects, driving some of the research solutions required to make the complex transition to renewables. 
The evolution of these projects highlights the strength of innovation Australia continues to demonstrate in solar PV technology. Australia helped kickstart the global industry over 40 years ago and continues to play a crucial role in further evolving that technology. 
With ARENA’s ongoing support, there are no signs of that pioneering approach slowing down.    
To read more about the progress made in the TRAC projects head here and navigate to each project at the bottom of the page.
 
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