Solar energy is booming, with more panels installed every year, fueling a race to the bottom on pricing. But efficiency could also be on the rise, making solar panels even more cost-effective. A new technique that reduces light reflection from those same panels could dramatically boost efficiency without requiring a bigger footprint.
The Shockley-Queisser limit has long been the theoretical limit of solar panel efficiency. It suggests that solar energy production with photovoltaic cells would be limited to a maximum efficiency of 33.7%. Techniques that layer panels and use alternative materials have pushed this limit higher, but most consumer panels still have limited capacity to convert light into usable energy.
Researchers at the Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO) in France have found a new way to boost efficiency by redesigning the solar cell structure and materials. By using an organic solar cell (rather than the silicon of most panels) and replacing the cell’s indium tin oxide electrode with a thin silver one, they converted the cell into a facsimile of an optical cavity. This meant the light was funneled down to the cell, rather than bouncing off a flat panel, reducing light loss and increasing solar cell efficiency by 0.85%.
Researchers believe that if they refine this technique and create a lensing system that focuses light more effectively, they could reduce losses almost entirely, increasing efficiency to a new theoretical limit of 43%.
This follows advances in solar cell material science from China, which earlier this year showed off a new tandem panel type based on silicon-perovskite. The silicon absorbs and converts light energy from one part of the spectrum, while the perovskite absorbs light energy from another. That raised efficiency to 35.5%, with a theoretical limit of around 43%, and enabled underwater solar panels for the first time.
These panel technologies are still very much lab-based, but with most consumer panels operating in roughly the 25% range, even small improvements that trickle down to widely available solar technology could have a big impact.
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