07-09-2015, 01:00 AM
What will tomorrow’s solar panels look like? Last month, along with colleagues from Oxford and MIT, I published a feature in Scientific American making the case for cheap and colorful solar coatings derived from a new class of solar materials: perovskites. In this post, I’ll critically examine prospects for commercialization of solar perovskites, building on our article’s claim that this technology could represent a significant improvement over current silicon solar panels.
To Succeed, Solar Perovskites Need to Escape the Ivory Tower : Greentech Media
Scientists in Switzerland announced a clean-energy breakthrough on Wednesday; a cheaper, solar technology that splits water molecules to create clean-burning hydrogen fuel. The solar panel design will make it cheaper to produce hydrogen, but a simple version won't be available for average citizens for at least 10 years, scientists said. Splitting water molecules to create hydrogen allows the sun's energy to be more easily stored to generate electricity or power clean cars.
Discovery Brightens Solar's Future, Energy Costs to Be Cut - NBC News
A consortium of eleven European partners in eight countries claims to have an effcient alternative to silicon that achieves 25% efficiency with its Sharc25 (super-high efficiency CIGS thin-film solar cells) program to produce single-junction thin-film solar cells that rival silicon at 25 percent efficiency for a fraction of the cost of the cheap low-efficiency Chinese varieties.
Thin film solar cells may rival silicon - Electronics Eetimes