The new perovskite solar cells have achieved an efficiency of 20.1 per cent and can be manufactured at low temperatures, which reduces the cost and expands the number of possible applications.
Credit: Kevin Soobrian
A U of T Engineering innovation could make printing solar cells as easy and inexpensive as printing a newspaper. Dr. Hairen Tan and his team have cleared a critical manufacturing hurdle in the development of a relatively new class of solar devices called perovskite solar cells. This alternative solar technology could lead to low-cost, printable solar panels capable of turning nearly any surface into a power generator.
“Economies of scale have greatly reduced the cost of silicon manufacturing,” said Professor Ted Sargent, an expert in emerging solar technologies and the Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology. “Perovskite solar cells can enable us to use techniques already established in the printing industry to produce solar cells at very low cost. Potentially, perovskites and silicon cells can be married to improve efficiency further, but only with advances in low-temperature processes.”
Today, virtually all […]
Great news!
Tantalizing!
This development makes the countdown clock tick a little louder toward the rise of decentralized power and the fading of our belching coughing centralized dinosaur power plants. Businesses could economically according to their own power needs instead of being slapped with onerous demand charges which are rampant in this era of monopoly power. Even more exciting is what it does for places without an antiquated regulated utility system..they can go straight to cleanish, low cost, localized power generation that fits their needs directly.