Efficiency with Photovoltaic Cells

The Department of Energy of the United States informed about a new world record in efficiency of photovoltaic cells. Those cells reach a performance of a 40.7%, that made its installation cost only $3, producing electricity at a price of 8-10 cents per kilowatt/hour.

This solar cell was developed using a unique structure called multi-junction solar cell. That structure, also called a cascade or a tandem cell, can reach a total efficiency higher than the conversion, capturing a bigger amount of solar spectrum. In the multi–junction cell, individual cells with diverse bandgaps are piled up in a way that allows the sunlight to be absorbed by the material with the biggest bandgap. Photons who has not been absorbed by the first cell are trespassed to the second cell, absorbing the higher rate of solar radiations while it stays transparent to the lower radiation energy rate. Those selective absorbing processes continue through the final cell, with the lower bandgap. All this provokes high efficiency because of capturing more energy from the solar spectrum.

Currently, Boeing uses this kind of solar cells for Space Satellites, based on GaAs.

Solar Energy is not far from becoming today’s future.

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Published by val on Apr 11th, 2009 in Solar Energy

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2 Responses to “Efficiency with Photovoltaic Cells”

  1. Solar PV Firm Bets on Bioplastic | Solar Energy Power, on January 7th, 2010 at 7:21 pm Said:

    [...] OptiSol Solar Concentrator is billed as a nanotechnology-based plastic solar concentrator and solar photovoltaic cells film. Traditional silicon solar cells absorb only a small fraction of the total incident solar [...]

  2. Fidelis Energy Announces $25 Million Solar Energy Facility in India’s Thar Desert, on January 11th, 2010 at 5:50 pm Said:

    [...] determined to meet a portion of India’s energy requirements by developing several large solar photovoltaic cell projects (PV Projects), which will generate electricity from sunlight. Fidelis has shown that it [...]

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