New World Record Achieved in Solar Cell Technology

www.energy.gov/ ^ | 12/05/2006 | DOE

[Red Badger]

New Solar Cell Breaks the “40 Percent Efficient” Sunlight-to-Electricity Barrier

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner today announced that with DOE funding, a concentrator solar cell produced by Boeing-Spectrolab has recently achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7 percent, establishing a new milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance. This breakthrough may lead to systems with an installation cost of only $3 per watt, producing electricity at a cost of 8-10 cents per kilowatt/hour, making solar electricity a more cost-competitive and integral part of our nation’s energy mix.

“Reaching this milestone heralds a great achievement for the Department of Energy and for solar energy engineering worldwide,” Assistant Secretary Karsner said. “We are eager to see this accomplishment translate into the marketplace as soon as possible, which has the potential to help reduce our nation’s reliance on imported oil and increase our energy security.”

Attaining a 40 percent efficient concentrating solar cell means having another technology pathway for producing cost-effective solar electricity. Almost all of today’s solar cell modules do not concentrate sunlight but use only what the sun produces naturally, what researchers call “one sun insolation,” which achieves an efficiency of 12 to 18 percent. However, by using an optical concentrator, sunlight intensity can be increased, squeezing more electricity out of a single solar cell.

The 40.7 percent cell was developed using a unique structure called a multi-junction solar cell. This type of cell achieves a higher efficiency by capturing more of the solar spectrum. In a multi-junction cell, individual cells are made of layers, where each layer captures part of the sunlight passing through the cell. This allows the cell to get more energy from the sun’s light.

For the past two decades researchers have tried to break the “40 percent efficient” barrier on solar cell devices. In the early 1980s, DOE began researching what are known as “multi-junction gallium arsenide-based solar cell devices,” multi-layered solar cells which converted about 16 percent of the sun’s available energy into electricity. In 1994, DOE’s National Renewable Energy laboratory broke the 30 percent barrier, which attracted interest from the space industry. Most satellites today use these multi-junction cells.

Reaching 40 percent efficiency helps further President Bush’s Solar America Initiative (SAI) goals, which aims to win nationwide acceptance of clean solar energy technologies by 2015. By then, it is intended that America will have enough solar energy systems installed to provide power to one to two million homes, at a cost of 5 to 10 cents per kilowatt/hour. The SAI is also key component of President Bush’s Advanced Energy Initiative, which provides a 22 percent increase in research and development funding at DOE and seeks to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil by changing the way we power our cars, homes and businesses.

For more information, visit the Solar America Initiative website at: http://www.eere.energy.gov/solar/solar_america/.

Media contact(s): Chris Kielich, (202) 586-5806

[Red Badger]

Now we can have a great new source of energy.......the sun.......

[Red Badger]

Ping!

[Blueflag]

very cool. good news for those of us who power homes in NC -- a state with great alternative energy tax-breaks.

[MarineBrat]

Our solar will be installed in late January. I'm both excited and filled with dread at the same time. :)

[DBrow]

Efficiency is nowhere near as important as dollars-per-watt.

If the new cells cost, installed, $40 per watt, I'd opt for the current commercial cells at $10 per watt installed, even if they are less efficient.

Cell lifetime is important, too- amorphous technology made cheap low-efficiency cells, but they "faded" with time.

So what's the installed cost of these cells with their solar concentrator and tracking devices, and how long before I have to replace them?

[Red Badger]

If they are $40/watt but last 5 times or more longer, then they are certainly cheaper...........

[Bommer]

This breakthrough may lead to systems with an installation cost of only $3 per watt, producing electricity at a cost of 8-10 cents per kilowatt/hour

Soits going to cost me 3 grand for 1 kilowatt, so I can generate 8-10 cents worth of electricity for that same kilowatt....or is my math wrong?

[Red Badger]

You are mixing apples and oranges. 3k, That is the installed cost. The 8-10 cents is the monthly cost amortized over the life of the installation............

[Young Werther]

Psst...don't tell anyone but ALL of our energy comes from the sun.

A log burned in the fireplace is solar energy captured and preserved by the photosynthesis process.

Coal is petrified plant material. Oil is plant food ingested by dinosaurs an preserved in their dead bodies over the millennia

Uranium was formed by super novas and methane comes from a non-Beano process.(heh heh)

[Red Badger]

Oil is plant food ingested by dinosaurs an preserved in their dead bodies over the millennia

A new theory on the origins of oil postulates that it was formed by methane trapped in the earth from the beginning of time of our planet's formation.......

[Herosmith]

Yeah, you'll make about $2.40/day, no wait, at most your cell could only produce on average say 12 hours per day? Make that $1.20/day... So it will take almost 7 years to make enough money for that installed 1KWatt cell. Will it need any maintenance in that time?

[Young Werther]

Organic material is not unique to the Earth. Given that all material arises from solar activity up to and including massive Super Novae we know that when the Earth coallesced from stellar material, (from God's hand as it were) then all energy comes from the Son!

[wildbill]

Lots of tech breakthoughs thanks to private enterprise. This is a major improvement on solar cells.

About two weeks ago, I read something about a completely new technology using a solar laminate of nano technology that also broke the 30% barrier and was much cheaper to produce than solar cells.

[TKDietz]

They make it really easy to confuse kilowatts with kilowatt hours. When they say $3 per watt, they are talking about the rated maximum for the panels. A 100 watt panel should produce about 100 watts continuously in full sun. Of course you won't get full sun all day so there will be times during the day when the panel will produce more power than other times. You will average something like four to six peak watt hours per day depending on where you live. So if you have a thousand watts installed, you'll produce maybe four to six kilowatt hours worth of electricity a day on average. If you have 3000 watts installed, you'll produce in the neighborhood of 12 to 18 kilowatt hours worth of electricity a day. If you pay ten cents a kilowatt hour that will save you around $1.20 to $1.80 a day, or $36 to $54 per month. You would probably save more though because when people spend all that money on solar panels they usually end up paying a lot of attention to how much power they consume and end up being far less wasteful in how they use electricity. Then they can tell their friends they made a really good purchase with their solar system because they are only spending "X" dollars a month on electricity from the grid.

[3niner]

Yep, your math is wrong. You are getting confused about units. Kilowatts and kilowatt-hours are two different things. ("Kilowatt/hour" is incorrect, by the way, that would mean that would mean kilowatts per hour.)

Kilowatts are a measure of power, while kilowatt-hours are a measure of energy. Energy is power delivered over a period of time.

[Strategerist]

Oil is plant food ingested by dinosaurs an preserved in their dead bodies over the millennia

Sigh.

Oil has absolutely NOTHING to do with dinosaurs. It's made of microscopic plankton in oceans and large lakes(largely algae and diatoms) that dies and falls to the bottom and is later buried, become petroleum over time.

[Young Werther]

When I worked in downtown Dallas in the mid 80s I was a member of the downtown YMCA amd played racquet ball. One of my favorite opponents was a Petroleum Engineer who worked for a oil exploration firm.

He was extremely computer literate and was excited about the new analysis programs which used 3D techniques to take the old fashioned seismic shots and resolved strata to a degree that didn't exist before. He showed me a river bed and rver delta from a something_cene era where he could see the limestone deposits where dinosaur bodies would collect and be compressed into OIL! This particular river bed was deep under the Rockies in the Colorado Springs area. He said that the overthrust belt was the place to wildcat for gas and oil if the Bureau of Land Managment would allow it!

[DBrow]

I hope the forecasted cost is met, and that they last.

[Realism]

Our solar will be installed in late January. I'm both excited and filled with dread at the same time. :)

Don't worry, you'll love it. You will develope two more intimate friends, the sun and your electric meter, both of whom can be very uncooperative at times. In no time you'll be able to walk outside, look up to the sky, and know what your savings are for the day. My 4.6kw just went on-line in mid-October. The array has produced just about 500 kwh, about 1/3 our usage. Not bad for Upstate NY this time of year. Its not uncommon to not see the sun for a full week at a times and currently I have about 1"+ of snow on the panels. Only a couple more weeks before the sun starts climbing higher, combined with the cold air we should be seeing some good savings as the voltage and output climb. I find myself constantly reminding my family that producing our own power doesn't mean it's ok to use more.

[r9etb]

Soits going to cost me 3 grand for 1 kilowatt. so I can generate 8-10 cents worth of electricity for that same kilowatt.

Apples and oranges. Watts is the power output. Watt-hours is a measure of energy (power * time). Your utility bill charges you for the latter. The power plant produces the former.