{"id":14606,"date":"2013-10-17T17:21:11","date_gmt":"2013-10-17T11:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenworldinvestor.com\/?p=14606"},"modified":"2013-10-17T17:21:11","modified_gmt":"2013-10-17T11:51:11","slug":"nrel-sets-new-world-record-with-two-junction-solar-cell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/2013\/10\/17\/nrel-sets-new-world-record-with-two-junction-solar-cell\/","title":{"rendered":"NREL Sets New World Record with Two-Junction Solar Cell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Scientist Myles Steiner has announced that The <strong>Renewable Energy Laboratory<\/strong> (NREL) has set a new world record at 31.1% for a <strong>two-junction solar cell<\/strong>. The research team at NREL beat Alta Devices&#8217; previous record by 0.3%.<\/p>\n<p>The new solar cell consists of a layer of gallium indium phosphide on a gallium arsenide cell. Bilayer anti-reflective coating sits on the top of the cell and a reflective gold contact layer is attached to the bottom. In other words, far more costly materials than what we currently use in the\u00a0highest-efficiency crystalline-based solar panels.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Read all about Solar cells <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenworldinvestor.com\/2011\/04\/05\/pv-solar-cells-guide-to-solar-cell-costs-and-efficiencybuying-solar-cells-major-cell-manufacturers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/cdn3.energyinformative.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/efficiency_chart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.energyinformative.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/efficiency_chart-660x394.jpg\" alt=\"NREL efficiency chart\" width=\"660\" height=\"394\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>NREL&#8217;s latest chart of best research-cell efficiencies (up-to-date with the new world record) can be found\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nrel.gov\/ncpv\/images\/efficiency_chart.jpg\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The new record will likely be beaten in short time. NREL is determined to get closer to the 48% efficiency goal set by Department of Energy&#8217;s F-PACE project.<\/p>\n<p>Although the solar market is currently dominated by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/energyinformative.org\/best-solar-panel-monocrystalline-polycrystalline-thin-film\/#crystalline-silicon\">different types of crystalline silicon<\/a>\u00a0(90%), scientists see a lot of opportunity in other materials. Multi-junction solar cells are currently the preferred type of solar cell for applications in space. High efficiency goes hand-in-hand with space-efficiency (surface) and is therefore of higher importance than costs.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a lot of things happening in the <strong>solar industry<\/strong> nowadays. Recently <strong>Sharp<\/strong> announced that they have created the most efficient solar cell to date, with an incredible 44.4% efficiency rate.<\/p>\n<p>Whether or not we will ever see <em>multi-junction solar cells<\/em> in widespread use here on earth remains to see. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to follow NREL as they get closer and closer to 48%, and keep pushing the threshold of what is possible with photovoltaic technology.<\/p>\n<p><em>This article is written by Mathias Maehlum. He is currently doing masters in energy and environmental engineering at NTNU in Norway. He also runs EnergyInformative.org, a site that focuses on informing and promoting the use of clean, renewable energy technologies and increased energy efficiency.<\/em><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientist Myles Steiner has announced that The Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has set a new world record at 31.1% for a two-junction solar cell. The research<span class=\"excerpt-hellip\"> [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-solar-renewable-energy-greeninvest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}