2y ago

Perovskite + silicon solar panels hit efficiencies of over 30%

2y ago

Perovskite + silicon solar panels hit efficiencies of over 30% (The two-layer panels still suffer from rapid decay of performance, though.)

7 comments

Exciting news but they still have a long way to go before commercial availability:
The big problem is that the devices are horrifically short-lived. Even the most stable device made by the first group had dropped to 80 percent of its original efficiency after just 66 hours of exposure to sunlight. The second was somewhat better, managing to reach 347 hours before dropping below 80 percent. Assuming 12 hours of sunlight a day, however, that translates to less than a month of use, which is terrible.>
I'm surprised that regular solar panels are only around 20% efficient. I hope eventually we'll see much higher efficiency solar panels become available
- But why are you surprised? What's driving your intuition to expect it to be higher?
  
  I'm surprised because I would have assumed that they would be at least 50% efficient given how long they have existed and how ubiquitous they are. I'm sure many billions have been put into research and development of solar power and for 30% to be a noteworthy achievement after decades is surprising to me
- Plants are at 1% or so. So we're not that bad.
- To be fair, they used to be much lower than that a few years ago. Like 5%. So it's going in the right direction, even though it's actually challenging to find a good balance between efficiency and lifespan

7 comments