New technology could revolutionize solar energy

As governments around the world push for a green transition, companies around the world are investing heavily in research and development of innovative ways to improve renewable energy production. New technologies are making conventional renewable energy projects, such as solar and wind farms, much more efficient as companies build more powerful panels and bigger turbines. Now, one German team believes it has found a new light-harvesting system that could significantly increase solar energy production.

Conventional solar panels rely on silicon-based solar cells, which absorb light across the visible spectrum, but only weakly. These solar cells must be several micrometers thick so that they can absorb enough protons to generate electricity. This makes them heavy, expensive, and difficult to fit into small spaces. In contrast, thin-film solar cells, which are made from organic dyes, are both cheaper and lighter, being just 100 nanometers thick. However, they can only absorb a small fraction of the solar spectrum. Scientists have been looking for a solution for years, aiming to increase the efficiency of solar panels while reducing weight and cost.

Now, researchers at the University of Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, believe they may have discovered the structure needed to dramatically increase solar energy production. The researchers recently published a study in the journal Chem demonstrating the use of the URPB system—an acronym for ultraviolet, red, violet, and blue—that relies on the photosynthetic antennae of plants and bacteria to efficiently capture sunlight. The URPB model uses four different dyes, which are arranged in a precise configuration that allows them to efficiently capture light in the UV, visible, and near-infrared wavelengths.

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During the test phase, the research team was able to convert 38 percent of the incoming light into usable energy. While the four dyes themselves convert less than one percent to a maximum of three percent. JMU chemistry professor Frank Würthner explained: “Our system has a band structure similar to that of inorganic semiconductors. This means that it absorbs light panchromatically over the entire visible range. And it uses the high absorption coefficients of the organic dyes. As a result, it can absorb a large amount of light energy in a relatively thin layer, similar to natural light-harvesting systems.”

The next challenge will be scaling the process for commercial use. While there has been success in using the technology for energy production in a lab setting, there are always greater challenges when it comes to introducing a new technology for use in a real-world environment.

This is the latest technology being tested around the world to increase solar energy production. Encouraged by higher levels of public funding and financial incentives such as tax breaks, and driven by the need to increase the world’s renewable energy capacity to reduce fossil fuel consumption, companies around the world are investing heavily in research and development in the solar energy sector. Solar energy production has made enormous progress over the past decade. Solar panel efficiency has increased from about 17% in 2012 to 22-29% today, while production costs have fallen and the price per watt of solar panels has fallen from about $5 in 2000 to less than 50 cents today.

Solar photovoltaics (PV) is the fastest growing energy source in the world, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), with production increasing about 26-fold since 2010. By the end of 2022, 1,047 GW of photovoltaic capacity had been installed globally, with 191 GW added in 2022 alone.

Earlier this year, Turkish researchers published a study showing the potential of a hemispherical photovoltaic cell structure that they say could absorb up to 66 percent more light than conventional flat panels. The team now wants to produce a prototype to test the technology, which has shown promise in computer simulations.

There is also optimism around the use of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) due to their high efficiency and low production costs. PSCs have shown great progress in recent years, with significant improvements in efficiency, from about 3 percent in 2009 to over 25 percent today. This has encouraged the US Department of Energy (DoE) and other public and private institutions around the world to invest heavily in improving PSC technology.

To date, most PSC testing has been done in the lab. But a team of researchers from across the country in the U.S., led by the University of North Carolina, is taking the testing outdoors. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Perovskite PV Accelerator for Commercializing Technologies (PACT) Center has successfully used the technology outdoors for 29 weeks and achieved an operating efficiency of more than 16 percent. Laura Schelhas, a NREL chemistry researcher, explained, “Real-world demonstration is a critical step toward commercialization, and we hope that with PACT providing these capabilities, researchers and companies will be able to leverage this data to improve reliability.”

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

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