Silicon solar panels are hitting their limit. This UK lab is making perovskite the next big thing
Rooftops and ‘flying wings’ could be fitted with these more powerful perovskite-on-silicon solar panels.
Tucked away on the outskirts of Oxford, the solar R&D centre looks like any other drab industrial unit in the October sun.
But for green energy enthusiasts, Oxford PV’s lab is as exciting as Charlie’s Chocolate Factory.
Dozens of solar cells are dished out to scientists at the start of the day, who set to work experimenting: tweaking their composition, stress-testing them in climate chambers, and zooming in on microscopes to separate the good cells from the bad.
Their secret ingredient? Perovskite, a crystal structure that increases the efficiency of solar panels when overlaid on traditional silicon cells.
Oxford PV, which evolved out of a University of Oxford research project and has a factory near Berlin, is leading the way on perovskite-on-silicon tandem solar cell manufacturing.
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It's in good company in the Oxford Pioneer Park, where experts are also hard at work on electric motors and nuclear fusion.
Oxford PV is now reaping the benefits of being ahead of the curve on perovskite, with broad intellectual property rights and a deal with a US utility company in the bag.
Perovskite-on-silicon: the next big solar breakthrough?No one needs convincing that the future features a great deal of solar energy. As well as being better for the climate and energy security, solar and wind are now the cheapest ways to add electricity generation in almost every country.
But traditional silicon solar cells are bumping up against their efficiency limit of around 26 per cent sunlight converted into electrical energy.
"We were founded in 2010 in the middle of the last wave of solar dying, whether that be in Europe due to Chinese competition or in the US due to the failure of some of the then new thin-film PV companies,” Oxford PV CEO David Ward tells Euronews Green.
There has been little to challenge the incumbent position of silicon in the last decade - which is often the minimum time that it takes for a new hard tech innovation to break through.
Oxford PV is only now seeing the commercial world wake up to the potential of perovskite-on-silicon, for which it achieved a world-record efficiency for a cell of 29.5 per cent in 2020.
Since then, there’s been what Ward describes as a “burgeoning” of companies in the perovskite silicon tandem space, who are mostly playing catch up.
“The tipping point is really quick, and it’s been true across the PV industry in all of the silicon generations,” adds Ward.
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What is perovskite exactly and how does it work?Perovskite refers to an organic mineral discovered in Russia in the 1800s, which was named after mineralogist Lev Perovski. It also describes this type of mineral’s crystal structure, which can contain various atoms.
Oxford PV’s perovskite is made by machines (keeping it cheap) and is a semiconductor material well-suited to harvesting sunlight, deputy chief technology officer Ed Crossland explains.
In a regular solar panel, silicon ingots are sliced into very thin wafers and spread out to cover the widest area. Metal contacts are then added that activate the silicon material. In total, around 60 cells are placed together to form the panel.
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