Solar Cells Continue Efficiency Gains
The US Department of Energy said today that a research group led by the University of Delaware has achieved a new record for solar cell efficiency.
In late July, a consortium led by the University of Delaware (UD) announced that it has created a solar cell that can convert 42.8% of the sunlight that hits it into electricity, besting a record set by Spectrolab and DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in December 2007.
This is good news for the future of solar, which is currently limited in application due to exorbitant costs ... which map back to poor efficiency of the current cell technologies. If memory serves, most solar cells on the market today are about 11-12% efficient. 42.8% efficiency is, therefore, a huge leap forward for the technology. Of course, this has been achieved in a lab ... not in a mass-production, real world environment ... so there is still a tremendous need for funds and research to make higher efficiency a reality.
Interesting also to note that this research discussed above is funded by DARPA, the US Department of Defense's R & D center. The military seems to understand our current energy predicament quite well, based on their interest in alternative sources of energy like solar.
