Cheaper and better solar panels are coming

Installing solar panels is not a small expense. It is an investment that will pay off in the long term and that we would ideally like to use for as long as possible. That is why the choice of panels that will decorate our roof or yard is crucial, especially their efficiency. Current solutions reach efficiencies of up to 25%, but each percentage comes with a drastically higher cost as manufacturing processes become increasingly complicated as scientists approach the theoretical limit of silicon solutions of 29%. However, that limit has just been erased. It seems that the year 2023 will be a breakthrough year in solar panel technology, as two different papers were published in the Science magazine last week that, thanks to the implementation of a perovskite layer, successfully exceeded 30% efficiency. In the first work, German engineers managed to achieve an efficiency of 32.5% using a combination of silicon and perovskite, while the second group, led by Shin Yu Chin at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, managed to demonstrate an efficiency level of 31.25%, and for says its photovoltaic cells have “the potential for high efficiency and low manufacturing cost.”