[LINK] Aussie solar energy record

[Stephen Loosley]

Australian scientists announce solar energy record
ABC Environment
				
					
						
						8 Dec 2014 http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2014/12/08/4144142.htm







Solar cells have set new records in the past week, heading towards converting half the sunlight hitting them into electricity.



AUSTRALIAN SCIENTISTS have set a new record in 
increasing the efficiency of solar panels, which they hope could 
eventually lead to cheaper sources of renewable energy.


In what the University of New South Wales described as a world first,
 the researchers were able to convert more than 40 per cent of sunlight 
hitting the panels into electricity.



"This is the highest efficiency ever reported for sunlight conversion
 into electricity," UNSW Professor Martin Green said in a statement.


"We used commercial solar cells, but in a new way, so these 
efficiency improvements are readily accessible to the solar industry," 
added Dr Mark Keevers, the UNSW solar scientist who managed the project.



While traditional methods use a single solar cell, which limits the 
conversion of sunlight to electricity to about 33 per cent, the newer 
technology splits the sunlight across four different cells, each 
optimised for the fraction of the sunlight they receive, which boosts 
the efficiency level, Green said.


The four-way solar cells can be used at the centre of a field of 
mirrors which are arranged to concentrate the Sun's rays. Specialised 
filters shuttle heat away from where it would reduce the solar cells' 
efficiency and towards the solar cell that can best handle the heat.



The record efficiency level was achieved in tests in Sydney and 
replicated at the United States government's National Renewable Energy 
Laboratory, the university said.



Green is hopeful the technology can also eventually be used for solar
 panels mounted on people's roofs, which he said currently had a 15 to 
18 per cent efficiency rate.



"The panels that you have on the roof of your home, at the moment 
they just have a single cell but eventually they'll have several 
different cells... and they'll be able to improve their efficiency to 
this kind of level," he said.



German efficiency



Meanwhile in Germany, scientists set a new record for solar cell 
efficiency in a laboratory setting, converting 46 per cent of light into
 electricity.



The scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems
 used a type of solar cell called a multi-junction cell, made of layers 
of semiconducting materials, with the record-setting cell being a 
four-junction cell. Each of its sub-cells converts precisely one quarter
 of the incoming light, including all the colours of the rainbow plus 
infrared light (wavelength between 300 and 1750 nm), into electricity. 
The light is concentrated using a kind of magnifying glass called a 
Fresnel lens.


The new record efficiency was measured at a concentration of 508 suns
 and has been confirmed by the Japanese AIST (National Institute of 
Advanced Industrial Science and Technology), one of the leading centres 
for independent verification of solar cell performance results under 
standard testing conditions



Jocelyne Wasselin, vice president solar cell product development for 
Soitec, a company which partnered with the scientists said: "We are very
 proud of this new world record. It... clearly indicates that we can 
demonstrate 50 per cent efficiency in the near future."


--


Cheers,
Stephen