Sounds like it’s still a solar cell though, they just figured out how to make it thinner and flexible. By the time you stack them into a cell, is there really any difference?
“By stacking multiple light-absorbing layers into one solar cell (known as a multi-junction approach), a wider range of the light spectrum is harnessed, allowing more power to be generated from the same amount of sunlight.
This thin-film perovskite material has been independently certified by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) to deliver over 27% energy efficiency. It matches the performance of traditional, single-layer silicon PV for the first time.”
One of the main advantages here is that this can be applied to almost any surface because of how thin it is.
From the article:
We can envisage perovskite coatings being applied to broader types of surfaces to generate cheap solar power, such as the roofs of cars and buildings and even the backs of mobile phones. If more solar energy can be generated in this way, we can foresee less need in the longer term to use silicon panels or build more and more solar farms.
It might not be as thin as before, but is several microns of thickness not thin?
It was nice if they gave more details about exactly how thick it is at 27% efficiency though.
I’ll look around to see if I can find more information about it.
Edit: And by the way, I’m actually not aware of any 27% solar panels currently in production.
Other than the ones Ofxord PV has recently begun manufacturing (established by the same Prof. leading this research).
We could generate solar power before we even had solar panels. You just used the sun to heat up water. Solar panels made solar power generation more effective.
Another perovskite hype piece. You’ll know that they’ve got something that’s commercially viable once they’re making these sorts of efficiency claims and not omitting information about cell degradation.