The world is moving toward renewable energy to save the planet from destruction by
pollution.
There are several ways to generate energy from renewable sources, but one
of the most common methods and easy to set up is solar panels.
Many households are setting up their own panels, but the panels
are held back by their inherent limitations!
However, scientists have revealed a new type of solar cell that revolutionizes the
renewable energy industry, known as Perovskite!
What is Perovskite, and what makes it far better than standard solar cells?
Join us as we bring you all the details about Perovskite solar cells that are finally hitting
the market!
Depending on where you live, you or your neighbors have solar panels on the roof
generating electricity without polluting the air!
And as you are watching this video, a large solar farm somewhere is providing electricity
to a city!
Along with wind, solar photovoltaic or PV is the most established
of the low-carbon energy technologies, and as it grows in scale, the costs of development
are coming down.
The total cumulative installed capacity at the end of 2019 amounted to around 627
gigawatts globally.
According to the International Energy Agency, solar is on track to set
records for new global deployments each year after 2022, with an average of 125 GW
of new capacity expected globally between 2021 and 2025.
Solar PV generation increased 22 percent in 2019 and represented
the second-largest absolute generation growth of all renewable technologies, slightly
behind wind and ahead of hydropower.
Globally, China is the top solar energy consumer.
In 2019, the country had installed 205 GW of solar panels and generated 223.8 terawatt
hours of energy from the sun.
The largest single solar project at the time was
the Huanghe Hydropower Hainan Solar Park, with 2.2 Gigawatt of installed capacity in
Qinghai province.
The US had the world's second-largest installed solar capacity in
2019, totaling 76 gigawatts and producing 93.1
terawatt hour of electricity.
However, over the present decade, US solar installations are
forecast to reach around 419 gigawatts as the country accelerates its clean energy
efforts and attempts to decarbonize its power system by 2035 fully!
Solar energy has many benefits.
The biggest is costs.
Solar energy doesn't require any external supply to work, so its maintenance
and energy production costs are practically zero.
The only cost associated with the use of solar energy is the manufacture and
installation of the components.
This means there are no additional costs associated with
its use, so the installation is recovered quickly!
Also, there is no fluctuation in the cost as
the main material, the sun, is practically always available.
In addition, solar energy results in less energy lost during long-distance transport.
Losses during transport and distribution of energy increase with the distance between
the production and supply points and affect the performance of the installation in
densely-populated areas.
On the other hand, with the individual installation of
photovoltaic panels on rooftops, the distances are drastically reduced, increasing the
efficiency of the electrical system.
The simplicity of the installation means that you can install PV panels almost anywhere,
taking advantage of both vertical and horizontal spaces with no specific use.
This means the possibility of providing electricity
in remote locations, where the cost of installing electrical distribution lines is
too high or unfeasible.
Also, solar energy doesn't generate noise pollution, a great point in urban areas.
It also doesn't generate any waste because it doesn't
need maintenance and its lifetime is far longer than other energy-production systems.
However, PV panels have drawbacks, limiting their capacity and applications.
One of the most important is the cost.
The first initial investment for solar panel installation is
quite high, and not everybody will be able to afford them.
Although you could argue that solar panels are the most affordable they've
ever been, the fact is that they do come with a high price tag!
Also, the size of the system is dependent on your available space.
Available space is a big factor in solar panel installation because,
if your roof is not big enough, for example, you may have to downsize your system or rethink
getting solar altogether.
Solar panels are still fairly large products meaning they
require a big space to be installed.
The size disadvantage means that they cannot be placed
in small areas and actually require a large roof!
There is also the problem of a low energy conversion rate.
Even the most advanced solar panels still only convert 20 to 25 percent
of the sun's energy into power, showing how much opportunity there is to develop better
technology to optimize the full force of the sun!
Now, there is also this disadvantage that solar energy proponents might prefer does
not exist; manufacturing solar panels can harm
the environment!
Although solar panels produce clean, renewable energy, the process
it takes to manufacture them can harm the environment.
Mass production of solar panels may result in fossil fuels being burned
and plastic waste.
They are simply not eco-friendly to mass manufacture!
However, a new material for making solar panels promises to fix most of these
problems!
You can call it the Holy Grail of solar energy because of its versatility!
The breakthrough material is known as Perovskite!
What is Perovskite, and how does it work?
To understand these, let's quickly look at how current solar panels work!
A solar panel works by allowing photons, or particles of light, to knock electrons free
from atoms, generating a flow of electricity.
Solar panels actually comprise many smaller units called photovoltaic cells.
Of course, photovoltaic means they convert sunlight into electricity.
Many cells linked together make up a solar panel.
Each photovoltaic cell is basically a sandwich made up of two slices of semi-conducting
material.
Photovoltaic cells are usually made of silicon, the same stuff used in
microelectronics.
To work, photovoltaic cells need to establish an electric field.
Much like a magnetic field, which occurs due to opposite poles, an electric
field occurs when opposite charges are separated.
To get this field, manufacturers "dope" silicon with other materials, giving
each slice of the sandwich a positive or negative electrical charge.
Specifically, they seed phosphorous into the top layer of silicon, which adds extra
electrons, with a negative charge, to that layer.
Meanwhile, the bottom layer gets a dose of boron, which results in fewer electrons
or a positive charge.
This all adds up to an electric field at the junction between the
silicon layers.
Then, when a photon of sunlight knocks an electron free, the electric field
will push that electron out of the silicon junction.
A couple of other components of the cell turn these electrons into usable power.
For instance, conductive metal plates on the sides
of the cell collect the electrons and transfer them to wires.
At that point, the electrons can flow like any other source of
electricity.
In general, Photovoltaic technologies can be divided into two main categories: wafer-
based PV, also called 1st generation PVs, and thin-film cell PVs.
Traditional crystalline silicon, c-Si, cells, single crystalline silicon,
multi-crystalline silicon, and gallium arsenide or GaA cells belong to the wafer-based PVs,
with c-Si cells dominating the current PV market; it has about 90 percent market share,
and GaAs exhibiting the highest efficiency.
So let's come back to perovskites.
Perovskites are a class of materials that share a
similar structure, which displays many exciting properties like superconductivity,
magnetoresistance, and more.
These easily synthesized materials are considered the
future of solar cells, as their distinctive structure makes them perfect for enabling
low- cost, efficient photovoltaics.
A perovskite solar cell is a type of solar cell that includes a perovskite structured
compound, most commonly a hybrid organic-inorganic lead or tin halide-based material,
as the light-harvesting active layer.
Perovskite materials such as methylammonium lead
halides are cheap to produce and relatively simple to manufacture.
Perovskites possess intrinsic properties like broad absorption
spectrum, fast charge separation, long transport distance of electrons and holes,
long carrier separation lifetime, and more, making them very promising materials for solid-state
solar cells!
Perovskite solar cells are, without a doubt, the rising star in the field of photovoltaics.
They are causing excitement within the solar power industry with their ability to absorb
light across almost all visible wavelengths, exceptional power conversion efficiencies
already exceeding 20% in the lab, and relative ease of fabrication.
Perovskite solar cells aim to increase efficiency and lower the cost of solar energy.
Perovskite PVs promise high efficiencies, as well as low potential material and reduced
processing costs.
A big advantage perovskite PVs have over conventional solar
technology is that they can react to various wavelengths of light, which lets them
convert more of the sunlight that reaches them into electricity!
Moreover, they offer flexibility, semi-transparency, tailored form factors, light-weight,
and more.
Electronics designers and researchers are certain that such characteristics
will open up many more applications for solar cells!
For example, perovskite cells can power small internet of things gadgets and
even aircraft where they are not expected to
last very long.
On the commercial side, Saule Technologies has signed an investment deal with Hideo
Sawada, a Japanese investment company.
Saule aims to combine perovskite solar cells with other currently available products,
and this investment agreement came only a year after the company was launched.
Saule has launched sun breaker lamellas equipped with perovskite solar cells.
The product would be marketed across Europe and potentially go global after that.
It is also reported that a perovskite photovoltaic cell production line has gone into
production in Quzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province.
The 40-hectare factory was reportedly funded by Microquanta Semiconductor
and is expected to produce more than 200,000 square meters of photovoltaic glass
within a year!
Let's hear what you think of perovskite PV cells in the comment section below