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| New milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance U.S. Department of Energy announced that new concentrator solar cell produced by Boeing-Spectrolab has achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7%, establishing a new milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance. This breakthrough may lead to systems with low installation cost, making solar electricity a more cost-competitive and integral part of our nation's energy mix. Attaining a 40% efficient concentrating solar cell means having another technology pathway for producing cost-effective solar electricity. Almost all of today's solar cell modules do not concentrate sunlight but use only what the sun produces naturally, what researchers call 'one sun insolation', which achieves an efficiency of 12 to 18%. However, by using an optical concentrator, sunlight intensity can be increased, squeezing more electricity out of a single solar cell. The 40.7% cell was developed using a unique structure called a multi-junction solar cell. This type of cell achieves a higher efficiency by capturing more of the solar spectrum. In a multi-junction cell, individual cells are made of layers, where each layer captures part of the sunlight passing through the cell. This allows the cell to get more energy from the sun's light. write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Construction News :: home page |