Today’s Solutions: November 21, 2024

Our technology for harvesting solar power has just gotten better thanks to scientists in Germany who have achieved a new efficiency record of almost 30 percent.

The new achievement comes from researchers at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) who created a new solar cell that combined silicon and perovskite together to squeeze an impressive 29.15 percent efficiency of converting solar power into electricity.

Perovskite has been known to science for a long time but it has only in recent years become recognized for its use in harvesting solar power. And since it burst onto the solar cell scene around a decade ago, the material has broken efficiency records at a blistering pace, especially when paired with silicon.

The reason why they work so well together is that each one is optimized to absorb different wavelengths of light. Silicon focuses mostly on the red and infrared part of the spectrum, while perovskite excels at the green and blue light. By combining the two, more electrical energy can be extracted from sunlight than possible with a single kind of solar cell.

The new record is particularly impressive since only five years of similar silicon-perovskite solar cells had a maximum efficiency of 13.7 percent. Eventually, the technology could further be improved to reach the theoretical limit of 35 percent, which would give a significant boost to the widespread adoption of renewable energy.

Image source: Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin

Solutions News Source Print this article
More of Today's Solutions

Changemakers of the week: GRuB and SparkNJ

Every day on the Optimist Daily, we report on solutions from around the world. Though we love solutions big and small, the ones that ...

Read More

The giant beneath the waves: world’s largest coral found in the Pacific

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM In a world where bad news about the environment routinely outweighs good news, scientists have discovered an incredible ...

Read More

Tortoise discovered in a home in Pompeii

Almost 2000 years after the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and its trapping of the city of Pompeii in time, archaeologists are still making discoveries ...

Read More

Revel at the most detailed image of our universe yet

Here at The Optimist Daily, we have been sharing every exciting step of the James Webb Telescope’s journey, from its long-awaited launch, to when ...

Read More