The new battery will allow solar energy to better match the solar spectrum at prices below 10 cents per kilowatt-hour.
One startup, Solar Junction, said that its pilot manufacturing plant is producing solar cells that are more efficient than the best products on the market today. This progress relies on new semiconductor materials that have been developed by the company. This development has helped to create a type of solar energy system. This type of system, called concentrating photovoltaic systems, is more attractive. It can use the sun to generate electricity.
Concentrating photovoltaic systems account for only a fraction of today's total solar energy, with only a few megawatts of capacity installed, compared to traditional solar panels with many gigawatts of capacity. They are confined to particularly sunny places, where they compete with solar thermal energy, which is the cheapest form of solar energy today. It uses mirrors to collect sunlight and is designed to produce steam and drive steam turbines. These advances are in terms of solar cell efficiency, but it has only recently made concentrating photovoltaic systems more economical, as in some regions.
Craig Stauffer, one of the founders of Solar Crossing, a San Jose, Calif.-based company, said that his company’s new battery can make solar prices less than 10 US$ per kilowatt-hour. In contrast, 16.5 cents per kilowatt-hour or more is in contrast, which is the price of a typical solar panel. Solar Crossing's batteries require fewer layers than many other ultra-efficient solar cells and can better match the solar spectrum.
The solar cross company's battery is designed for use in photovoltaic systems. It uses many mirrors or lenses and collects sunlight 1,000 times. Gathering sunlight can increase the efficiency of most solar cells, but these solar cells are designed to use such high concentration, so-called multi-junction cells, which are particularly effective because they contain two or three semiconductor layers. To absorb different colors of sunlight instead of a single semiconductor layer, this single layer is used for traditional solar panels.
Concentrating solar power has been hindered because it is difficult to find some semiconductors in order to have the best way of separating the spectrum, but this kind of semiconductor also has a corresponding crystal structure, which makes the battery easy to make. Solar Crossing's technology solves this problem and can be used for the infrared end of spectrum, which has proven to be the most challenging, as it has been for the development of multi-junction cells. In traditional multi-junction cells, some semiconductor materials are designed for this part of the spectrum, but either the absorbed light is too far infrared or it is not compatible with other semiconductors. Therefore, the battery requires an expensive buffer layer.
Steffe said that none of his company's new materials have these problems. He did not disclose exactly what the materials were made from, but he said that its crystal structure was compatible with other semiconductor materials for multi-junction cells and could be modified to absorb different wavelengths to increase efficiency. The company calls them Adjustable Spectrum Lattice Matched materials.
This new battery uses a new material that can convert 41% of the sunlight's energy into electrical energy, compared to 38% to 39% of other multi-junction cells on the market. (The world record is more efficient than this, but researchers have already achieved this level, using disposable batteries, which are made in the lab, not the production line.) Jumping two percentage points can dramatically change the solar system. The price, especially concentrating photovoltaic systems, only about 20% of the cost belongs to the battery. Increasing the output power of the battery will reduce the number of lenses, metal frames, tracking systems and other components, which account for 80% of the cost.
Steffe said that the company has also made two new semiconductors that can be used in future batteries, so that efficiency can be as high as 50%. Because these materials are very easy to grow and grow on top of each other, the preparation of such a five-layer device requires only the same cost, just like a three-layer device. He predicted that the company can produce this battery within five years.
"I would not be surprised if they reach 50%, but when will the issue be how much they will spend," said Jerry Olson, who is a Golden State in Colorado. Chief scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He said that this plan will take longer and may exceed the company's vision because the solar cell is complicated.
Even if it is less than 10 cents per kWh, the concentrating photovoltaic system is still far more expensive than fossil fuels. Fossil fuels often cost less than six cents per kilowatt-hour, and have the advantage that they can stay up all night. Olson said that although concentrating photovoltaic systems are still relatively rare, they may be the cheapest type of solar photovoltaic cell because high concentrations of sunlight will reduce the amount of land required and expensive semiconductor materials.
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