Emerging High-Efficiency Low-Cost Solar Cell Technologies

[bsteadman]

Emerging High-Efficiency Low-Cost Solar Technologies: Solar Mini-Series (2 of 2)

[bsteadman]

Natcore Technology: The New Era Of Solar Energy

Seeking Alpha
Peter Arendas
8/27/2015

Excerpt:

Disclosure: I am/we are long NTCXF. (More...)

Summary

• Natcore Technology has created a silver-free solar cell.
• The company has a couple of other technologies that will increase the efficiency of solar cells while decreasing their production costs.
• Natcore has several partnerships in place, but no revenues yet.
• Natcore's silver-free solar cells may be commercialised in 2016.
• Natcore has market capitalisation of slightly more than $20 million and potential to become a billion dollar company in the coming years.

Two weeks ago, I listened to an interesting interview with Brien Lundin. Although the interview was primarily focused on the gold mining sector, he mentioned a technology company that has immediately attracted my attention. The company is named Natcore Technology (OTCQB:NTCXF) and it has a huge potential to bring revolutionary changes into the energy sector.

Natcore Technology is a small technology company headquartered in Rochester, New York. It is focused on research of new solar cell technologies. The company owns 23 patents and another 36 patents are pending. Technologies developed by the company will have a huge impact on the global energy sector as they enable production of more efficient solar cells at lower prices.

The company has a couple of interesting projects in its pipeline. Some of them are more progressed (black silicone, low-temperature laser process), some of them are in earlier phases of development (quantum-dot solar cells). And the recent news is Natcore's silver-free solar cell.

Black silicone

Black silicone is a silicone with billions of nano-sized holes per square centimeter. The holes decrease the amount of light reflected back to the atmosphere. As a result, black silicone solar cells are more efficient than conventional solar cells. The dark color of the silicone is caused by the huge amount of nano-holes. It is estimated that black silicone may push solar cell production costs down by more than 20%.
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View the complete article at:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/3471...f-solar-energy

[bsteadman]

Elon Musk’s SolarCity to Begin Mass-Producing ‘World’s Most Efficient’ Solar Panel

EcoWatch
By Lorraine Chow
10/5/2015

Excerpt:

SolarCity and its chairman Elon Musk have introduced “the world’s most efficient rooftop solar panel” at a conference in New York City on Friday.

“This is the most advanced solar panel in the world,” Musk said.

According to a SolarCity press release, these new panels acheive a peak efficiency of 22.04 percent, a determination based on third-party testing provider, Renewable Energy Test Center.

The panels claim to produce 30-40 percent more juice and “generates more power per square foot and harvests more energy over a year than any other rooftop panel in production,” SolarCity said.

SolarCity expects to build about 9,000 to 10,000 units a day at its own major, 1 GW factory in Buffalo, New York once the the facility reaches full capacity in 2017.

At 22.04 percent, yes, the efficiency purportedly achieved by SolarCity’s new panels is very impressive. However, with photovoltaic technology growing in leaps and bounds, the actual world’s most efficient solar cell has about double the efficiency of SolarCity’s new panels at 44.7 percent. Additionally, most solar panels available on the market today already have roughly similar efficiencies between 15 and 20 percent, according to CleanTechnica.

What SolarCity has done, actually, is create the biggest bang for your buck. “Essentially,” as The Verge explained, SolarCity is providing “the most efficiency for the lowest cost.” - (bold and color emphasis added)

The new panels, a hybrid of traditional crystalline panels and silicon, will be the same size as the industry standard but will be cheaper through a proprietary process “that significantly reduces the manufacturing cost relative to other high-efficiency technologies,” the company said.

As Reuters pointed out, SolarCity—known as the top solar installer in the U.S.—entered the solar panel manufacturing game after it acquired Silevo, a solar panel manufacturer, last year. Thus, by making their own panels system costs are expected to drop by 15 to 20 cents a watt, chief executive Lyndon Rive told Reuters.

Musk also explained to Mashable when SolarCity looked at their third-party panel manufacturers, “They were happy to make a standard efficiency 15 panel panel year-over-year that looked not that great. So we thought we had to make our own panels.”

SolarCity’s co-founder and chief technology officer Peter Rive (Musk’s cousin) told Mashable the new panels are cheap to produce and will continue to make money for the company even if government tax breaks for panel installation expire.
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View the complete article, including image, at:

http://ecowatch.com/2015/10/05/elon-musks-solarcity/

[bsteadman]

SolarCity Commercial

[bsteadman]

Elon Musk Says Tesla's Next Home Battery Is Coming This Year

Fortune
By Robert Hackett
2/2/2016

Excerpt:

The pack is on track for the summer.

Last spring Tesla CEO Elon Musk debuted his company’s Powerwall home battery pack, a rechargeable store for solar energy. Since then the company has been cooking up a second generation of the device.

At a Paris event on Friday, Musk told Tesla customers that the next iteration of the company’s wall-mounted source of backup power is due out as early as this summer, as the autos and energy blog Electrek first reported.

“We’ve got the Tesla Powerwall and Powerpack, which have a lot of trials underway right now around the world. We’ve seen very good results,” said Musk, who also heads the aerospace startup SpaceX and serves as chairman of solar energy firm SolarCity. “We’ll be coming out with version two of the Powerwall probably around July or August this year, which will see further step change in capabilities.”

Tesla’s original residential lithium-ion battery weighs 220 pounds, comes with a 10-year warranty, and come sin two sizes: 7 kilowatt-hour ($3,000) or 10 kilowatt-hour ($3,500). The packs sold out in 2016, and the company began assembling them in its Gigafactory—its manufacturing plant based outside Reno, Nev.—last fall.
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View the complete article, including videos, at:

http://fortune.com/2016/02/02/elon-m...l-two-battery/

[bsteadman]

Microscope reveals key to big efficiency boost for solar cells

treehugger
by Megan Treacy
7/19/2016

Excerpts:

Crystalline silicon solar cells make up the majority of solar panels out in the world today, but scientists believe that other types have the potential to be more efficient and carry more benefits. One of those types is perovskite solar cells, called that because they are made from compounds that have the crystal structure of the mineral perovskite.

These solar cells are inexpensive and easy to fabricate, making them a great alternative to traditional solar cells. Scientists have been working with this technology for about seven years and in just that amount of time the efficiency of those cells has increased from just three percent in 2009 to 22 percent today -- similar to silicon solar cells. That's the fastest efficiency increase of any solar cell material so far.

Scientists at the Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry and the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis have made a discovery that could push that efficiency up even higher -- up to 31 percent.

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The researchers believe that if they can study the high efficiency facets and understand what makes them better at converting sunlight to electricity, they can produce a much higher efficiency solar cell overall.

“If the material can be synthesized so that only very efficient facets develop, then we could see a big jump in the efficiency of perovskite solar cells, possibly approaching 31 percent,” said Sibel Leblebici, a postdoctoral researcher at the Molecular Foundry.

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View the complete article, including image, at:

http://www.treehugger.com/solar-tech...lar-cells.html

[bsteadman]

Intersolar Europe 2017 focuses on new technologies and efficiency concepts in solar PV production

SolarServer
2/15/2017

Excerpt:

The investment trend in the photovoltaics (PV) industry is carrying through into 2017: Numerous solar PV manufacturers are set to build new production facilities or retrofit existing capacity this year.

Innovative technologies are increasing the efficiency of solar cells, and at the same time, reducing manufacturing costs. Intersolar Europe, the world’s leading exhibition for the solar industry and its partners, will focus on the latest developments in PV production technologies from May 31 until June 2, 2017 in Munich.

Alongside the exhibition, the Intersolar Europe Conference and accompanying workshops, which are taking place in parallel, will be discussing the innovations and new concepts in the industry.

The photovoltaics industry looks set for dynamic development in 2017. Production technology companies are responding by investing heavily in new facilities for cell and module production or upgrades to existing manufacturing lines.

According to the industry information service PV-Tech, companies in China and India alone have announced plans to expand production by 17 gigawatts (GW) each in 2017.

The USA, Europe, Saudi Arabia and Iran are also building new production facilities, and the German Engineering Federation (VDMA) reports that the order books of German manufacturers of facilities, components and machines are as full as ever.

The main focus is on technologies for more efficient solar cells, such as PERC cells (passivated emitter rear contact) and PERT cells (passivated emitter, rear totally diffused), as well as heterojunction technology.

Furthermore, new manufacturing and automation systems are expected to reduce operating and material costs and ensure an increase in productivity, and thereby more competitive prices.

New technologies for greater solar PV efficiency

Innovative processes for manufacturing highly-efficient cells hold considerable promise: Both PERC cells, which increase the passivation on the rear side of solar cells, and PERT cells increase efficiency, thereby reducing the module costs per KW of output.

As a result, manufacturing facilities for such efficient modules are in demand and offer a significant competitive advantage – not only for plant constructors, but also for PV manufacturers who, on these grounds, are retrofitting existing manufacturing lines with new technologies in addition to constructing new facilities.

Heterojunction technology is also expected to set new records for efficiency. This cell concept combines crystalline and amorphous solar technology to achieve extremely high efficiency levels.

Suppliers of production facilities for double-sided (bifacial) solar cells and modules anticipate a 30% higher yield compared with the yields achieved by the cells available up till now. The industry expects to see progress not only from new cell concepts, optimized contacts and improved module concepts, but also from higher quality silicon wafers.

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View the complete post, including image, at:

http://www.solarserver.com/solar-mag...roduction.html