Researchers have converted 40 percent of sunlight hitting a solar cell into electricity, which is the highest efficiency ever reported.
The achievement was made using focused sunlight, and could have implications in photovoltaic power, the University of New South Wales reported.
"This is the highest efficiency ever reported for sunlight conversion into electricity," said UNSW Scientia Professor and Director of the Advanced Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics (ACAP) Professor Martin Green.
"We used commercial solar cells, but in a new way, so these efficiency improvements are readily accessible to the solar industry," added Mark Keevers, the UNSW solar scientist who managed the project.
The prototype also boasts an optical bandpass filters that work to capture the sunlight that is normally wasted by modern solar cells and converts it to electricity with a higher efficiency than conventional devices.
"We hope to see this home grown innovation take the next steps from prototyping to pilot scale demonstrations. Ultimately, more efficient commercial solar plants will make renewable energy cheaper, increasing its competitiveness," said ARENA CEO Ivor Frischknecht.
The achievement is one of many made by UNSW solar researchers over the past 40 years. This includes the first photovoltaic system to convert sunlight to electricity with over 20 percent efficiency in 1989, which doubled its performance.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the Progress in Photovoltaics journal. The work was funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and supported by the Australia-US Institute for Advanced Photovoltaics (AUSIAPV). It was independently confirmed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at their outdoor test facility in the United States. Power towers are being developed by RayGen Resources, which provided design and technical support for the high efficiency prototype. The U.S.-based company Spectrolab also contributed solar cells to the project.
