A team of researchers at the Imperial College London and their international collaborators in Belgium, China and Japan have demonstrated that the efficiency of all solar panel designs could be improved by up to 22 percent by covering their surface with aluminum studs that bend and trap light inside the absorbing layer. Solar panels covered… »
Engineers at the Fraunhofer Institute, Soitec, CEA-Leti and the Helmholtz Center Berlin joined forces to achieve a new world record for the conversion of sunlight into electricity. Using a new solar cell structure with four solar subcells, they managed to set a new record efficiency of 44.7% was measured at a concentration of 297 suns… »
Increased interest for sensor networks in various applications are forcing research groups to come up with ways to power the individual sensor modules remains a sticking point in these sorts of applications. While wiring and batteries can be viable solutions for small-scale projects, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute came up with tiny solar cells that… »
The same type of microwave oven technology that most people use to heat up leftover food has found a new application in the solar cell production. Engineers at Oregon State University have for the first time developed a way to use heating from microwave oven to provide a new way to make thin-film photovoltaic products… »
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, came across a relatively simple solution based on a mathematical connection between absorption and emission of light that could lead to improvement of flat-plate solar cell efficiency. Although their concept is counterintuitive, the researchers managed to demonstrate that solar cells which are able to emit light more efficiently… »
Although it has been referred as “fool’s gold” throughout the history, dating to times of ancient Rome and tricking prospectors for centuries, yellow-toned mineral pyrite found its use as an inexpensive and promising option for solar energy. Oregon State University (OSU) researchers discovered related compounds that use the advantages of the material without the downsides… »
Vestas, a global wind turbine company from Denmark, has recently completed their new headquarters in Aarhus, Denmark. Named House of Vestas, the new office building exhibits various sustainable features and it is built to meet the to the low-energy class 1 building according to the Danish building code and expected to become the first LEED… »
Almost as cheaply and easily as printing a photo on your inkjet, an inexpensive, simple solar cell can be created by special “inks” deposited on the paper. The researchers from MIT came with a process essentially the same as the one used to make the silvery lining on packages you see in everyday groceries –… »
