Solar energy has shown promising progress in terms of its adoption. It is because it is clean and renewable. For humanity, Sun is the most significant source of energy. Today, to create electricity, it is one of the best alternatives in thermal energy production. There is a need to harness it more so that we can move ahead towards a cleaner environment. Considering the Paris Climate Agreement, every nation-state must rigorously adopt renewable energy in their nationally determined contributions (NDC). However, many issues have arisen in the recent past that requires immediate resolution to tap it to the fullest. To enhance the performance of the solar panel, a team from King Abdullah University of Science & Technology and the University of Toronto Engineering has come up with an innovative idea. Let’s dig out more information from this latest development and how it will be beneficial for humanity and the environment.
Latest Development
The team developed a two-sided solar cell that is bifacial. In this solar cell, the team has incorporated and adopted the best features of silicon and perovskite technologies. They published their innovation in the research journal Nature Energy. The research team has outlined the methodology and ways they integrated to develop this perovskite/solar cell or device in the research paper. The results obtained from the devices exceeded the present accepted efficiency and performance for any tandem setup and configuration. Hence, the researchers realized that the solar cells could gather more solar energy when they become bifacial.
Other findings
Apart from developing two-sided solar cells, the research team also worked with the researchers and scientists of the University of Bologna and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. This larger collaboration worked to solve the challenges lying ahead in terms of science and engineering. Among studying the challenges, one of them is understanding how to get and receive indirect sunlight that these modules obtain and gather. The main quest was to tap the current albedo, i.e., the reflection of solar light from the earth, to acquire and transform more energy into electricity. Conventional solar cells can absorb direct sunlight. But, the issue comes when the solar cells are not in the sunlight’s direction and cannot go for photonic generation inside the cells.
Benefits & Potential
More accumulation of sunlight will let more electrical energy production. Hence, there is an enhancement in solar performance.
Enhanced solar performance will help to increase its outreach on a massive scale.
The higher the adoption and outreach, the cleaner the environment is.
The cleaner the environment, the slower is the change in global climate change.
Conclusion
The research will help to get more efficiency with this new two-sided solar cell. There is more scope to enhance to a better level. The study has opened gates to increase the adoption of solar cells and energy to a greater extent. However, other challenges are lying ahead related to this domain. Hence, there is a need to answer them so that humanity can move forward and mitigate the changes related to global warming.
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