Make Solar Panels More Efficient

There is an alphabet soup of acronyms and buzzwords being floated around about improvements in technology coming down the pipeline.

Make solar panels more efficient.

If a solar panel has 20 percent efficiency that means it s capable of converting 20 percent of the sunshine hitting it into electricity. What you need to know. The highest efficiency solar panels on the market today can reach almost 23 percent efficiency. Today s average commercial solar panel converts 17 19 of the light energy hitting it to electricity.

Uk firm s solar power breakthrough could make world s most efficient panels by 2021 oxford pv says tech based on perovskite crystal can generate almost a third more electricity jillian ambrose. Improving the way the cells are placed in the panel. A team of researchers at massachusetts institute of technology has come up with a new way to capture solar energy that makes it easier to store and be used on demand at a later time. Capturing more of the light.

Improving the solar cells themselves. Given the same amount of sunlight shining for the same duration of time on two solar panels with different efficiency ratings the more efficient panel will produce more electricity than the less efficient panel. There is a worldwide race from san francisco to shenzhen to make a more efficient solar cell. That bump in efficiency combined with an over 17 percent price drop could convince a decent amount of homeowners to make the jump to solar power.

Some of them involve capturing heat some use new semiconductor materials and some use layering of existing materials. With a higher efficiency fewer panels or modules. There are a few ways scientists are using to make solar cells more efficient. Manufacturers can make solar panels more efficient in two basic ways.

None of them are quite ready for prime time and they all have faults but they all show promise. Measuring efficiency is fairly simple. You can read more about how solar panels are manufactured in this post. Making solar panels more efficient apr 2 2014.

One way to reduce the cost of solar is to improve the efficiency of the solar panels.