Graphene For Solar Panels

The research done by the chinese team shows promise as a proof of concept but they were only able to achieve about a 6 5 efficiency in the rain compared to the typical average 20 25 efficiency that most solar panels can get in full sun conditions.

Graphene for solar panels.

Researchers aim to develop transparent or semitransparent solar cells with high efficiency and low cost to replace the existing opaque and expensive silicon based solar panels have become increasingly important due to the increasing demands of the building integrated photovoltaics bipvs systems. The addition of microscopically thin graphene layers to solar panels is a wonderful innovation but there are still years of research ahead. Since scientists and researchers are stretching graphene s performance to actively collecting energy from rainwater they were able to produce hundreds of microvolts from the water and reach 6 53 percent solar to electricity ratio efficiency from the solar. In early october 2017 we posted about nanotech engineering s novel graphene enhanced solar panel a post that raised many eyebrows.

Graphene has been developed as a non reflective coating for solar cells so the application of graphene to solar panels is not new news. It is extremely strong and almost entirely transparent and also astonishingly conductive and flexible. Nanotech says that their graphene panel reaches a 92 efficiency compared to around 20 for large commercial silicon based pv panels and the cost per watt of their panel will be 0 55 cents compared to a us average of 3 26 for silicon pv panels. Graphene has now been implemented into various junctions in graphene silicon solar cells including p type heterojunctions n type heterojunctions and schottky junctions.

In an abstract describing the work. After adding a layer of graphene to the cell it was put on a transparent backing of indium tin oxide and plastic. For the experiment the team used an inexpensive thin film solar cell called a dye sensitised solar cell. The resulting all weather solar cell concept was then equipped to produce power from both sunshine and the rain substitute.

The graphene augmented solar cell was able to retain its efficiency even after 1 000 hours of operation. How we ll store energy in the future. Graphene is made of a single layer of carbon atoms that are bonded together in a repeating pattern of hexagons. Graphene silicon solar cells are being researched however pure silicon cells performance is still superior.

It is a 2 dimensional material with amazing characteristics which grant it the title wonder material. The tuneability of graphene is promising for hybrid solar cells.