U.S.-based SunPower Corp. has said it has produced a full-scale solar cell with a sunlight to electricity conversion efficiency of 24.2 percent.
Commenting on the announcement, Dr. Richard Swanson, SunPower founder and chief technology officer said: "As we celebrate SunPower's 25th anniversary this year, I am thrilled to see the company achieve technology milestones that were inconceivable only a few years ago. SunPower's research and development and engineering teams have increased cell efficiency by a full four percentage points over the last five years while radically driving down manufacturing costs. We are extremely proud of their continued success."
Improved cell efficiency, says the company, reduces the levelized cost of energy by increasing the energy production from each wafer manufactured into a solar cell. For the same reason, increased efficiency reduces the cost per watt and cost per kilowatt-hour for feedstock and materials, depreciation and other manufacturing expenses, installation time, land and system operations, and related maintenance.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.