Longi said today at the SNEC tradeshow in Shanghai, China, that it has achieved a power conversion efficiency of 34.6% for a perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell.
The European Solar Test Installation (ESTI) has certified the results, which represent a world record for this cell typology. The previous record was held by Longi itself, which achieved an efficiency of 33.9% in November.
“We achieved this result by optimizing the thin film deposition process of the electron transport layer, developing and using high-efficiency defect passivation materials, and designing and developing high-quality interfacial passivation structures,” the company said in a statement, without providing further details.
In June, Longi reported an efficiency of 33.5% for the same cell. The European Solar Test Installation (ESTI) certified the results, which represented a significant increase on its previous 31.8% efficiency rating, which was announced during last year's SNEC edition.
Longi has broken the world record for solar cell efficiency 16 times since April 2021. It claimed the world’s highest efficiency for silicon cells in November 2022, with a 26.81% efficiency rating for an unspecified heterojunction solar cell.
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The problem with these cells is their service life! There was no mention of how long they last in the real world!
Efficiency figures are meaningless without also specifying the input light source/intensity (x Suns). Very high efficiencies can be achieved under simulated multiple sun luminosity and is nice for bragging rights but doesn’t translate to anything meaningful in real world operation under our one and only Sun.
And yet generating electricity from PV is is so much more efficient than burning fossil fuels originating from plants that used about 1% of the solar radiation millions of years ago to build up biomass. Let alone the fact that the carbon that was deposited over very long periods is now burnt within a few decades and leads to a drastic rise in CO2 levels. What alternatives besides wind generators do we have?
This is true, but if the efficiency was certified by the European Solar Test Installation (ESTI), it means that standard reporting conditions were used, i.e. 1 sun.
This does not alter the fact that fixed solar panels (as 99.99% are) produce around 13 times LESS electricity than the standard rating. The standard rating comes from facing the panel directly into bright sunlight. A fixed panel gets oblique sunlight and so the output rises from zero at 6AM solar time to maximum at solar midday, and back to zero at 6PM solar time. In the winter, 50°N, the day only last 8 hours. Couple that with cloudy days (1/3 of days are overcast in the UK) and there is your 13 times reduction in output. The output is zero, zilch, nada, nothing, for more than half the time – 12 hours in the summer and as much as 16 hours in the winter in the UK. Storage that exists is nowhere near 16 hours – it is around 30 minutes at the most. This is a preposterous and wasteful way to generate electricity and only works when there is an existing grid to support it.
What nonsense is this! Have you already worked with the technology? Doesn’t look like it. With a gable roof they have less power in the morning or evening, but they get the energy 80% of the time. In other words, you also get the performance that is stated on the modules. You calculate 15% full load hours (base is 24 hours, including at night). Look at California, in combination with wind and storage, 100% is possible! Perovskite are the next step and will increase the efficiency to 39% (even more power per area and lower electricity production costs).
So to fully take advantage of solar.
You need to live in the Sunbelt of the USA and live off grid.😼