Sustainable Energy Improvement via Perovskite Solar Technology

Solar panels are often a serious investment both in terms of energy and money spent, so it stands to reason that we would want to ensure our sustainable energy plans take advantage of every opportunity to drive down the costs of energy production, raising the overall efficiency of the final result. It takes energy to deal with mining and purifying raw materials and to manufacture and work on installing the final product, so the cheaper the path to said product is, the better the results will be as well.

Silicon-based solar panels have been dominating the market thus far, but they have a major drawback in their overall affordability – they require at least a minimum of about two years to pay off and return the investment.

The expectations for perovskite-based solar power are that this time can be significantly turned down to the much more affordable and impressive two to three months time in total. This would revolutionize the solar power industry if the technology becomes widespread.

There are findings made by scientists in the US Department of Energy and their Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University that back these claims quite impressively. The study takes a broader perspective and evaluates solar technology from its beginning in a complete assessment, tracing the products from the mining of raw materials to the retirement and potential recycling of the panels. Studies were also made on the ecological impacts of making solar panels and the energy recover rate for the investment as well.

Perovskite technology is not yet commercialized, but scientists are optimistic about its capability to bring about a revolution in how solar technology is handled.

Most projects have been more or less focused on efficiency of power conversion from sunlight into actual electricity so far. Although Perovskite lags in conversion efficiency compared to silicon, it requires a lot less to be turned into a solar module than the latter. Perovskite modules will have a much shorter energy payback time, potentially the shortest ever among currently existing solar power options.

The team of scientists hopes that in the future projects can use such a zoomed-out and wider scope way to identify the safest and most energy-efficient approaches in subsequent iterations of solar technology to create safer, environmentally sustainable and commercially affordable products. As it stands the prognosis is that we will need to turn to alternate energy sources with increasing speed, since there is no time to play around with much trial and error to find the right designs.

Fossil fuels are wreaking havoc on the planet’s ecosphere and we need a more stable and cheaper method of energy conversion that can become widespread and extremely efficient to halt or slow down pollution and global warming.

Although perovskite offers a lot of opportunities as a material for solar panels and the size of the panels won’t change, making maintenance and cleaning the same as they have been, some materials that are currently unsustainable or environmentally damaging to produce on a global scale will need to be replaced due to ecological and economical reasons.

Extending the lifetime of the modules made of perovskite will be important to ensure they can be stable and easy to use for long-term commercial uses, there are improvements that still need to be made.

Commercialization within the next two years is expected if researchers complete a comprehensive analysis and choose optimized materials for manufacturing and raw material production.

Since projected global energy demands are expected to double by 2050, Argonne scientist Seth Darling believes solar power will play a major role in contributing to solving the upcoming energy crisis. Solar power capabilities need to be scaled up significantly in efficiency and its costs need to be driven down drastically if we hope to make real use of it in the future.

The biggest advantage of this type of technology still remains – the ability to use it in hotspots around the world, a slim and easy to install design that allows quick implementation, easy cleaning and maintenance without the need of a cleaning service and the ability to be a viable energy source without a problem. Whether this technology becomes as widespread as Argonne and Northern University scientists hope remains to be seen.