All solar efficiency breakthroughs since 1975 on a single chart

[Scuba]

http://www.treehugger.com/slideshows/energy-efficiency/all-solar-efficiency-breakthroughs-single-chart/

The National Center for Photovoltaics (NCPV), which is part of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), maintains a chart that shows efficiency records for all kinds of research solar technologies, from more vanilla to very exotic flavors (thin-film, single-junction cells, multi-junction cells, organic cells, quantum dot cells, etc). Above is the latest version as of April 2013.



On it, you can see the steady pace of progress and how different solar cell compositions compare to each other. Of course, these record-breaking cells were probably very expensive to manufacture and made only in very small quantities, so don't expect to see efficiency numbers like these in commercial PV... But over time, yesterday's record-breakers become today's mass-market products, so all this progress isn't just for the sake of breaking records either.

Link to much larger chart can be found at the site.

[Drew Richards]

1. THANK YOU! I had lost that link...great site.

[MineralMan]

2. In 1958, in the eighth grade,

My science fair project had the title, "Generating Electricity from Sunlight." I dismantled several selenium rectifiers from broken radios and turned them into a small solar panel. Wired to a milliampmeter, it made tiny amounts of electricity that varied with the light intensity. It was a big hit at the science fair, but some cynical adult told me that it would never be useful.

That adult was wrong.