A great solar cell has to be a great LED: So what’s wrong with subsidized solar panels?

A new scientific principle has produced record-breaking solar cells following UC Berkeley Professor Eli Yablonovitch’s mantra, “A great solar cell has to be a great LED.” These solar cells have smashed all efficiency records and are in commercial production. Nonetheless, the overhang of greater than 60 gigawatts/year of subsidized, outdated, Chinese-silicon solar panel factories is blocking the scaling of the superior technology. Silicon solar panels are in line to provide about 10% of electricity, but the super-efficient technology can eventually provide almost all of the world’s electricity and fuel.

In the interim, the solar/LED symmetry will revolutionize thermophotovoltaics, the creation of electricity directly from heat, and enable electroluminescent refrigeration, a refrigerator in which light is the working fluid.

This talk was presented on February 8, 2017 as part of the IHS Markit Seminar Series.

About the speaker:

Eli Yablonovitch is director of the NSF Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science (E3S), a multi-university center based at the University of California, Berkeley. In his photovoltaic research, Yablonovitch introduced the 4(n squared) (“Yablonovitch Limit”) light-trapping factor that is in worldwide use for almost all commercial solar panels. His mantra that “a great solar cell also needs to be a great LED” is the basis of the world record solar cells: single-junction 28.8% efficiency, dual-junction 31.5%, quadruple-junction 38.8% efficiency, all at 1 sun. He has been elected to the NAE, the NAS, and as Foreign Member, UK Royal Society. Among his honors are the Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society and the Isaac Newton Medal of the UK Institute of Physics.

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