UNSW

World beating Sydney-based startup SunDrive has given itself an early Christmas present in the form of the fabrication of its first full-sized panel. This panel marks the most recent milestone on the road to commercialisation for SunDrive, which set a new world record for commercial-sized silicon solar cell efficiency in September.

Solar installers are to play a key role in a unique ‘reverse logistics’ model which researchers from the University of New South Wales believe can help deliver an economically viable national recycling strategy as the number of decommissioned solar PV modules coming off Australian rooftops continues to grow.

Should heterojunction solar technologies be temporarily shelved? Could copper plating replace screen-printed silver conductive surfaces in cells? Why are tandem cells a likely successor to PERC? Brett Hallam recently sat down with Natalie Filatoff in Sydney to explain the findings of a new study by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) that sought to answer these controversial questions.

Here’s the rundown of everything you need to know about the upcoming Glasgow Climate Summit.

Everything you ever wanted to know about the way we will ultimately derive all our power from renewable sources, and how quickly it will be achieved.

Developed by Australian scientists, the demonstrated system is claimed to achieve a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 20% at a levelised cost of hydrogen (LCOH) of $4.10/kg. The direct solar hydrogen generation technology is powered by a tandem perovskite-silicon solar cell with an unprecedented high open-circuit voltage of 1.271 V, and a power conversion efficiency of 24.3%.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales will look to improve the quality of advanced solar PV cells after the project secured a share of more than $1.5 million in the latest round of the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Linkage Project Grants.

The time is now for the energy consumer, says Anna Bruce, as energy “prosumers” produce, consume, and provide electricity and grid services in previously unimagined ways. Bruce, a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales’ School of Solar Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering (SPREE), leads work on the role of distributed energy resources in the energy transition, analysing firsthand the dizzying level of complexity it brings.

Solar power is already the cheapest form of electricity generation, and its cost will continue to fall as more improvements emerge in the technology and its global production. Now, new research is exploring what could be another major turning point in solar cell manufacturing.

The research group led by Professor Martin Green has published Version 58 of the Solar cell efficiency tables. He spoke with pv magazine about the criteria with which these tables are compiled and the importance of result certification by independent third parties.