New PV technology -Silicone and Thin Film Combined
Who says a solar company has to choose between conventional silicon and thin-film solar cells? RoseStreet Labs Energy , a Phoenix-based private company, is combining the two in a double-layered cell that it claims can achieve “practical efficiencies” – meaning efficiencies of cells actually available on the market, not just in the lab – of 25 to 30 percent . On Monday, the company announced the world’s first (or as RoseStreet put it, the “first known”) nitride/silicon tandem solar cell, which it plans to produce in the fourth quarter of next year. The potential efficiency might not sound breathtaking considering that the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency both announced last year that they had produced cells that achieved more than 40 percent efficiency in the lab. But lab efficiencies and production efficiencies are not the same thing, and the highest efficiencies for mass-produced solar cells hover around 22 percent. SunPower Cor...