Talk:Solar-cell efficiency

Latest scientific research

 * 2011: A new scientific paper promises solar product that captures up to 95 percent of light energy. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-05-solar-product-captures-percent-energy.html
 * 2013: Perovskite: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/521491/a-new-solar-material-shows-its-potential/ --spitzl (talk) 10:47, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Cell efficiency chart
Can someone add the NREL research cell efficiency chart back to this page. The updated version is PVeff(rev140627).jpg and is back in WikiCommons; this image is in the public domain. I load updated versions whenever we add new efficiency points. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dgwinner (talk • contribs) 12:41, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

The NREL efficiency chart would be a better graph to show on the top of the article, compared to the image of dust on a cell; — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.69.131.10 (talk) 11:49, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

I have now moved the chart to the top of the article. I also moved the picture of the cell with dust down to the only paragraph where dust is mentioned in the article (the section about ''Maximum power point" Aasmusko (talk) 10:29, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

STC?
Please do not use uncommon abbreviations I have no idea what STC is and I'm sure that goes for most of the world's population.

It's not even here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.186.85.10 (talk) 13:13, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

= "Standard Testing Conditions." I think acronyms are dumb. 97.125.100.129 (talk) 23:08, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

I notice that "Standard Testing Conditions" have been written out everywhere now. The only remaining place where "STC" is used (in the Comparison section), it refers to "standard temperature and conditions", which I have not heard of before. I suggest the acronym "(STC)" is removed altogether Aasmusko (talk) 10:22, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Calculated Efficiency in the first section
"In central Colorado, which receives annual insolation of 5.5 kWh/m2/day,[1] such a panel can be expected to produce 440 kWh of energy per year."

5.5*20%*365=400, not 440. Is this a typo, or am I missing something? 128.227.181.62 (talk) 14:44, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

New edit
"a solar panel with 20% efficiency and an area of 1 m2 will produce 200 W at Standard Test Conditions" but insolation at the tropics is only about 300 W per m2 (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance) which would give a figure of 60W not 200W or am I missing something 217.155.120.142 (talk) 12:46, 20 January 2018 (UTC)Morley@lineone.net
 * First off, never trust a number out of Wikipedia till you've verified it with an authoritative source. Secondly, Solar irradiance, after an awesome amount of irrelevancy, tells us that the direct irradiance at the earth's surface is around 1050 watts/square meter. Thirdly, the sentence says "standard test conditions" whose relationship with the real world is always a matter for discussion. --Wtshymanski (talk) 18:59, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Direct irradiance at the earth's surface is around 1050 watts/square meter only at noon, at the equator, under optimal atmospheric conditions. At any other time and place, it is less -- generally much less. Taking the average over daylight hours, at mid-latitudes, and accounting for dust, aerosols, terrain features, and cloud cover, the available solar irradiance is much, much less than ~1000 W/m^2.

Updates infrequent
So...a lot of this article goes out of date rapidly. Assuming we provide numbers, they have to be changed every couple of years, and some of this data is 10 years out of date.

It's very misleading.

97.125.100.129 (talk) 23:10, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It should be updated weekly, not decennially. MaynardClark (talk) 11:13, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Update system efficiencies
This is very old (>12 years) and should be updated.

Commercially available solar cells (as of 2006) reached system efficiencies between 5 and 19%. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.130.151.38 (talk) 20:32, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Update on solar cells with an efficiency of 47.1% ("Six-junction III–V solar cells with 47.1% conversion efficiency under 143 Suns concentration")
The article's lead currently has this:

In 2019, the world record for solar cell efficiency at 47.1% was achieved by using multi-junction concentrator solar cells, developed at National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, Colorado, USA. This is above the standard rating of 37.0% for polycrystalline photovoltaic or thin-film solar cells.

The study used as reference has this abstract (emphasis by me):

We propose practical six-junction (6J) inverted metamorphic multijunction (IMM) concentrator solar cell designs with the potential to exceed 50% efficiency using moderately high quality junction materials. We demonstrate the top three junctions and their monolithic integration lattice matched to GaAs using 2.1-eV AlGaInP, 1.7-eV AlGaAs or GaInAsP, and 1.4-eV GaAs with external radiative efficiencies >0.1%. We demonstrate tunnel junctions with peak tunneling current >400 A/cm 2 that are transparent to <;2.1-eV light. We compare the bottom three GaInAs(p) junctions with bandgaps of 1.2, 1.0, and 0.7 eV grown on InP and transparent metamorphic grades with low dislocation densities. The solution to an integration challenge resulting from Zn diffusion in the GaAs junction is illustrated in a five-junction IMM. Excellent 1-sun performance is demonstrated in a complete 6J IMM device with V OC = 5.15 V, and a promising pathway toward >50% efficiency at high concentrations is presented.

and the study's conclusion has (emphasis by me):

We have demonstrated excellent performance of an initial 6J IMM device at 1 sun, but achieving low series resistance remains the primary challenge to achieving 50% efficiency. However, nowhere in the study can I find a claim of them having built a solar cell with 47.1% efficiency.

Am I missing something there or is there a separate source which says so?

Furthermore, in April 2020 this study was published: "Six-junction III–V solar cells with 47.1% conversion efficiency under 143 Suns concentration" by authors of the study. Could you please add information on it? It was received by the Nature journal in July 2019 which seems to validate the text of the lead. In that case it should be added as a reference there.

Should there be some other changes to the article to incorporate info on this study? (Reported on e.g. at:, )

And do you think it could be added to 2020 in science? Could you add it there (to the April section)?

--Prototyperspective (talk) 16:47, 31 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Why do we see numbers like 25% as one type of record, with >47% as another type of record. The article does not make sense of such SEEMING discrepancies.  JinkoSolar claims a record of 25.25% for a large-area n-type TOPCon monocrystalline solar cell.   Are claims duplicitous or deceptive, perhaps intentionally so?  Maybe this article could try to do more to sort out the nature and extent of different types of efficiency claims about newly-engineered solar cells.  An informative, illuminating, more highly educational chart might dramatically improve this article on solar cell efficiency.MaynardClark (talk) 11:09, 2 June 2021 (UTC)