The efficiency of solar panels for the first time reached 40%

Scientists from Australia's University of New South Wales announced that after a series of public trials in Sydney they were able to convert sunlight into electricity with a record efficiency of 40%. It is important to note that scientists from Australia are among the first who began to set records in efficiency in the production of electricity from solar light since 1989. At that time, the researchers were able to achieve results in 20% efficiency.

The experts behind this project, explain that, despite the current level of research in the field of generation of electricity through photovoltaic systems, the performance indicator which has been made in the course of experiments in Sydney, is the first in history.

"This is the highest level of efficiency of production of electricity from sunlight at the moment," says Martin green, Professor and Director of the Centre for policy development in the field of photovoltaics.

In a published article in the scientific journal Progress in Photovoltaics Martin green and his colleagues are trying to explain why their success in improving efficiency in the production of electricity from solar energy gives new hopes for the popularity of this renewable energy and why it may one day become a major world energy source.

Scientists explain that while working on this project, they turned for help to the Australian company RayGen Resources and the American company Spectrolab. The first helped with the design and installation of the system, and the second engaged in the manufacture of solar panels.

His success in raising the level of efficiency in the production of electricity from sunlight international team of scientists is obliged newly developed so-called optical band-pass filter used to capture the fact sunlight which, in turn, without the use of this technology simply would be spent in vain.

As explained by Martin green and his colleagues, this filter was built specifically to order and were used to selectively capture and transfer part of the spectrum and cast those light waves that are not of interest within this series of experiments. In other words, the photovoltaic system built by scientists, worked on the principle of focusing sunlight.

"New results based on the use of focused sunlight, and are of particular importance for photovoltaic power towers, which are currently being developed in Australia," commented green.

One of the developers of the new system, Dr. mark of kivers, explains that the new approach to collect solar energy is not sverhodarennym and, if desired, it can be used everywhere. We apply the conventional solar cells which are used in all solar panels installed in the world. In other words, even the most ordinary solar panels can be upgraded so that they showed similar results of efficiency, which was shown in experiments in Sydney.

Source: hi-news.ru