Only 13% of US solar industry jobs are currently in manufacturing. The Biden administration hopes the sector will grow fast, but that might not be so simple.
The process of manufacturing gallium-doped solar panels was under a patent until last year. It’s only now that this method has started to pick up steam.
Installing solar panels on a roof.
Shutterstock/lalanta71
The first commercial-scale installation of rooftop solar cells, printed with specialised inks, is a step towards an energy future in which solar power can be stuck to any roof or structure.
What if it were a lot easier to install solar power?
zstock/Shutterstock.com
Silicon is cheap and a good semiconductor, but it’s bulky and rigid. Using organic polymers as semiconductors could yield solar panels with the physical characteristics of plastics.
Solar windows would need to trap enough light to generate power, while letting through enough to keep buildings light. Thankfully, newly developed semitransparent cells offer to do just that.
Individual light-harvesting protein complexes have a remarkable ability. Light, which is normally effectively harvested, is also used to finely control how much of it should be harvested.
Is solar power the technology of the future? It is certainly the fastest-growing energy generation technology in the UK. By the early 2020s, according to a new report, it will be cost-competitive with…
Perovskite, the latest magical substance.
Rob Lavinsky/iRocks.com
Whenever I tell people I work with solar cells I am asked the same two questions: are they ever going to be really cheap? And can you get me some? While the answer to the second question is no, the answer…
Layers of cool: a thin layer of glass added to solar cells could help them work better for longer.
Minoru Karamatsu/Flickr
Self-cooling, longer lasting and more efficient solar cells are within reach simply by adding a thin layer of glass. A paper published today in the online journal Optica outlines a possible solution for…