Solar Panel Breakthrough Could Almost Double The Efficiency Of Today's Panels

Here's hoping the new approach trickles down to consumer panels someday.

Researchers at the Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO) have discovered a novel way to design solar panels that can dramatically increase their energy efficiency. Notably, while existing studies have focused on reducing how much solar energy is lost to heat, ICFO's research addresses another limiting factor: Boltzmann loss, or the energy lost to the light solar panels emit.

New research doesn't mean you'll be able to go out and buy a more capable solar panel tomorrow, of course, but considering the growing adoption of plug-in balcony solar panelsin the US, improving the basics could go a long way. If it's possible to boost panel efficiency from the current theoretical limit of 33.16 percent (known as the Shockley-Queisser limit) to the roughly 43 percent the ICFO claims its new method would enable, we could see significant trickle-down benefits for...

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