Spray-on material to lead to cheaper solar panels

In a bid to reduce CO2 emissions and provide sustainable clean energy, the search continues with academics and industry to develop cheap efficient solar energy that competes with traditional forms of power.

 

Some experts believe that over the next decade the price of solar panels will drop by as much as ten per cent a year and that solar power will be the main source of energy. We are certainly seeing with new technological advances and increased production costs prices starting to drop.

 

Now a new company Spark Solar Australia has teamed up with the Australian National University (ANU) to create a new spray-on material that could make solar panels cheaper.

 

The development which is one of two projects being funded with a combined total of $1.85m and will focus on a new way to treat the surface of a solar cell, the core component inside a solar panel that converts sunlight to electricity. The project will be run with the Finnish materials company Braggone Oy.

 

Dr Keith McIntosh from ANU said in a recent announcement "It will provide an opportunity for significant manufacturing cost reductions by replacing the conventional, expensive manufacturing techniques that are currently employed industry-wide with the spray-on films."

 

The second project will be run with German solar company GP Solar and led by ANU who will look at methods to change the surface of a solar cell to improve its efficiency.

 

Spark Solar Australia hope to raise $60 million to build a factory in the ACT region so that solar cell production can start in 2010. The factory will initially produce eight million solar cells per year, enough to power about 10,000 Australian homes, using state-of-the-art manufacturing technology.

 

For more attend the conference Photovoltaics Beyond Conventional Silicon Europe  and read Printed and Thin Film Photovoltaics and Batteries .