Solar Panel Efficiency World Record

  World Record broken in Major Breakthrough for Solar Panel Efficiency

The world’s largest producer of solar panels made headlines with a new world record for a product’s energy conversion efficiency. Longi Green Energy Technology, the world’s largest producer of solar panels, made headlines by announcing it has broken another world record for a product’s energy conversion efficiency. While the news is exciting for scientists and engineers, it will take years for this achievement to translate to cheaper electricity bills for consumers and bolster global efforts to decarbonise energy production and fight climate change, analysts said. New record comes as renewable energy passes 30 per cent of global electricity generation for first time. Solar panel breakthrough could make renewable energy more commercially viable. Scientists have broken the world record for solar panel efficiency, less than six months after setting the previous record.

A research team from Chinese firm LONGi Green Energy Technology, which is the world’s largest solar panel supplier, achieved an efficiency level of 27.3 per cent, breaking the previous record of 27.1 per cent set in November. The latest record was made under laboratory conditions using a crystalline silicon solar cell, however the company also unveiled a new commercially available cell with a conversion efficiency rate of 24.43 per cent. LONGi said the new technology will provide a major boost for the global transition to clean energy sources.

It is really a great achievement, bringing the progress in the industry to the next level. The next notable factor, however, is to stabilise the production cost at a level which is viable for commercialisation. Though Longi is able to produce solar cells using a single production line with a capacity of several hundred megawatts, it will take one or two years to scale up production and reduce costs. A solar panel is an assembly of solar cells mounted in a frame. “What’s more, it retains this performance throughout its life, as the module is designed to the highest standards of reliability,” said Dennis She, vice president of LONGi Green Energy Technology. “Power plant owners can rest assured that a plant built from the HiMO 9 module will help them make the most efficient use of their land and get the most value out of sunlight.”

The latest record is still a way off the record set by next-generation solar cells that use perovskite, which have achieved efficiency rates beyond 33%  in the lab. However it bodes well for increasing the electricity generation capabilities of solar on a global scale. Remarkably, this achievement not only exceeded the theoretical limit of 33.7% for standard single junction cells, commonly found in commercial solar panels, but it also marked the first instance of surpassing this limit. The new record coincides with a report revealing that renewable energy accounted for more than 30 per cent of the world’s electricity for the first time. Solar power accounts for more than 10 per cent of annual electricity generation in more than 30 countries, while now making up 5.5 per cent of global electricity generation in 2023 – up from 4.6 per cent in 2022. The surge in clean energy use has largely be driven by the adoption of solar technologies, according to the Global Electricity Review published by climate think tank Ember. “The renewables future has arrived,” said Dave Jones, global insights director at Ember. “Solar in particular is accelerating faster than anyone thought possible.”

Renewable energy, mainly solar and wind, will meet over 70 per cent of China’s additional electricity demand in the next three years as the nation aims for peak coal consumption by 2025 and peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 to help fight global warming, according to the International Energy Agency. Longi’s achievement will be included in the next version of the efficiency tables tracking the industry’s progress, the Shanghai-listed firm quoted Martin Green, known in the field as the “father of photovoltaics”, as saying at a ceremony to announce the record. “Together with wind, solar will form the backbone of the future electricity system, providing nearly 70 per cent of global electricity by 2050,” Ember’s report stated. “The continuing cost reductions for solar and wind power, battery storage, EVs and other key technologies show that a clean energy future is also a cheaper energy future.”

The PERC solar cell he invented in 1983 accounted for 91.2 per cent of global silicon solar panels produced last year, according to the China Photovoltaic Industry Association. The conversion efficiency of cells is reduced by 2 to 3 percentage points after they are assembled into panels. While more efficient modules are more expensive and would increase the upfront infrastructure costs, this could be more than offset by savings on transportation, installation, operations and maintenance. However, future cost reduction is hard to predict since manufacturing solar components consumes a lot of electricity. Higher prices of the materials used to build solar generation systems, such as aluminium used in support structures and ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) used to seal the solar cells into panels, have also affected costs.  The breakthrough in efficiency, reaching 33.9%, represents a significant leap forward in solar cell technology. The emergence of crystalline silicon-perovskite tandem technology has paved the way for the development of next-generation high-efficiency solar cells, allowing the same area, absorbing the same light, to produce more electricity.

The Renewable Energy Institute prides itself on being at the forefront of renewable energy training. With a host of expert course lecturers, our topics are frequently updated to ensure the most relevant and up to date information is being covered. Perovskite is just one of many new renewable energy technologies, ensure your knowledge on the ever changing world of renewable energy is kept up to date by joining our exclusive Renewable Energy Institute Membership Programme on completion of any course; including Expert Certificates and the Accredited Master Award in Renewable Energy. Projections indicate that the next-generation panels could be both 50% cheaper and 50% more efficient than traditional silicon cells. UK start-up Oxford PV, a spin-out from the University of Oxford, is actively working on commercialising this technology and aims to commence full-scale production at a German facility.