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					</table>Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (<a href="https://www.nrel.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NREL</a>) have proposed enhancing cell and module efficiency to record levels, scale manufacturing, address reliability, and durability issues, and figure out the design of hybrid tandem solar modules to better commercialize them.
Tandem cells, which combine two or more junctions, are recognized for their potential to achieve much higher efficiencies—over 40% under ideal conditions—compared to single-junction cells. Despite this, the commercial scalability of these cells continues to be hindered by the need for improved material properties, better integration techniques, and solving the durability and reliability issues.
In a recently published study in the journal Joule, the researchers have outlined a pathway by reviewing the current state of photovoltaic (PV) technologies and proposed a roadmap for overcoming the challenges. Through this, the team was able to effectively map the fundamental aspects of the cells and also identify the technical hurdles that needed to be navigated to improve the commercial viability of the tandem cells.
As per the researchers, most solar modules currently in use depend on a single junction, which can only absorb a fraction of the solar spectrum, limiting their efficiency. Tandem solar cells, when stacked together, hold the potential to reach higher efficiencies.
Tandem cells also come with their own challenges. ‘For single-junction PV materials, modules are made by interconnecting individual cells laterally in series. For tandems, there are multiple options to interconnect the cells, which provides another layer of complexity to the design of tandem modules,” said co-author Emily Warren, a staff scientist in the High-Efficiency Crystalline Photovoltaics group at NREL.
The roadmap they charted focuses on combining two or more different PV technologies — hybrid tandems — to provide maximum efficiency. These are further divided into top cells and bottom cells.
The researchers have also found that only three single-junction PV technologies were successfully scaled up to at least a gigawatt production.
Inroads have been made by solar cells from copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) and cadmium telluride (CdTe). CIGS is suitable for a bottom cell and CdTe as a top.
However, the commercialization trajectories between silicon and thin-film cells made of CIGS and CdTe inform the challenges that must be overcome to establish a gigawatt-scale tandem technology. Silicon PV benefitted from a steady influx of investments by the semiconductor community, resulting in shared knowledge and standardized processes.
For CIGS and CdTe, companies have guarded their processes and deposition techniques as they attempt to make headway against silicon PV.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-65754 size-full" src="https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Picture1.jpg" alt="Cell level configurations" width="936" height="748" srcset="https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Picture1.jpg 936w, https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Picture1-300x240.jpg 300w, https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Picture1-768x614.jpg 768w, https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Picture1-650x519.jpg 650w, https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Picture1-624x499.jpg 624w, https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Picture1-600x479.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 936px) 100vw, 936px" />
For the top cell, the roadmap also vouches for the potential of other materials such as Gallium arsenide (GaAs) and gallium indium phosphide (GaInP)- both of which are known for their highest efficiency in single-junction devices. However, they are expensive, and the researchers at NREL were keen to search for cheaper manufacturing methods.
“Metal halide perovskites provide high enough efficiencies as a top cell and are also cost-effective enough to incorporate that the tandem would have much higher efficiencies than the single-junction cells of either technology,” said Kirstin Alberi, the lead author of Joule.
For the bottom cell, silicon is an obvious choice that is currently dominating the solar industry. The researchers claim that a tandem cell consisting of these top and bottom cells currently holds the record for efficiency. Further, this can be an important driver for lowering the total system cost by reducing the area of the system and the associated balance of system costs.
With these benefits, the study has placed tandem cells on the roadmap of PV manufacturers and has predicted that the cells will reach 2% of the market share by 2030.
“Existing consortia have proven to be immensely helpful in the development and commercialization of single-junction PV technologies because they can help in information sharing, advocating for cross-cutting research that will help the field as a whole, and focusing larger sets of stakeholders to work together to solve problems that impact the entire field,” said Alberi.
The authors have sought to enable researchers and manufacturers to collaborate and address important aspects of tandem design, reliability, and scaling to facilitate progress in mass commercialization.
Last month, researchers from the National University of Singapore <a href="https://www.mercomindia.com/record-efficiency-tandem-solar-cell" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> a record energy conversion efficiency of 27.1% in a triple-junction tandem solar cell that they developed.
Earlier this year, scientists from the University of Michigan also <a href="https://www.mercomindia.com/bulky-molecules-perovskite-solar-last-longer" target="_blank" rel="noopener">found</a> that adding bulky additives can improve the stability of perovskite solar cells and make them last longer.

NREL’s Roadmap to Make Tandem Solar Cells Commercially Viable

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					</table>The United States needs to deploy 40–90 GW of solar and 70–150 GW of wind energy every year until 2030 to decarbonize the country’s power sector by 2035, a report by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (<a href="https://www.nrel.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NREL</a>) and the U.S. Department of Energy (<a href="https://www.energy.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DOE</a>) has said.
The report estimates the move to cost $330-$740 billion in additional power systems costs between 2023 and 2035.
Electricity <a href="https://mercomindia.com/renewable-energy-generation-surpassed-nuclear/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">generated</a> from renewable sources totaled 795 million megawatt-hours (MWh) in the U.S. in 2021, surpassing the 778 million MWh of electric power generated from nuclear reactors. According to Energy Information Administration (<a href="https://www.eia.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">EIA</a>), wind and solar energy primarily contributed to the boost in power generation from renewables.
The report recommends concentrating on four scenarios — All options, Infrastructure renaissance, Constrained, and No carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies.
Wind and solar provide 60%–80% of the generation in the least-cost electricity mix in all the main scenarios.
The report suggests that research and development, manufacturing, and infrastructure investment decisions will help determine the exact technology mix costs over the next decade. It also says that the mix of technologies to achieve the net-zero carbon target in power generation is the main uncertainty in all four scenarios.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-41061" src="https://mercomindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Wind-and-Solar-by-2035.png" alt="Wind and Solar by 2035" width="756" height="516" srcset="https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Wind-and-Solar-by-2035.png 756w, https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Wind-and-Solar-by-2035-300x205.png 300w, https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Wind-and-Solar-by-2035-650x444.png 650w, https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Wind-and-Solar-by-2035-624x426.png 624w, https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Wind-and-Solar-by-2035-600x410.png 600w" sizes="(max-width: 756px) 100vw, 756px" />
The report projects that the overall generation capacity would grow to roughly three times the 2020 level by 2035, including a combined 2 TW of wind and solar capacity. This would require growth rates in the range of 43-90 GW every year for solar and 70-145 GW annually for wind energy by the end of 2030, which would more than quadruple the current annual deployment levels for each technology in many scenarios.
The study highlights that the grid emissions could decline to 68-78% below 2005 levels by 2030, while the longer implications of the new laws are uncertain.
Additionally, NREL represented seasonal storage in one of its models as clean hydrogen-fuelled combustion turbines, which can also include a variety of technologies under various stages of development, assuming they achieve similar costs and performance.
The report found significant uncertainty about seasonal storage fuel pathways, including synthetic natural gas, ammonia, and alternative conversion technologies such as fuel cells.
Bipartisan law and Inflation Reduction Act
The report comes just after the U.S. announced the <a href="https://mercomindia.com/inflation-reduction-act-a-gamechanger-solar/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Inflation Reduction Act</a> (IRA), which along with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, is estimated to reduce the economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions in the country to 40% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade.
Apart from higher technology costs, the report also highlights a few critical hurdles in decarbonizing the power sector. One of them is the investment required in doubling or tripling transmission capacity for connecting the new green energy capacity to the grid. However, the report says that the Inflation Regulation Act could mitigate the cost of installing new infrastructure.
The report suggests analyzing the unprecedented deployment rates that require a corresponding growth in raw materials, manufacturing units, and a skilled workforce. NREL recommends continued research, development, demonstration, and deployment support to bring emerging technologies to the market.
&nbsp;

US Needs to Deploy 90 GW Solar, 150 GW Wind Capacity Annually to Decarbonize Electric Grid

Scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (<a href="https://www.nrel.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NREL</a>) in the U.S used gallium arsenide (GaAs) with quantum wells and invented a multijunction solar cell that exhibited a record efficiency of 39.5% under 1-sun global illumination.
Through the new research, the NREL team explored concepts of quantum well solar cells that function using ultra-thin layers to alter the properties of solar cells.
While in a previous study, NREL scientists achieved a record efficiency of 39.2% in a solar cell with six junctions using III-V materials, the new experiment enhanced the bandgap combination of the three-junction inverted metamorphic design.
The solar cell invented by the team is based on NREL&#8217;s invention of the inverted metamorphic multijunction (IMM) architecture.
The IMM devices are used as experimental test structures to support NREL&#8217;s research, which focuses on increasing photovoltaic power conversion efficiencies. NREL developed it to be compatible with small sample sizes to afford rapid turn-around times, providing accurate and timely feedback for researchers.
Triple-junction solar cells
III-V solar cells possess the highest efficiencies of any materials system, making them the dominant technology for satellites and space vehicles like the Perseverance and the Curiosity rovers sent to Mars by <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NASA</a>. The triple-junction tandems are tolerant to high-energy particles, which become the key criteria for radiation environment during the launch of space vehicles.
The triple-junction tandems are named III-V because of where they fall on the periodic table. They span a wide range of energy bandgaps that allow them to target different parts of the solar spectrum. While gallium indium phosphide (GaInP) is the topmost junction, gallium arsenide (GaAs) is the middle layer with quantum wells (QW). The bottom layer is made of lattice-mismatched gallium indium arsenide (GaInAs).
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-35563" src="http://mercomindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Multijunction-solar-cell-design.jpg" alt="Multijunction solar cell design" width="996" height="996" />
<h6 style="text-align: center;">Source: Science Direct</h6>
&#8220;A key element is that while GaAs is an excellent material and generally used in III-V multijunction cells, it does not have the correct bandgap for a three-junction cell, meaning that the balance of photocurrents between the three cells is not optimal. Here we have modified the bandgap while maintaining excellent material quality by using quantum wells, enabling this device and potentially other applications,&#8221; observed senior scientist and cell designer Ryan France, who co-authored the research.
The NREL scientists introduced a middle cell with a lower bandgap than GaAs and proved better for global and space spectra. The team targeted the ideal three-junction bandgap combination using two metamorphic junctions and observed that even as the concentrator efficiency was excellent. The voltage loss in 1.35 Ev gallium indium arsenide resulted in a greater efficiency loss under 1-sun.
&nbsp;
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-35564" src="http://mercomindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Multijunction-record-efficiencies.jpg" alt="Multijunction record efficiencies" width="2917" height="866" />
<h6 style="text-align: center;">Source: Science Direct</h6>
In contrast, a higher efficiency could be attained after the team implemented the improved bandgap combination. The NREL scientists pursued quantum wells to engineer the bandgap of materials. The QWs are planar nanostructures that sandwich a lower bandgap well layer between two higher bandgap-confining barrier layers. The team introduced an absorption edge (ionization threshold to continuum states) that depends on the low bandgap of the well layer combined with the effects of strain and quantum confinement— all of which act to raise the effective bandgap in the solar cells.
The scientists developed an optically thick GaInAs/ GaAsP strain balanced quantum well superlattices exhibiting excellent absorption and voltage for the first time by maintaining excellent material quality in multiple QW repeat procedures for the solar cells in the experiment. The optimal bandgap combination of the device, combined with high voltage and absorption in the QW solar cell, resulted in a record efficiency of 39.5% ± 0.5% under the AM1.5 global spectrum and 34.2% ± 0.6% efficiency under the AM0 space spectrum.
Researchers globally have been conducting experiments to enhance the properties of solar cells. Earlier this year, researchers from Stanford University claimed to have <a href="https://mercomindia.com/researchers-develop-solar-cell-electricity-generation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">developed</a> a solar photovoltaic cell that harvests energy from the environment during day and night, utilizing radiative cooling while avoiding the need for batteries.

Solar Cell With 39.5% Efficiency in 1-Sun Illumination Developed Using Quantum Wells

A team of scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (<a href="https://www.nrel.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NREL</a>) has analyzed a water-splitting method called solar thermochemical hydrogen (STCH), which can be more energy-efficient than the standard electrolysis process for hydrogen production.
Due to the properties of being a carrier to store energy generated by renewable resources, hydrogen is a potential replacement for fossil fuels currently used for transportation, ammonia production, and other industrial applications.
The new research is published in the journal <a href="https://www.journals.elsevier.com/renewable-energy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Renewable Energy</a> titled System and Techno-economic Analysis of Solar Thermochemical Hydrogen Production.
In standard electrolysis, photovoltaics are used to convert sunlight into electricity. However, the PV cells in use only capture a part of the solar radiation. In contrast, STCH uses the entire spectrum using concentrated solar thermal (CST) power, which the NREL scientists pursued.
The NREL scientists claimed that perovskites are likely to play a crucial role in producing hydrogen in a renewable manner. The research aligns with the U.S. Department of Energy&#8217;s Hydrogen Energy Earthshot program. The Biden administration aims to use hydrogen as fuel, ultimately reducing the cost of clean hydrogen by 80% to $1 per kilogram in a decade.
NREL&#8217;s newly developed water electrolysis process utilizes a complete spectrum of solar radiation, resulting in higher solar energy conversion efficiencies. The team claimed that a preferred configuration for hydrogen production is to have the high-temperature step occurring in a directly irradiated solar receiver reactor. The scientists then conceptualized a receiver design and associated solar field layout to probe the operational boundaries of the STCH production method.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-35220" src="https://mercomindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Picture1.jpg" alt="" width="1377" height="777" srcset="https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Picture1.jpg 1377w, https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Picture1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Picture1-768x433.jpg 768w, https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Picture1-650x367.jpg 650w, https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Picture1-844x475.jpg 844w, https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Picture1-624x352.jpg 624w, https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Picture1-600x339.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1377px) 100vw, 1377px" />
The design was further used to investigate the component costs and sensitivity parameters of the Department of Energy&#8217;s $2/kg hydrogen goal.
One of the co-authors observed, &#8220;The material has not necessarily been found, but this analysis provides some boundaries for where we think the costs will be if the materials meet some of the targets and expectations the research community envisions.&#8221;
Water is split into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity in the standard electrolysis procedure. Solar thermochemical hydrogen production pursues a two-step chemical process to produce hydrogen. In the first step, metal oxides are exposed to higher temperatures over 1,400 degrees. The second procedure involves re-oxidizing metal oxides with steam at lower temperatures to generate hydrogen.
Companies worldwide are racing to produce clean hydrogen as a substitute for fossil fuels.
<a href="https://hygenco.in/?msclkid=e4ae52ecd0e711ec861cf65e7ab57e88" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hygenco</a>, an Indian venture-backed by solar developer Vivaan Solar, recently<a href="https://mercomindia.com/daily-news-wrap-up-oil-companies-sign-agreement-petrol-program/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> installed</a> India&#8217;s first-of-its-kind off-grid solar photovoltaic-based green hydrogen pilot plant in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh. An advanced energy management and control system (ECMS) controls the green hydrogen pilot plant. The venture announced that the pilot plant in Ujjain is 100% green while being completely independent of the grid and is fossil-powered.
Last month, Indian scientists from CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad, <a href="https://mercomindia.com/indian-scientists-produce-clean-h2-with-carbon-capture-efficiency/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">developed</a> a fluidized bed reactor (FBR) facility to produce clean hydrogen in its purest form.

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