FIG - Flux Increasing Glass to enhance photovoltaic efficiency

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The cost of silicon photovoltaics has fallen dramatically over the last 10 years to around 0.5$ per peak Watt of generating capacity and needs to fall further if grid parity is to be achieved but the efficiency of the best laboratory silicon cells has hardly increased during that period because, at 26% efficient, they are already well optimised and close to the theoretical efficiency limit of 29%. This project aims to develop a coating for solar module cover glass that is able to split photons of high-energy blue and green light into two infra-red photons. This increase in photon flux increases the amount of electricity generated, adding up to 4% to the efficiency of a silicon module of average efficiency and reducing the cost of the solar energy produced. The new materials technology that makes this possible has just been demonstrated to be feasible in a single-layer coating. In this project, the consortium aims to significantly improve the efficiency of the technology, to develop a process for coating it on glass and to show that it can remain operational after lamination to silicon solar cells.