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Solar power is now the fastest, most economical way to introduce more kilowatts into the US grid, and things are about to get a lot more interesting. Traditional silicon solar cells are relatively expensive and difficult to manufacture compared to the up-and-coming crop of photovoltaic technologies to emerge from the lab. In particular, new perovskite solar cells are finally beginning to hit the marketplace.
The Perovskite Solar Cell Story
The first practical silicon solar cell was introduced by Bell Labs in New Jersey back in 1954. However, widespread adoption is a 21st century phenome…
Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.
Solar power is now the fastest, most economical way to introduce more kilowatts into the US grid, and things are about to get a lot more interesting. Traditional silicon solar cells are relatively expensive and difficult to manufacture compared to the up-and-coming crop of photovoltaic technologies to emerge from the lab. In particular, new perovskite solar cells are finally beginning to hit the marketplace.
The Perovskite Solar Cell Story
The first practical silicon solar cell was introduced by Bell Labs in New Jersey back in 1954. However, widespread adoption is a 21st century phenomenon, spurred by accelerating cycles of falling costs and rising demand, leading to economies of scale that force prices down even farther with every cycle.
Those cycles will continue to pick up steam in the coming years. Although solar is already competitive with fossil fuels in many markets globally, solar innovators have not stopped trying to push the cost of solar cells down even farther, and perovskites are part of the effort.
Perovskites are lab-grown crystals that follow the structure of calcium titanate, also found in the mineral perovskite. By way of illustrating the rapid pace of innovation today, perovskite was first identified in nature back in 1839. However its application to solar cells did not surface for another 170 years. A team of researchers in Japan reported the first perovskite solar cell in 2009, with a solar conversion efficiency of 3.8%. Today, just 16 years later, researchers around the world are routinely hitting the double digits for perovskite solar conversion efficiency (see more perovskite background here).
Solving The Perovskite Solar Cell Puzzle
The road to a marketable perovskite solar cell has been a relatively short one, but a difficult one. Perovskites are extremely fragile, defying practical applications until researchers could figure out how to engineer durability and longevity without sacrificing solar conversion efficiency.
One promising workaround is a tandem approach that deploys layers of perovskites and silicon. Silicon is the longtime semiconductor of choice for mass-marketed solar cells. It is relatively expensive compared to perovskites, so combining the two yields a high-efficiency solar cell that is less expensive than silicon alone. The tandem approach also delivers a lighter, more flexible solar cell than silicon alone.
Among the innovators focusing on tandem perovskite solar cells is the US startup Swift Solar. The company is new to the pages of CleanTechnica so a bit of catch-up is in order.
The Acid Test For Perovskite Durability
Swift Solar co-founder and MIT engineer Joel Jean introduced his company’s perovskite solar cells in 2019. The company has focused on stacking different types of perovskites in a solar cell, boosting efficiency by absorbing different parts of the solar spectrum. As of 2019, Jean anticipated a solar conversion efficiency potential of more than 30% for its all-perovskite tandem solar cells.
The company has since adopted tandem perovskite-silicon technology while ramping into manufacturing mode. “Swift Solar’s proprietary next-generation perovskite tandem technology outperforms legacy silicon solar technologies, generating up to 30% more power than today’s solar panels,” the company asserts.
In August of this year, Swift’s US-made perovskite tandem solar cells were featured in the Defense Department’s annual Cyber Fortress exercise in Virginia, hosted by the 91st Cyber Brigade at Fort Belvoir and the Information Operations Support Center of the Virginia National Guard.
This year’s exercise focused in preparedness for a cyberattack on an electric cooperative (electric cooperatives are member-supported utilities that form the backbone of the US power grid), featuring multiple US agencies as well as students, electric co-ops, and representatives from other countries including Finland, Sweden, Latvia.
As part of the exercise, Swift’s technology was integrated with a hybrid microgrid engineered by the firm Resilient Energy & Infrastructure. “Swift Solar’s perovskite tandem solar panels provided clean energy alongside two other power sources during a critical infrastructure cyber defense exercise,” Swift explains.
“DoD leadership, Army operational energy specialists, and private sector partners like Amazon Web Services (AWS) were on hand to learn about and observe the DoD’s latest operational energy capabilities,” Swift adds.
A Next-Level, Solar-Enabled Microgrid For The DoD
“The exercise demonstrated the potential for Swift Solar’s technology to support energy resilience for national defense operations,” Swift concludes.
Don’t just take their word for it. In a press release dated October 24, Swift cited the Cyber Fortress Lead for the US Army, Dr. Andre Slonopas, who reported that **“**US-made perovskite solar technology can directly address the growing power demands of the modern battlefield and enhance overall military readiness.”
As for solar technology in general, don’t just take Slonopas’s word for it, either. The US Army has been pushing the market for solar-enabled microgrids and lightweight, transportable solar technology since the early 2000’s, to help secure a more nimble, flexible, scavenge-able power supply for the geared-up Soldier of today.
Resilient CEO Paul Maloney also chipped his two cents into Swift’s press release, taking note of the potential for perovskite solar cells to take his company’s “Rapid Deployment Hybrid MicroGrid” technology to the next level.
“For our mobile RDHMs, where space, weight, and agility are mission-critical factors for operational energy, we envision Swift Solar’s perovskite as vastly increasing the energy density we can deploy, while enhancing energy resilience for military operations,” Maloney explained.
Resilient is laser-focused on integrating solar and energy storage into transportable microgrids. Its portfolio includes the proprietary “SolFlex” solar array, designed to unfold and fold back up, accordion-style, enabling the entire system to be recovered and transported elsewhere. “Key facet: No stranded asset risk,” the company emphasizes.
“REI’s objective is to address a significant disequilibrium between legacy, inefficient, and antiquated centralized systems and more modern, resilient, and efficiency-optimized distributed systems-of-systems,” Resilient emphasizes again for good measure.
Next Steps For The US Solar Industry
Beyond the potential for use in microgrids, Swift also indicates that DoD is also interested in electromagnetic applications and space-based missions, among other fields. With plans to scale up its manufacturing systems over the next two years, Swift takes note of private sector interest among leading industries including power generation, satellite operations, and telecommunications
No kidding. It’s difficult to make an economical case for any other power generation resource in the US under the current state of energy technology today, with the ability to address mobile and transportable energy needs on up to utility-scale power plants. If you can think of one, drop a note in the comment thread.
Image (cropped): The US DoD is testing tandem perovskite solar cells paired with silicon to improve efficiency, durability, and overall performance without raising costs (screenshot, courtesy of Swift Solar).
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