Onyx to help bring perovskite solar cells to market
Onyx Solar has announced that it will participate in ESPResSo, an ambitious €5 million, EU funded collaboration project to make perovskite solar cells a market reality.
The ESPResSo team targets cost-effective alternative materials, novel cell concepts and architectures, and advanced processing know-how and equipment to overcome the current limitations of perovskite technology. The consortium aims to bring the cell performance close to its theoretical limit by demonstrating cell efficiency of more than 24 percent (on 1cm²) and less than 10 percent degradation in cell efficiency following thermal stress at 85degC, 85 percent RH for over 1000h. Scale-up activities using solution processed slot-die coating and laser processing will additionally deliver modules with more than 17 percent efficiency showing long-term (>20 years) reliable performance as deduced from IEC-compliant test conditions.
With its low-cost materials and low-temperature deposition processes, perovskite-based PV technology has the potential to take its place in the thin-film PV market. Perovskite solar cells have already demonstrated high efficiencies (above 22 percent) that rival those of established mainstream thin-film PV technologies like CIGS and CdTe. The challenge is now to transfer the unprecedented progress that the perovskite PV cell technology has made in recent years from its cell level into a scalable, stable, low-cost technology on module level.
The ESPResSo team also envisions integrating modules in façade elements demonstrating a levelised cost of electricity (LCoE) of ≤ 0.05€/kWh. Prototyping advanced, arbitrary-shaped architectures with specific materials and process combinations will emphasise that new highly innovative applications like on flexible substrates or with high semi-transparency are well accessible in the mid- to longer-term with this very promising thin-film PV technology.
The members of the consortium include the fundamental research organisations, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland and Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Italy; Perovskite solar cell scale-up and industrialisation members IMEC, Belgium, Universita degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata (UNITOV-CHOSE), Italy and Fraunofer, Germany; Experts in sustainability and durability CSGI (Consorzio Interuniversitario per lo Svilu ppo dei Sistemi a Grande Interfase), Italy and University of Cyprus, Cyprus.
Members representing materials development include Dycotec Materials, UK, Dyenamo AB, Sweden and Corning SAS, France; M-Solv, UK; Saule, Poland; Onyx Solar Energy, Spain.
