Germans break sunlight-to-electricity record

German researchers say they’ve broken a new record for solar energy efficiency, converting a full 41.1 percent of the power of incoming rays into electricity.

“We are elated by this breakthrough,” said Frank Dimroth, a member of the research team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE).

“The high efficiencies of our solar cells are the most effective way to reduce the electricity generation costs for concentrating PV (photovoltaic) systems,” said Andreas Bett, department head at Fraunhofer ISE. “We want that photovoltaics become competitive with conventional methods of electricity production as soon as possible. With our new efficiency results, we have moved a big step further towards achieving this goal.”

The Fraunhofer system concentrates incoming sunlight by a factor of 454, then focuses the beams onto tiny — 5 millimeters square — solar cells made of gallium indium phosphide and gallium indium arsenide on a germanium substrate.

Previously, such so-called “metamorphic multi-junction” solar cells presented efficiency problems because of hard-to-eliminate defects in the solar cell’s crystal materials. Rather than get rid of the defects, the Fraunhofer team found a way to localize the defects in parts of the solar cell that aren’t electrically active. The result: a solar cell whose electrically active regions are free of defects and capable of record-high efficiencies.

You can find further details about the technology at the Fraunhofer ISE’s Website.

The Fraunhofer team is now working with two German companies — Azur Space and Concentrix Solar GmbH — to “make this technology competitive as soon as possible.”