Key Points
- Experts believe that traditional silicon solar panels are close to reaching their efficiency limits.
- China’s monopoly over silicon-based solar manufacturing makes it difficult for Australia to control its own supply chain: independent think tank.
- Emerging, ‘printable’ perovskite solar cells could could prove Australia still has a future in manufacturing
It’s no secret that Australia enjoys plenty of sunshine, allowing it to produce more solar energy per capita than any other country in the world.
But only a fraction of the sunlight hitting the surface of the Australia’s 3.6 million household solar panels, or “solar cells”, is converted into electricity.
Silicon is by far the most common semiconductor used in solar cells and many experts including Queensland University of Technology’s Professor Hongxia Wang say they’ve just about reached their maximum theoretical efficiency limit of 29-30 per cent.
Professor Hongxia Wang at QUT is exploring ways to break new efficiency benchmarks with perovskite solar technology. Credit: Anthony Weate
“The main limitation of silicon-based cells is the material itself … If you want it to absorb more solar energy, you need to make the panels thicker,” Wang told SBS Chinese.
At the same time, perovskite, another semiconductor, has been setting the scientific world alight due to its abundance, low-cost production and portability.
Wang’s team has found success in using low-cost carbon materials and graphene to produce perovskite solar cells with comparable efficiency.
She said the current efficiency for perovskite was 32 per cent in the laboratory and was confident it could be even higher with continuous development.
“Our next step may be to do scale-up experiments, including some tests of battery performance under different conditions,” Wang said.
Perovskite solar cells are printed on flexible plastic films, paving the way for abundant, cheap and portable cells. Credit: CSIRO
In a field where scientists struggled for every per cent boost in solar efficiency, even a 0.1 per cent gain was an “incredible number”, Wang said.
Can Australia get ahead?
Separately, Mei Gao, Principal Research Scientist for the Printable Photovoltaics Team at the CSIRO, said the local development of perovskite solar cells had the potential to benefit the economy, boost the renewable energy sector and create domestic jobs.
“Perovskite’s advantage is in its cheaper and faster deployment as well as its performance indoors and in low-light conditions,” she said.
“It rolls up like a roll of newspaper. It’s very lightweight. You can unfold it and charge your phone or laptop,” she added.
Gao said they the CSIRO was working “closely” with the many perovskite research groups within major Australian universities to accelerate the development of the solar cells from the laboratory to industry.
The CSIRO's Mei Gao said they were also working on low-cost, lightweight, flexible, easily fabricated solar cells. Credit: CSIRO
Meanwhile, others in the commercial space have more ambitious targets.
Wang’s industry partner, Paul Moonie, founder of Halocell (in collaboration with First Graphene), said he was confident of large-scale manufacturing of perovskite solar cells within five years.
The consortium was awarded a $2 million grant in June from the Australian government’s Cooperative Research Centres Project, or CRC-P initiative.
Perovskite solar cells can be printed using roll-to-roll technology on flexible plastic films and Moonie said this was where they held a competitive edge over silicon solar powerhouse China.
He added that the manufacturing of perovskite solar cells was cheap, required less energy to produce and was highly automated, which meant lower labour costs.
Halocell's Paul Moonie said with the manufacturing of perovskite solar cells on rolls of film didn't require a huge workforce or floor space. Credit: JACKIE COOPER
Energy analyst at independent think tank Climate Energy Finance, Xuyang Dong, said clear policy targets had helped led China to yield more than 80 per cent of the world’s solar manufacturing capacity.
She said Australia had the opportunity to capitalise on the manufacturing of emerging solar technologies through similar “hard” policy planning.
“China’s central government sets energy goals, such as its renewable energy development targets in the 14th Five-Year Plan, which compels state-owned energy enterprises to undergo transformations in line with these policies. It's not a recommendation, it's a compulsory command,” Dong said.
Halocell's Paul Moonie said he believed perovskite solar cells could be manufactured competitively in Australia. Credit: JACKIE COOPER
“Forty years ago, the silicon technology was largely invented at the University of New South Wales and we let all that IP go,” he said, adding he had problems with how research and commercialisation was conducted in Australia.
“Now we tend to dig up coal, send it to China, they make solar panels for us and sell it back to us. Our universities generate some of the best IPs in the world; but North America, Asia and Europe are good at commercialising that and value-adding,”
He said he saw the industry not just capable of producing the next generation of solar technology but disproving that thesis that it was difficult to do research commercialisation in Australia.
“Albanese is right, as was Scott Morrison. We’ve got to make things here. We need to bring manufacturing back to Australia,” he said.
