Breakthrough in solar efficiency by UNSW team ahead of its time
Australian scientists have found a way of hugely increasing the
efficiency of solar panels while substantially reducing their cost.
The University of NSW researchers have come up with
improvements in photovoltaic panel design that had not been expected for
another decade...
Prices tumble
The price of solar panels has fallen by about 65 per cent in
two years, partly due to a huge rise in production in China.
Australians have been taking advantage of lower prices, with the number
of homes with solar panels exceeding 1 million.
The phenomenal growth has caused some casualties in the
industry as companies have taken on massive debt to expand supply, then
struggled with falling prices in saturated markets. Notable among them
is the recent debt default by Suntech Power, once the world's largest
solar-panel maker, founded by former University of NSW researcher Shi
Zhengrong.
Panel prices are predicted to fall much further. European
producers predict they will be 60 per cent cheaper by 2020. "Based on
the technological advances we're making, we think that's certainly
achievable," Dr Wenham said.
Eight commercial firms have signed up to be a partner in
developing the technology to an industrial scale, including Suntech,
which continues to operate from its base in the eastern Chinese city of
Wuxi and has a research unit in Sydney.
"It's the kind of advance that other people are anticipating
is a decade away,'' Suntech R&D Australia managing director Renate
Egan said. "It is quite a breakthrough."
Funding
Suntech funded much of the early work, including in China.
“Suntech has the right to use that (intellectual property) and UNSW has
the right to licence the technology to third parties,” Dr Egan said.
Funding to help commercialise the technology will total about
$15 million over three years, with the UNSW seeking support from the
federal government’s Australian Renewable Energy Agency for part of that
sum.
The annual funding of $5 million – equivalent to what bidders
last month paid for the half-brother of champion race mare Black Caviar
– is “a lot of money for us”, Dr Corkish said.
Already worth about $100 billion a year, the solar industry
is expected to swell to about $140 billion by 2018, according to
estimates published in April by Transparency Market Research.
Installed PV capacity probably surpassed 100 gigawatts,
worldwide, in the March quarter, according to the International Energy
Agency. Some forecasts project capacity will more than triple by the end
of the decade. Australia ranked ninth, with installed capacity of 2.4
GW, at the end of 2012.
