“The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.”
Edith Wharton
You may have noticed solar energy is a common topic here at Unheating. This is because it checks a lot of boxes: it’s clean, cheap, and limitless. Soon, new technologies will allow solar cells to be coated on almost any surface. It’s fun to imagine the possibilities of ultra-thin solar.
Despite its benefits, solar has some downsides. Among other things, the silicon panels in use today are large and heavy. But new technology is coming. Oxford University, a leader in developing solar cells made from other materials, recently announced a breakthrough with perovskite.
What is perovskite
Please don’t ask me to pronounce it, but it’s a mineral containing calcium, titanium, and oxygen. Solar cells made with perovskite are created synthetically in labs. Earlier iterations didn’t convert sunlight to energy very efficiently, but scientists have been hard at work cooking up new versions. This latest form has proven to be as effective, if not more, than silicon panels.
Ultra-thin solar
The new substance is so thin and flexible it could be applied to almost any surface. Just how thin? We are talking 1 micron, or about 150 times thinner than a silicon wafer. Or for us non-scientists, thousands of times thinner than a vanilla wafer. The potential applications for perovskite solar cells are endless – for starters, they could be coated on things like cars, windows, walls, roofs, and phones.
Silicon panels are still the gold standard, and we need to keep adding them to the grid as fast as possible. That said, this new option will likely be a versatile, lower-cost supplement to what we have today. The sky is the limit!
Let’s do something about climate change. Learn about it. Think about it. Talk about it.