Solar Energy News

July 19, 2024

Top Headlines

Cool Roofs Are Best at Beating Cities' Heat

July 4, 2024 — Painting roofs white or covering them with a reflective coating would be more effective at cooling cities like London than vegetation-covered 'green roofs,' street-level vegetation or solar panels, finds a new study led by UCL ...

Giant Clams May Hold the Answers to Making Solar Energy More Efficient

July 2, 2024 — Solar panel and biorefinery designers could learn a thing or two from iridescent giant clams living near tropical coral reefs, according to a new study. This is because giant clams have precise geometries -- dynamic, vertical columns of ...

Moving Beyond the 80-Year-Old Solar Cell Equation

July 2, 2024 — Physicists have made a significant breakthrough in solar cell technology by developing a new analytical model that improves the understanding and efficiency of thin-film photovoltaic (PV) ...

Solar Technology: Innovative Light-Harvesting System Works Very Efficiently

June 26, 2024 — Researchers are reporting progress on the road to more efficient utilization of solar energy: They have developed an innovative light-harvesting ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:01pm EDT

Solar Farms With Stormwater Controls Mitigate Runoff, Erosion, Study Finds

July 18, 2024 — As the number of major utility-scale ground solar panel installations grows, concerns about their impacts on natural hydrologic processes also have grown. However, a new study by Penn State ...

Researchers Show Promising Material for Solar Energy Gets Its Curious Boost from Entropy

July 10, 2024 — Researchers discovered a microscopic mechanism that solves in part the outstanding performance achieved by a new class of organic semiconductors ...

Promise Green Hydrogen May Not Always Be Fulfilled

June 21, 2024 — Green hydrogen often, but certainly not always, leads to CO2 ...

A 'Liquid Battery' Advance

June 12, 2024 — A team aims to improve options for renewable energy storage through work on an emerging technology -- liquids for hydrogen ...

Lab Achieves Major Gains in Perovskite Solar Cell Stability

June 13, 2024 — Researchers have developed new chemistry to achieve commercially relevant stability and performance for perovskite solar ...

Algae Offer Real Potential as a Renewable Electricity Source

June 11, 2024 — The need to transition away from fossil fuels to more sustainable energy production is critical. That's why a team of researchers is looking at a potential power source that not only produces no ...

Some Countries Could Meet Their Total Electricity Needs from Floating Solar Panels

June 4, 2024 — Floating solar photovoltaic panels could supply all the electricity needs of some countries, new research has shown. The researchers calculated the ...

New Method Makes Hydrogen from Solar Power and Agricultural Waste

May 30, 2024 — Engineers have helped design a new method to make hydrogen gas from water using only solar power and agricultural waste such as manure or husks. The method reduces the energy needed to extract ...

Renewable Grid: Recovering Electricity from Heat Storage Hits 44% Efficiency

May 23, 2024 — Closing in on the theoretical maximum efficiency, devices for turning heat into electricity are edging closer to being practical for use on the grid, ...

Promising New Development in Solar Cell Technology

May 15, 2024 — Researchers who contributed to the development of record-breaking solar cells a few years ago, expanded their invention. The self-assembled monolayers can now be applied not only in inverted but also ...

Earlier Headlines

'Secret' Hidden Structure Paves New Way of Making More Efficient and Stable Perovskite Solar Cells

July 19, 2024 — Researchers has revealed the existence of surface concavities on individual crystal grains -- which are the fundamental blocks -- of perovskite thin films, and have unraveled their significant ...

Scientists Generate Heat Over 1,000 Degrees Celsius With Solar Power Instead of Fossil Fuel

May 15, 2024 — Instead of burning fossil fuels to smelt steel and cook cement, researchers in Switzerland want to use heat from the sun. The proof-of-concept study uses synthetic quartz to trap solar energy at ...

Efficacy of Solar Panels Boosted

May 7, 2024 — Solar energy is a crucial asset in the fight against climate change, and researchers have now devised a smart approach to optimize its effectiveness. Their innovative method includes incorporating ...

Low-Energy Process for High-Performance Solar Cells

May 7, 2024 — Finding reliable, eco-friendly power sources is crucial as our world grapples with increasing energy needs and the urgent call to combat climate change. Solar energy offers one solution, with ...

Path to Easier Recycling of Solar Modules

May 2, 2024 — The use of femtosecond lasers to form glass-to-glass welds for solar modules would make the panels easier to recycle, according to a proof-of-concept ...

Physicists Show That Light Can Generate Electricity Even in Translucent Materials

Apr. 29, 2024 — Some materials are transparent to light of a certain frequency. When such light is shone on them, electrical currents can still be generated, contrary to previous assumptions. Scientists have managed ...

Key to Efficient and Stable Organic Solar Cells

Apr. 25, 2024 — A team of researchers has made a significant breakthrough in the field of organic ...

Positive Perceptions of Solar Projects

Apr. 24, 2024 — A new survey has found that for residents living within three miles of a large-scale solar development, positive attitudes outnumbered negative attitudes by almost a 3-to-1 margin. Researchers ...

A Flexible and Efficient DC Power Converter for Sustainable-Energy Microgrids

Apr. 19, 2024 — A new DC-DC power converter is superior to previous designs and paves the way for more efficient, reliable and sustainable energy storage and conversion solutions. The development can efficiently ...

New Four-Terminal Tandem Organic Solar Cell Achieves 16.94% Power Conversion Efficiency

Apr. 8, 2024 — Researchers have fabricated a new four-terminal organic solar cell with a tandem configuration with a 16.94% power conversion efficiency (PCE). The new device is composed by a highly transparent ...

Chemistry Researchers Modify Solar Technology to Produce a Less Harmful Greenhouse Gas

Apr. 2, 2024 — Researchers are using semiconductors to harvest and convert the sun's energy into high-energy compounds that have the potential to produce environmentally-friendly ...

Heat, Cold Extremes Hold Untapped Potential for Solar and Wind Energy

Mar. 27, 2024 — Conditions that usually accompany the kind of intense hot and cold weather that strains power grids may also provide greater opportunities to capture solar and wind energy. A study found that ...

A Solar Cell You Can Bend and Soak in Water

Mar. 27, 2024 — Researchers have developed an organic photovoltaic film that is both waterproof and flexible, allowing a solar cell to be put onto clothes and still function correctly after being rained on or even ...

Pairing Crypto Mining With Green Hydrogen Offers Clean Energy Boost

Mar. 25, 2024 — Pairing cryptocurrency mining -- notable for its outsize consumption of carbon-based fuel -- with green hydrogen could provide the foundation for wider deployment of renewable energy, such as solar ...

Researchers Take Major Step Toward Developing Next-Generation Solar Cells

Mar. 22, 2024 — Engineers have discovered a new way to manufacture solar cells using perovskite semiconductors. It could lead to lower-cost, more efficient systems for powering homes, cars, boats and ...

Reimagining the Future of Solar Energy

Mar. 18, 2024 — New research suggests that there might be other ways to generate solar energy than just trying to make individual solar cells ...

Perovskite Solar Cells: Vacuum Process May Offer a Short Track to Commercialization

Mar. 14, 2024 — Which process is best suited for mass production of perovskite solar cells? While solvent-based manufacturing processes are used in laboratories around the world, vacuum vapor-phase deposition ...

New High-Performance Solar Cell Material

Mar. 13, 2024 — A new study reports the discovery of an entirely new stable, earth-abundant, high-performance material for solar absorbers -- the central part of a solar cell that turns light into electricity. While ...

Researchers Invent New Triple-Junction Tandem Solar Cells With World-Record Efficiency

Mar. 4, 2024 — Scientists have developed a novel triple-junction perovskite/Si tandem solar cell that can achieve a certified world-record power conversion efficiency of 27.1 per cent across a solar energy ...

Researchers Improve the Stability of Perovskite Solar Cells

Feb. 29, 2024 — Perovskite solar cells are considered the strongest contender to replace silicon solar cells. While they achieve high power conversion energy, they also suffer from lead leakage and perovskite ...