NREL Center for Photovoltaics
Abstract
Solar cells, also called photovoltaics (PV) by solar cell scientists, convert sunlight directly into electricity. Solar cells are often used to power calculators and watches. The performance of a solar cell is measured in terms of its efficiency at turning sunlight into electricity. Only sunlight of certain energies will work efficiently to create electricity, and much of it is reflected or absorbed by the material that make up the cell. Because of this, a typical commercial solar cell has an efficiency of 15%—about one-sixth of the sunlight striking the cell generates electricity. Low efficiencies mean that larger arrays are needed, and that means higher cost. Improving solar cell efficiencies while holding down the cost per cell is an important goal of the PV industry, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and other U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories, and they have made significant progress. The first solar cells, built in the 1950s, had efficiencies of less than 4%.
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1048085
- Resource Type:
- Multimedia
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 14 SOLAR ENERGY; SOLAR CELL; PHOTOVOLTAICS; PV; NREL; NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORY; SUNLIGHT; EFFICIENCY; DOE; SOLAR; RESEARCH
Citation Formats
. NREL Center for Photovoltaics. United States: N. p., 2009.
Web.
. NREL Center for Photovoltaics. United States.
. Thu .
"NREL Center for Photovoltaics". United States. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1048085.
@article{osti_1048085,
title = {NREL Center for Photovoltaics},
author = {},
abstractNote = {Solar cells, also called photovoltaics (PV) by solar cell scientists, convert sunlight directly into electricity. Solar cells are often used to power calculators and watches. The performance of a solar cell is measured in terms of its efficiency at turning sunlight into electricity. Only sunlight of certain energies will work efficiently to create electricity, and much of it is reflected or absorbed by the material that make up the cell. Because of this, a typical commercial solar cell has an efficiency of 15%—about one-sixth of the sunlight striking the cell generates electricity. Low efficiencies mean that larger arrays are needed, and that means higher cost. Improving solar cell efficiencies while holding down the cost per cell is an important goal of the PV industry, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and other U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories, and they have made significant progress. The first solar cells, built in the 1950s, had efficiencies of less than 4%.},
doi = {},
journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2009},
month = {Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2009}
}