First Solar has broken a record held by GE for cadmium-telluride (CdTe) photovoltaic (PV) solar cell conversion efficiency.
The US solar energy firm says that its CdTe cells achieved a 20.4 % conversion efficiency at the Newport Corporation's Technology and Applications Centre (TAC) PV Lab.
The previous record was set by GE Global Research in 2013 and stood at 19.6 %. First Solar says that it is continuing to transfer its successes in research and development to its commercial solar modules.
"This record marks another achievement in our mission to unlock the industry-changing potential of CdTe PV," said Raffi Garabedian, First Solar's Chief Technology Officer. "We are demonstrating improvement in CdTe PV performance at a rate that dramatically outstrips the trajectory of conventional silicon technologies, which have already plateaued near their ultimate entitlements.
"The advanced technologies and processes we developed for this record-setting cell are already being commercialised and will positively impact performance of our future production modules and power plants."
Last year First Solar singed an agreement to acquire GE's CdTe solar intellectual property and to collaborate with GE's research team in the solar field.
CdTe is a thin-film PV technology and the progress reported by First Solar in cell efficiency indicates that thin film technologies are starting to catch up with silicon-based PV technologies.
Although less efficient than silicon-based PV technologies, thin film PV is less expensive to manufacture and could therefore start to be more widely deployed in the solar sector.
A CdTe photovoltaic research cell developed by First Solar has been certified at 20.4 percent conversion efficiency, a world record. (Photo courtesy First Solar, Inc.)
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