The Best Solar Technology to Date

Jorge Ruiz, Staff Writer

Normally solar panels can only work at 44% efficiency, but this new design made by Swift Solar can reach up to 68.7% efficiency. The newest solar panel is not only more efficient in energy it could also be up to 15 times cheaper per watt according to Swift Solar. The name of this revolutionary solar panel is Perovskite and it has 100 times the power to weight performance compared to regular conventional silicon not only that Swift solar said, “It is also so abundant you could use it to paint skyscrapers.” The normal solar panels usually only work at 20% efficiency because they can only absorb one color, but the you can stack the Perovskite on top of itself increasing efficiency and the more you stack the more efficient it will be however there is still a limit of 86.6% and you would start to get diminishing returns after stacking more than twice so the current perovskite is made in a stack of two. Prevoskite also uses the heat to turn into energy while, in normal solar panels, some energy would be lost due to this. Currently, the perovskite is being tested to see if it could last 25 years of harsh weather, once it does they will be on the market. Perovskites are also a lot thinner and can be made to be extremely flexible. Perovskite can currently be used on cars, altitude drones, and in the future could be used on homes, buildings, and devices such as phones or calculators.