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PEROVSKITE PHOTOVOLTAICS

Venturing outdoors

Nature Energy volume 7, pages 576–577 (2022)Cite this article

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Metal halide perovskite solar cells have shown promising performance, but mainly on small-area devices and under laboratory conditions. Now, researchers have demonstrated the fabrication of large-area devices assembled and packaged into modules and reported on their operation outdoors.

To enter the market, photovoltaic (PV) technologies need to deliver cost-effective, efficient, and durable modules at scale with predictable energy output in the field. To reach this stage, emerging technologies such as solar cells based on metal halide perovskites need to overcome several challenges including making quality cells at scale; integrating these cells into high-energy-yield modules at a relevant scale; and producing predictable energy output outdoors. So far, most demonstrations of perovskite solar cells with promising efficiency and durability have been on devices smaller than 1 cm2 and only indoors under simulated field conditions. Commercially relevant modules have area on the order of 2 m2. While focus is starting to shift to processing at scale, outdoor field demonstrations have all remained below 1% of 1 m2 (refs. 1,2,3). While these previous works are an important step forward for perovskite PV technology, studying small area devices may miss processing and degradation concerns that only emerge at larger scale.

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Fig. 1: The deployment and performance of the perovskite modules in a PV system.

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Acknowledgements

Efforts by L.T.S. and T.J.S. were supported by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) under the Solar Energy Technologies Office Award Number 38050. The views expressed in the article do not necessarily represent the views of the DOE or the US Government.

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  1. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, USA

    Timothy J Silverman & Laura T. Schelhas

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  1. Timothy J Silverman
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  2. Laura T. Schelhas
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Correspondence to Timothy J Silverman or Laura T. Schelhas.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Silverman, T.J., Schelhas, L.T. Venturing outdoors. Nat Energy 7, 576–577 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-022-01072-z

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