Solar cell efficiencies at a glance – updated

An international research group led by Professor Martin Green from the University of New South Wales in Australia has published Version 60 of “Solar cell efficiency tables” in Progress in Photovoltaics.

The scientists said they have added 15  new results to the new version of the tables since January. They also noted that an appendix describes new approaches and terminology.

Since 1993, when the tables were first published, the research group has seen major improvements in all cell categories.

“Copper, indium, gallium and selenium (CIGS) and multijunction cells have seen the most consistent gains, although perovskites have recently seen similar overall gains compressed into a shorter timescale,” Green told pv magazine in an interview last year.

He said that the most important factor for inclusion in the tables is that all results should be independently measured at test centers on the group’s list.

“All of our recognized test centers are carefully vetted prior to inclusion on our list and have been involved in round-robin testing with one another, ensuring consistency of measurements to well within the uncertainty estimates included with the published results,” said Green.

The research group includes scientists from the European Commission Joint Research Centre, Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, the US Department of Energy, and the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory.