{"id":480665,"date":"2018-05-23T02:26:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-23T06:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?guid=2f8ee042bfd36640bc8a747d4262f480"},"modified":"2018-05-23T02:26:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-23T06:26:00","slug":"30-efficiency-solar-cell-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=480665","title":{"rendered":"30% efficiency solar cell"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nSolar cells have a hard life in space \u2013 their efficiency at converting sunlight into energy at the end of their time there is more prized than their initial efficiency. This next generation solar cell having an area of around 30 sq. cm boosts the beginning of life efficiency of up to 30.9% and end of life efficiency to 27.5% – and in the future designers expect to push this figure above 30%.\n<\/p>\n

\nDeveloped for ESA by a consortium led by German solar cell manufacturer Azur Space<\/a>, CESI in Italy<\/a>, Germany\u2019s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems<\/a>, Qioptiq<\/a> in the UK, Umicore<\/a> in Belgium, tf2 devices<\/a> in the Netherlands, and Finland\u2019s Tampere University of Technology<\/a>, this design is a \u2018four-junction\u2019 0.1 mm-thick device containing four layers of different materials (AlGaInP<\/a>, AlGaInAs<\/a>, GaInAs<\/a>,Ge<\/a>) to absorb separate wavelengths of sunlight.\n<\/p>\n

\nThis design was originated through ESA\u2019s Technology Research Programme<\/a> with further development and qualification testing supported through the Agency\u2019s ARTES<\/a>, Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems, programme. It is currently intended to fly with ESA\u2019s next generation Neosat<\/a> telecom satellites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\nSolar cells have a hard life in space – their efficiency at converting sunlight into energy at the end of their time there is more prized than their initial efficiency. This next generation solar cell having an area of around 30 sq. cm boosts the beginning of life efficiency of up to 30.9% and end of life efficiency to 27.5% – and in the future designers expect to push this figure above 30%.\n<\/p>\n

\nDeveloped for ESA by a consortium led by German solar cell manufacturer Azur Space<\/a>, CESI in Italy<\/a>, Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems<\/a>, Qioptiq<\/a> in the UK, Umicore<\/a> in Belgium, tf2 devices<\/a> in the Netherlands, and Finland’s Tampere University of Technology<\/a>, this design is a ‘four-junction’ 0.1 mm-thick device containing four layers of different materials (AlGaInP<\/a>, AlGaInAs<\/a>, GaInAs<\/a>,Ge<\/a>) to absorb separate wavelengths of sunlight.\n<\/p>\n

\nThis design was originated through ESA’s Technology Research Programme<\/a> with further development and qualification testing supported through the Agency’s ARTES<\/a>, Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems, programme. It is currently intended to fly with ESA’s next generation Neosat<\/a> telecom satellites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-480665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=480665"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":480666,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480665\/revisions\/480666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=480665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=480665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=480665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}