To mark one year into the project, the PEPPERONI partners launched the first webinar on Empowering Future Solar Energy: Unveiling PEPPERONI’s Perovskite/Silicon Tandem PV Ambitions. This online event held on the 10 November attracted a diverse audience, bringing together approximately 70 participants from around the world and spanning across the entire PV value chain. Representing a kaleidoscope of industries, including energy, utilities, PV manufacturing, education and research, high-technology development, and governmental bodies, attendees assumed a spectrum of roles from PhD students and PV researchers to development managers and chief technology officers.
What insights did Qcells, CSEM and HZB share?
During the webinar, Fabian Fertig from Qcells, Germany discussed “Silicon Evolution: Navigating the Latest Technological Advancements,” shedding light on Qcells’ innovations in silicon PV and elaborating on the prerequisites for perovskite-based PV to compete with the current mainstream. Quentin Jeangros from CSEM explored “Tandem Unveiled: Exploring Perovskite/Si Solar Technology Inside Out,” focusing on the latest advances in perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells, including contact materials and interface passivation strategies. The closing talk of Bernd Stannowski from Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, Germany, on “Challenges in up-scaling of Perovskite/Silicon Tandem Cells and Modules” delved into the complexities of performance, manufacturing processes and socioeconomics. The presentation also outlined the PEPPERONI project’s strategies to address barriers to speed up mass production of high-performance PV modules.
What questions did participants ask?
Participants were highly interested in technologies used in the PEPPERONI project, research on the stability and reliability of perovskite-based solar cells and tandem modules. Have a look at some of the questions tackled during the webinar:
Q: Do you plan on using Q.ANTUM.NEO in the tandems?
We can use any of our technologies, to make tandem solar cells, but what’s going to be the cell, what’s going to end up in a potential final product, this is too early to call today. What we will move forward with is the solar cell that gives us the highest performance at the lowest cost. What we have done already, is that we modified our Q.ANTUM and Q.ANTUM NEO cells to be compatible with a monolithic two-junction tandem device.
Q: For how many years stability would be suitable for commercial perovskite/silicon tandem cells?
Long story short –approaching 20 years is certainly a good value to be economically competitive, but it depends on many, many factors. In the past, there have been several ideas for products, for PV modules that are a bit cheaper but don’t withstand 20 or 30 years. But if you look at the market, the trend is more going towards longer and longer warranties. We expect that you would have to match the perovskite/silicon tandem modules to the long-term stability of silicon modules.
Q: Would a low bandgap single halide PK have more chance to pass the light soaking test? And what would it imply in terms of tandem cell design versus the actual 1.65-1.7 eV top cell?
You would certainly need to lower your top cell bandgap. And then this would mean changing the composition and going towards single halide or close to single halide perovskite, which in literature have been found to be a bit more stable. But time will tell if this is the right approach. At least from in-house results, we see that there are still ways to stabilise the 1.65eV perovskite top cell.
Through interactive polls, participants also shared their predictions on perovskite/silicon tandem technology. Most attendees foresee that perovskite/Si small area prototypes will reach 36% efficiency in 5 years but already in 3-5 years, the tandem modules will enter the market. Contact us at [email protected] if you would like to get access to the webinar recording and learn directly from presentations and discussions held there.
The webinar on Empowering Future Solar Energy: Unveiling PEPPERONI’s Perovskite/Silicon Tandem PV Ambitions was the first from the series that PEPPERONI plans to hold. So if you’re interested in a specific topic or you have a question that ought to be answered, we encourage you to take a few minutes and answer three questions in the online form to let us know. This will help us to better tailor the content for future events and address key questions.
