Solar ♦ news digest
takes the form of a thin film just half a micrometer thick, the team’s analysis shows that the lead from a single car battery could produce enough solar panels to provide power for 30 households.
As an added advantage, the production of perovskite solar cells is a relatively simple and benign process. “It has the advantage of being a low-temperature process, and the number of steps is reduced” compared with the manufacture of conventional solar cells, Belcher says.
Battery pileup ahead
One motivation for using the lead in old car batteries is that battery technology is undergoing rapid change, with new, more efficient types, such as lithium-ion batteries, swiftly taking over the market. “Once the battery technology evolves, over 200 million lead-acid batteries will potentially be retired in the United States, and that could cause a lot of environmental issues,” Belcher says.
Today, she says, 90 percent of the lead recovered from the recycling of old batteries is used to produce new batteries, but over time the market for new lead-acid batteries is likely to decline, potentially leaving a large stockpile of lead with no obvious application.
In a finished solar panel, the lead-containing layer would be fully encapsulated by other materials, as many solar panels are today, limiting the risk of lead contamination of the environment. When the panels are eventually retired, the lead can simply be recycled into new solar panels.
“The process to encapsulate them will be the same as for polymer cells today,” Chen says. “That technology can be easily translated.”
“It is important that we consider the life cycles of the materials in large-scale energy systems,” Hammond says. “And here we believe the sheer simplicity of the approach bodes well for its commercial implementation.”
Beijing–based Hanergy Holding Group, which makes thin-film solar devices, has completed the acquisition of Alta Devices, whose thin film gallium arsenide solar technology has a conversion efficiency of 30.8 percent, the highest among the solar energy technologies currently available.
Both companies’ R&D teams will join forces to develop Alta Devices’ technology. Hanergy plans to actively expand the application of Alta Devices’ products in mobile and wearable power application areas, ranging from emergency charging of mobile phones, to the automotive sector and the Internet of Things.
Alta Devices’ use of GaAs allows its dual- and single-junction solar cells to produce record- breaking conversion efficiencies of 30.8 percent and 28.8 percent respectively, as certified by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). On a same surface area basis, its cells produce a power output two to three times higher than standard flexible thin-film cells, 8 percent higher than mass-produced monocrystalline silicon cells, and 10 percent higher than multicrystalline silicon cells.
Chairman and CEO of Hanergy Li Hejun said: “Alta Devices’ thin film solar technology allows more energy to be produced in lower light conditions than any other type of solar cell, giving it greater potential to power a wide range of mobile devices and equipment from phones to cars. It has the potential to change the way solar energy is used. This acquisition advances Hanergy’s goal to become the world leader in the solar technology of the future.”
Issue VI 2014
www.compoundsemiconductor.net 105
Hanergy Completes Acquisition of GaAs solar firm Alta
Plans to push thin film GaAs solar technology into mobile markets
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