An international team of scientists has announced the creation of a solar farm for the first large-scale tests
In an article published in the journal Nature Energy,the researchers say that for the farm they made 9 solar panels based on a two-dimensional graphene-perovskite material (GRAPE). The area of each of them is 0.5 m2, they consist of 40 perovskite modules connected to each other. The total area of solar farm batteries is 4.5 m2.
The solar panel used consists ofmultiple layers: fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) glass, graphene compact titanium oxide, graphene mesoporous thetan oxide, perovskite, molybdenum sulfide, poly(triarylamine) (PTAA), and gold. With scaling and sustainable mass production of the technology, gold can be replaced by an alternative material such as graphene, other carbon materials, or cheap metals. Image: Pescetelli et al.
The researchers also created the necessarysupporting infrastructure, data collection systems and a weather station. This equipment allows you to constantly monitor the solar farm by comparing environmental conditions with the performance of the system outdoors. All system and weather data is uploaded to an online storage and available to researchers around the world.
Solar panel on the farm. Image: Pescetelli et al.
Researchers first published resultscollaborative effort at Advanced Functional Materials in 2016. In that paper, the scientists opened up a new avenue for perovskite photovoltaic research by demonstrating that by properly designing interfaces with 2D materials, the stability of perovskite solar cells can be greatly improved.
After our first publication on the cells of a smallarea (both 0.1 and 1 cm2), we have developed the possibility of using this technology on large area devices, transferring it to the modular level (hundreds of cm2). The main goal of our recent work was to demonstrate the maximum scale of this technology at the solar farm level. In doing so, we were able to test perovskite technology on such a scale for the first time.
Aldo Di Carlo, research participant in an interview with Tech Xplore
Cover image: explorers in front of a farm. Photo: Solar Farm, HMU Group
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