The photovoltaic effect is the basic physical process through which a PV cell converts sunlight into electricity. Sunlight is composed of photons (like energy accumulations), or particles of solar energy. These photons contain various amounts of energy corresponding to the different wavelengths of the solar spectrum.
While not conforming to the requirements to be recognised as a class record, the devices in Table 2 have notable characteristics that will be of interest to sections of the photovoltaic community, with entries based on their significance and timeliness.
The final new result in Table 2 is an improvement to 26.7% efficiency for a very small area of 0.05-cm 2 Pb-halide perovskite solar cell fabricated by the University of Science and Technology China (USTC) 41 and measured by NPVM.
The price index represents the average price per watt of photovoltaic modules in the market. The information used to generate the graph only considers individual modules with ratings over 125Wp; the price index might be lower if modules are purchased in larger quantities at wholesale price .
The system structure is very flexible. PV modules are the main building blocks; these can be arranged into arrays to increase electric energy production. Normally additional equipment is necessary in order to transform energy into a useful form or store energy for future use.
Mattos LS, Scully SR, Syfu M, Olson E, Yang L, Ling C, Kayes BM, He G. New module efficiency record: 23.5% under 1-sun illumination using thin-film single-junction GaAs solar cells. Proceedings of the 38th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2012. 63. Sugimoto H. High efficiency and large volume production of CIS-based modules.