A technician holds a germanium wafer at Spectrolab. High efficiency Ultra Triple-Junction gallium arsenide solar cells are "grown" onto the wafers using specialized machines called reactors. Image supplied by Boeing.

It may not have anything to do with aircraft, but something important to the industrial future of space industries and earth bound sustainable energy has been happening in a Boeing laboratory in California.

Boeing’s Spectrolab Inc subsidiary has perfected a solar cell that converts 41.6% of concentrated sunlight into electricity.

This is a world record for terrestrial concentrator solar cell efficiency, passing the 41.1% level achieved by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany.

The new record was verified by the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado.

Boeing says “High-efficiency solar cells in concentrator systems require fewer cells to produce the same electrical output as conventional solar cells. They enable energy producers to generate more electrical power from typical industrial solar panels and pass on lower costs to home owners, businesses and other end users.”

It also erodes the persistent and complacent pessimism expressed about solar energy in high places in government and the parts of the research community in Australia in recent decades.

The Boeing Spectrolab announcement is a reminder that we are likely to end up paying other countries for solar innovations that have for the most part, not found fertile ground in Australia.

“This … brings the industry one step closer to achieving affordable solar electricity,” said David Lillington, president of Spectrolab. “This cell is an advanced version of our lattice-matched cell technology that will be incorporated quickly and successfully into our production line. This milestone underscores our emphasis on realizing the highest efficiency cells in high-volume production.”

The new cell is an advanced version of the lattice-matched triple-junction technology already produced in high volumes for space and terrestrial applications at Spectrolab, which pioneered the technology more than a decade ago. The new cell incorporates multiple improvements in wafer processing to reduce metal grid shadowing and series resistance, raising the cell’s overall efficiency for conversion of sunlight to electricity.

“Over the past decade, Spectrolab’s efforts developing terrestrial solar cell efficiency have achieved an average improvement of approximately one percentage point per year, and we expect to continue that pace,” Lillington said.

Spectrolab cells have powered satellites since 1958 and claims to power 60% of all Earth orbiting satellites including the International Space Station. It says that it expects to sell the equivalent of an extra 300 megawatts of electricity a year from next year for use in military and specialised civil systems, including in those in orbit, where conventional power generation is either impossible or difficult to provide.

Dr. David Lillington holds a wafer, which will be eventually cut into individual concentrator solar cells. Image by Boeing.