Silicon photovoltaic panels are the most expensive solar installations at the moment but things are about to change because IBM claimed they have the technology to reduce the cost of harnessing the Sun’s energy for electricity, down to $2 / W.

The company announced in a press release on Thursday, that using a large lens that concentrates power to around 2300x, they managed to capture a record 230 Watts on a square centimeter of solar cell which was later converted into 70 Watts of usable electric power. The main problem with such a power concentration is cooling down the silicon cell but I guess IBM engineers are experts in doing it, though not for photovoltaics.

“Specifically, the IBM team used a very thin layer of a liquid metal made of a gallium and indium compound that they applied between the chip and a cooling block. Such layers, called thermal interface layers, transfer the heat from the chip to the cooling block so that the chip temperature can be kept low.”

If IBM’s technology turns out to be true and the company is able to cool the solar cell efficiently, concentrated photovoltaic systems may become the cheapest type of solar energy available on the market. This would be a very big step in going mainstream, don’t you think?

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The efficiency of a solar panel is given by the percentage of the sun’s light that is being turned into electricity. The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) innovated a new thin film solar panel that just broke the world’s efficiency record, reaching 19.9-percent.

“The copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) thin-film solar cell recently reached 19.9 percent efficiency in testing at the lab, setting a new world record.” Treehugger noted.

Traditional silicon based solar panels may have a hard time when these multicrystalline silicon-based solar cells are going to be produced.

I am a big fan of solar cells and using them for a greener home, but we all know that investments to get solar energy are usually spicy and not everyone can afford. There is a solution though. Konarka Technologies, a company that builds low cost sources of renewable power affordable and universally available thinks we can print our own solar cells using an inkjet printer.

Konarka has built a printable solar panel film and with the help of a common inkjet printer they can produce build thin photovoltaic solar cells. The technology is innovative as it uses solar cell material as ink and Konarka’s light-activated Power Plastic® that is flexible, lightweight, lower in cost and much more versatile in application than traditional silicon-based solar cells, as paper.

“This essential breakthrough in the field of printed solar cells positions Konarka as an emerging leader in printed photovoltaics.”

Using such technology is only feasible to large productions of solar cells but as it evolves we can expect to see all kinds of solar cells from as small as a window or laptop to as big as car’s roof.

Press release via Inhabitat