How to Harness the Power of 70,000 Suns

Stacked solar cells, also known as multi-junction cells, are already the most efficient solar cells available, but researchers at North Carolina State University have found a technique to boost the cells' effectiveness even further.

Multi-junction cells are used in concentrated solar power (CSP) applications, where lenses are used to concentrate the sun’s energy onto the panels. Concentrating the energy can increase the power of one sun to thousands of suns.

One of the limitations of CSP is its high cost, but the more effective junctions should help drive down the overall cost because producers could make much smaller cells that produce as much electricity or more compared to larger cells.

How to Harness the Power of 70,000 Suns