Is the solar industry entering a new era?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2025
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A new type of solar cell has been developed and has made it to market.
Perovskites have been called a 'magic material' that many believe will be the new, efficient way to convert the sun's energy to electricity.
Now the material is being used on commercial roof panels for the first time, we look at the opportunities of the new tech, its flaws, and when it might be available to households.
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Presented and produced by Rick Kelsey
(Picture: Illustration of a modern perovskite high performance solar cell module for high efficient photon recycling. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The next generation of solar panel is here. |
| 0:07.0 | Does it really deliver on its promises? |
| 0:09.0 | And the answer is yes, and it does so because of the unique nature of this perovskite composition. |
| 0:16.0 | Parovskites are more efficient and more flexible than traditional cells and have now gone life. |
| 0:23.4 | If you're a scientist like me, they have really cool properties which we have yet to discover. |
| 0:27.8 | Is this going to change the way that we look at solar renewable energy? |
| 0:33.1 | I think so, yeah. They have the ability to generate electricity at a lower cost than ever before. |
| 0:39.7 | The solar industry is entering a new era. We suddenly get this whole new theoretical limit of efficiency. |
| 0:46.7 | We totally smashed through that ceiling. If we get through that limit, the ability to have the |
| 0:51.6 | same amount of energy created on a smaller space is really, really profound. |
| 0:56.3 | Yet Parovskites have only been tested with solar for 15 years. Have their flaws been addressed? |
| 1:02.3 | The first research paper about these materials in solar panels was published in 2009. And whilst that |
| 1:09.4 | sounds like a long time ago, in the world of scientific development, that's |
| 1:13.0 | really young. |
| 1:14.0 | And could the natural resources of places like Nigeria and Rwanda create a manufacturing |
| 1:19.3 | hub of the material in Africa? |
| 1:21.9 | Believe me, the potential for rapid growth and innovation is there. |
| 1:27.1 | This is Business Daily with Rick Kelsey on the magic new solar, where it's being made and when it will be coming to our rooftops. |
| 1:36.7 | I'm out on my flat roof with my solar panels in North London. |
| 1:42.0 | They have a thin layer of dust on them, but they're generally designed to be |
| 1:46.3 | self-cleaning by the rain and the slope they sit at. Like most panels, these are made of silicon. |
| 1:53.9 | It's durable, but it has limits on how efficient it can be, how much energy it can pull from the |
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