The United States wants India to explore manufacturing a cheaper alternative to silicon solar cells, said, US Energy Secretary, Dan Brouillette amid high dependence on Chinese technology. Brouillette was addressing a virtual press conference at the conclusion of the India energy forum at the IHS CERA Week. He said, “India was perfectly positioned as a potential manufacturer of perovskite cells, on which the US has been conducting research at its national laboratory in Colorado. We have seen recently with this pandemic supply chain issues have arisen with countries like China and in certain cases we have become overly dependent upon one country. It is a technology we want to share with India, we think it is better done there than other parts around the world.”
India has an ambitious plan to increase its renewable energy capacity to 175 GW by 2022. India imports over 80% of its solar cells and modules from its neighbour and wants to increase domestic manufacturing but has so far had little success. Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are considered by scientists as a potential cheap alternative to silicon cells.
“PSCs offer a much lower production cost compared to silicon solar cells and its efficiency has improved dramatically. However, PSCs are still not stable enough to be considered as a commercial competitor of silicon.” said Sandheep Ravishankar, a scientist researching PSCs at the Institute of Energy and Climate Research, Forschungszentrum Julich, Germany.
Scientists are also exploring using perovskite in tandem with silicon to increase efficiency, and research on the technology is being carried out in countries including the United States, Saudi Arabia and Germany.
