Sun-powered Sharp’s world-beating solar cells provided the winning margin The October 2009 announcement that Sharp had achieved the world’s highest* solar cell conversion efficiency opened a new frontier for renewable energy. By inventing compound solar cells that are nearly 14 percent more efficient than previous models (up from 31.5%), Sharp took a technology that was previously reserved for space use and made a giant leap so it could be used here on Earth.
These high-efficiency compound solar cells don’t use silicone, which is the building block of most solar panels we see on rooftops and other solar arrays that produce electricity. But because compound cells are more expensive to produce, they have mostly been deployed on orbiting satellites. Now that Sharp has achieved 35.8 percent efficiency on a “triple-junction compound solar cell,” the sky is no longer the limit.
A similar compound solar cell recently powered a car manufactured by Tokai University students to a win in the 2009 Global Green Challenge in Australia, one of the world’s most prestigious solar-powered car races. For four days, across a grueling, 3,000-kilometer course that ran from Darwin in the Northern Territory to Adelaide on the southern coast, the sun-powered vehicle hit a top speed of 123 kilometers per hour and was the only one to average more than 100 kilometers per hour.
