Perovskite solar cells could hit 35% efficiency and cost half as much as silicon, but they're still years away from your roof. Meanwhile, silicon panels just lost their 30% federal tax credit in the US, making them suddenly more expensive. So here's the $20,000 question:
Perovskite solar cells are smashing efficiency records and starting to hit the market, but what if the real future of solar is a material you’ve probably never heard of? It’s called kesterite, and new research suggests it could match perovskites’ efficiency without any toxic lead in the stack.
I called 2024 the year of perovskites. We got our first commercial shipments and some record-breaking efficiencies. But 2025? This was the year perovskites went from "interesting lab tech" to "you can actually buy these." Oxford PV shipped the first commercial batch to a US solar
What if solar panels could generate twice the power for a fraction of the cost, making them cheap enough that you'd actually want them on your roof? Researchers in Australia may have just pulled it off. This is a solar cell made with both perovskites and graphene, the
Thanks to reusable rockets that fly, land, and fly again, launch costs are coming back down to Earth. And that’s revived a ‘70s dream to beam clean solar energy from orbit. Space agencies around the world are revamping blueprints for giant solar farms capturing sunlight 24/7 and wirelessly
Why are the world's most efficient solar panels learning to sweat? When it comes to solar, you'd assume more sun equals more power, but the truth is that solar panels actually hate being hot. In fact, for every single degree the temperature rises, these panels lose
What if I told you there's a way to get up to 30% more power from the same solar panel footprint? No breakthrough chemistry. No quantum physics. Just one simple change that’s finally starting to catch on. They're finally putting solar cells on both sides
This summer, the United States made a $559 billion decision. The consequences of that decision could make your next car $7,500 more expensive and send your electricity bills soaring unpredictably…if they aren’t already. On July 4th, 2025, President Trump signed the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act&
Solar panels are built to last around 30 years, weathering all kinds of abuse during that time.1 That’s a solid run for any piece of tech, but what if we could push that even further? What if solar panels could last… forever? That’s the promise behind a
Believe it or not, solar panels aren’t exactly pros at handling the sun. Sounds backward, right? But it’s true — excess heat can be a big problem for solar panels. It drags down their efficiency and can even shorten their lifespan. So, how do you keep something that’s
Believe it or not, the long-promised next generation of solar panels are here. A tandem perovskite solar panel with higher efficiency than silicon alone has just arrived on the market. The first batch has already been purchased by an undisclosed U.S. customer, which will soon install them in a
So, it’s been a full year since I installed these solar panels and a large home battery on my new house … and I’ve got some news. They say solar power can save you thousands on energy bills, but what actually happened. This past year was a bit of