Advanced Photovoltaics

Umbrella’s advanced photovoltaics have a theoretical limit of up to 60% overall efficiency with no directional sunlight or adjustment.

The currently available PV panels are capable of only converting a small part of solar radiation into electrical energy. This limits solar-to-electric conversion efficiency and can increase the PV cell temperature. PV cell efficiencies drop rapidly when the sun is obscured by clouds or when it rains, and efficiencies are also compromised as the angle of the sun’s rays shift over the course of the day.
Commercial panels are theoretically 30% efficient but in practice are much lower than that. To improve efficiencies, additional layers of cells are added to absorb the full spectrum of the sun’s energy. Newer techniques are constantly being developed, and reports show that under controlled laboratory settings they achieve 40% ratings for the capture and conversion of solar radiation to electrical energy. When reduced to practice, the cell materials need to be rugged, relatively inexpensive and be able to be manufactured on a practical and recurring basis.
Commercial solar cells are principally based upon doping the surface of silicon wafers. While more efficient approaches exist which incorporate the ability to capture more of the solar spectrum, these approaches tend to be based upon extremely high cost exotic materials and manufacturing approaches. Umbrella Technologies is developing tandem cells within silicon of the same material which affect the band gap energy of the same dopant in silicon. Our patent pending tandem cells of a single dopant material in a silicon wafer are able to marry the benefits of lower cost and higher performance while maintaining high efficiency.