Solar Panels Are More Efficient Than You’ve Heard. This Material Could Make Them Even Better.

Today’s typical silicon solar panels operate at around 22 percent efficiency, but a new crystalline material called perovskite could soon raise the solar efficiency bar much further

Image: Grist / K. Y. Cheng / South China Morning Post via Getty Images

By Maddie Stone

Renewable energy has been on the defensive recently. Following the release of Planet of the Humans, the controversial new climate change documentary executive produced by Michael Moore, fossil fuel–backed climate denial groups are bashing wind and solar power with renewed vigor, regurgitating the film’s flawed, ancient talking points about the supposed poor performance and unreliability of these energy sources.

Those talking points include the assertion that solar power is wildly inefficient, something director Jeff Gibbs demonstrates by visiting a solar farm in Michigan where photovoltaic panels convert “just under 8 percent” of the energy in sunlight to electricity. But that efficiency rating is, as the photovoltaic-focused publication PV Magazine puts it, “from another solar era”: Today’s typical silicon solar panels operate at around 22 percent efficiency. And a new crystalline material called perovskite could soon raise…