Copper-based solar panels?

[AE-NMidlands]

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... boomSilver lining?

Why an Australian startup is betting on a copper solar boom.
SunDrive hopes its copper-based solar cell can reach commercial scale in partnership with global panel producer Trina

If an Australian startup gets its way, the silver lining in the global solar boom will become a copper one – before reserves of the material run out.
SunDrive Solar, backed by investors including Malcolm Turnbull and the billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, is hoping its copper-based solar cell can reach commercial scale through a partnership with Trina Solar, one of the world’s biggest panel producers.

Consuming about one-seventh of silver output yearly, solar photovoltaic (PV) panels could account for as much as 98% of world silver reserves on present trends and technology by 2050, University of New South Wales researchers argue.
Photovoltaic panels no longer capable of producing electricity are having their aluminium and wires removed before being ground up and refined into plastic, glass, silicon, silver and copper

SunDrive is hoping its copper-based solar cells will catapult from the pilot to the market stage in Australia and beyond through a planned joint venture with Trina. It’s applied for funding from the first round of the Albanese government’s $1bn Solar Sunshot program to build 1 gigawatts of solar modules a year at a western Sydney site.
“Copper is 1,000 times more abundant and 100 times cheaper per kilo than silver,” Natalie Malligan, SunDrive’s chief executive, says. “It also has performance benefits so you can generate more electricity per cell.

I hadn't realised that solar panels depended on silver... Let's hope it flies.

[Stinsy]

Solar panels are already so cheap they're effectively free. So I don't see much need to make them cheaper. However I'm interested in the "performance benefits" that was almost an afterthought. Every little bit of efficiency goes a long way! We've gone from 15ish to 22ish percent efficiency in the last decade more steps in that direction will be where the difference is made.

[AE-NMidlands]

Solar panels are already so cheap they're effectively free.

Yes, the article goes on to say

Australia’s PV market is about 6GW of capacity a year – but it could expand as prices for modules continue to fall. Global solar panel capacity is close to 1,000GW yearly – the vast bulk of it in China – outstripping demand of less than 600GW.
“We’re in a huge oversupply condition at the moment [but] it will settle because the market doubles every three years,” Renate Egan, the head of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics based at UNSW, says. In a decade, “we’re expecting it to be 10 or 20GW a year” in Australia alone.

[Fueltheburn]

Performance wise Silver is more conductive than copper.
Roughly 10% more conductive.

[Mart]

Talk about blast from the past, I'd forgotten that a decade or so back the nay-sayers were explaining that PV wasn't a viable solution as there wasn't enough silver in the World.

I think the 'not enough lithium in the World' claims about EV's may have dried up a year or so back too.

Sorry, total digression, but fun mental jog for the day.

[Marcus]

Performance wise Silver is more conductive than copper.
Roughly 10% more conductive.

I was thinking that too, with reference to the claim that copper performs better . But perhaps the argument is that silver being expensive means they use the bare minimum they can get away with, whereas they can use as much copper as they want.

[Fueltheburn]

Their statement trying to pass it off as fact is what I found annoying. There is a reason silver soldering is the benchmark for certain electronics.

I think it must be from a manufacturing cost point of view. There can't be a lot of profit left in solar panels these days.
10% gain for 10 times the material cost is not good value. I somehow doubt any saving would be passed onto the purchaser of the panel though.


I do wonder if the cost of panels may start to rise again with material shortages?

[AE-NMidlands]

I don't understand it. https://www.silverinstitute.org/silver- ... hnology-2/ says

Silver’s use in photovoltaics
Photovoltaic (PV) power is the leading current source of green electricity. Higher than expected photovoltaic capacity additions and faster adoption of new-generation solar cells raised global electrical & electronics demand by a substantial 20 percent in 2023. This gain reflects silver’s essential and growing use in PV, which recorded a new high of 193.5 Moz last year, increasing by a massive 64 percent over 2022’s figure of 118.1 Moz.

How is silver used in solar cells?
Silver powder is turned into a paste which is then loaded onto a silicon wafer. When light strikes the silicon, electrons are set free and the silver – the world’s best conductor – carries the electricity for immediate use or stores it in batteries for later consumption.

but if it's just the conductors behind the cells then slightly thicker copper would seem to be a reasonable alternative. Maybe "silver paste" can be applied by printing and kilned on the almost-completed panel to make the conductors, whereas copper can't?

[Fueltheburn]

I don't understand it. https://www.silverinstitute.org/silver- ... hnology-2/ says

Silver’s use in photovoltaics
Photovoltaic (PV) power is the leading current source of green electricity. Higher than expected photovoltaic capacity additions and faster adoption of new-generation solar cells raised global electrical & electronics demand by a substantial 20 percent in 2023. This gain reflects silver’s essential and growing use in PV, which recorded a new high of 193.5 Moz last year, increasing by a massive 64 percent over 2022’s figure of 118.1 Moz.

How is silver used in solar cells?
Silver powder is turned into a paste which is then loaded onto a silicon wafer. When light strikes the silicon, electrons are set free and the silver – the world’s best conductor – carries the electricity for immediate use or stores it in batteries for later consumption.

but if it's just the conductors behind the cells then slightly thicker copper would seem to be a reasonable alternative. Maybe "silver paste" can be applied by printing and kilned on the almost-completed panel to make the conductors, whereas copper can't?

This may help your understanding. Be warned, this subject becomes a rabbit hole.

https://www.sputtertargets.net/blog/eve ... rgets.html

The sputtering process applies a thin film of the base material. It has many applications. It can be used in mirrors or DVD9 where the laser can read but also break through the layer and read the layer beneath it, usually aluminium.

In Solar, it is like you are coating the silicon wafer with a fine layer of silver to transport the charge to the edges where the bus bars reside in the solar panel. Many single wafers, connected in series equals the cumulative power at the terminals.

Pretty sure each wafer cell is somewhere around 0.4 - 0.5 volts.

[Fueltheburn]

Sorry - meant to say the reference of dvd 9 is because they use dual layers. One layer is silver sputtered onto a polycarbonate disc and the other layer is aluminium sputtered to a polycarbonate disc.

The silver layer is translucent and the aluminium layer is not. The two layers are then bonded together to form the disc. The silver layer though translucent contains enough material to be read by a laser.