“Global Challenge, Global Solutions” is a series hosted on Climasphere highlighting inspiring, innovative, and creative global solutions to the challenge of climate change in the lead up to the next major climate conference, COP22. These solutions have been provided by members of the Earth To Marrakech coalition, a group of more than 50 media organizations, civil society groups, and businesses from around the world who are raising their voices in a collective call to move from words to action on climate change. Let’s send a message, from Earth To Marrakech: The solutions to climate change are out there, and they’re inspiring. 

Efficient, Flexible, Thin-Film Solar Cells

Yes Solar En­ergy Tech­no­logy has de­veloped a method to man­u­fac­ture su­per-thin, light-weight, and flex­ible solar cells re­quir­ing 75% less energy to produce and 90% less silicon materials than sim­ilar pan­els. The product is the out­come of com­bin­ing the ad­vant­ages of flex­ible thin-film solar cell tech­no­logy and highly ef­fi­cient crys­tal­line sil­icon tech­no­lo­gies. Yes Solar is slash­ing ma­ter­ial and en­ergy use for pro­duc­tion by avoid­ing the cut­ting and sli­cing pro­cesses many main­stream tech­no­lo­gies use in the sec­tor.

The solar cells can reach an efficiency of up to 22%, while also per­form­ing well with wide-angle and weak light. The low weight, thin­ness, and flex­ib­il­ity make the cell fit for many ap­plic­a­tions where reg­u­lar solar pan­els can­not be de­ployed.

RELEVANCE OF SOLUTION
Photo­vol­taic solar pan­els play a cru­cial role in se­cur­ing clean and green en­ergy for all, and the an­nual growth rate for the sec­tor cur­rently ex­ceeds 20%. However, cre­at­ing solar pan­els does re­quire en­ergy, and pro­du­cing the sil­icon wafers of reg­u­lar crys­tal­line sil­icon mod­ules is the most en­ergy-in­tens­ive part of the pro­duc­tion pro­cess. Due to the ad­vanced pro­duc­tion method, Yes Solar can help to lower the en­vir­on­mental im­pact from pro­du­cing solar pan­els.

TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE:

ENVIRONMENTAL
As­sum­ing a 15% mar­ket share of Yes Sol­ar’s product by 2025, the com­pany’s product will avoid about 52 mil­lion tons of CO2 emis­sions an­nu­ally.2

SOCIAL
Due to its flex­ib­il­ity, the solu­tion can be used in di­verse set­tings and help to in­crease the pos­sible ap­plic­a­tions for solar pan­els.

ECONOMIC
Ac­cord­ing to a study done by the com­pany, if de­ployed at a ca­pa­city of 300 MW, the tech­no­logy could provide sav­ings of 50% to 80% com­pared to cur­rent products.