461 articles
Ascent Solar Technologies
Ascent Solar Technologies is a Thornton, Colorado company, founded in 2005, that makes lightweight flexible CIGS thin-film solar modules for satellites, spacecraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles.
Back surface field
The back surface field (BSF) is a heavily doped region at the rear of a silicon solar cell that repels minority carriers and reduces recombination losses.
Back-contact solar cell
A back-contact solar cell is a crystalline silicon solar cell with both contacts on the rear, eliminating front gridline shading; it holds the silicon efficiency record at 27.8%.
Backtracking (solar tracking)
Backtracking is a solar tracker control strategy that rotates panels away from the sun in early morning and late afternoon so one row does not shade the next.
Balcony solar power
Balcony solar power, known in German as Balkonkraftwerk and also called plug-in solar, is a small photovoltaic system mounted on balconies so apartment residents can generate their own electricity.
Behind-the-meter (solar)
Behind-the-meter solar is photovoltaic generation installed on the customer's side of the utility billing meter, whose output serves on-site loads first so customers avoid retail charges for self-consumed power.
Belectric
Belectric, or BELECTRIC GmbH, is a German solar energy company founded in 2001 in Kolitzheim, which has installed more than 5.9 GW of photovoltaic capacity worldwide.
Benban Solar Park
Benban Solar Park is a utility-scale solar complex in Aswan Governorate, Egypt, among the world's largest, with 32 plants feeding 1,465 MW into the national grid.
Better Energy
Better Energy is a Danish renewable energy company, founded in 2012, that develops, builds, and operates utility-scale solar parks and was among Denmark's largest solar developers.
Bhadla Solar Park
Bhadla Solar Park is a 2,245 MW solar power complex in the Thar Desert of Rajasthan, India, among the largest solar parks in the world.
Bifacial perovskite solar cells
Bifacial perovskite solar cells are photovoltaic devices that generate electricity from light hitting both surfaces, collecting reflected light (albedo) from behind to exceed the yield limit of one-sided cells.
Bifacial perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells
Bifacial perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells stack a wide-bandgap perovskite top cell on a silicon bottom cell, collecting sunlight plus ground-reflected albedo for 10 to 30% more energy.
Bifacial solar cell
A bifacial solar cell is a photovoltaic cell that captures light on both its front and rear faces, credited to Antonio Luque, who patented a practical design in 1976.
Blade-coated perovskite solar cells
Blade-coated perovskite solar cells are perovskite solar cells whose light-absorbing perovskite layer is deposited by blade coating, a scalable method that can coat the large areas commercial modules need.
Blattner Company
Blattner Company is an American utility-scale engineering, procurement, and construction contractor based in Avon, Minnesota, founded in 1907 and acquired by Quanta Services in 2021.
Blythe (NextEra) solar farm
The Blythe Solar Power Project is a 485-megawatt solar plant near Blythe, California, built by NextEra Energy Resources between 2015 and 2020, with battery storage added later.
Bokpoort CSP plant
Bokpoort CSP is a 50 MW concentrating solar power plant near Groblershoop in South Africa's Northern Cape, operated since 2016 with about 9 hours of molten-salt storage.
BrightSource Energy
BrightSource Energy, founded in 2004 and headquartered in Oakland, California, builds concentrating solar power plants using power tower technology, including the Ivanpah plant in the Mojave Desert.
Building-applied photovoltaics
Building-applied photovoltaics (BAPV) is photovoltaic equipment added onto an existing roof or façade solely to generate electricity, treated as an external attachment rather than a building material, the retrofit counterpart of building-integrated photovoltaics.
Building-integrated photovoltaics
Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) are photovoltaic materials incorporated into the building envelope, serving as roof tiles, facade cladding, or glazing while generating electricity, first installed in 1991.
Bulk heterojunction
A bulk heterojunction (BHJ) is the photoactive architecture of most organic solar cells, blending electron-donating and accepting semiconductors into one network; introduced in 1995, it drove efficiencies beyond 20 percent.
Bulk heterojunction solar cell
A bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cell is an organic photovoltaic device whose light-absorbing layer blends electron donor and acceptor materials into a nanoscale network, introduced in 1995.
Buried-interface passivation in perovskite solar cells
Buried-interface passivation is the treatment of defects at the hidden contact between a perovskite absorber layer and the charge transport layer beneath it, improving efficiency and lifetime.
Busbar-free metallization
Busbar-free metallization is a crystalline silicon solar cell design that eliminates printed silver busbars, instead collecting current with many thin wires bonded during lamination, cutting silver use and shading.
Bypass diode
A bypass diode is a diode in a solar panel that carries current around shaded or damaged cells, preventing hot spots that can damage the module.
Cadmium telluride
Cadmium telluride (CdTe) is a semiconductor compound of cadmium and tellurium used in thin-film solar cells and X-ray and gamma-ray detectors, the second most common photovoltaic technology after silicon.
Cadmium telluride photovoltaics
Cadmium telluride (CdTe) photovoltaics are thin-film solar cells using a cadmium telluride absorber, the second most common solar technology after silicon, with 21% of the U.S. market in 2022.
Capacity credit
Capacity credit is the fraction of a power plant's nameplate capacity that can be reliably counted on during peak demand, measured as effective load carrying capability.
Carbazole self-assembled monolayer hole-selective layers
Carbazole self-assembled monolayer hole-selective layers are single-molecule-thick films of carbazole phosphonic acid molecules (PACz family) that extract holes in inverted perovskite and perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells.
Carbon electrode perovskite cell
A carbon electrode perovskite cell (C-PSC) is a perovskite solar cell whose rear electrode is carbon rather than gold or silver, offering low cost and stability, with efficiencies up to 23.6%.