Xerocoat, a newcomer in the solar industry, has patented a system that will make solar panels better and more efficient. They made a coating for the solar panels so that when covered with it, they receive 3% more light at noon and as much as 6% during early morning and evening hours. So they increase sensibly the solar panels’ efficiency and decrease the cost/watt.
XeroCoat’s anti-reflective coating technology most cost-effectively increases the energy performance of solar systems without requiring modifications to existing cell or module manufacturing processes.
Photovoltaic modules suffer from reduced conversion efficiency even before the sun’s light reaches the solar cell. This is because the solar module’s protective glass cover reflects some of the incident sunlight. For typical glass panels, depending on the time of day 4% to 15+% of the incoming light is lost from reflections and thus, is not available to generate electricity. Applying an anti-reflective coating to the cover glass of the module will reduce these reflections and increase the module’s output power. Current commercial PV technologies convert 10%-20% of the incoming light to electricity. The same module with a suitable anti-reflective coating can deliver an additional 0.3%-0.6% power conversion. A product achieving higher conversion efficiency in a cost-effective manner can make solar modules more affordable.
Tom Hood, chief executive officer and president of XeroCoat, declares: “At XeroCoat, we’re strongly committed to making solar energy more affordable for all today [...] the XeroCoat antireflective coating offers a very simple and cost-effective way to get the most power out of the sun.”
