
Juan Francisco Martínez Sánchez, a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, received the Gips-Schüle Young Scientist Award this week for combining concentrator PV technology with a conventional silicon photovoltaic (PV) module. The decisive innovation is that the hybrid PV module uses not only direct sunlight, which is concentrated by lenses onto miniature concentrator solar cells no bigger than several millimeters in size, but also diffuse, or scatttered, sunlight thanks to silicon solar cells. With this innovative concept, a bifacial PV module was able to achieve a power output of 350 watts per square meter for the first time worldwide.
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