Development of a perovskite solar cells industry

Question

Are solar energy companies considering using perovskite solar cells?

Answer

My PhD research is on solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells, a precursor to the perovskite solar cells, and I have worked in solar energy research for 6+ years. Here is my understanding.

Perovskites solar cells has seen tremendous efficiency improvements in the past 5 years, but I believe many people in academia and industry sees perovskites largest potential not in replacing existing solar technologies (like Si, CdTe, CIGS... etc), but in augmenting them. Perovskites can potentially serve as a higher-bandgap top-cell in a multi-junction solar cell to boost the efficiency of the Si, CdTe or CIGS solar cells. In fact, there has been multiple papers in the past year demonstrating multi-junction solar cells with perovskites top cell. If this technology can be scaled with reasonable cost and yield, it could be very attractive for established solar energy companies.

Because of this great potential, I'd bet that many startups are already working on this idea! But, as other answers have pointed out, the stability of this class of materials is not yet proven, and there is a long way ahead to see this material into production.

(Original answered on quora: Are solar energy companies considering using perovskite solar cells?)