Accelerate Climate Solutions Interns Build Their Own Solar Cells With Professor Orion Pearce
- Andrew Sandoval
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Dr. Orion Pearce, a chemistry professor at North Central College, presented to our summer interns on Wednesday, June 17th. He is an expert in physical chemistry and materials science, using his expertise to help advance the renewable energy transition.
His presentation highlighted the drawbacks of traditional fossil fuel usage, mainly that the combustion of these fuels leads to the emission of harmful greenhouse gases. Solar panels, while they come in different sizes and types, all harness the immense energy that comes from the sun and bring clean energy to the grid.
While there are many different types of solar cells, Pearce highlighted that all solar cells have three necessary properties. These properties are semiconductor behavior due to their bandgap, diode behavior to enable charge separation, and light absorption to enable charge generation.
Roselynne Orrala, junior at North Central College and intern with the Climate Communications team noted, “I enjoyed the hands-on experience and didn’t realize how easy it was to create a solar cell to better understand how it works.”
Even though the underlying physics can be complicated, our students were able to build their own solar cells in one sitting. Using titanium dioxide and crushed berries, they were able to create a dye-sensitized solar cell and obtain a reading on a voltmeter, showing how generating solar energy can be done simply.
While dye-sensitized cells are simple to produce, Pearce was eager to express his hope about modern and cost-efficient Perovskite cells and their potential impact on the solar energy space going forward. His presentation highlighted how their efficiency has been quickly climbing while still remaining cost-efficient. He also noted that pairing perovskite with silicon cells makes for very efficient cells.
In addition to more efficient types of cells, he stated that the technology with the most impact on solar energy at the moment is actually batteries. Speaking about this advancement, Pearce stated, “The fact that now there are better and better storage technologies for energy has made it so that solar energy is a much more viable part of our electricity mix.”
It is clear that solar energy is the key to providing clean and efficient energy going forward, but that legislative action is needed in order to accelerate its implementation. Due to the advances of solar energy, efficiency is no longer the main issue, nor is the price.
Pearce stated that “for the past five years or so, solar energy has been about as cheap as fossil fuel energy and the price keeps going down.”
The key to advancing the renewable energy transition is now spreading awareness about the solutions provided in the clean energy space and contacting your representatives to actually implement the changes needed to provide clean energy to our communities.
We encourage you to reach out to your elected officials and make your voice heard about this key issue. To learn more about how ACS is taking local action sign-up for our newsletter and follow us on social media!
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Note: Information and data was derived from Orion Pearce’s presentation.