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The University of New South Wales - UNSW
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  • For over two decades The University of New South Wales has been a world leader in research and commercialisation of high performance silicon solar cells. The UNSW School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering was established in order enable a greater number of students to specialise in Photovoltaics (the science and the engineering practice of turning sunshine directly into electricity by using solar cells). With energy becoming an increasingly important world-wide issue, the breadth of our teaching in Photovoltaic Engineering was increased to include Renewable Energy Engineering.
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  • UNSW School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering

  • The UNSW School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering is one of 10 Schools in Australia’s largest Faculty of Engineering.
    For over two decades The University of New South Wales has been a world leader in research and commercialisation of high performance silicon solar cells. The UNSW School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering was established in order enable a greater number of students to specialise in Photovoltaics (the science and the engineering practice of turning sunshine directly into electricity by using solar cells). With energy becoming an increasingly important world-wide issue, the breadth of our teaching in Photovoltaic Engineering was increased to include Renewable Energy Engineering.

    Undergraduate degrees include the Bachelor of Engineering in Photovoltaic and Solar Energy Engineering; and, the Bachelor of Engineering in Renewable Energy Engineering. It is also possible to study in a combined degree program. There are 473 students enrolled in these programs.

    On the postgraduate level, we currently have 74 PhD and Masters research degree candidates and many of these will go on to work world-wide in the explosively growing Photovoltaics or Renewable Energy industries. At last count, 35 of our higher degree graduates had CEO, CTO or other senior management positions in some of the world's largest photovoltaics companies. In addition, we have 85 postgraduate coursework students.

    It is an exciting time for engineers who choose to look at a world needing increasing amounts of energy and seeing the solution being in utilising the renewable resources available to everyone: sunshine, wind, rain, tides and biomass to name a few.

    World-wide there is a real need for the specialties that we teach. If you are interested in these specialties we invite you to consider studying with us.

      • ARC Photovoltaics Centre of Excellence

      • The ARC Photovoltaics Centre of Excellence officially came into being on 13th June 2003. The Centre is charged with the mission of advancing silicon photovoltaic research and applying these advances to the related field of silicon photonics.

        • Research Achievements

        • A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ARC PHOTOVOLTAICS CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE
          The Centre had its origins in a Solar Photovoltaic Group that fabricated its first cell in 1975 in the Integrated Circuits Laboratory within the School of Electrical Engineering. Promising results obtained during 1976 with a novel MIS (metal-insulator-semiconductor) solar cell stimulated the establishment of a dedicated Solar Photovoltaic Laboratory in 1977 in Room 128 of the Electrical Engineering building.

          This led to a period of rapid progress where solar cells with very high output voltages and rapidly increasing energy conversion efficiencies were demonstrated. By 1980, the Laboratory had outgrown the space available in Room 128 and moved to its present location on the ground floor of the Electrical Engineering building. During the period from 1983 to 1990, cells fabricated within the Laboratory became the first silicon cells to exceed the 18%, 19%, 20% and 24% energy conversion efficiency barriers and are now at 25%.

          In 1990, the Laboratory combined with the activities in the Power Department in the Electrical Engineering School to form the Special Research Centre for Photovoltaic Devices and Systems with support from the Australian Research Council and from Pacific Power. Prior to completion of this Centre’s program at the end of 1999, the ARC Key Centre for Photovoltaic Engineering was formed with responsibility for developing the world’s first undergraduate photovoltaic degree program. This was followed in 2000 by the start of the ARC Special Research Centre for Third Generation Photovoltaics. In 2003, these two Centres merged with related research programs to become the ARC Centre of Excellence for Advanced Silicon Photovoltaics and Photonics.

          The ARC Centre’s broad aims are to accelerate the development of photovoltaics as a large-scale, sustainable energy source and to maximise Australian involvement with this technology.

            • Products & Services

            • Purchase UNSW Solar Cells
              Our PERL (Passivated Emitter and Rear Locally-diffused) high efficiency cells, refer below, are the world's highest performing silicon solar cells. Whilst they are very suitable for specialist applications such as solar car racing, research and other applications where efficiency is the prime consideration they are not a cost competitive solution to most domestic and commercial solar cell applications. As a guide they are about 100 times the cost of a standard commercial solar cell. For solar cells involving normal applications please contact your nearest photovoltaic/solar cell supplier.

              The School currently holds the independently verified world efficiency record for a silicon solar cell (25.0 %), a significant advantage in performance over the nearest rival. The technology being offered has also been used to set the current world efficiency record for a solar module (22.7 %).

              PERL Cell Technical Specifications
              Basic Physical specifications
              Outer dimensions: 61.9 * 37.8 mm2
              Mass: 0.002 kg (approx)
              Half-size cells are also available, with dimensions of 30.95 * 37.8 mm2.

              The School is offering cells in a range of cost, size and efficiency, and will, on demand, negotiate the supply of customer-specific encapsulated cell strings using leading edge lamination technology to achieve the very highest module efficiency available.
              PC1D
              PC1D is a computer program written for IBM-compatible personal computers which solves the fully coupled nonlinear equations for the quasi-one-dimensional transport of electrons and holes in crystalline semiconductor devices, with emphasis on photovoltaic devices.

              PC1D requires at least an 80386 CPU and an 80387 math coprocessor (note that most 80486 and Pentium processors have the math coprocessor built-in). Only one file is necessary to run the program, PC1D.EXE. The additional file PC1D.HLP provides on-screen help, and several additional files are provided which contain material parameters for selected semiconductors, standardized solar spectra, and example problems. All of the files can be simply copied into the directory of choice; no setup program is required. To store files of different type in different directories, see the instructions for the Options menu.

              Please note that MS Vista does not support the 32-bit Help file format used in PC1D. MS may be able to provide a program to allow the PC1D Help files to be read by Vista users.