Toyota says it will combine EneCoat’s perovskite solar cells with its own in-vehicle solar panel technology. Enecoat has developed a perovskite module conversion efficiency of 19.4%.
“The two companies continue to promote the development of practical applications by integrating EneCoat’s elemental technology with perovskite solar cells and Toyota’s vehicle solar panel technologies with the aim of promoting renewable energy self-sufficiency and contributing to the achievement of carbon dioxide emissions. neutrality,” the companies said in a statement.
EneCoat said Toyota will use the cells it developed and manufactured with a proprietary coating technology that enabled perovskite module production with 19.4 percent efficiency from March 2023.
“The low-temperature coating process makes it possible to create a very uniform ultrathin film, as shown in the image,” the company said. “Using the wet process makes large surfaces suitable for mass production, we plan to move forward to Roll to Roll production, which can be customized according to the application and scale in the future.”
In April 2022, NGK Insulators, a Japanese network attached storage (NAS) storage specialist, acquired an unspecified stake in EneCoat. The Japanese Green Science Alliance, which specializes in the development of electrode materials for solar cells, also invested an unspecified amount in Enecoat in June.
Toyota said in March that it had chosen the Japanese solar energy manufacturer Kaneka as its supplier to deploy solar cells in one of its electric vehicles. For years, Kaneka’s solar cells have been recognized as the most efficient crystalline silicon PV device, which has been developed both at the industrial and research level.
However, Chinese manufacturer Longi said last November that it had achieved 26.81 percent power conversion efficiency with a full-size wafer-based undefined heterojunction (HJT) solar cell in mass production.
