• Energy Research
• 2016-2025close
• DE close
• Imperial College London close

AbstractImproving the long-term stability of perovskite solar cells is critical to the deployment of this technology. Despite the great emphasis laid on stability-related investigations, publications lack consistency in experimental procedures and parameters reported. It is therefore challenging to reproduce and compare results and thereby develop a deep understanding of degradation mechanisms. Here, we report a consensus between researchers in the field on procedures for testing perovskite solar cell stability, which are based on the International Summit on Organic Photovoltaic Stability (ISOS) protocols. We propose additional procedures to account for properties specific to PSCs such as ion redistribution under electric fields, reversible degradation and to distinguish ambient-induced degradation from other stress factors. These protocols are not intended as a replacement of the existing qualification standards, but rather they aim to unify the stability assessment and to understand failure modes. Finally, we identify key procedural information which we suggest reporting in publications to improve reproducibility and enable large data set analysis.

AbstractImproving the long-term stability of perovskite solar cells is critical to the deployment of this technology. Despite the great emphasis laid on stability-related investigations, publications lack consistency in experimental procedures and parameters reported. It is therefore challenging to reproduce and compare results and thereby develop a deep understanding of degradation mechanisms. Here, we report a consensus between researchers in the field on procedures for testing perovskite solar cell stability, which are based on the International Summit on Organic Photovoltaic Stability (ISOS) protocols. We propose additional procedures to account for properties specific to PSCs such as ion redistribution under electric fields, reversible degradation and to distinguish ambient-induced degradation from other stress factors. These protocols are not intended as a replacement of the existing qualification standards, but rather they aim to unify the stability assessment and to understand failure modes. Finally, we identify key procedural information which we suggest reporting in publications to improve reproducibility and enable large data set analysis.

Abstract A recent article in this journal claimed to assess the socio-technical potential for onshore wind energy in Europe. We find the article to be severely flawed and raise concerns in five general areas. Firstly, the term socio-technical is not precisely defined, and is used by the authors to refer to a potential that others term as merely technical. Secondly, the study fails to account for over a decade of research in wind energy resource assessments. Thirdly, there are multiple issues with the use of input data and, because the study is opaque about many details, the effect of these errors cannot be reproduced. Fourthly, the method assumes a very high wind turbine capacity density of 10.73 MW/km2 across 40% of the land area in Europe with a generic 30% capacity factor. Fifthly, the authors find an implausibly high onshore wind potential, with 120% more capacity and 70% more generation than the highest results given elsewhere in the literature. Overall, we conclude that new research at higher spatial resolutions can make a valuable contribution to wind resource potential assessments. However, due to the missing literature review, the lack of transparency and the overly simplistic methodology, Enevoldsen et al. (2019) potentially mislead fellow scientists, policy makers and the general public.