Australia has made history with its very ambitious SunCable project, which promises to change the face of renewable energy around the globe. It entails the export of solar energy towards Singapore via a 4,300 km underwater cable, marking Australia’s transition to sustainable power from fossil fuels.

It is indeed very exciting development in renewable energy which is the SunCable project. At its heart is an intended most gigantic solar and battery park in the world, to be built near Tennant Creek in northern Australia, at an estimated cost of $35 billion.

This will supply green energy to Singapore, with the potential of contributing 6 GW towards 15% of its electricity needs, connected by the world’s longest underwater cable – a technological marvel six times the length of any existing cable.

Increasing module efficiency and expanding manufacturing capacity play complementary roles in reducing costs of metal halide perovskite/silicon tandem solar modules, according to researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Each cost lever can play a similar role depending on a manufacturer’s ability to scale up and improve module performance.

Most photovoltaic (PV) modules manufactured today are based on single-junction silicon solar cells. By pairing silicon with another solar cell material such as metal halide perovskites (MHPs), thus creating a tandem, manufacturers can create a solar module that can convert more sunlight to electricity than using silicon alone.

This tandem technology is still in the early stages, and there are multiple options being pursued to integrate MHPs and silicon, with a lot of unknowns in terms of cost and performance. To address this gap, the researchers built a manufacturing cost model that combines laboratory processes with existing equipment and supply chains to compare different possible approaches at scale.