Dyesol has announced that it has been awarded a grant of 2.5 miilion AUD (almost $2 million USD) under the Cooperative Research Centre Projects (CRC-P) programme. The grant, administered by the Australian Department of Industry, is for an 18 month project titled, "Large Area Perovskite Photovoltaic Material Coating on Glass Substrate" and complements Dyesol's Major Area Demonstration (MAD) prototype development activities.

Dyesol will lead the project and other partners are CSR Building Products, and its subsidiary, CSR Viridian, and CSIRO. This activity aims to advance the goal of commercializing Perovskite Solar Cell (PSC) photovoltaic technology on glass substrates.

Researchers at the University of Toronto have developed a novel way to print perovskite solar cells easily and at a low cost. This breakthrough could lead to low-cost, printable perovskite solar panels capable of turning nearly any surface into a power generator.

Perovskite materials can be mixed into a liquid to form an ink, which allows them to be printed onto glass, plastic or other materials using a simple inkjet process. The common catch is, however, that in order to generate electricity, electrons excited by solar energy must be extracted from the crystals so they can flow through a circuit. That extraction happens in a special layer called the electron-selective layer, or ESL. The difficulty of manufacturing a good ESL has been one of the key challenges holding back the development of perovskite solar cell devices.

A collaboration between researchers at Stanford University and Arizona State University (ASU) resulted in a new perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell that converts sunlight to electricity with 23.6% efficiency. The team stated that work is being put into reaching 30% efficiency, and they believe that they "could be there within two years".

In the tandem cell created by Stanford and ASU, the top cell is composed of a perovskite compound and the bottom cell is made of silicon that is specifically tuned to capture infrared light. The perovskite and silicon cells boast efficiency of 15 and 21%, respectively. ASU provided the silicon bottom cell, while Stanford researchers fabricated the perovskite compound and subsequent cells. Throughout the yearlong collaboration, the ASU team also provided modeling support to design the tandem for maximum current generation, while the Stanford team characterized the tandem cells.