In 2025, ACAP-supported research at ANU  materially shaped how governments, utilities and developers plan long-duration energy storage. The Pumped Hydro Energy Storage (PHES) Atlases , led by Professor Andrew Blakers  and supported by ACAP, are now embedded in national strategies and commercial pipelines across multiple continents – accelerating the pathway to ultra-low-cost solar (ULCS).   Solving solar’s storage constraint   Ultra-low-cost solar depends on one critical fact

The modelling shows that ultra-low-cost solar fundamentally changes the economics of Australia’s energy transition.

The Australian Silicon Study (AusSi) has identified that a 50,000 tonnes per annum solar-grade polysilicon facility represents the minimum commercially viable scale for production in Australia – aligned with projected global demand of approximately 1.2 terawatts of new solar PV installations annually by 2030. Funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency under the Solar SunShot Program, AusSi assesses the technical, commercial and investment feasibility of establishing a l

As the global solar industry accelerates toward terawatt-scale manufacturing, it faces a critical bottleneck: silver. Today’s high-efficiency silicon solar cells rely on screen-printed silver contacts, and in 2025 alone, photovoltaic manufacturing consumed roughly 25% of global silver supply, highlighting the material risk of scaling solar without redesigning how critical resources are used.    With the support of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics,  Associate P

UNSW’s Daylight Photoluminescence (DPL) Imaging Group, led by Professor Thorsten Trupke and Dr Oliver Kunz, with ACAP support, continues to develop their drone-based imaging solutions which have the potential to transform how solar farms are assessed, monitored and maintained.  Their pioneering DPL technology allows operators to ‘see’ hidden defects in solar panels in broad daylight, providing rapid, high-resolution diagnostics.

At UNSW, Professor Bram Hoex and his research group are leading the international effort to understand, quantify and standardise how UV-induced degradation (UVID) should be tested and mitigated in modern silicon solar cells, suppported by the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics.

UNSW-ACAP researchers tackle corrosion in TOPCon and HJT solar cells, strengthening reliability and long-term performance in next-generation PV.

In 2025 UNSW successfully completed commissioning of ACAP’s new Tandem Cluster, a major research infrastructure and the first of its kind in Australia. This integrated suite of sputtering, evaporation, ALD and in‑situ characterisation systems now provides ACAP researchers with a unified platform for fabricating next‑generation tandem solar cells.

CSIRO’s globally accredited PV testing lab leads development of international standards for perovskite solar cell measurement.

Supported by the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, researchers at ANU have developed an industrially compatible method for perovskite deposition on large textured silicon wafers, tackling one of the major barriers to market for perovskite -silicon tandem solar cells.

Supported by ACAP, Professor Xiaojing Hao (UNSW) and her team have played a leading role in engineering pathways for kesterite solar cells beyond 15% efficiency, a milestone that repositions the technology as a credible, scalable alternative to less sustainable thin-film options. At the heart of this advance is precise control of the kesterite formation pathway using molecular ink chemistry, as reported in Nature Energy, with international collaborators.

Researchers at The University of Queensland (UQ) have made a major step forward by showing that large-area perovskite solar cells can deliver high performance using simpler, more scalable designs.

By combining high-throughput manufacturing-style experimentation with machine learning (ML), researchers from CSIRO and Monash University have achieved both unprecedented data scale and record device performance,

At last year’s SNEC 2025 conference in Shanghai, ACAP founder and UNSW Scientia Professor Martin Green unveiled new insights showing that silicon still has room for big performance gains. His plenary talk focused on a promising frontier in photovoltaic innovation: reducing reflection and boosting light capture using ultra-fine, sub-micron surface structures.

Supported by ACAP, UNSW researchers are advancing antimony chalcogenide as a serious tandem top-cell candidate.

A reliable beacon of progress for the international PV industry, Professor Martin Green's Solar Cell Efficiency Tables Version 67 are a snapshot of the latest highest confirmed efficiencies across cell, device and module technologies.

The Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics (ACAP) is proud to highlight the publication of a landmark analysis in prestigious journal Joule titled " State-of-play of contending silicon photovoltaic technologies " 1 , authored by Professor Martin Green alongside notable co-authors Dr Jessica Yajie Jiang , Dr Ning Song and Dr Zibo Zhou (UNSW/ACAP), and industry heavyweights from Aiko , LONGi , Huasun, JA Solar and Trina Solar . Silicon solar cells account for over 97%

Professor Kylie Catchpole gave an update on ACAP’s PV Futures and Knowledge Sharing program which is focused on understanding what ultra‑low cost solar means for the whole energy system, and how we communicate that to industry, policymakers and the community. 

ACAP researchers at ANU have tackled degradation in perovskite silicon tandem cells, by deliberately running tandem cells in a slightly mismatched mode, where the silicon layer limits the overall current – and dramatically suppresses the problematic voltage fluctuations in the perovskite layer.

As part of ACAP's expansion of outdoor PV testing facilties, CSIRO's PV Outdoor Test Facility has had a substantial upgrade and is now accessible to all ACAP researchers.