The New South Wales solar energy company, Dyesol, has received $449,000 support from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency to enable it to create a “roadmap” for taking its perovskite solar cell technology from the laboratory to a commercially available product.

The roadmap will guide investment and innovation in perovskite solar cell manufacture and provide a clearer understanding of the patent landscape.

The main benefit of making solar cells from perovskite is that the material is cheap and abundant and could ultimately be used to produce dramatically lower cost solar power.

Perovskite solar cells can also be produced in very thin layer architectures with high degrees of transparency, which lends them to a variety of novel applications, including building integrated photovoltaic projects and flexible panel designs.