Canada's New Invention Could Replace Solar Panels Forever

In 1839, a heavy black stone with tiny cube shaped crystals came out of the Ural Mountains. It was named perovskite. Today that crystal is being stacked on top of silicon solar cells, and it has already broken a limit the solar industry lived with for more than 60 years. This is the real Canadian side of that story: the world's largest solar plant in 2010 (Sarnia, Ontario), the University of Toronto team that put perovskite on textured silicon in 2020 and called it a "drop-in solution", the Saskatoon scientists who used the Canadian Light Source to watch these cells fail one second at a time, the Montreal and Halifax startups trying to print them, and what all of this could mean for a cold northern country that still buys most of its panels. Chapters 0:00 Two micrometres 1:39 What is coming 2:17 The panel on your roof 4:15 Canada's solar problem 6:12 From the Urals to Yokohama 8:00 Toronto, 2020 10:04 The records travel 11:13 Watching it die 13:35 Montreal and Halifax 14:56 The summer the ceiling broke 16:21 Why the North wins 17:20 Now imagine 18:57 The answer Note: some scenes are dramatised reconstructions, and the Lomond panel is an imagined concept created for this video. It is not a real product and no company is building it. Dates, figures, people and quotes about real companies, labs and governments come from public sources, including the University of Toronto, the Canadian Light Source, CEA-INES, pv magazine, Northwestern University, KAUST and the Government of Canada. Canada Invents is part of the same family as True North Invents. Footage: Pexels, Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons (credits below). Music and sound effects: YouTube Audio Library. #Canada #SolarPanels #Perovskite #CanadaInvents Image credits (Wikimedia Commons): "Bahen Front View" by Sabrerider, CC BY-SA 3.0 "Bahen centre (1776417440)" by 松林 Ｌ, CC BY 2.0 "Haupteingang Nokia Bell Labs Murray Hill, NJ" by Ckaack, CC BY-SA 4.0 "CLS from the air" by Canadian Light Source Inc., CC BY-SA 2.0 "Canadian-Light-Source-Entrance" by J. Adamson SriMesh, CC BY 2.5 "Canadian Light Source, on the U of S campus (5675502251)" by CLS Research Office, CC BY-SA 2.0 "Henri Hicks Building, Dalhousie University" by mricon, CC BY-SA 2.0 "2024-06-30 01 SILVA OF HALIFAX - IMO 5327996 - Halifax NS CAN" by Gordon Leggett, CC BY 4.0 "2022-08-15 01 Wide angle view of Halifax skyline, Nova Scotia, Canada" by Gordon Leggett, CC BY-SA 4.0 "KAUST yacht club" by Arbitrarily0, CC BY-SA 3.0 "KAUST pontoon boat" by Arbitrarily0, CC BY-SA 3.0 "View from King's College Circle Field towards Bay Tower (2001) (50944893898)" by Sergei Mutovkin, CC BY 2.0 "Pinery Provincial Parl View of Lake Huron from the end of Cedar trail 1" by Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0 "Pinery Provincial Parl View of Lake Huron from the end of Cedar trail 3" by Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0 "Montreal Twilight Panorama 2006" by Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0 "Montreal night view" by Paolostefano1412, CC BY-SA 3.0 "Aerial view of Northwestern University" by Saku, CC BY-SA 4.0 "University Hall Northwestern" by Madcoverboy, CC BY-SA 3.0 "Chicago Skyline Northwestern University" by Raquel Baranow, CC BY-SA 4.0 "Old Crow houses" by Jennoit, CC BY 2.0 "Perovskite. Valmalenco, Italy-9097" by Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0 "Perovskite. Valmalenco, Italy-9096" by Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0 "Perovskite. Valmalenco, Italy-9093" by Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0 "Bridge in Porcupine from Porcupine River - panoramio" by Paul LaRocque, CC BY 3.0 "Sarnia skyline" by P199, CC BY-SA 3.0 "Sarnia, Ontario (21653747469)" by Ken Lund, CC BY-SA 2.0 "Silicon solar cell (PERC) front and back" by WhistlingBird, CC BY-SA 4.0 "Heterojunction solar cell surface SEM image" by Radiotrefoil, CC BY-SA 4.0 "Solar panels at the factory of China Steel in Kaohsiung 2023-02-13" by Makoto Lin, CC BY 2.0 "Hatil rooftop solar panels" by HokuroN, CC BY-SA 4.0 "Snow on solar panels in Tuntorp" by W.carter, CC BY-SA 4.0 "Cleaning solar panels (1053)" by Oliver Rudkin, CC BY 2.0 "Synchrotron Solaris" by Emmilia Kr, CC BY-SA 4.0 "Sirius Synchrotron Entrance" by Tex.Bold, CC BY-SA 4.0 "University of Saskatchewan campus" by Joli Rumi, CC BY-SA 4.0 "CollegeBuilding-UofS" by SriMesh, CC BY-SA 3.0 "University of Saskatchewan Prince Albert campus" by Padowntown, CC BY-SA 4.0 "Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, main entrances" by Talar Nersesian, CC BY-SA 4.0 "Landscape view in Circumpolar Urals" by ugraland, CC BY 2.0 "Ural Mountains Tyuluk (31373803663)" by Alex Alishevskikh, CC BY-SA 2.0 "Ural Mountains Tyuluk (32184010315)" by Alex Alishevskikh, CC BY-SA 2.0 "Near Vulcan, Alberta - panoramio" by R. Sieben, CC BY 3.0 Public domain/CC0: Dennis Schroeder, Gottscho-Schleisner Collection, Raysonho, SayCheeeeeese, Spencer David, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Spencer, David, Syced, Wikideas1, Wilfredor