By Gbenga Obikoya
In this era of green technology, the focus has shifted to renewable methods of energy production to reduce carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions. Solar photovoltaic (PV) is currently the fastest-growing renewable energy source due to its cost-effective approach to harnessing energy from the sun.
Thus, it helps to promote a reduction in the carbon footprint and, consequently, helps to meet the global climate goal.
The solar PV energy revolution is currently sweeping across Africa. According to statistics, solar PV installed capacity in Nigeria has increased by over 100 folds in the last 10 years.
Remarkable research and development (R&D) efforts have paved the way for manufacturing more efficient solar PV panels at a reduced cost, leading to massive deployment across Africa and other parts of the world.
We discovered that a Nigerian, Gbenga Obikoya, who graduated with a doctorate from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Delaware, has made remarkable research efforts in solar PV technologies and applications.
He conducted his PhD research at the Institute of Energy Conversion (IEC), University of Delaware. IEC is the world’s oldest solar research institute and one of the only two recognised centres of excellence for Photovoltaic Research and Education by the United States Department of Energy.
Obikoya’s research focuses on fabrication, characterisation, and reliability studies of solar PV cells made from two market-leading materials: silicon and cadmium telluride. On a system level, he also researched the cost-effectiveness and viability of renewable energy micro-grid systems.
As solar PV technologies continuously undergo evolutionary upgrades in their design and fabrication to increase power conversion efficiency further and reduce cost, Obikoya’s research taps into the opportunity to optimise semiconductor materials to achieve enhanced efficiency, reduced cost, and reliability in both the silicon heterojunction solar cell and the cadmium telluride solar cell technologies.
He developed an approach to reduce fabrication costs without sacrificing the power conversion efficiency. This remarkable achievement is positioned to promote solar PV deployment on a large scale, thus helping to reduce carbon footprints.
Besides, he investigated degradation mechanisms, defects, the influence of the indium material layer on long-term stability, and other root causes of failure mechanisms in solar cells. These outstanding research efforts are positioned to provide insights for PV manufacturers when developing sets of acceptable measurement procedures to investigate the long-term reliability of solar PV products, especially when solar PV panels are to be deployed in harsh climatic environments.
On a system level, Obikoya researched a viable, resilient, and cost-effective renewable energy microgrid solution using NASA data provided by HOMER Grid modelling software.
As a Volunteer Research Engineer at Community Dreams Foundation (CDF), he continues researching renewable energy micro-grid resilience, thus contributing to shaping the “Energy Storage Resilience Home Act” in Central Florida.
The output of this work is positioned to ensure a system that can provide a black start during hurricanes or other natural disasters. Besides, the work is positioned to mitigate the undesirable technical, economic, and environmental issues that arise when integrating renewable energy resources (from micro-grid systems) into the grid network, consequently promoting grid decarbonisation.
Obikoya’s unique research contribution was recognized at the 49th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialist Conference. One of his works was nominated for the Best Student Presentation Award Finalist, while another work he co-authored won the Best Poster Award.
With dedicated researchers like Obikoya, the future of the renewable energy sector, especially the solar PV industry, looks promising. Further innovation will help to achieve a renewable energy future with net-zero emissions.
Dr Gbenga Obikoya is a Nigerian in the diaspora exploring approaches to scaling up Solar PV Technology
