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“It's like selling a salad,” says Tandem PV CEO Scott Wharton. “You've got your base salad, and then you pick your protein.”
It’s a delicious way to describe how Tandem PV’s perovskite-silicon solar panel works. A layer of perovskite sits above a conventional silicon cell, adding another way to capture sunlight. The extra ingredient could deliver much more power from a similar panel footprint.
In plain English, perovskite is a family of crystalline materials with a particular atomic structure that’s exceptionally good at absorbing light. The name comes from a 19th-century Russian mineralogist, Lev Perovski. Solar scientists can tune these materials cheaply in the lab, and a perovskite layer captures parts of the light spectrum that silicon can’t use, which is why stacking the two can lift a panel’s output well beyond either material alone.
And that's important well beyond electricity.
From promising result to commercial product
Most commercial solar panels operate at around 22 to 24 percent efficiency, with the best silicon panels approaching 25 percent. Tandem PV has reported a 30.4 percent efficiency result for a small demonstration module. The company says it’s now shipped its first production-quality panel, with paid pilot deployments expected to begin later in 2026.
Tandem PV is targeting gigawatt-scale manufacturing in 2028, and sees an engineering path to 37 percent efficiency by 2030. Higher theoretical figures, around 45 to 50 percent, are possibilities for future stacked designs.
The panel’s design is interesting for another reason. Its perovskite layer is applied to the glass rather than directly to the silicon cell, which could let the company pair it with different silicon technologies. The concept is modular, much like that salad. Keep the base, add a new layer, and potentially get more from the whole.
If the early perovskite solar panels deliver at scale, higher-efficiency modules could improve the levelised cost of energy by 15 to 25 percent. In plain English, levelised cost of energy is the average cost of producing one unit of electricity over a power plant's whole life, combining what it costs to build, run, maintain and eventually decommission, divided by all the electricity it will ever produce. It's the number energy investors use to compare different ways of generating power on a level playing field, so a more efficient panel lowers it by generating more electricity from the same upfront investment.
Why food leaders should pay attention
For food and agriculture, electricity isn’t just another operating expense. It shapes many food parameters including the economics of indoor growing, water treatment, cold storage and energy-intensive production. Precision fermentation, cellular agriculture, alternative proteins and computational biology will all benefit as the cost and availability of power improve.
I’ve previously explored why the energy cost curve matters for food production. The short version is that better energy economics change which production models become viable, and where.
In my TECHXponential model, Energy is one of four accelerators alongside AI, Quantum Computing and Sensors. This solar development is a new signal for that accelerator, as a technology moves from promise towards commercial testing.
There’s another possibility I find fascinating. Higher-output panels could make it easier to produce more electricity where land is limited, including on suitable farm infrastructure. Researchers are also exploring perovskite solar panel applications in greenhouses and over crops.
The strategic question for food businesses isn’t whether this one panel will transform the industry overnight. It’s what happens as solar keeps improving, manufacturing scales and the cost of clean electricity continues to shift. Could the next generation of food facilities be designed around power that’s more local, more abundant and less exposed to price shocks?
That’s the opportunity I’m watching. The salad panel is still moving through its commercial test. But if its added layer delivers as promised, it will help reshape the energy foundations beneath tomorrow’s food system.
To continue the conversation email me at tony@futuristforfood.com
