Overview
- The monarch toured Oxford Photovoltaics’ Yarnton site on Friday, met engineers in the labs, and laughed off a plaque that fell during the unveiling.
- He praised the work as “wonderful” and urged a faster shift to renewables, telling staff he hoped they could “speed up the transition a bit.”
- Oxford PV’s tandem cells layer light-sensitive perovskite on silicon to capture more of the sun’s spectrum, which the firm says lifts energy for the same roof area by at least one fifth.
- Chief executive David Ward said after the visit that the company is shipping pilot volumes to early customers as it moves from lab proof toward market use.
- The firm, a 2010 University of Oxford spin-out with about 150 staff worldwide and roughly 60 in Oxford, hosted a visit that was delayed about 45 minutes by bad weather.