- The Vatican announced that in order to conserve Earth's resources they would be installing solar panels on some buildings, in "a comprehensive energy project that will pay for itself in a few years." 2007 - University of Delaware claims to achieve new world record in Solar Cell Technology without independent confirmation: 42.8% efficiency. 2007 - Nanosolar ships the first commercial printed CIGS, claiming that they will eventually ship for less than $1/watt. However, the company does not publicly disclose the technical specifications or current selling price of the modules. 2008 - New record achieved in solar cell efficiency. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have set a world record in solar cell efficiency with a photovoltaic device that converts 40.8% of the light that hits it into electricity. However, it was only under the concentrated energy of 326 suns that this was achieved. The inverted metamorphic triple-junction solar cell was designed, fabricated and independently measured at NREL. 2010 − IKAROS becomes the first spacecraft to successfully demonstrate solar sail technology in interplanetary space. 2010 - US President Barack Obama orders installation of additional solar panels and a solar water heater at the White House 2011 - Fast-growing factories in China push manufacturing costs down to about $1.25 per watt for silicon photovoltaic modules. Installations double worldwide. 2013 - After three years, the solar panels ordered by President Barack Obama were installed on the White House. 2016 - University of New South Wales engineers established a new world record for unfocused sunlight conversion to electricity with an efficiency increase to 34.5% . The record was set by UNSW’s Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics (ACAP) using a 28 cm2 four-junction mini-module – embedded in a prism – that extracts the maximum energy from sunlight. It does this by splitting the incoming rays into four bands, using a four-junction receiver to squeeze even more electricity from each beam of sunlight. 2016 - First Solar says it has converted 22.1 percent of the energy in sunlight into electricity using experimental cells made from cadmium telluride—a technology that today represents around 5 percent of the worldwide solar power market. 2018 - Alta Devices, a US-based specialty gallium arsenide (GaAs) PV manufacturer, claimed to have achieved a solar cell conversion efficiency record of 29.1%, as certified by Germany's Fraunhofer ISE CalLab. 2018 - The first dedicated solar panel recycling