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King Charles experienced an awkward yet light-hearted moment during a visit to Oxfordshire, where he toured the facilities of Oxford Photovoltaics (PV).
The monarch burst into laughter after unveiling a commemorative plaque that accidentally slipped and fell to the ground.
He chuckled as the plaque dropped at his feet, before a member of the Oxford PV team quickly picked it up.
Once it was placed back on display, the King posed beside it with a smile for the photographers.
During the visit, the monarch praised Oxford PV’s work on next-generation solar panels, describing it as “wonderful,” and joked about the “disaster” of his plaque unveiling mishap.
The King has long been a strong supporter of sustainability and environmental causes, often speaking about the challenges facing the planet and taking practical steps himself — including running his Aston Martin on eco-friendly fuel.
Speaking to staff, he said, “I hope you can speed up the transition a bit,” seemingly referring to the move away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy.
He added: “I think you’re remarkable, how you’ve managed to keep it all going, but it does take time to get to the point where you can actually commercialise all these things.”
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“But we need it all badly, all your products, fantastic… applicable on one or two roofs.”
During the visit, Charles toured the research and development laboratory at Oxford PV, a company founded in 2010 as a spin-out from Oxford University.
The firm has since grown into a global leader in using light-sensitive perovskite to develop solar panels that are more than 20 percent more efficient than conventional ones.
He was also shown an electron microscope image of the perovskite surface — a material layered onto silicon solar panels to enhance performance by capturing different parts of the light spectrum.
The King arrived around 45 minutes late after bad weather forced him to switch from a helicopter to travelling by car for his journey to Oxford, reportedly from London.
He apologised several times for the delay, making light of the situation with a few jokes.
During the visit, His Majesty was shown images of advanced solar panel applications that are not yet available to the public.
Charles appeared particularly interested in their potential use across industries such as car manufacturing, aviation and satellite technology.
During the visit, Oxford PV’s chief executive, David Ward, explained that the company is currently shipping “pilot volumes” of its products to early customers in a safe and controlled way.
He said: “There’s been a decade of work, getting it from a brilliant piece of science into a real module that you see here, that we could give to a customer and they put on a roof.”
He added: “I don’t think one energy source will dominate all others, but solar right now is the cheapest form of energy generation and deals with security and energy transition.”
