A new design for a quasi-solid-state Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET) enabled solar cell with unattached Lucifer yellow (LY) dye molecules as donors and CdS/CdSe quantum dots (QDs) tethered to titania (TiO2) as acceptors is presented. The Forster radius is experimentally determined to be 5.29 nm. Sequential energy transfer from the LY dye to the QDs and electron transfer from the QDs to TiO2 is followed by fluorescence quenching and electron lifetime studies. Cells with a donor-acceptor architecture (TiO2/CdS/CdSe/ZnS-LY/S2--multi-walled carbon nanotubes) show a maximum incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency of 53 % at 530 nm. This is the highest efficiency among Ru-dye free FRET-enabled quantum dot solar cells (QDSCs), and is much higher than the donor or acceptor-only cells. The FRET-enhanced solar cell performance over the majority of the visible spectrum paves the way to harnessing the untapped potential of the LY dye as an energy relay fluorophore for the entire gamut of dye sensitized, organic, or hybrid solar cells. Fostering Forster resonance: A highly efficient quasi-solid-state Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET)-enables donor-acceptor solar cells, consisting of Lucifer yellow (LY) dye as the donor component and CdS/CdSe quantum dots (QDs) as the acceptor, which exhibit an incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency (IPCE) of 53 %; the highest among Ru-dye free FRET-enabled quantum dot solar cells. © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.