New Solar Panel Design Traps More Light

GoSun wrote in with an article about new solar panels that opens, "Sunlight has never really caught fire as a power source, mostly because generating electricity with solar cells is more expensive and less efficient than some conventional sources. But a new solar panel unveiled this month by the Georgia Tech Research Institute hopes to brighten the future of the energy source." The new panels are able to produce sixty times the current of traditional models.

Comments

Re:Outdated canard

[MyNymWasTaken]

Do you have any references to back up that claim with?

The fact that you closed with an ad hominem barb leaves me doubtful. More referenced research and less willfully ignorant babble please.

Energy pay-back time and CO2 emissions of PV systems
"energy pay-back time was found to be 25-3 years for present-day roof-top installations and 3-4 years for multi-megawatt, ground-mounted systems. [...] This leads to the conclusion that in the longer term grid-connected PV systems can contribute significantly to the mitigation of CO2 emissions."

(found by typing 'photovoltaic payback time' into google)

Cost comparisons

[aegl]

People keep dismissing solar because it can't compete in price against traditional large scale ways of generating electricity.

But it doesn't matter to me that some hydro-electric plant far from my house is making power at $0.02 per kWh, what matters to my economic reality is that my local power company charges just over $0.08 for the first dozen kWh delivered each day and then has a sliding scale that goes up to $0.36 kWh for increased amounts of power.

Before I installed solar panels a high percentage of my power was costing me that top rate. So the relevent economic calculation for me is the cost to install my panels divided by the expected number of kWh that they will generate across their lifetime. This number comes out at about $0.16 per kWh. So I'm better than breaking even now, and assuming that energy prices continue to rise, I'll do even better in years to come.

The final kicker in the equation is that I've switched to a time-of-use tariff so across the summer the power company will credit me with $0.209 for excess power that I generate in peak hours (between 1pm and 7pm), and $0.112 for partial-peak (10am-1pm + 7pm-9pm).

If I'd taken the capital that I used to install the panels and invested it instead, I'd have to maintain a >19% annual pre-tax rate of return to beat the panels. Possible, but extremely unlikely (especially with my stock-picking track record!).

Re:Is solar really green?

[Animats]

When Mark Pinto of Applied Materials spoke at Stanford in EE380 two weeks ago, he said that the current energy payback time on their solar panels is two years, and they're trying to get that down to six months. Some of the fab steps borrowed from semiconductor processing, where the areas aren't so large, can be improved.

Dumb question

[lawpoop]

Hey, if you have solar panels on your roof, how often to you have to wash them? Do they develop a film that reduces their efficiency?

Re:Dumb question

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had solar panels on my roof for 1.5 years, I did not try cleaning them until 3 months ago. Over last summer I estimate I lost 1 to 2 KWHr / day because they were not clean (there was rain in October which cleaned and increased the output.) What caused me to clean them was trying to understand how much energy was falling on my system and where the losses were. In one year my 18 x 170W panels generated 5MWHr, (San Jose, reasonably sunny), which at 10 cents / KWHr only represents $500. The system cost me $16K, but on top of it the state paid some ~7K. I expect in 32 years to get equal. But the true advantage is by putting the cells on the roof I started to investigate and understand where all my energy usage was going, and to reduce. It has also allowed me to study how to calculate where the sun is in the sky (math I've been wanting to do for a long time) and atmospheric effects. (I recommend http://rredc.nrel.gov/ .) I now believe the biggest loss I have is in the summer and do to how hot the panels are getting. I turns out by fixed mounting them only 6 inches above my roof, without a wind I have measured over 100F under the panels, on are relatively cool day. Yesterday was sunny, cool and windy, and I generated close to my ideal. (My solar water heater only got up to 110F, where as a couple days ago when the outside temp was 10 to 15F higher and no wind, I reached 140F but generated 1-2KWHrs less.) If I were installing them again, I would have raised them a little higher off the roof, spread them out a little more so there is better air circulation around them, and I would like to had an adjustable angle. (It amazes me how lazy American's have become, expecting everything to be automatic. By changing the angle only 4 times a year I could increase my output.)
    To sum it up: Cost of System: too much, Information gained: Priceless

Re:Efficiency is not really important

[BarneyL]

Surely the $/Watt includes all the things you have just thrown in so when calculating your examples:

1) The cost of the land would have to be taken in to account
2) The cost of maintenance would be taken in to account
3) The cost of legal fees and vet bills for treating spontaniously combusted neigbours pets would be taken in to account.

The parent's point still holds, the important factor is the total cost of a PV system (installation, land space, maintenance and enclosure costs included) divided by the power it produces.