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40% Efficiency Solar Cells Developed
gtada writes "A story published at Physorg.com discusses recently published research into the fabrication of solar cells that surpass the 40% efficiency milestone. Such devices would be the high water-mark to date, and hint at the possibility of even more effective technology. 'In the design, multijunction cells divide the broad solar spectrum into three smaller sections by using three subcell band gaps. Each of the subcells can capture a different wavelength range of light, enabling each subcell to efficiently convert that light into electricity. With their conversion efficiency measured at 40.7%, the metamorphic multijunction concentrator cells surpass the theoretical limit of 37% of single-junction cells at 1000 suns, due to their multijunction structure.'"
Yes, and we have the nuclear waste for oh, I don't know, a few HUNDRED THOUSAND years ...
Only with stupid old technology. The Integral Fast Reactor generates 100 times less waste and it's only hotter than ore for a few hundred years. We should be building one at Yucca Mountain as a national security priority.
Fusion will be great in 40+ years, but that's a little late to act. We could have one of these running in probably 5 years.
Solar, at 40% efficiency would still require covering something like 8% of the land surface area of Earth to meet current-day demands. Wind is too variable, hydro is too small - we basically have coal and nuclear as the two viable baseload options.
Obviously, TBPB don't want to end anthropogenic global warming. It's left as an exercise to the reader to speculate on why.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
All the more reason we need to establish reliable mining on the moon. Concentrations on the moon are about 80% higher than on Earth. You know, there is a lot of history ahead of us and maybe Lunar mining would allow future infrastructure that at this point in time boggles the imagination.
Shh.
I think cost is still the limiting factor right now.
Yeah, there's a guy in NJ who went completely solar for his energy needs and spent about $400K on the system, not counting maintanence costs.
If only Moore's Law applied we'd all have a setup like that in ten years.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
no the main material is silicon and it's plentiful, the expenive part is the production, it requires a LOT of processing and quality control. people keep rambling on about moore's "law" but fail to realise the price of a cpu hasn't really fell very much at all in 10 years, they've just gotten faster (which is all moores prediction is to do with). in the case of solar panels this will NOT help them sell. they need to get much much cheaper for adoption to happen.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
True, but it makes me wonder how they'd hold up to the softball sized hail that regularly crops up in colorado.
I also remain curious about the weight- roofs seem to be supported by thinner and fewer A frames and you can see in many roofs where they sag rather obviously on either side of a beam. Will roofs have to be made stronger to support these heavy glass panels? I thought many of the recent ones were thinner and made with plastics? I saw one on TV the other day that was made to look like that sheet stuff that has thin shake-like things on it- even had nails through it for holding it up.