New Record For Solar Cell Power Efficiency

mdsolar writes "Renewable Energy Access is reporting that a consortium led by researchers at the University of Delaware has achieved 42.8% efficiency with a silicon solar cell. The method uses lower concentration (factor of 20 magnification) than the previous record holder (40.7% efficiency) so that it may have a broader range of applications, since tolerances for pointing the device will be larger. They are now partnering with DuPont to build engineering and manufacturing prototypes. They expect to be in production in 2010. On a roof, such cells would require less than half the surface area to produce the same amount of power as today's standard solar panels, which have an efficiency of about 17%."

Comments

Efficiency is less important...

[Anonymous Coward]

...than price per watt. We got plenty of space we can cover with solar cells so it's not important that they are extremely efficient, just cheap enough so it doesn't cost much to cover large areas.

Re:Another kind of efficiency

[dwandy]

It takes more than 3 years to pay back your monetary investment.

"Three years" should not be a 'too long' perdiod to re-coup your investment.

• That's less than 4% of an average lifetime.
• I'd take an investment that was guaranteed to pay back 100% every three years.

I don't see energy getting any cheaper on this planet, and I don't see energy consumption decreasing.

The problem is it's not just the solar panels: it's the batteries and other infrastructure (and then maintenance!), and the last time I looked at it, it was closer to 20-yrs to pay back a whole system, and the system had a 20-yr life expectancy. That's break-even assuming it makes it to life expectancy.

What I am interested in is directly attaching an AC unit to a solar panel. Where I live it's generally only hot when it's sunny, so the AC would run for free.
Since the AC is one of the most expensive things to run it's win-win-win-win:

• I can run it guilt-free
• It runs whenever it's hot
• I don't need the other infrastructure
• I will still pay for the panel in a relatively short time.

Re:hmmm.

[JaredOfEuropa]

There is also the huge number of people who believe that the consensus of thousands of scientists on climate change is a "global conspiracy" and their fear that it may eventually mean, shock horror, more taxes.

This believe is partly justified. The conspiracy isn't by the scientists, and isn't a global conspiracy either, but the climate scare has given the meddlers of any political stripe the perfect pretext to push their own agendas. The climate debate has been thoroughly politicised, at the expense of proper science. That does not mean that all conclusions are incorrect or made up, but very often peer reviews are sorely lacking, and many reports have had chapters and sections stricken in the final draft, because those sections could cast doubt on the severity or existence of human impact on the climate. In many cases scientists voicing such doubts have not been gainsaid, but fired from "scientific" institutions. Because a widespread doubt in our impact on the climate would spoil the party for the meddlesome politicians. The political stakes are huge, perhaps the largest of any issue in our history.

Why are long term trends not taken into account in these reports, for example. It is rubbish to say that we cannot accurately predict climate that far into the future because our short-term predictions are not very good. After all, we cannot predict the little ups & downs in next month's weather, but we can predict that winter will follow summer and autumn, and we know what the trends are in each of those seasons. The long-term trends in global weather can be predicted as well.

On a geological timescale, we are in high summer. Winter is coming, and in 10.000 years we'll be in an ice age. The start of the downward trend in average temperatures is imminent (which means anywhere between now and 1.000 years)... Perhaps that is why the IPCC report does not look any further than the year 2100, the scary hockeystick curve will flatten out after that year, and if you look even further it will drop. Our distant descendants (if any) may even be grateful for the extra CO2 we have released, since it might make the next ice age a little less severe.

But with all that said, conservation and reducing our dependancy on a limited resource is a good thing. But I refuse to join in the mindless panic.