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Hairy Solar Cells Could Mean Higher Efficiency
kitzilla writes "Two research groups working independently have come up with what they say are cheap processes for growing nanowires to be used with solar cells. The 'hairy' cells provide a direct path for electrons collected at the panel face to reach an electrode, something which has the potential to dramatically improve system efficiency."
solar cells are pn junctions and DO NOT Collect electrons. i am to lazy to get into solid state theory right now. so go figure how exactly pv cells work.
but what is really needed is a photovoltaic that will release two electrons for every photon. If any of you material guys out there do that, you'll be a gazillionaire! That will really make photovoltaics productive enough to really complete with other alternative energy source - assuming fossils fuels don't go up much higher than they are now. Photovoltaics need to get down below $0.15 kwh on the roof (the heat from a typical roof reduces photovoltaic's efficiency by at least 10%).
Slight problem at the moment is band gap, and tuning a semiconductor to have the appropriate bandgap that will cover the visible spectrum. Currently there is no single device that is sensitive to the whole visible spectrum, but there is research into this. This is one of the major reasons for the low efficiency in solar cells.
Personally I love solar voltaic panels with a little of that canned cheese on them. On a more serious note, why do people not focus on the tech that we have now? For instance if you want solar the solar thermal systems are pretty cheap to build and have decent efficiency. I just don't get why everyone is so stuck on solar voltaic which is as someone else said in a perpetual early adoption stage when a good chunk of baseline power could be provided by solar thermal.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
If I am not completely mistaken "classical" semi conductor cells can reach efficiencies of 40%, meaning that even with perfect 100% efficiency you would get at best a factor 2.5 improvement. Of course, 100% efficiency is an impossibility and thus I think we can safely assume that these cells will never reach more than 80%-90% efficiency, which would be an improvement of a factor of 2 over current technology. Now last estimate I saw was that in Europe solar cells work out to be about 4 times as expensive as wind power (which is itself rather pricey ), so even assuming the 100% efficiency, efficiency gains alone cannot make solar economical.
Add in to this that a large part of the cost of solar is the energy needed to produce the cells, which means that if you get that energy from a more expensive power source, the price of the cells will increase. I.e, if one started to replace relatively cheap generation capacity with more expensive solar cells, then the cost of energy, and hence the cost of the cells, would increase.
It would therefore appear to me that for solar to have a chance to become competitive what is needed is focus on lowering the cost of producing the cells, because the gains from improving their efficiency cannot offset their presently large price, and it appears unlikely that pushing for higher and higher efficiencies will be possible without making the cells more expensive.
Thermal solar is the lowest costs of all AE except for hydro. At this time, it is the same costs as a recent coal plant i.e. a plant that is cleaner than average. Of course, the solar thermal is clean all the way around.
In addition, it is fairly easy to store the heat in salts and generate during the night. Spain, Arizona, New Mexico, Northern Africa, etc. are all headed in GW size of solar thermal. Spain expects to sell power back to its northern neighbors at a tidy profits. Arizona has a 1/4 GW install going in. In addition, another group is close to building a 1/2-3/4 GW in NM or southern CO (possible to take advantage of 3 different power companies and 5 states incentives).
All in all, the only joke is a fool like you.
36% in concentrator cells, but they'll be stuck in the lab for quite a while, and will probably be infeasible for large installations.
Thermal is currently 40% in some units, and a prototype achieved 60%.
That's the efficiency of the turbine itself. The plant will have some additional losses (not all of the sunlight hitting the area of the plant will actually be collected, etc).