Solar Cell Inventor Wins Millennium Prize

adeelarshad82 writes "The inventor of a new type of solar cell won the Finnish state and industry-funded, €800,000 ($1.07 million), Millennium Technology Prize. According to the foundation, Michael Graetzel's dye-sensitized solar cells, known as Graetzel cells, could be a significant contributor to the future energy technologies due to their excellent price-performance ratio."

Comments

Decrease, not increase

[Anonymous Coward]

I still think we should decrease our use of energy, instead of inventing new ways to increase its production.

Dr. Pekka Paisti

Re:Decrease, not increase

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right. And naive.

Re:Decrease, not increase

[PhongUK]

In order to decrease our use of energy, or atleast to have any chance of doing it at all, we need to stop making babies.

Re:Decrease, not increase

[Fluffeh]

I still think we should decrease our use of energy, instead of inventing new ways to increase its production. Dr. Pekka Paisti

You are right. And naive.

Hmmm, what a funny two first posts. Both are totally correct, yet at polar opposites.

Yes, we should decrease the amount of power we use. I totally agree, yet, the chances of getting the average consumer to actually do so, keep dreaming. As long as people keep coming up with power hungry devices that people want (read: air conditioners, plasma TVs, faster PCs and just about every other imaginable device), people will in fact keep buying them. Will they pay vastly larger sums for them if they are power efficient? Unlikely, some might, most won't. Will they put up with lower/smaller/decreased functionality? Again, some might, most won't.

I totally support using less power (my own electricity bill for example comes from 100% wind energy, which costs a good deal more than normal coal fired here in Australia) but I welcome any steps that are taken to make the overall impact of the "sheep consumers" less on the environment.

Re:Decrease, not increase

[kcelery]

Everyone seems to have the same idea as yours, but they don't seem to agree upon whose babies.

Re:Decrease, not increase

[ZiakII]

Well I am happy to announce that the Slashdot crowd is leading in that front!

Re:Decrease, not increase

[Dr. Spork]

You're actually wrong. The sort of people who are upgrading computers and plasma screens (North Americans, Europeans and similar) are actually not increasing their per-capita energy use each year. They're the same people who are upgrading their insulation, light bulbs, etc.

All the increases in energy use is from the global poor, the people who are just now acquiring computers, light bulbs and cars. And I know that orthodox environmentalists disagree with me on this, because they're assholes and want the destitute to stay destitute, but I say that it is a good thing that the world's poor are using more energy. A life with any reasonable standard of living is necessarily going to involve some significant energy use, and if we want people to escape from poverty (and the non-assholes among us do), we have to welcome this.

Those of us who waste energy should cut down, but not to the point of making ourselves poor. And since that won't save nearly enough energy to allow to poor to escape poverty, what we need is a lot more energy. I would guess at least 10 terrawatts more. It's that simple. Solar will help.

Re:Decrease, not increase

[polar red]

I live in a cold climate - it is use energy or freeze

actually, Investing in insulation is ten times cheaper than buying energy. a passive house has been build in very cold climates.

Re:Decrease, not increase

[Firethorn]

Not only that, I love how people say that we can simply reduce usage over building new power plants, then turn around and rave how electric cars are going to solve all of our problems.

The 'average' household uses something around 700-1400 kwh a month.
The 'average' electronic vehicle gets about 5 miles to the kwh, and the average vehicle is driven around 10-15k miles a year.
Don't forget that the average household is 2 cars today.

So, you're looking at probably around a 22% increase in electricity usage if people go to EVs. You just can't reduce energy usage that much via other means, especially when you also have 5% growth in population/households on top of it.

Still, I salute the inventer in the op, because he's, well, actually addressing the problem. The moment I can make solar panels make sense in a cost-benefit analysis is when I recommend all my relatives in Florida get them.

I'm moving to Alaska(work), so they'd probably still have to come down in price another 50% before they'd make sense for me.

Until I was informed of my exciting new opportunity, I was looking at a wind turbine for the small town I live in - because a turbine big enough to power a town costs a lot less per watt of capacity, and by reaching higher has steadier wind, resulting in lower costs when you factor the cost of the turbine into the cost per kwh it produces. Small $10k turbine = 5k kwh per year, expensive. $1M turbine = 1M kwh per year, much better. These figures are example only. Actual production is so location dependent it's hard to put proper figures on.

Re:Decrease, not increase

[captainpanic]

You're over-simplifying things.

There is an optimum in every climate. Here's how it works:

You choose a certain period. Say, 30 years.

You check the price of the energy. You check the price of different kinds of insulation.

Insulation is a one-time investment, energy costs money all the time. You check which is the cheapest after 30 years.

In many houses an investment in insulation is worth the money and will pay itself back. But in some cases, the quality of the insulation is already such that it's just too expensive to add even more insulation to save those few euros/dollars/whatevers in energy.

Re:Decrease, not increase

[Firethorn]

Investing in insulation is ten times cheaper than buying energy. a passive house has been build in very cold climates.

Investing in insulation is only 10X cheaper than buying energy if you don't already have a significant amount of insulation.

Let's take a house, generic. Let's disregard doors, windows, or perhaps we assume that we upgrade them as well.

The house, with NO insulation, costs Y energy to keep warm.
With X insulation, it costs Y. If X is 1000 and Y is 1000/year,
With 2X insulation, cost is Y/2, That next 1000 makes Y 500, and your payoff of the extra insulation is 2 years.
With 4X insulation, cost is Y/4, the marginal return on the second 2X amount of insulation(costing 2000) is 250, payoff is 8 years.
With 8X the insulation, cost is y/8, or 125 saved. For 4k cost. With a 32 year payoff without cost of capital, you're better off investing in the energy company; a decent return will pay your remaining bill perpetually.

Now, yes, the formula is more complicated - 8X the money spent on insulation won't actually get you 8X the insulating values, especially in a refit scenario - you have to make the walls thicker at that point, and maybe even raise the roof. There are practical limits on windows and doors, especially when you open them. There's also a certain amount of 'free' heat that is generally available. Every person is like 100 watts just sitting there. You need a certain amount of fresh air flow.

And I say this as a libertarian survivalist type who likes the idea of not being dependent upon the grid. I just acknowledge that there are costs that don't make financial sense. Call it being warped by my upbringing - both my parents are accountants. I was doing cost of capital analysis before I knew what it was called. ;)

Re:Decrease, not increase

[hey!]

Then increase the price. That's the only way.

The problem is that the practical effect of this falls disproportionately on the poor (as do the negative effects of current energy production). The wealthy have to adjust the distribution of their investments -- an inconvenience. The poor have to endure cold, give up that job that's too far to walk to, cut back on food which has become more expensive.

Let's say the price of energy doubled overnight. A lot of us would lose our jobs as investments were shuffled around. But for those of us who didn't lose our jobs, we wouldn't go without. We'd have food, heat, transportation. We wouldn't stay home during vacation. We'd alter our use of energy by changing the kind of car we bought next time around, or keeping our thermostats set differently. We might go to one place instead of taking a driving vacation. In the short term the low inflation caused by lost employment would blunt the impact of the price increases, and in a few years we wouldn't even notice the difference.

I'm all for conservation through tax credits, incentives, even carbon taxes with provisions for blunting the impact on people who will feel it the most. But we've had all our energy eggs in one basket for the last century: cheap oil. Moving some or even most of those eggs to the conservation basket is a good idea, but we can't do it overnight and we certainly can't move all of them.

What's the "right" amount of energy to consume? That's a meaningless question when asked in isolation. You need to ask "for what" and "from what sources" and "with what impact?" Clearly the answer for fossil fuels, given their externalized impacts (pollution) and future availability (dwindling) is that we should be using less of them. But conservation is no more a panacea for our energy problems than nuclear power is.

Re:Decrease, not increase

[Bemopolis]

So, you're looking at probably around a 22% increase in electricity usage if people go to EVs.

And around a 100% reduction in the use of gasoline. You see, that's why it's called a cost-BENEFIT analysis.

where can I buy them?

[LingNoi]

Have this guy's solar cells left the lab yet?

I searched around and the achievement of creating a low cost solar cell is great, but I couldn't find anywhere you can get them from. Since he's been doing this since 1991 (?) I'm guessing they'd have come to market by now.

One site I saw listed it as being 100W m2 but having a price to go along with it would be good for comparison with other solar cells.

Re:where can I buy them?

[afidel]

Not yet, some reports have shown promise in stabilizing the dyes for long term exposure but I don't think there are any commercial cells available yet. Also I'm not sure how much of a panacea they are, according to the articles I can find most of the lab cells use ruthenium and platinum, any solution using trace elements is unlikely to bring a mass scale replacement to our current fuels. That's why I think we need to concentrate on stored energy wind farms and collecting solar/thermal plants, neither require exotic trace materials (some "rare" earths for more efficient magnets, but nothing on a gram/kW scale compared to any of the photovoltaic solutions).

Re:where can I buy them?

[Maury Markowitz]

> Have this guy's solar cells left the lab yet?

In some small applications, yes, but nothing serious. There are several reason:

1) the electrolyte is a liquid. It loses efficiency in cold weather, and eventually stops working.

2) well before that limit, expansion and contraction is a serious issue and large-scale structures have problems with sealing and leakage.

3) the electrolyte dissolves silver. It can be used for small-scale systems where the cost of platinum is not a major factor compared to construction costs, but for large low-cost solutions silver is the only practical solution.

4) the solvents used to mix the dye with the TiO degrade plastics.

None of these is unsolvable. It just needs another decade of work. I install mSi panels now, I suspect I will be installing DSSCs in 15 years.

Maury

Re:The Berry Cell

[kcelery]

http://teachers.usd497.org/agleue/Gratzel_solar_cell%20assets/instructions%20for%20making%20the%20gratzel%20cell.htm

Finland pays again

[ultranova]

As a Finnish taxpayer, I'm happy that my government is once again giving my tax money to foreigners, rather than keeping Finnish hospitals going. No, really, I'm sure that photovoltaic cells will do a lot of good to us here in the Arctic Circle where the Sun shines a few hours a day most of the year. Really, it's better to spend money on useless shit like this than to treat rheumatic children.

Re:Finland pays again

[captainpanic]

As a Finnish taxpayer, I'm happy that my government is once again giving my tax money to foreigners, rather than keeping Finnish hospitals going. No, really, I'm sure that photovoltaic cells will do a lot of good to us here in the Arctic Circle where the Sun shines a few hours a day most of the year. Really, it's better to spend money on useless shit like this than to treat rheumatic children.

Your government has spent loads to subsidize innovation. The Espoo campus (near Helsinki) is brand new, and produces a lot of knowledge which in turn keeps the Finnish knowledge-economy running. Finland is doing quite well because of these investments (it attracts companies).

However, science is an international effort, and it's only fair to award a prize to whoever is the best... And why wouldn't you have some research on solar cells in Finland? It's not like you are actually investing in the production and implementation. It's just research. You can do solar cell research in the basement or any other place where the sun never shines, as long as you have the right equipment.

Of course, healthcare is important. Finnish healthcare is among the best in the world... and already heavily subsidized. Perhaps you found that 1 single example where something went wrong, but the tone of your reply is in contrast with the Finnish reality.

Re:Finland pays again

[marsu_k]

Oh FFS, I'm a Finn and I really don't have any problem with this. In the summary you'll find the price is "Finnish state and industry-funded". And the price is biannual, 400k€ annually is not really that much for the state, even if it were completely "my tax money".

Re:Finland pays again

[Maury Markowitz]

> Sun shines a few hours a day most of the year

And 24 hours a day for others. Sure, it's not California, but if we can get a 1/2 reduction in price (totally doable) then it's perfectly economical even in Finland. In the meantime, you need to build infrastructure.

Maury

Apparently, right here

[ishmalius]

http://www.dyesol.com/ . It's not often that you see a tech announcement that is realized so soon, but this seems to be real.