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Innovative Use of Plastics Could Cheaply Double Solar Cell Output

Posted by timothy on from the hot-photon-on-plastic-action dept.

doug141 writes "In standard solar cells, much energy is lost (as heat) from photons mismatched to the capability of silicon to capture them. A new technique uses a pentacene layer to down-convert each hot (un-captureable) electron to two electrons that can be captured by standard silicon cells." You can read more at the University of Texas research group's web page.

3 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Power companies by bonch · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It would be really interesting to see what happened if solar energy became affordable enough to power people's homes. Based on current technology, the cost of solar panels is several thousands of dollars for a typical home's electricity needs. Over the lifetime of the panels, that's about 30 cents per kilowatt hour, which is three times the cost of typical utility fees. I wonder if there would be resistance from power companies if people were able to put cheap solar panels on their houses, or if they would buy up all the patents so you had to buy your panels from them.

    1. Re:Power companies by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Informative

      The power companies won't mind if solar is used for large-draw things like daytime AC, when they themselves have to buy power at peak rates. They'd actually become more profitable with less demand.

      The use for night-time heating is a solved problem - store the heat in something massive during daytime hours - you don't even need to take the losses from converting to electricity and back.

    2. Re:Power companies by CarlDenny · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's an insanely ignorant suggestion.

      That would incentivize people to move their power usage from off-peak times to on-peak times, forcing power companies to build *more* capacity for on-peak utilization. The pricing you describe is the *exact opposite* of the actual economy of the power industry, and any company that tried it would end up out of business.

      The fact that solar only generates during the day makes is a boon for power companies, it prevents them from having to build expensive plants for peak production while leaving lots of profits in providing baseline power with existing investments.