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Nanotech Solar Cell Minimizes Cost, Toxic Impact
bonch writes "Researches at Northwestern University have developed an inexpensive solar cell intended to solve the problems of current solar cell designs, such as high cost, low efficiency, and toxic production materials (abstract). Based on the Grätzel cell, the new cell uses millions of light-absorbing nanoparticles and delivers the highest conversion efficiency reported for a dye-sensitized solar cell."
More ground-breaking world-changing solar technology that will neither break ground or change the world because it will never make it to the consumer.
i keep throwing money at my monitor and nothing is happening
He mentioned that this new solar cell design was intended to solve (among other things) the "low efficiency" of current designs.
According to TFA, the new design has a 10.2% conversion efficiency, as opposed to the 11-12% efficiency of the "Gratzel cell" it was supposed to improve upon.
It was further noted (in TFA) that traditional cells have up to 20% efficiency.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The sun shines all day - when my car is in the underground car park - at work.
So home Solar and electric cars don't work together in any useful way.
Electric cars have a long way to go before they can replace combustion engines but your post doesn't really mean anything. The solar cells don't have to be on the car.
You're correct, but explain why your company would lay out the money (assuming they own their building) to put solar cells on the building and charge stations in the parking garage?
or every bit of news about solar arrays is pretty much the same - better efficiency, lower cost. I'm getting tired of reading the same thing every week.
Why would your company buy you a car? Why would they pay for your health insurance? Why would they pay you more than minimum wage?
Before we get a lot of comments saying "what's so good about this?" it's actually pretty interesting. I did some undergraduate research with dye-sensitized solar cells (and am currently a graduate student researching inorganic semiconductors) and the basic thing you hear is that if you can get an organic solar cell to 10% efficient, they will be viable because they're so much cheaper than inorganics. While this may be true, the problem with dye-sensitized cells is, like they say in the paper, that they degrade in a rather short period of time. I saw this first-hand doing research on them - we had to make sure our batches were kept in darkness while making them otherwise the solution would degrade in a matter of hours, and after they were made I believe they only lasted a few months. If you can make 10% efficient organic solar cells that will last as long as inorganic ones (typically 20-30 years), you have a very attractive alternative to brittle, expensive and often toxic inorganics. I didn't see in the paper how long their new cells are supposed to last but anything you can do to make it more stable is going to help.
Solar and electric cars don't work together in any useful way for me.
FTFY
There are three factors that must converge to make it economically sensible to go solar electric.
1). Grid parity. This is when the amortized cost of power from the solar electric system costs less than power off the local grid.
2). When the cost per KWH per year stops dropping so rapidly. A corollary of Moore's law applies.
3). Storage. We need a low cost & efficient power storage system. Flywheel, hydro, battery, even hydrolysis. Lightweight batteries or hydrogen fuel cells that could be swapped into the car would be best.
At the current technology curve, it should be here within a decade in the sunny parts of the world.
I don't know, but why would they have to? While it might need better batteries than we have now there is no reason in the long run not to put them on your house and "time shift" the energy. It is also true that the new battery tech just being announced will take 5-10 years to filter into availability for consumers, but the stuff produced 5-10 years ago is turning up now for us to use.
Why would this be up to the company? There's still a grid out there. Maybe we just need more options for feeding it.
From TFA, it is only 11% to 12% efficient nearly half, of conventional solar panels which are themselves woefully inefficient. If you want to be commercially viable, you have to meet or exceed that target, not what prior iterations of your own method produce.
Silence is a state of mime.
You've apparently never heard of grid-tie solar. The idea is to have solar panels on roofs everywhere, feeding excess power into the grid during the day, when demand is high. So if you plug your car into the wall at work, the power might well be coming from solar panels, and certainly *can* come from solar panels.
what's not to like about having your car charge in the work carpark all day so you can cruise around all night?
When you go nanoscale the properties of materials change dramatically. This is why it's done and happens because of quantum mechanics take precedence over Newtonian physics of the macro world. One of the property changes is toxicity. This is why materials which have been known to be non-toxic should also be tested before applied in nanoscale. See e.g. http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/05/nanotechnolog-1.html
When techno-optimists and greedy investors hurriedly work together the consequences are often dramatic and sad.
If it wont last 15+ years it's a failure.
Just like this thin film crap all over the place from china, works great but loses 40% of the output in 12 months and then slowly dies within 5 years.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
even if said technology was free of cost, in all ways, capitalistic dogma insists that it would cost as much to the consumer as the lowest cost alternative. i.e., we'll always be screwed.