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New Solar Cell Sets Record For Energy Efficiency
Lucas123 writes "After three years of work, German and French researchers have achieved a new world record on converting sunlight to energy through a photovoltaic cell, achieving a 44.7% rate of efficiency, which was measured at a concentration of 297 suns. The efficiency rating means the solar cell collects 44.7% of the sun's spectrum's energy, from ultraviolet to the infrared spectrum, which is converted into electrical energy. The team of researchers said the technology places them on the path to achieving their roadmap of 50% efficiency in solar energy conversion."
eet me know when they got to 120%.
heh.
This is good news.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'd like to get one, but all I have for it is this camouflaged golden gun.
In January they were at 20%. I wonder if Bill Gates is throwing money at them yet.
Thats better than the 25-30% gasoline efficiency. So it sounds good to me! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency
Take this sig and smoke it.
At cleantechnica site you can see a priced drop of $76/w to under $.74 a watt in only (sorta wish it was .76 a watt for neatness sake, dontcha?)
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/24/solar-powers-massive-price-drop-graph/
You can also see a similar exponential but reverse growth curve off a link from that page.
Elsewhere, I saw solar was projected to generate more energy than the U.S. currently generates by 2050-- and to quintuple from there by 2100.
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Loved "Mystery Men". On my top 100 list.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Sure, the Germans get better solar efficiency, they get a lot more sun.
What happens when you only have 1 Sun? Or, more importantly, a fractional Sun since we have this nifty thing called an atmosphere.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I don't think we'd care what the efficiency would be if Earth had 297 suns. jk
What's the actual efficiency when used at a single sun? Is this technique only useful with hundreds of mirrors?
How many years before it hits the market? 44.7% is much better than the normal 15% that's flood the market despite the efficiency record constantly being broken.
Makes me suspect that this is anything but affordable.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Here is a graph of solar cell efficiency showing the different kinds of materials used to make them. The typical solar cell is silicon (blue on the graph) and maxes out at 27.6% efficiency.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The worked with the energy output of 297 suns? Please point that the other way sir.
Unfortunately these super high efficiency cells are unlikely to ever be very cost effective due to the manufacturing process required. Any efficiency >33.7% (known as the Shockley–Queisser limit) requires combining cells made of different semiconductors with different bandgaps onto the same wafer, which is always going to be substantially more expensive than the plain silicon cells.
The reason for this limit is the basic physics behind how solar cells work: a photon is used to knock an electron in the cell from a low energy band to a higher one. Based on how far apart these bands are (known as the bandgap) only photons above a certain energy level are useful. However, any energy in the photon beyond the bandgap is wasted, as it can't make the electron energy greater than the highest orbital in the atom. Thus there is a balance between picking a bandgap which can capture more photos and one which captures more energy from each photon. As luck would have it, silicon is actually pretty close to optimal (1.1eV when optimal is 1.34eV, giving a max efficiency of 29%).
But Snake Oil has an efficiency close to 30% - that should count for something.
Let me know when any of these miracle solar technologies have even a vanishingly small chance of being economical. The most likely route for solar technology to take is not in high cost, high efficiency modules, but in low cost, low efficiency modules spread like blacktop over any surface we can find - that is, a terribly untidy but effective rollout that is expensive to install but inexpensive to insure and maintain. Practically all multi-junction technologies rely on rare materials with no known substitutes. They have no economic future except in the most demanding applications, like the space programs they were invented for.
Since these cells also rely on concentrated sunlight, their performance is diminished in diffuse light like what is seen during a cloudy day, eliminating one of the main advantages that photovoltaic technologies have over concentrated thermal technologies. I suspect that the scarcity of the materials used to produce these modules combined with the need for concentrating hardware (and subsequent maintenance of said hardware - that's strike two) will keep them from competing with thermal applications any time soon, which also require concentrating hardware but have no need for expensive, exotic solar cells.
Personally, my money is on dye sensitized photovoltaic technology bringing this type of energy to the masses. No, it will not be efficient, and nobody will care because in time it will be very cheap.
Blah blah blaaaaaaah it'll never work blah /thread
And what if you put it under 1 sun? aka outside?
I was excited when reading the "Set Record" claim in the title. However, upon reading the following:
"...a photovoltaic cell, achieving a 44.7% rate of efficiency, which was measured at a concentration of 297 suns"
my excitement was very much doused.
I will be waiting for the day when someone come up with a solar cell that can achieve 50%+ conversion rate with the 1 sun that we have.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Do they need rare elements? TFA does not say a word about it, and it is important: if the answer is yes, then it is not economically viable.
Solar electricity will never be economical, even if the cells are free and operate at maximum efficiency.
First free cells wouldnâ(TM)t be free. It would still cost thousands of dollars to put them up on a roof. We put a new asphalt shingle roof on our house (a nice suburban house not Algore mansion sized) a few years ago. It cost about $15,000.
I canâ(TM)t conceive of a generating material that would be as cheap as asphalt roofing, which is about as generic and low tech as it gets.
Furthermore the roofing business labor pool is also generic and low tech. Getting licensed electricians involved will only drive up labor costs.
I have not even noodled the price of wiring and the electronics needed to make the low voltage DC output of the cells usable.
Frames and land would be large costs for non-roof systems. Paving material? Around here roads are repaved every few years â" more cost.
Second, solar systems do not operate at night and their output can drop between 50 and 75% on a cloudy day. Every day has a night, and a majority of days around my location are cloudy. There are no economically viable systems for storing large quantities of electricity, therefor every watt of solar you are relying on must be backed up by a watt of something else. These days that is usually natural gas generation. This doubles the capital cost of solar systems.
Third, north of the tropics there is an annual variation in the amount of available solar energy. In my location at 40 north, the ratio between available solar energy in June and the amount in December is about 2.67 to 1. The amount of electricity used does not vary nearly that much. Electricity used for air conditioning in the summer is used for lighting, heating, and cooking in December. We often hear brownout alerts on the coldest days of the winter.
The implication of this is that two thirds of a solar electricity system big enough to supply us in December would sit idle in June, producing no revenue but still carrying a capital cost.
The punch line is that solar electricity is and will remain unaffordable no matter what the solar cell technology is.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
"at a concentration of 297 suns"... for 1 microsecond.
It really depends on your local power company NET/FIT rates, federal solar panel import protections and state/city building/code regulations.
Some areas ensure you get real cash back for feed in back to the grid. Others have do not offer so much export cash to homes with solar.
City building/code regulations can also be costly in some areas.
http://freeingthegrid.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_metering#United_States vs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed-in_tariff#United_States_2
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/solar-panel-next-granite-countertop-161321343.html
http://www.fool.com/how-to-invest/personal-finance/home/2013/09/15/net-metering-how-a-little-known-policy-can-shave-h.aspx
When energy prices going up, you get a FIT, the cost of a solar install in your state is fair, your home has newer appliances... the pay back period is not so unaffordable over years.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
"Germany's Energy Poverty: How Electricity Became a Luxury Good" Spiegel 09/04/2013
German consumers already pay the highest electricity prices in Europe. But because the government is failing to get the costs of its new energy policy under control, rising prices are already on the horizon. Electricity is becoming a luxury good in Germany, and one of the country's most important future-oriented projects is acutely at risk.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Do you get your talking points from a PR firm? Did you seriously just list the price of re-shnging your roof as a reason why solar could never be economical? Even if that were true, you need to think outside of the box, brah. http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/15/caution-wet-solar-power-new-affordable-solar-paint-research/
I find it pretty comic you're listing today's absorption rates as the reason solar "will never" (emphasis on the bolded word) be affordable. What website are you on right now? I wouldn't peg you for a technology enthusiast. Got news for you, bud: technology advances. Solar will become a dominant energy source. It's just a matter of when. You should stop watching cable TV; it's convinced you of silly things, sheltered you in petrol pipe dreams.
Solar will win, will defeat the Nuclear Industry!
They used to say the same thing about desktop computers too.
We already have free solar cells. They're called plants. When you burn wood, or make ethanol from cane sugar, you're using solar energy.
That's why IMHO the holy grail of power generation (other than fusion) is cellulosic ethanol. The vast majority of the solar energy plants collect goes into making cellulose. CO2 + H2O + energy => O2 + (CH2O)n. The (CH2O)n is sugar, which plants then string together into (C6H10O5)n which is cellulose. If we can figure out a cheap, scalable way to convert cellulose back to sugar, then ferment it to produce ethanol, we will have effectively turned every plant out there into an ethanol production factory. That solves almost every energy problem we have. It's cheap, abundant, renewable, has high energy density (nearly as much as gasoline, an order of magnitude better than batteries), we already have massive infrastructure in place for transporting and burning liquid fuel, as well as over a century of R&D into engines which combust liquid fuel.
Sunlight at high noon directly overhead is close to 1000 watts per square meter. My neighbor's roof has panels about 2x4 ft (a bit less than a square meter) that are rated at 120 watts output each. Her rooftop array of just a dozen panels provided 100% of her consumption last year, per her net metering annual bill.
It's a very modest sized house, One bedroom, one bath, about 1000 square feet, but it is also a very modest sized array.
In short, their 'leadership' is artificial and shallow - bought and paid for, and likely only persisting so long as their market remains distorted by law. And your research missed a further distortion - a tariff on non-renewable energy that's used to subsidize renewable energy installations. (Which can then sell their power at the legally mandated above market rates.)
Two years ago I had 10 square metres of solar power put on my roof. Total cost: £15000 (~$20000). These cells have produced 3400 kW/H of electricity over that period. I don't live in the tropics; Latitude ~53 deg north.
Last point: Solar cell prices have fallen over 35% during the last 2 years.
Not phenominal but not irrelevant either
If we can figure out a cheap, scalable way to convert cellulose back to sugar, then ferment it to produce ethanol, we will have effectively turned every plant out there into an ethanol production factory. That solves almost every energy problem we have.
I dream of a day when I will make money by allowing someone else to cut my grass.
1. What the fuck is a kilowatt per Henry?
2. At $0.20/kWh your install would pay for itself in about 60 years. Assuming no maintenance cost, no efficiency loss and everlasting inverters. Whoops.
I don't see your point at all.
I installed a 10kW system on my roof several months ago. Including (professional, by licensed company) installation and decent hybrid panels, it cost 18k Euro ($24k). It would have been 15k with cheaper panels back then, and now the prices have fallen another 20%.
It produces over 15MWh/y (I am not in Germany, however my roof does not have near optimal alignment, hence it could still be better), and the panels have an efficiency guarantee for 25 years. So a modest estimate (the panels won't necessarily stop working in 25 years), even including a drop in efficiency, is easily over 300MWh of production. I get a subsidized price from the power company, but for the sake of the argument assume an unsubsidized price of around 0.1 Euro/kWh. You still easily make a profit, and with current lower prices and an optimal alignment (i.e. pointed southwards instead of whatever random angle your roof is) they should make but the installation cost more than 3 times in sunny countries. Yes, the production drops when it is cloudy, or the sun is low (winter, morning, afternoon), however that is a given and figures like the above take that into account.
Oh, and the panels make my house cooler. Not only in the "hey, cool roof" sense, but in the summer they are extra protection from the heat of the sun.
Apart from the cost let's go back to how useful solar production is, given that there is none during nighttime and maximum when it is hot. Well, guess what, the availability curve is almost exactly like the demand curve. During hot summer days the power network is to strained here due to the usage of A/C and we get brownouts. If the power network had a significant percentage of solar power, then it would be available exactly when it was required. There is very little usage at night in comparison, so even if a part of the production grid is working (i.e. non-solar), you are OK. Of course you cannot have 100% of your production be solar power, but I bet in many countries even over 50% might be possible.
I visited a relative near Aberdeen (north part of Scotland). The sun did not rise more than a few degrees over the horizon during the day and I was staring at the numerous solar panels in disbelief. Obviously solar power is not for everywhere, even Germany is "pushing" it, resulting in expensive power (since they installed all these panels when they were expensive, without having many sunny days), but for the warm/sunny climates it is not only viable, but probably the best solution.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
I don't believe this one bit. A dozen 120 watt panels, at noon, are going to only put out ~1100 watts. If that. Unless she lives in the place a couple hours a day and has the fridge on 50 degrees and never turns on a tv, the a/c, a light bulb or the water heater or oven for that matter, there's no way she's getting 100% of her consumption covered by the panels.
Source: Me. I own a 5.62kw array and know what's up on consumption and production.
I'm thinking that at some point electrical utilities will lobby to stop people from connecting PV systems directly into their household grid. It is hugely unprofitable for them to pay people the full delivered electricity rate for uncontrolled power generation. Maybe they will require a separate meter for the power generating part of your installation and pay you a much lower rate for the generated power. Making that meter part of the smart grid, so that the electric company would have the ability to turn on or off your electricity generation can probably bump up the rate paid for generated power, bus still to less then half the consumer rate. As grid-connected PV installations become more common, I think this change is inevitable.
Right now, you produce energy during the day (peak use of the grid), and at night, whe the use drops, you start taking back what you delivered. So for now, each PV is good for them (you send energy when it is expensive for them, and consume when it is cheap).
However, too many of them will turn the tide, and peak surplus will be at noon, and peak use will be at night.
$0.34/kwh is already what we pay ConEdison in NYC. So we're already at break-even here. ConEdison has raised rates double-digit percentages every year for the past 10 years. The price per watt solar panel installation has fallen to $2, and that's dropping quickly. With those two trends we don't need any government intervention to produce a sea-change from centralized- to distributed power generation in this country in the next decade.
There is also the not inconsiderable effect Hurricane Sandy had on hearts and minds in the northeast US, where most financial and political power in this country is concentrated. People were quite upset to be without power and gasoline for weeks and weeks. So even from a climate resilience perspective there is a keen and growing will to move to distributed power generation.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The utility company in Colorado (XCel) is already doing this. Their argument is that the solar companies (there are 3-4 major players in the population centers, of which Namaste Solar is probably one of the biggest) are not paying for transmission into the local grid, and maintenance of the local grid, and that it's an unfair subsidy. We'll see how it gets sorted out. They've been kvetching about the existing real gov't subsidies for residential solar, anyway, for a long time now. Most people I know who have solar installs have made the decision based on the 25-year estimated lifespan of the equipment and the 10-year payoff agreement (this is pretty much the norm), and have been satisfied. What we're not seeing so much of is a kind of upgrade/replacement element to these contracts. I think there would be more of these installs if home owners had a way of buying some kind of replacement guarantee in 5 years, with the option to replace at 10 years at install cost without the continuation of the contract. The quality of the panels seems to be going up very rapidly and the cost is falling very rapidly. Unfortunately, this is keeping a lot of people (who might commit to panel installs) on the fence. They don't want to emerge from contract in 10 years with panels that are 25% the efficiency of what's being regularly installed by that time. I, personally, think that it would be better for XCel and other providers to link arms with rooftop solar companies, hash out an agreement on funding contributions for infrastructure, and then leverage their own money to reduce the up-front costs for home owners. I'm not sure exactly how that might work, but I think both groups are fighting a partnership arrangement because they each want all the control and all the spoils.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Maybe get with the times, you can already buy mass-produced >20% efficient non-concentrated panels from various manufacturers.
> I'm thinking that at some point electrical utilities will lobby to stop people from connecting PV systems directly into their household grid.
That's what we have here in Ontario. It's not the solution you might imagine. It requires the removal of the existing meter base and its replacement by a dual base. This costs a lot of cash on the labour side. Additionally, since the grid comes in through the meter, that means you have to cut power at the grid to do the work. That means a call to the local power company, and a bill somewhere around $1750. All told it adds about $2500 or more to the install costs, which these days is the same as 1.5 kW worth of kit.
I think the model will eventually be that distribution costs will have to be born entirely in the distribution cost line of your bill, instead of being spread around in the other numbers like it is now. People with PV systems will pay for two connections, one in and one out, and then the problem basically just disappears.
Nah, since peak output coincides with peak demand solar production means lower capital costs for peaking plants and grid upgrades, smart utilities will be all about residential solar generation.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
That might have blowback on the utility companies in an unexpected way: With solar panels are also solar charge controllers. It used to be that one would have to pay $500 or so for a name brand MPPT model. Now, one can get a decently reliable no-name CC from eBay, and a quick gander inside shows that it is actually using true inductor coils for about a C-note. It might not have the options that the name brands do, but it will keep the batteries charged at multiple stages.
With PSW (pure sine wave) inverters also becoming more common, I've seen some homeowners bite the bullet and have 1-2 circuits in their place wired to a battery bank. No, the circuit won't run the big stuff (dryer, A/C, etc.) but it can keep items like sump pumps, well pumps, computers, and other things going no matter how dirty the mains power gets.
As battery storage gets better (it is pretty slow, but it is happening), more and more circuits on a house can be moved from mains power to the off-grid system.
This will be a loss for the utility company because they won't have as much available peak energy because people will move from grid-tie systems to battery banks, where no power will go back to the grid whatsoever. If the utility company raises rates to compensate for the less available peak usage, it will have to fight against regulators, and if they do succeed in a fee hike, it makes the cost of off-grid systems even more reasonable for homeowners, causing more people to move off-grid.
The problem is how ethanol is being misused. Farmers grow corn for fuel and not food, which drives up food prices. It might help with prices at the pump, but it edges a number of countries closer to riots and revolutions (and usually the winners of a revolution are the most brutal and violent of the bunch.)
Ethanol also trashes engines. Ask any marine or RV dealer about the first cause of dead generators.
If one has any ethics at all, they cannot support ethanol, as it takes food out of people's mouths. If the market were like Brazil where their main crop made fuel and usable food, things would be different, but here in the US it is a choice between people getting fed or cars getting fueled.
I don't believe this one bit. A dozen 120 watt panels, at noon, are going to only put out ~1100 watts. If that. Unless she lives in the place a couple hours a day and has the fridge on 50 degrees and never turns on a tv, the a/c, a light bulb or the water heater or oven for that matter, there's no way she's getting 100% of her consumption covered by the panels.
Source: Me. I own a 5.62kw array and know what's up on consumption and production.
Depending on her usage and the type of "net metering" that is going on, she could be selling her electricity at noon for many multiples of what she is paying for electricity at night when she uses the most. With no AC and water heating done by gas, the only major drain during the day would be the fridge.
But maybe the original poster is making the whole thing up. It is true that sunlight on earth is much closer to 1kW/m^2 than it is to 8 W/m^2 though.
Subsidies like fed in tariffs and tax credits do not alter the total cost, they merely change the payee.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Really depends on the funding mix and vision of the state or federal govs. :)
Power cost 30c per unit, you get 60c back for every unit exported from tax payers and/or power company.
Power cost 30c per unit, you get 15c back for every unit exported from tax payers and/or power company.
Power cost 30c per unit, you get 4c back for every unit exported from the power company.
Power cost 30c per unit, you get a limited credit back for every unit exported from the power company.
Power cost 30c per unit, you get taxed for every unit exported from solar.
Mix in NET, tariffs with off-peak power rates and it gets more interesting
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"