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MIT Study Outlines a 'Perfect' Solar Cell
Daniel_Stuckey writes A new MIT study offers a way out of one of solar power's most vexing problems: the matter of efficiency, and the bare fact that much of the available sunlight in solar power schemes is wasted. The researchers appear to have found the key to perfect solar energy conversion efficiency—or at least something approaching it. It's a new material that can accept light from an very large number of angles and can withstand the very high temperatures needed for a maximally efficient scheme. Conventional solar cells, the silicon-based sheets used in most consumer-level applications, are far from perfect. Light from the sun arrives here on Earth's surface in a wide variety of forms. These forms—wavelengths, properly—include the visible light that makes up our everyday reality, but also significant chunks of invisible (to us) ultraviolet and infrared light. The current standard for solar cells targets mostly just a set range of visible light.
Is this the least helpful summary ever on /.? It could be. I read it, and found it really didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, and gave very little clue as to how this study's results might even be helpful. I have a strong suspicion it's clickbait and so am moving along.
Hmmm .. you know .. that could just as easily describe a Bennett Haselton story
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solar and wind already have won that race
The US Dept of Energy does not agree with you. Look at the "Total Levelized System Cost", Solar is the highest cost by far, although Wind does pretty well in good locations.
Those figures are completely wrong and very out of date. Power Purchase Agreements have recently bought wind energy for $0.0365 per kwh - that is half the figure on the table linked. That cost includes subsidies, the actual agreement was $0.025 per kwh. For solar the PPA is for $0.05 per kWh (0.08 inc subsidy), with the price of solar falling rapidly I'd expect cheaper PPA's to be struck going forward.
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/...
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/...
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Well, going to the abstract of the actual paper, What they have is silicon milled with dielectric cavities (waveguides) that are tuned to the frequency of your solar cell. Hot black bodies can emit any wavelength, but the tuned cavities can only efficiently emit one. Other wavelengths destructively interfere. In that respect they work just like antennas at radio wavelengths.
The tuned light is efficiently absorbed by the solar cell. Natural sunlight isn't because some of the photons are too high in energy, and the excess gets wasted as heat, and some are too low and don't kick out an electron at all. Thus you get around 25% efficiency in a good cell these days.