I wish all these solar tech announcements would turn into products. Two years ago I was reading about new solar paint that would revolutionise solar power. Then it was printable panels that would drive down solar panel costs. There's always these announcements coming out, yet buying a solar panel still has a very long term payoff because of the high cost. I'd be solar-ed up tomorrow if I could make the numbers add up. Tired of the hype - show us products to buy.
30% of what was theoretically possible with thick film. I think this research is saying that what is theoretically possibly with the newer technology could be 10 times more.
the efficiency of these things is measured by: produce a beam of light with known/fixed cross sectional area and total energy. point it at the cell. measure how much energy you get out. what the cell is made of doesn't affect the way this is calculated.
And of course, sunlight has a wide range of wavelengths and it's almost impossible to convert >1000 nM light to electricity, so you can't get close to 100%.
The problem with current cells isn't efficiency but cost. 5% efficient cells that were cheap (including mounting & protection) would be a breakthrough.
> The problem with current cells isn't efficiency but cost. 5% efficient cells that were cheap (including mounting & protection) would be a breakthrough.
It depends. My house has a finite amount of roof space.
If a solar farm has to be too big, it can only be very remote and then there's a distribution problem. (Consider road sign lights. You'd rather not run wires to them, so "on sign" solar is a natural, but size matters.)
You're right about remote applications, of course. I'm thinking about replacing coal with solar on a large scale.
Roofs are a silly place to put solar cells. Like everyone growing wheat on their roofs. Farms are the right model for harnessing lots of sunlight to grow food or make electricity.
