New efficient, cheap solar cell

[f95toli]

Interesting article over at the Scientific American website.
New, cheap, solar cell with an efficiency of around 40% :thumbsup:

It seems mass production will start pretty soon, the company developing the technology is owned by Boeing so they should have the plenty of resources available.

 

[Mark R]

This is very interesting - however, it's not a totally new technology, just a small incremental improvement over spectrolab's shipping products (which get around 36%).

Unlike 'normal' silicon PV, this material is designed for optical concentrators. This is advantageous because only a small area of the very expensive PV is required (only 1 cm^2 of PV is required for each 30W of electrical output), but it complicates the design by requring a focused concentrator, a precise 2-axis sun-tracking mechanism, and some form of active cooling (water cooling, or a massive heatsink) for the PV.

You also don't fully utilise the improved efficiency due to inefficiency in the concentrator and the inability to focus diffuse light (this is a killer in areas which receive a lot of haze, or thin cloud cover).

The other potential disadvantage is that the semiconductor contains gallium arsenide - which isn't particularly environmentally friendly.

 

[tuteja1986]

Yeah Boeing is even more loaded ever since the Airbus screw up.

 

[marulee]

Germanium wafer is a new technology for solar cell..very very interesting..

 

[BrownTown]

More efficiency is good, but the problem right now with solar is more that it is absurdly expensive, increasing the efficiency is nice, but until its costs 1/5 what it does now it will not be economically viable (yes, maybe it California where it is HUGELY subsidized and coal/nuclear are beat into the ground it might be good now, but nowhere reasonable until it costs less). Having said that i will still give them props on their advances, only good things can come from this, whether or not soalr becomes a dominant energy technology in the future it is good to know we are always exploring all possible avenues to keep all options open.

 

[zinfamous]

Increased Efficiency will only help to drive manufacturing costs down. Or so it seems (I don't knwo the specifics of producing these cells, cost of material, labor , etc...).
Either way, it's a step in the right direction.

I imagine if the feds were more concerned with improving natural, renewable energy resources rather than making payoffs to Oil cartels....it could only help with cost/efficiency. Oh well...

 

[asearchforreason]

I don't get it. The whole point is that this does drive down costs. If the cell is more efficient, then it can produce more energy with fewer cells. Thus, their cost per kilowatt is reduced by the fact that each cell theoretically costs the same but produces more energy. So while it is not a breakthrough in cheaper manufacturing technology, it will still help solar become more viable. If you are talking about capital costs to build a solar plant, then I don't understand that either. Solar has pretty low capital costs since you can buy solar panels in small increments and add new panels at a later time. Nuclear on the other hand, you can't just build half of a reactor and then build the other half later.