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Solar cells that surpass the 40% efficiency milestone

physorg.com — Scientists from Spectrolab, a subsidiary of Boeing, have recently published their research on the fabrication of solar cells that surpass the 40% efficiency milestone - the highest efficiency achieved for any photovoltaic device.

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  • EntropyMan, on 10/11/2007, -11/+172I don't get the people who think energy is scarce. We have the most plentiful energy source available to us for as long as we need it, with enough power per millisecond to feed the entire US, while using up very little of this nation's most abundant resource -- open land.

    If we ever decided to subsidize solar to the extent we subsidize coal and oil (to the tune of a trillion dollar war), the only energy problem we'd have is having TOO MUCH and deciding how to sell it.

    If we get to the point where electric cars and electric homes are the biggest contributor to global warming (via pure heat loss), then I'd call that a whopping success. Because everything else would have simply gone away.
    • hdtvdust, on 10/11/2007, -151/+12OK...so PROVe that a lack of money to is hte reason why this kind of efficiency is NOT ACHIEVEABLE in the grand scale.

      Pleae do that.

      And solar eergy is subsidized you moron.
    • orelses, on 10/11/2007, -33/+10I can't believe its this taken people this long to say "hey we could create more light on these solar panels if we use MIRRORS!!!!!"

      I just assumed this was already being done.
    • MWeather, on 10/11/2007, -28/+4A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
    • Djerrid, on 10/11/2007, -1/+174"Open land"? Who needs open land when you have hundred's of square miles of roofs to put these solar cells on?
    • hdtvdust, on 10/11/2007, -128/+12Nice job...Bury me, but don't even try to refute me.

      Someone come up with ANY evidence that the only reason that these efficiencies are impossible to achieve on a grand scale is money.

      Any peice of evidence will do. But a warning, espeically to EntropyBoy. Your FEELINGS are not evidence. For the first time in your life I am asking you to back up your asinine bitchfests with facts. Otherwise, you are just that. A little bitch.
    • josegutz, on 10/11/2007, -25/+7Bitch please....
    • ryanknapper, on 10/11/2007, -9/+87hdtvdust: I mod you down just for being an *****. When you come across as an ***** it doesn't matter if you're right.
    • citrusfizz, on 10/11/2007, -12/+59@ hdtvdust

      dude, change your tampon. Don't be such a jerk and maybe you wont get buried.
    • CaptMonkey, on 10/11/2007, -2/+29It's not that energy is scarce, it's more that energy in cheap and easy-to-use forms is scarce. Nothing tops oil as far as portability, ease and low cost of getting it out of the ground, and that it packs a bunch of energy in a small package that can easily be exploited. You can easily get fuel from renewable sources, but it's going to be more expensive and harder to get the amount that you need. And with more expensive energy, comes more expensive everything. All of the stuff that you buy at a store needs energy for transport, storage, and production. When energy costs go up, so will the price of food, consumer goods, clothes, everything. Energy is going to be a huge problem that we need to tackle soon, but our politicians are too busy having hearings on trivial issues like steroid use in baseball and copyright infringment.
    • EntropyMan, on 10/11/2007, -6/+36It's very amusing. I've got hdtv on my ban list, so I only get to see your reactions to his rants. You should all try it sometime -- but let me know if there's something I should really slam him for. Otherwise, it's not worth my time.
    • DrDragun, on 10/11/2007, -4/+30the problem is that solar cells require rare heavy metals to produce en masse, of which the world is already seeing a shortage. Cadmium, Tantalum, Indium... all used heavily in electronics and all approaching critical shortages in the first half of the next century:

      http://www.my-esm.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199703926

      Solar is an awesome dream because it is 100% clean and 100% renewable, however the world still isn't ready economically to make such a radical change. Plus, it's like wind in that it is spiky and erratic generation of power, and so you have to install "batteries" to keep the grid up through the night. The most effective way is with a pumped hydro facility (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon_Mountain_Pumped-Storage_Plant) but this is terrain dependent.

      I think a more realistic approach to clean energy is biodiesel to start. It requires a minimal change to existing infrastructure (you can use normal gas stations and very little modification to existing diesel vehicles / facilities) and the process is nearly carbon-neutral (emissions are countered by photosynthesis growing the crops). Critics of biodiesel say corn feedstock is not sustainable or economic... but check out the new stuff they are doing with algae. Algae can be 100x as productive as corn per acre by using shallow ponds, and you can grow it in sewage water to replace waste treatment plants, killing 2 environmental problems with 1 stone.
    • rollem, on 10/11/2007, -1/+31hdtvdust: You're buried because you're being being unnecessarily caustic. Solar is obviously subsidized to some extent, but don't you think that more research would result in more efficient solar technologies. Finally, the solar cells used by NASA are much more efficient but cost significantly more. It's not just a grandiose, unsubstantiated statement.
    • EntropyMan, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7@DrDragun, I think it's just our government that's not ready. And as for the rare-earth elements, they can be recycled. But apart from this kind of solar cell, there are plenty that only use mirrors, steam, and a turbine. Those are quite effective, and they can be made to last practically "forever."
    • stinkypyper, on 10/11/2007, -0/+18@Entropyman

      Exactly! We are covered in the stuff. This map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Solar_land_area.png shows how much of the earths surface would have to be covered with solar panels with an 8% efficiency to handle ALL of the worlds energy needs for everything. Now divide that surface area by 5. If we just used wasted roof space on buildings we wouldn't need to wreck any more land. Toss in wind generation and some clean hydroelectric and we're done.

      I still wonder why the hell we bother even air conditioning or heating are houses when the ground just feet below surface level is a stable temperature year round.
    • Witchboy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+20I believe we should work toward putting a solar panel on every roof, commercial or private. Besides taking advantage of a great resource (the sun), it's clean and imagine the new revenue/small business it would generate. The cost of doing it is much, much smaller than the costs we'll face in the future if we continue to rely on oil and coal.

      @hdtvdust

      Ah, but he didn't *say* that we don't subsidize solar. He said that we don't subsidize it "to the extent we subsidize coal and oil." So you're wrong.
    • bsiviglia9, on 10/11/2007, -5/+5Given that most of Boeing's income comes from U.S. taxpayers, aren't we already subsidizing Boeing's solar research?
    • chaesar, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4@Witchboy

      You are right. There is a huge discrepancy between fossil fuel subsidies and solar ones, mostly because the gov't has yet to go all Monty Burns on us and block out the sun, there isn't nearly as much money to make from solar. Once the poorly funded solar power research creeps along far enough to make lots of money, then the enablers on Capitol Hill will take notice.

      @hdtvdust

      You think and you have an idea, try to think a little harder next time
    • NikoKun, on 10/11/2007, -4/+2Finally!!! Now we need to make solar panels with ridges in them so they have more surface area and collect more light! Something like /////// all over them, cept not so steep.

      If we would seriously take advantage of wasted space, solar panels really could be the major source of energy... problem is, we just don't do it.

      I think most roofs should be covered in solar panels, as well as the tops of cars (at least those that you don't put cargo ontop off)... put a few panels on the side of the building most exposed to sunlight... setup a few solar farms here and there... Hell figure out how to make it into fabric and put it on the back side of curtains, so that the wasted light blocked by curtains could be added to the energy... I'm sure there are plenty of ways we could use them to save a hell of a lot of money. How about all that wasted space along the ground near High Voltage powerlines??? At least in my area, thats about a block wide and miles long of open space that is wasted because of those powerlines... Mount solar panels along the ground there!

      Sheesh... It's not that they don't know this, it's just that they wont want to do it... for whatever reason, profit or pressure from fuel industries... ect..
    • betacmag4u, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7@ EntropyMan .....one they roll out the infrared spectrum cells it will be a 24x7 proposition.
    • chaesar, on 10/11/2007, -1/+19http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20070523-13025700-bc-us-solarenergy.xml

      22.7 million dollars for solar power research. That is all.

      http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=3782

      "The Department of Education spent $34 million supposedly helping Americans become better shoppers and homemakers."
    • grve, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3nikokun thats already being worked on - nanorods
      the process needs perfecting to be viable for large scale production though
      there's also work being done in replacing expensive rare metals/silicone based pv with plastic/organic materials. i think the best plastic pv are currently 3-6% effective, with nanorods it should go well into double digits.
    • DaveV, on 10/11/2007, -6/+1Why does your post sound like you think solar is being held down by "The Man"?
    • jeffeb3, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5@nikokun

      The slanted solar panels would not collect any more light than flat ones would. The only reason it's important to point the panels at the sun is the effective area to the sun:
      this: instead of:
      ______ ____
      | |
      | |
      | |
      |_____| ___

      Also, you're going to have a very hard time getting the power from a solar panel to effectively add power to the power running through the lines. it would be much more beneficial if people just start putting them on their own roof. When we run low on space, we will try to optimize every little nook. Right now, the best thing is to have them as close as possible to the drain as possible.

      Update: well *****, the pictures don't get through the formatting...
    • catalysis, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6I hate to break it to you guys, but you can't increase the surface area because the sun is a point light source. The most efficient geometry is a flat panel. This isn't an oil company conspiracy.
    • mandarin, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2We're looking at a global perspective here. Some countries still lack basic 24 hour electricity you know.
    • EntropyMan, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4@catalysis,

      As I understand the technology here, they have in fact increased the surface area by going 3D. Some wavelengths are absorbed at the top, and different ones filter down through the stack. That would seem to put a multiplier on the effective surface area times the number and effectiveness of each layer.
    • Muyoso, on 10/11/2007, -4/+3I still dont understand why we dont simply run pipe through our road system, fill it with water, and let the hot asphalt generate heat, which turns the water into steam for energy. Its about the cheapest and most effective way to use the sun for energy, takes 0 research, and take almost no infrastructure.
    • geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2"Cadmium, Tantalum, Indium... all used heavily in electronics and all approaching critical shortages in the first half of the next century:"

      At least for Indium, as well as for a lot of other rare earth elements we use in semi's manufacturing, they can be recycled with very little effort; Indium is extremely efficient to recycle, as we can recover virtually all of it from a device manufactured with it.

      This may seem counter-intuitive, illogical, etc. but one great way of getting back Indium is actually destroying current solar cells, and using the materials harvested to make new, super-high-efficiency ones. That, coupled with the minimizing of Indium (and Tantalum) in the manufacturing process of other devices (which will be particularly difficult with OLED/LCD manufacturing, but other devices we should see little trouble replacing it), and you can conserve the metals for generations to come.

      But you're right, solar won't solve everything.
    • thegoldenstate, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1@nikokun
      Do all you want with the house. Just stay away from my car.
    • Parisjune, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2If each household took care of most/all their energy needs then we wouldn't need acres of land for solar (thermal or PV). Pliny Fisk talked about this years ago.
  • diggydougie, on 10/11/2007, -0/+25The efficiency is only half of the battle. The other half is price. I know that this is still in the lab, but is it manufacturable?
    • JaYBrooks, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5Then you have to count on tooling costs... Then the supply and demand thing... I remember seeing a story about a high rise building that had the fake windows converted to solar panels... Thats where this should be put first I think... Make the buildings do more than house the corporate offices..
    • EochaidRiata, on 10/11/2007, -0/+11That is a good point. Decreasing cost to $1/m^2 at 5% efficiency would be a much larger breakthrough than a 50% efficiency cell that costs $10,000/m^2.

    • RicktheBrick, on 10/11/2007, -0/+14When will we get a phone call from the local power company asking to come to my house in order to install these solar collectors on my roof? When they are cost effective than they should be installed for free and paid for by paying one's normal electric bill. Satellite television and cell phones both give equipment away for service contracts so I do not see why power companies can not do the same.
  • geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -1/+84These cells are absolutely brilliant engineering at work. They act like single P-N junction solar photo-diodes, except they have three different stacked material layers, each with a decreasing band-gap to absorb the fast-moving photons first, then absorb the rest further down the stack. The biggest news here is the development of the new material stack (which is a blend of Gallium Indium Phosphide, followed by Gallium Indium Arsenide, built on a common substrate of Germanium). These are built by applying thin film substrates directly on top of the previous substrates, making these solar cells three-dimensional semiconductors (even if they are fairly simple rows of photodiodes). These are also very atypical semiconductors, as both InGaP and InGaAs have very large (tunable) band gaps, and a high degree of electron mobility (which means higher voltages, and faster switching when used to create transistors; Indium and Gallium compounds (especially GaAs) have the highest known electron mobilities of any material, allowing us to create XXXGHz transistors).

    The biggest problem right now is that these devices need really sophisticated manufacturing equipment (one process known as Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE), another important process known as MetalOrganic Vapor Phase Epitaxy (MOVPE)) in order to attach/grow the materials to/on their substrates and to make the diodes. This, combined with the exotic metals and semiconductors makes them quite expensive to manufacture, but with economies of scale and the price of MBE machines coming down due to blue laser manufacturing (BluRay/HDDVD), and MOVPE prices coming way down due to the usage of them in LCD and high-speed RF device (WiFi/WiMax/Bluetooth basebands) manufacturing, they should be more economical in the future. [Note, these machines are still fairly slow, so the rate of production will only increase by increasing the number of machines you have on your production line].

    Great science, but it'll be quite a while before we see them crop up into general usage (especially as this is a Boeing subsidiary, which means Defense contracts which means bloated budgets and so on and so forth).
    • Scyth3, on 10/11/2007, -5/+40I dugg you up just because you must know what you're talking about with those crazy scientific words of yours. :)
    • BrokenWind, on 10/11/2007, -14/+3nice truck
    • geekee, on 10/11/2007, -6/+3"one process known as Molecular Beam Epitaxy"

      Isn't MBE incredibly slow, as well as expensive?
    • ricree, on 10/11/2007, -2/+9"each with a decreasing band-gap to absorb the fast-moving photons first,"

      The fast moving photons?
    • satanatnmtedu, on 10/11/2007, -4/+1It isn't that impressive since they require a concentration of 100 effective suns.
    • mrmx, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2are these similar to the latest camera chips that don't use a mosaic but, instead, use layers for red, green and blue signal detection? Fovian Image Sensor

      http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sigmasd10/#x3
    • molecule, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7"each with a decreasing band-gap to absorb the fast-moving photons first,"

      i think you mean greater momentum, which increases w/ frequency. all the photons are fast-moving (c).
    • moocow1452, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Huh?
    • geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3"i think you mean greater momentum, which increases w/ frequency."

      Thanks, it was early in the day and I didn't spend as much time reviewing the post as I should (and hell, this is Digg, someone here will correct me even if I get it wrong). High-momentum photons is exactly what I meant and was thinking, something just got lost in translation between my brain and my fingers.
    • Deetman, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1"are these similar to the latest camera chips that don't use a mosaic but, instead, use layers for red, green and blue signal detection? Fovian Image Sensor"

      @mrmx

      From my quick check on the camera chips and what I understand from the article and the layering of the solar cells, it appears to be a similar technique. http://www.dpreview.com/news/0202/02021102foveonx3tech.asp goes into detail on the actual camera chips.
  • john95127, on 10/11/2007, -13/+4Newbie Question here:
    Where will we store the power so we can use it when the sun is down?
    • cupofjoe84, on 10/11/2007, -4/+10Charge up batteries, would be my guess.
    • scripkiddie, on 10/11/2007, -5/+2In a giant capacitor =P
      http://www.instructables.com/id/E1OSW5LM9YET9K4IMM/
    • MWeather, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7We won't need to, since we have more than one source of energy.
    • hdtvdust, on 10/11/2007, -2/+9Well, IF this was achieveable on a grand scale...which it isn't yet and not even close...it would not be as big a problem as you think. The vast majority of energy is used during daylight hours. Plus, during the evening, you are producing more than enough energy than you need, so the West could supply the east for those 3 extra hours that they have sun. Sure, there would need to be a way to store it, but not as much as you might think
    • TonyCubed, on 10/11/2007, -5/+3A battery?
    • geekee, on 10/11/2007, -3/+11"Where will we store the power so we can use it when the sun is down?"

      Pump water uphill (And then use it to turn a turbine when you want the energy)?
    • magicjava, on 10/11/2007, -8/+7The same answer as with _all_ the forms of alternative energy talked about on digg.

      You have a coal plant running 24/7 burning coal but not producing energy when the "alternative" is working. When the alternative stops (sun goes down, wind stops blowing), the coal plant kicks in.

      Unfortunately, you can't just start/stop a coal plant on demand. You _have_ to run it all the time, whether you're producing energy from it or not.
    • magicjava, on 10/11/2007, -7/+5P.S. This is why I sometimes get frustrated with folks here on digg. The ideas you're being told are just garbage. I know you don't have the time to research this stuff, I know you're just hoping for the best, but sometimes I just want to smack the lot of you. Sorry for that.
    • EntropyMan, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4@magicjava, not necessarily. Batteries and other kinds of fuel cells work. Mechanical energy, as above, or even using energy to compress gas to turn a turbine at night. Organic chemistry might also work at some point -- store energy in sugar, like the body does. Right now, I agree there is a lack of infrastructure for storing energy when the sun is down. But that can be fixed.
    • magicjava, on 10/11/2007, -6/+2@EntropyMan You're not going to be able to run America's economy off any of those things.

      Coal. Gas. Nuclear. That's it.
    • EntropyMan, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7I don't think solar is the only answer. But if we can switch to electric cars and only use oil for plastics and diesel and maybe an occasional nuclear plant for anywhere solar can't cover it, I think we'll be fine. It will take 10-20 years to switch over. But we're not even trying right now.

      The first thing is to get solar to the point where it's cheaper, and that means ending the subsidies for oil, and even coal now. The rest will happen fairly rapidly (in the grand scheme of things) once we do that.
    • ryanknapper, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7Batteries are terrible solutions for storing electricity. Fortunately, the Sun is always shining somewhere.
    • rzrshrp, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Partial BS on the coal plant running like usual 24/7. The coal plant will only burn enough coal to cover estimated energy usage. If the energy usage isn't as high because a bunch of people are using alt energy, it won't burn as much coal. Yes they still will be burning some coal because it won't actually shut off but it doesn't want to waste their coal when no one's using the energy.
    • magicjava, on 10/11/2007, -7/+2Quote - "But we're not even trying right now."

      The reason we're not trying is what I pointed out above. It doesn't work.

      Switch to electric cars, somewhere along the line you need a coal, gas, or nuclear plant to generate your electricity. Solar/wind power doesn't change that because they can't be relied on 24/7.
      Switch to biodiesel you need a coal, gas, or nuclear plant to run your biodiesel processing plant. Currently, every major biodiesel plant in America has its own coal plant.

      What it does get you is a politician who can say "We're generating 20% of our power from the sun". They just won't tell you there's a coal plant running the entire time they were doing that and it was producing nothing at all.
    • MWeather, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5"They just won't tell you there's a coal plant running the entire time they were doing that and it was producing nothing at all."

      Is that 100% capacity?
    • CedEx, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Maybe produce hydrogen for storage and use elsewhere (like your car).
    • magicjava, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2@Mweather The honest answer is I don't know. I've tried looking up that information and nobody really gives specifics, at least that I've been able to find.

      Anyway, for the skeptical, here's an article discussing the need for backup coal plants. http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2006/11/26/opinion/opinion1.txt
    • magicjava, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Quote - "Partial BS on the coal plant running like usual 24/7. The coal plant will only burn enough coal to cover estimated energy usage. If the energy usage isn't as high because a bunch of people are using alt energy, it won't burn as much coal. Yes they still will be burning some coal because it won't actually shut off but it doesn't want to waste their coal when no one's using the energy."

      As I mentioned above, I've been unable to find exact figures on how much coal you have to burn while your solar is running, but what you're saying seems reasonable to me. At any given time, you have to burn enough coal so the coal plant can cover usage at that time should the solar fail due to clouds, rain, etc. Another way to say this is you have to burn the same amount of coal you'd be burning without the solar plant.
  • pitfallharry, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1Could this speed up the inevitable Solarbabies future we know is coming?!?!
  • SteelChicken, on 10/11/2007, -1/+13We dont even need uber efficent solar cells...just uber cheap ones. put em on every roof. problem solved.

    • EntropyMan, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3uber-efficient should eventually equate to cheap, because you need less of them.
  • CaesarBlue, on 10/11/2007, -11/+4@hdtvdust
    OK...so PROVe that your typing skillz and spelling errors are hte reason why you deserve a response
    Pleae do that.
    this is NOT ACHIEVEABLE in the grand scale.
    solar eergy rawks!!
    IM OUTTA YR LEAGUE
    KTHXBYE
  • HubbertWins, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0Stories like this are great except for the fact that we never actually see these type of things come to market. The story appears, the product never amounts to anything and then the next new thing comes along and we start the process all over again.
  • Jibberish, on 10/11/2007, -3/+3I am a huge proponent of PV cells but like everybody before me has pointed out, these cells are really expensive to manufacture. This problem is not just as simple as getting the PV cells out there, because they have to last long enough to pay for their energy that was used during the manufacturing process. It might take 11 years for the cells to produce the same amount of energy that it took to manufacture them. If the cells only last 8 years, your net energy was a loss. Also PV cells power output deteriorate over time, and the article did not comment at all about this. For all we know the cells work at 40% for a week, but drop to something like 30% and progressively worse after that. There are a lot of unknowns.



    My point is that
    • betacmag4u, on 10/11/2007, -1/+21http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_solar_new.html

      A SOLAR POWER MYTH

      We've often heard the myth that "it takes more electricity to manufacture a solar panel than it will ever put out." This is simply not true...this myth may have started during the Ronald Reagan era. This is of course a very difficult statistic to calculate, but according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO, a study has been done to answer the question. The study found that single-crystal panels reach the energy payback point in 5-10 years, polycrystalline panels in 3-5 years, and amorphous silicon panels in 0.5-2 years. Be advised that because the question is so vague, there is a large margin of error for these figures! We just discovered a recent, very detailed study about solar panel energy payback time in the January 2001 issue of Home Power magazine. This study, by Karl Knapp, PhD, and Teresa Jester, finds payback time for a standard module to be about 3.3 years, and 1.8 years on a thin-film panel. The study factors in energy costs for ALL parts of the panel and manufacturing process.
    • GGzah, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6Most cells out there should last a minimum of 20 years (the industry standard from what I have seen is a 20 year minimum warranty), and tend to show only minor decreases in output (assuming they are used constantly over that time) There are PV cells back from when they where first being used 30+ years ago, that are apparently still chugging along nicely today (I only say 'apparently' because I've never seen one that old myself, only read about them online)
      Bottom line is, they last along time and continue to function at close to capacity for as long as they last. A sound long term investment!

    • MutatedNantuko, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5Ronald Reagan was a starch Solar Panel enemy because it required cooperation of non-NATO countries to create the grid large enough to power all NATO countries; efficiency was the problem. So, his cabinet members in charge of Energy made the move of disapproving solar power because of threats in the midst of the Cold War. Sadly, this move of disapproval has stuck since Reagan was such a highly approved president.
    • geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3"these cells are really expensive to manufacture."

      These cells in particular are really expensive to manufacture, but they also last damn well forever; we've already put very similar cells on extremely harsh environments (space, Mars) and left them there where they've operated for years non-stop under conditions that make earth look and seem like an absolute paradise.

      It's worth it to drop $50k on a solar array that could power your house (and a few of your neighbors) if it's going to last 50+ years ($1k/year doesn't seem so bad now, does it?) It seems silly to me that people would skip over this (especially when house builders could easily fold it into the cost of construction, and the people living in the house can defer the part of the energy bill they're saving on paying for the array).
    • Dilz, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1http://www.esolar.com/

      As someone mentioned about mirrors earlier... here you go. Mirrors that constantly reorient themselves throughout the day to maximize solar collection, eventually creating steam power. No slip in efficiency over time... at least not as great as with PV cells. :P
  • Lepuke, on 10/11/2007, -3/+2The rare metals in these things like Indium are running out rapidly, there was an artical in the new scientist about this the other week.
    I dont think these sorts of panel will ever be cheep to manufacture, infact they may well become more expensive to manufacture in the future due to increases in material costs.
  • CalipsoII, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFJc4xuFPcc
  • lostngone, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7Don't want to see or read about this "breakthrough", about every 3-4 years I read about some new super-duper photovoltaic technology that is going to revolutionize solar power as we know it... Well its been about 23 years since I started following solar power and I have yet to see any of these "breakthrough" technologies come to market.
    • chaesar, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5there hasn't been a "breakthrough" since they started using them to power calculators
    • MWeather, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Sure there has: Thin-film.
    • geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3"Well its been about 23 years since I started following solar power and I have yet to see any of these "breakthrough" technologies come to market."

      This tech will be on the market within the year; defense contractors and satellite builders absolutely require the highest efficiency cells they can get their hands on, and don't really care so much about the volume of production or how expensive they are (especially as these particular cells are young).

      Just because they're not going to hit the broader market for 10+ years, doesn't mean that these guys toiled away in a lab for absolutely no reason. The higher efficiency cells always go to Defense and Space contractors first, and they bring down the prices for the rest of us.
  • chaesar, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/energy.html Dept. of Energy 2008 Budget.

    Hightlights:
    385 M - Coal Research Initiative
    108 M - FutureGen project (coal)
    1.65 B - Coal-related tax credits
    148 M - Solar research
    179 M - Biofuel (retarded, people are already burning tons of plant oils in diesel engines worldwide)
    81 M - Hybrids/plug-ins
    309 M - Hydrogen fuel initiative
    • EntropyMan, on 10/11/2007, -4/+4Add to that 1 T (trillion) -- R&D (Destruction & Reconstruction) for oil in Iraq.
  • drgreenberg, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1"Finally!!! Now we need to make solar panels with ridges in them so they have more surface area and collect more light! Something like /////// all over them, cept not so steep."

    Imagine sitting on a photon and arriving at a solar cell. The area that matters is the apparent area that you see, so that a surface that's 1.414 x 1.414 m^2 tilted at 45 degrees to the direction of photon travel will have the same chance of absorbing that photon as a 1 x 1 m^2 surface at 90 degrees. Making ridges in a surface doesn't change this apparent area at all.
  • Darkhacker, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5What we need to invent is a better battery. I'm sure solar panels could power the average family home, but what about at night? The extra energy from the day needs to be stored somewhere and for large amounts of power like that, batteries are very expensive. We need a way to produce cheap batteries that hold a lot of energy for their size.
    • BobTrips, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3There's an interesting battery being developed at MIT - a "nano battery", really a super efficient capacitor.

      About twice as much storage capacity per pound as a lead acid battery (very important for vehicle use), charges in under five minutes, can be discharged/recharged thousands of times.

      If this thing pans out it would double the range of electric cars and make it as quick to recharge as to fill your tank with liquid fuel.

      Plus it would make it feasible to store a day or two worth of power in individual houses. That would take care of the periodic availability of solar and give people some "disaster" buffering.

  • jackal1291, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3As many have pointed out, the other side to getting solar feasible on a large scale is that of cost/materials. There is a ton of research happening in this area (low-cost photovoltaics) to achieve regular-PV efficiencies using cheaper and widely available metals/materials through some fundamental breakthroughs and ingenious engineering. This *will* happen, it may take some time, but the effects could be dramatic. Consider, for instance, that large swaths of the developing world (rural areas in particular) don't have regular access to electricity. However, with super-cheap PV cells we can at least provide reliable access to power in a decentralized way by having households place panels on the roofs of their houses.

    This is not hype, it's a basic science and engineering problem that is incrementally getting solved. More funding will, I think, be helpful since not too many companies are willing to invest on something that's still probably a decade away from the tipping point, as it were..
  • dave911la, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Its funny that i run into this article now as i currently have dr. richard king, the guy who made this record solar cell directly in front of me lecturing on this very topic...
  • renrutal, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3I'm a newbie at energy conversion, so I must ask:

    How do you calculate a solar cell conversion efficiency? BTW, how much efficient is photosynthesis?
    • Artifez, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1Photosynthesis is around 8% efficient but what are we going to do with simple sugars once we have them? I guess if we could bio-engineer a giant leaf we could engineer huge mitochondria that spit out electrons. Not too likely in the near term.
  • dave911la, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1photosynthesis conversion efficiency is less than 1%. to calculate solar efficiency is essentially the percent of power converted from capture/absorbed sunlight to the power delivered to the external circuit.
  • Error601, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2We need to get to 100% and use the back side of the panel for super-cooling super conductors.
  • RichStradler, on 10/11/2007, -3/+3Sorry to burst your bubble, but cost of Life is the problem with solar... not their first stated (or inflated) power efficiencies. Last available data from the Energy Department showed todays solar cells have to last and maintain outputting power at the same rate for 30 years in order to compete with other forms of energy. In the vaccuum of space they do... but on earth, they don't. The problem (and dirty little secret) of the solar companies are that Solar cells efficiencies drop off rapidly in just a few years due to obvious things like: Affected lens transparency, UV degradation, settled dust, lens abrasion, wind erosion, bird droppings, etc. And not so obvious things like: Weathering, PN junction erosion and PVA seal, encapsulation film integrity and polymeric breakdown-- loss of hermaticity. This quickly leads to copper conductor and interelectrode corrosion which effectively narrows conductor widths and increases current draws. Without breakthroughs addressing self-healing around these hidden power drains solar continues to look good only while it's still in the box. Longevity and cost of life is the key factors no-one talks about when it comes to solar. The bottom line is that it is way more expensive than the power grid over it's entire and less-than-trouble-free life. BTW: I was involved in testing manufacturers PV cells in a past career. Manufacturers warranties on efficiencies just didn't wash in the accelerated aging tests with the weatherometer and materials testing chambers either. But of course who's going to go after a manufacturer after those 20 years for loss of efficiency false advertising lawsuits anyway?
  • CUclimber, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Solar won't take off until I can go to Home Depot or Wal-Mart and buy a few panels for my roof and install them myself over the course of 1 afternoon and 3 beers.

    As soon as everyone has them on the roof of their house we'll see some massive reductions on the draw from the electrical grid.
  • CaptainStone, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1When I can actually buy a more efficient solar panel? I enjoy reading about improvements. However, I want to purchase one now! My specs are 10KW from panels that take up 12'x20'. Portable too. Want to move it between the house, the rv, the boat. Hey, I can dream...

    Sharp has 200W panels that are approx 3'x5'. So scaling to 12'x20' gets me 800W. Each panel is $1,050. So that would be $4,200. 1KW would be $5,250. 10KW would then be $52,500. Then cost of the power controller, inverter, batteries, etc...
    • CaptainStone, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1This is what I get for writing a comment and not checking my math. I only did the equivalent of one row.
  • LilRabbitFooFoo, on 08/11/2008, -0/+6We could have taken the trillion we've spent on Iraq and used it to make our country PERMANENTLY immune to OPEC, which would have allowed us to leave these godforsaken deserts because we no longer need their oil, and that would have made them happy cause we'd be gone. A win win win.

    Hmm, what was a better use of a trillion dollars, solar power or finally killing off an enemy we'd actually declawed a decade ago?
  • RedForemanTM, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0--
    DIGG
    --
    Anyone interested in the feasibility of 'going solar', Germany isn't the sunniest country in the world yet >> 'Astonishingly, Germany is now on track to produce 30 percent of its electricity from renewable [mostly solar] sources by 2020.' That's from NOVA http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/solar/about.html

    As for the economics >> 'The German PV industry generates over 10,000 jobs in production, distribution and installation.'
  • RedForemanTM, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0(continued) from http://www.solarbuzz.com/FastFactsGermany.htm you might also look at http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2001/07/45056 (there's more in the articles besides job creation).

    I think Nova mentioned a home owner with solar panels on his roof in New England (also not very sunny) who, on some days, doesn't draw power from the grid. I read somewhere (Reuters?) that parking lots with outlets for electric cars (google telsa motors for a cool electric car) were being built in a major city (don't remember the city or country - sorry). Some Canadian cities have parking meters with outlets so you can plug in your oil pan heater. Picture NYC, Chicago or LA air quality if there are financial incentives (and power supply) for electric cars.

    100 years ago it was impracticle to own a gasoline powered automobile, in part because there were no gas stations (you had to buy gas in containers from a general store - if they had it). Cars didn't catch on right away. (did I mention that the 1st cars sucked?). Point is, infrastructures can be built.

    I'm not advocating any single technology, I do think we should wean ourselves off of dependence on foreign produced energy.

    Related topics - go to the 'Mall of America' website. They have a section on why it is going 'green' (the reason is green - money). Also google 'Iceland geothermal power'. They have been heating their homes free for years now. The hot water also produces cheap electricity that they are now using to produce hydrogen for their prototype cars. (They can even produce hydrogen on site at the station - no transporting it).
  • TheDiggPig, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1Something is going to have to give soon,oil is running out and global warming is heating the world 10x faster then first thought.

    If Walmart can do it then why can't we?
  • jester55, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1i believe that the old ones were about 18% or even lower.
  • boddepalli4u, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0really good development.
  •  

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