Breakthrough in solar cell efficiency.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-07/miot-esd070119.php

This would be great news.

sibeen said:

Breakthrough in solar cell efficiency.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-07/miot-esd070119.php

This would be great news.

smarts+ these people.

Bogsnorkler said:

sibeen said:

Breakthrough in solar cell efficiency.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-07/miot-esd070119.php

This would be great news.

smarts+ these people.

My one caveat is that it’s from MIT and their spruiking department has no equal.

sibeen said:

Bogsnorkler said:

sibeen said:

Breakthrough in solar cell efficiency.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-07/miot-esd070119.php

This would be great news.

smarts+ these people.

My one caveat is that it’s from MIT and their spruiking department has no equal.

I did for a moment think you were on the team with the reference to Baldo…

I mean this is cool’n‘all but I usually take these things with a grain of salt.

Right now the cheapest (in terms of $ per nameplate watt or $ per Wh per annum) photovoltaics are aroun 18% efficiency.

25%, 30%, 35% efficient PV already exist and that’s great for some applications where space restrictions are crucial, such as on vehicles or in orbit etc, but it’s not going to change global power production because 35% efficient PV is much more expensive per W than 18%.

If MIT brought this to market much more cheaply than OTS moderate efficiency PV, then that would be news.

The bottleneck is not in PV efficiency it’s still in the storage.
Your PVs will charge at say 14A for a couple of hours and then go into float mode at say 4A to finish charging the batteries, you can have all the sun and PVs you want but their charging capacity is predicated on the batteries ability to take the charge.
Now Lithium batteries can overcome this but the cost involved with lithium batteries is the complexity of their control mechanism. I saw a very good video on this and it put me off going to lithium.

dv said:

I mean this is cool’n‘all but I usually take these things with a grain of salt.

Right now the cheapest (in terms of $ per nameplate watt or $ per Wh per annum) photovoltaics are aroun 18% efficiency.

25%, 30%, 35% efficient PV already exist and that’s great for some applications where space restrictions are crucial, such as on vehicles or in orbit etc, but it’s not going to change global power production because 35% efficient PV is much more expensive per W than 18%.

If MIT brought this to market much more cheaply than OTS moderate efficiency PV, then that would be news.

The article said that the maximum theoretical efficiency possible before this development was 27%.

How do the 30 and 35% ones work?

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

I mean this is cool’n‘all but I usually take these things with a grain of salt.

Right now the cheapest (in terms of $ per nameplate watt or $ per Wh per annum) photovoltaics are aroun 18% efficiency.

25%, 30%, 35% efficient PV already exist and that’s great for some applications where space restrictions are crucial, such as on vehicles or in orbit etc, but it’s not going to change global power production because 35% efficient PV is much more expensive per W than 18%.

If MIT brought this to market much more cheaply than OTS moderate efficiency PV, then that would be news.

The article said that the maximum theoretical efficiency possible before this development was 27%.

How do the 30 and 35% ones work?

Five years ago the most efficient PV cells in existence were 46% efficient. There may have been improvements since then.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150823133519/http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-and-media/press-releases/press-releases-2014/new-world-record-for-solar-cell-efficiency-at-46-percent