Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US startup begins producing 40%-efficient thermophotovoltaic cells

pv-magazine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 174 posts

Re: US startup begins producing 40%-efficient thermophotovoltaic cells

#11

Post by bestouff »

konstantinua00 wrote: post #9
_hypx_ wrote: post #3

> This cell achieved an efficiency of 41.1% operating at a power density of 2.39 W cm–2 and an emitter temperature of 2,400 C. At those temperatures, this is not very impressive.

it's the temperature of light emitter, not of the panel it's pretty much saying "efficient (for a photovoltaic) electricity from powerful infrared" Sun is 6000 degrees, so most of its emergy is in different frequency Instead, this panel is planned to be used in thermal batteries, I think the article says. I guess main competition is steam turbine or smth?

FWIW when we say "a light at 6000 K" it means "a light with the same color as a black body heated to 6000 Kelvin", so it has nothing to do with temperature, it's only a (veery rough) way of characterizing color.

Re: US startup begins producing 40%-efficient thermophotovoltaic cells

#12

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #7
glenngillen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on your last sentence? My naïve assumption was that theoretically the closer to 100% you could get the better, though for some applications you might take a cheaper and lower efficiency panel if it could consistently provide more than the required energy needs. With a storage system, you can just keep adding more storage to soak up higher conversion efficiencies. What am I missing? Why does 40% ma…

Because utility-scale batteries are around 86% round trip efficiency. Pumped storage is around 79%. 40% as a conversion efficiency alone isn't good. That's not a round-trip value; heat loss in storage has to be considered, too.

[deleted]

Re: US startup begins producing 40%-efficient thermophotovoltaic cells

#13

Post by oblio »

throwbadubadu wrote: post #10
fbnbr wrote: post #4

This just becomes interesting if electricity can be produced from reflected photons by the moon such as at night energy production is possible. Other than that I believe in fusion although the giant fusion reactor does help during the day. Instead of making photovoltaic more efficient they should do this with batteries

> This just becomes interesting if electricity can be produced from reflected photons by the moon such as at night energy production is possible "referring to thermal energy grid storage (TEGS) consisting of a low-cost, grid-scale energy storage technology that uses TPVs to convert heat to electricity above 2,000 C" You all speak in miracles here, the use case seems to be converting thermal energy and energy storage.…

> Why the moon, and what does that have to do with regular photovoltaic efficiency?

Presumably to produce energy at night and avoid the need for storage. Seems like a moonshot, though.

Re: US startup begins producing 40%-efficient thermophotovoltaic cells

#14

Post by throwbadubadu »

oblio wrote: post #13
throwbadubadu wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This just becomes interesting if electricity can be produced from reflected photons by the moon such as at night energy production is possible "referring to thermal energy grid storage (TEGS) consisting of a low-cost, grid-scale energy storage technology that uses TPVs to convert heat to electricity above 2,000 C" You all speak in miracles here, the use case seems to be converting thermal energy and energy storage.…

> Why the moon, and what does that have to do with regular photovoltaic efficiency? Presumably to produce energy at night and avoid the need for storage. Seems like a moonshot, though.

But not with these cells? Not getting it :( Or why does (any) storage thing become only interesting then?

Re: US startup begins producing 40%-efficient thermophotovoltaic cells

#15

Post by TaylorAlexander »

fbnbr wrote: post #4

This just becomes interesting if electricity can be produced from reflected photons by the moon such as at night energy production is possible. Other than that I believe in fusion although the giant fusion reactor does help during the day. Instead of making photovoltaic more efficient they should do this with batteries

I believe we will build a functional net energy gain fusion reactor probably in the next decade if things go well (I’m rooting for SPARC), but we will still need to build an actual power plant (designed for long life, serviceability, improve efficiency based on what was learned before) and that will take a while. And then we need to build lots of them. And they will be very expensive.

Probably fusion power will not be cheaper than renewables inside of 50 years, because fusion power plants will simply be very expensive.

In the next 20 years we need to decarbonize as much as possible. Fusion sadly won’t have much of an impact for that.

But in 30 years when todays new renewables are at the end of their service life, we have an opportunity to replace them with fusion. That said, renewables will be that much cheaper in 30 years. I think for a while fusion will make the most sense for large industrial manufacturing operations that necessarily require large constant amounts of power.

Re: US startup begins producing 40%-efficient thermophotovoltaic cells

#18

Post by roflmaostc »

fbnbr wrote: post #4

This just becomes interesting if electricity can be produced from reflected photons by the moon such as at night energy production is possible. Other than that I believe in fusion although the giant fusion reactor does help during the day. Instead of making photovoltaic more efficient they should do this with batteries

Are you aware the the light reflected from moon to earth compare to direct sunlight is probably more than 4 or 5 order of magnitudes smaller?

This excludes any possibility for generating reasonable amounts of energy from moon light. There is a reason why it is much colder during the night.

Re: US startup begins producing 40%-efficient thermophotovoltaic cells

#19

Post by Dylan16807 »

fbnbr wrote: post #4

This just becomes interesting if electricity can be produced from reflected photons by the moon such as at night energy production is possible. Other than that I believe in fusion although the giant fusion reactor does help during the day. Instead of making photovoltaic more efficient they should do this with batteries

Just becomes interesting? I don't really know how to parse that. What is it if electricity can't be produced that way?

It's a total waste of time to use moonlight. It is a million times dimmer than sunlight.

Re: US startup begins producing 40%-efficient thermophotovoltaic cells

#20

Post by rkagerer »

svantana wrote: post #16

Could this be used to create a nuclear power generator without moving parts? Some radioactive material in the center, some coating to absorb the radiation, and a shell of these cells to generate electricity.

Are there already solid state ones that use the heat from radioactive decay and the Peltier principle? I assume your idea, if feasible, might be more efficient?
Post reply on HN