I'm going to turn to Hacker News, as I always do, for context: what would 50% efficiency mean?
Probably just a benchmark. Goal # 1: "At least get half the way there".
World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency
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Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency
#12Maybe I missed it in the article, but what was considered a good efficiency prior to this?
> Back in May 2013, the German-French team of Fraunhofer ISE, Soitec, CEA-Leti and the Helmholtz Center Berlin had already announced a solar cell with 43.6% efficiency.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-world-solar-cell-efficiency.htm...
Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency
#13"These solar cells are used in concentrator photovoltaics (CPV), a technology which achieves more than twice the efficiency of conventional PV power plants in sun-rich locations. The terrestrial use of so-called III-V multi-junction solar cells, which originally came from space technology, has prevailed to realize highest efficiencies for the conversion of sunlight to electricity. In this multi-junction solar cell, s…
There are many reasons to be investing in NASA. They actually have subdomain devoted to highlighting their spinoff technologies.
Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency
#14"These solar cells are used in concentrator photovoltaics (CPV), a technology which achieves more than twice the efficiency of conventional PV power plants in sun-rich locations. The terrestrial use of so-called III-V multi-junction solar cells, which originally came from space technology, has prevailed to realize highest efficiencies for the conversion of sunlight to electricity. In this multi-junction solar cell, s…
>I think we may start to see Moore's Law starting to be applied to Solar Cells. It would have to be a kind of inverse Moore's law, given that you can't double beyond 100%.
I guess what I really mean was exponential increase in gains.
Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency
#15"These solar cells are used in concentrator photovoltaics (CPV), a technology which achieves more than twice the efficiency of conventional PV power plants in sun-rich locations. The terrestrial use of so-called III-V multi-junction solar cells, which originally came from space technology, has prevailed to realize highest efficiencies for the conversion of sunlight to electricity. In this multi-junction solar cell, s…
>I think we may start to see Moore's Law starting to be applied to Solar Cells. It would have to be a kind of inverse Moore's law, given that you can't double beyond 100%.
It's worse than that. There's no room for a single doubling of 44% efficiency. The theoretical maximum for multi-junction concentrator cells is about 86%:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley–Queisser_limit
For single junction cells it's a mere 33%.
Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency
#16Is the composition of this one solar cell from 4 subcells of any significance? Is it just 4 for a reason?
"The single subcells absorb different wavelength ranges of the solar spectrum."
Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency
#17this is great but its worth noting that efficiency isn't really what's holding solar production back, its price. few peoples roofs are crammed with PV to the point where they can't fit more in.
Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency
#18When will the world run out of the "III-V semiconductor materials" ? And which nation or corporation currently controls the largest deposits?
Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency
#19Maybe I missed it in the article, but what was considered a good efficiency prior to this?
someone on wikipedia has been maintaining a beautiful image of the history of solar cell efficiency for various technologies.. let's see if this has been added yet. It looks 1. No, and 2. There was a recent discovery by Sharp of 44.4%.
Main page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell_efficiency
Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency
#20I'm going to turn to Hacker News, as I always do, for context: what would 50% efficiency mean?
Short answer is that more of the solar insolation that hits Earth gets converted into electricity. So on the equator its about 1kW per square meter, in North America closer to 700W sq Meter, and converted at 50% you would start at 350W per sq meter, which after rectification might be 300W per square meter.