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World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency

phys.org

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Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency

#21

Post by MikeCapone »

gilgoomesh wrote: post #15
wyager wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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%.

Efficiency matters, but price/watt matters more and there's still room for a kind of moore's law there.

Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency

#22

Post by paul_f »

twelvechairs wrote: post #17

this 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.

This is the fundamental problem with PV. Compared to cheap natural gas, there just isn't much future in it

Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency

#23

Post by contingencies »

twelvechairs wrote: post #17

this 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.

The picture is more complex than just price, as greater efficiency also means greater access to available light under suboptimal/changing conditions, which can make a difference to overall deployment feasibility.

Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency

#24

Post by dmazin »

twelvechairs wrote: post #17

this 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.

That's true. This is exciting news for the solar panel research and industry world but not the world at large. This is a little like infinitesimally improving the efficiency of matrix manipulation. A giant leap for a microbe.

However, this is indeed good progress and gives me hope we'll get to the apparently coveted 50% efficiency milestone.

Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency

#25

Post by contingencies »

diydsp wrote: post #19
sejje wrote: post #10

Maybe 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PVeff%28rev130923%29a.jpg

Image is credited to L.L. Kazmerski of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO.

Have a look at the types of markers shown on the image key again. While vast amounts of resources are being dumped on efficient electricity extraction through expensive, advanced manufacturing processes, some are looking at going back to organics, which NREL classes as 'emerging'. Apparently hybrid organic/electrical photovoltaics date back to 1958, and can produce 11.1% (roughly 1/3-1/2 of currently available manufactured products) efficiency while remaining cheap to produce at high volumes. Mitsubishi is one of the research leaders.

More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_solar_cell

Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency

#26

Post by jussij »

paul_f wrote: post #22
twelvechairs wrote: post #17

this 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.

This is the fundamental problem with PV. Compared to cheap natural gas, there just isn't much future in it

No Future?

That might be true, except for that rather large elephant in the room call human-induced climate change.

Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency

#27

Post by markfx »

TheLegace wrote: post #14
wyager wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Moore's law describes a polynomial increase, not exponential.

Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency

#28

Post by diydsp »

marcfawzi wrote: post #18

When will the world run out of the "III-V semiconductor materials" ? And which nation or corporation currently controls the largest deposits?

haha a legit question, but i guess you got downvoted because you could have researched it and shared it? dunno.

anyway. not a chem dude at all, but it appears III-V semis are when you combine: "III-V compound semiconductors obtained by combining group III elements (essentially Al, Ga, In) with group V elements (essentially N, P , As, Sb). This gives us 12 possible combinations; the most important ones are probably GaAs, InP GaP and GaN." [1]

In other words, the materials in general are: Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Antimony, Arsenic, Bismuth, Boron, Aluminum, Gallium, Indium and Thallium.

I imagine nitrogen, phosphorus and aluminum are the easiest to find generally throughout the world.

China appears to control 90% of antimony [2] and its price seems to have gone up 700% over the last decade.

Arsenic seems to have major supply issues, one of the most critical in terms of scarcity according to [3] and [4]. Nevertheless, the price has gone down over the last 100 years significantly and according to this source is less scarce than it was a century ago: [5]

Bismuth is "relatively rare" but doesn't appear to be scarce. it is found mostly in Peru Japan Mexico, Canada, Bolivia and not in the USA. [6]

remaining elements are left as an exercise to the reader.

[1] http://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/semitech_en/kap_2/back... [2]http://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/semitech_en/kap_2/back... [3]http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2012/a... [4]http://environment.yale.edu/news/article/arsenic-supply-at-r... [5]http://theunbrokenwindow.com/2010/03/08/running-out-of-resou... [6]http://www.carondelet.pvt.k12.ca.us/Family/Science/Nitrogen/...

Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency

#29

Post by jws »

twelvechairs wrote: post #17

this 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.

Gains in efficiency can also be looked at as reductions in installation costs, for a given capacity. They can support a greater price premium than just the extra power would command.

Re: World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency

#30

Post by nether »

twelvechairs wrote: post #17

this 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.

In the major solar car races, there's a category for cars built with a mandated type of midrange cost solar cell. That way it's not just about who can afford the best cells.
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