> I don’t see any meaningful similarities beyond ‘they absorb light at more than one frequency’. Ah, that's definitely not what I'm talking about. Look at the

> I don’t see any meaningful similarities beyond ‘they absorb light at more than one frequency’. Ah, that's definitely not what I'm talking about. Look at the relationship between efficiency and wavelength for plants and photovoltaics... the similarity is clear. Both photovoltaics and plants are capable of absorbing specific amounts of energy from incoming photons but not other amounts. Any excess energy becomes waste heat. The reason is because in both systems, the incoming light is used to move electrons from one state to another; the energy required to do this must usually come from one photon. Not all solar power systems work this way.