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Current solar cells range in the 15% - low 20s% efficiency. So I'm immediately sceptical, but click the link anyway. It's a typically badly written modern cli

Current solar cells range in the 15% - low 20s% efficiency. So I'm immediately sceptical, but click the link anyway. It's a typically badly written modern clickbait-journalism article, but I'm certain this isn't gonna result in solar panels on your roof delivering 4 times as much power at the sunlight falling on them.

hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
Article content to advertising is a 1:1 ratio, too.
MikeDelta 5y ago
Indeed, I was wondering about that as well: solar cells producing more energy than put in would be a great achievement.
jiggawatts 5y ago
Hilariously, the article URL contains "recent-discovery-may-give-solar-cells-a-thousand-times-more-power". Last time I checked, 1000% and 1000x were not the same. From the original paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe4206 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe4206 > "In comparison to BTO, a staggering enhancement of more than three orders of magnitude is observed in the case of SBC222, while an enhancement of 100 times is observed in SBC252" So it's both: one test showed a 100x improvement, the other a 1000x improvement. However, these improvements are not being compared to standard silicon photovoltaic cells, but to ferroelectric cells that are currently merely laboratory curiosities with very low power outputs. In other words, these boffins figured out how to get 1000x more power out of this new type of PV material. I don't see any comparison to silicon PV in the paper, so it's probably still far too low to be commercially viable.
_Microft 5y ago
The title is wrong but the confusion is lifted with the first sentence: "Researchers [...] achieved an increase in the photovoltaic effect of ferroelectric crystals by a factor of 10" They did not increase efficiency of silicon-based photovoltaic (PV) cells but the PV effect of the crystals in question. They argue that these crystals might be easier to manufacture than existing silicon-based cells. A PDF of the paper can be found here: https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/sciadv.abe4206 https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/sciadv.abe4206
rich_sasha 5y ago
What is the denominator on the efficiency calculation? Total solar power output (at ground level), or power output in the spectrum band PVs operate on? This is not what the article meant, but I wonder if in the latter case, efficiency can be increased "past 100%" by expanding the spectrum converted to energy.

hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago

Article content to advertising is a 1:1 ratio, too.

MikeDelta 5y ago

Indeed, I was wondering about that as well: solar cells producing more energy than put in would be a great achievement.

jiggawatts 5y ago

Hilariously, the article URL contains "recent-discovery-may-give-solar-cells-a-thousand-times-more-power". Last time I checked, 1000% and 1000x were not the same. From the original paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe4206 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe4206 > "In comparison to BTO, a staggering enhancement of more than three orders of magnitude is observed in the case of SBC222, while an enhancement of 100 times is observed in SBC252" So it's both: one test showed a 100x improvement, the other a 1000x improvement. However, these improvements are not being compared to standard silicon photovoltaic cells, but to ferroelectric cells that are currently merely laboratory curiosities with very low power outputs. In other words, these boffins figured out how to get 1000x more power out of this new type of PV material. I don't see any comparison to silicon PV in the paper, so it's probably still far too low to be commercially viable.

_Microft 5y ago

The title is wrong but the confusion is lifted with the first sentence: "Researchers [...] achieved an increase in the photovoltaic effect of ferroelectric crystals by a factor of 10" They did not increase efficiency of silicon-based photovoltaic (PV) cells but the PV effect of the crystals in question. They argue that these crystals might be easier to manufacture than existing silicon-based cells. A PDF of the paper can be found here: https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/sciadv.abe4206 https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/sciadv.abe4206

rich_sasha 5y ago

What is the denominator on the efficiency calculation? Total solar power output (at ground level), or power output in the spectrum band PVs operate on? This is not what the article meant, but I wonder if in the latter case, efficiency can be increased "past 100%" by expanding the spectrum converted to energy.