8 ms·
Panel with photovoltaic material layered on silicon hits 33% efficiencies
- hesdeadjim 3y agoAnyone know what the state of the art is/will be for panel lifetimes? Efficiency is great, but I’d sacrifice some if it meant 50+ year lifetimes of 85%+ peak output.
- greenthrow 3y agoThey essentially last 50+ years now, and have always, barring damage. State of the art panels today warranty 90%+ output after 25 years. So they probably aren't far off what you're asking for at 50. They keep getting better and cheaper every year.
- jeffbee 3y agoNREL's latest data is summarized here: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81172.pdf#page=5 https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81172.pdf#page=5 Some types of panels have increased capacity after being in the field for years. Degradation is not a significant economic concern at this stage of the process.
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoI see degradation numbers between -0.1%/year and -1.1%/year. This translates to about * 0.999^25 = 97.5% to 0.989^25 = 75.8% output after 25 years. * 0.999^50 = 95% to 0.989^50 = 57.5% output after 50 years.
- Retric 3y agoData I’ve see doesn’t show output dropping continuously at a constant rate. Also some panels did show modest improvement for a few years.
- londons_explore 3y ago> modest improvement for a few years. Many regions of the world are getting dryer. You might just be seeing a global warming side effect as there is less cloud cover.
- londons_explore 3y agoIt would be good to break the figures down between: * The actual silicon is degrading * The cover glass is getting dirty/frosted/delaminating/optical adhesive is no longer clear * Electrical failure of a whole cell - for example it is cracked, yet the panel still appears to work due to the bypass diodes removing a whole cell from the circuit. Sure - from the users point of view it doesn't matter, but from an engineering point of view, the cause of failure gives some clues how to prevent it.
- philipkglass 3y agoThis is true for panels on the market now, and most of those produced in the past. The 33% tandem systems reported on by Ars Technica see severe efficiency degradation after just a few hundred hours of full-power operation, so that's something that needs to be solved before perovskite-on-silicon tandem systems enter mass production.
- larsiusprime 3y agoWhat about hail damage? That's the main concern holding me back, but is this something already being addressed?
- ben_w 3y agoThat sounds like you want armoured panels; As I understand it, the degradation being discussed here is from the light itself.
- greenthrow 3y agoMost panel warranties cover hail up to like 1" diameter. So, pretty sizable. Beyond that, you need insurance.
- goldenkey 3y agoIs it possible to put some translucent protective material that doesn't block the frequencies the panels absorb?
- jackmott42 3y agoyes, they use this new tech called glass.
- goldenkey 3y agoGlass refracts and depending on what it's made of, will absorb some frequencies. > For normal incidence, approximately 4 % of the light is reflected; this value is determined by the refractive index of the glass. For most glasses with a refractive index of 1.5, reflection losses at the surface result in an approximate 4% decrease in light intensity.
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoYou can always put more/stronger glass on top to protect them more. But I would bet it is cheaper to buy insurance for such infrequent events.
- jackmott42 3y ago
- epolanski 3y agoI have worked as a solar scientist researcher for some time, have coauthored 3 papers in Michael Graetzel[1]'s laboratory and I have some experience in both Graetzel cells and perovskite solutions like the one mentioned in this article. Long story short: scientific researchers, especially those in well funded laboratories are incentivized by the wrong metrics (in all fields, not unique to solar) and in this field the only metric that matters is efficiency. It doesn't matter if your cell decays by 50% in a day, it reached some great potential in a new way, here's the way for a high impact publication. Want to work on the other problem though? Lifetime, resiliency? Cheap and affordable and non-toxic materials? Good luck getting proper funding and exposure. Why? Because scientific papers are a closed mafia, where a set of the most influential scientists (doesn't matter how many scientists the planet has, the moment you start entering a niche the number of people is very low) in their field review the submitted papers. Don't have high efficiency or you're not breaking science? Forget a high-impact journal. You're back at B-tier, C-tier papers, but those won't get you funding and status. Not great for your career. So what do you do? You play fool and focus your efforts and many many millions of euros to get the next perovskite cell that can reach high 20%s with some twist at least or go for the 30%+ ones. Just to express how sad and toxic the world of scientific research is (not even mentioning the insane amount of fake data that gets published every day, the politics, etc): instead of being a researcher I now prefer being a web developer writing forms list and tables. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Gr%C3%A4tzel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Gr%C3%A4tzel
- casparvitch 3y agoI disagree that science has the wrong incentives. The place for science is to chase new (e.g.) physics, not build something useful. As a society we have decided that (e.g.) physics should/shall solve our problems with better technology. But that is not what pure academic science is about, or what pure academic scientists care about. You want to iteratively improve technologies? Give more funding to proper engineers, not physicists/chemists, even if they're sometimes in the 'school of electrical engineering'.
- ScoobleDoodle 3y ago
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoI'm the opposite, I'd trade some of the current longevity, for ever increasing efficiency. Some research suggests you should replace all solar panels every 17 years because the tech will have advanced enough to make it worthwile.
- walrus01 3y agoThere are very reputable manufacturers now that warranty on a sliding scale over time to be 84% of original STC watt rating at 25 years.
- throwawaymaths 3y agoWe should all take a moment and appreciate that plants are pegged to (IIRC) 10-15% theoretical max efficiency, and that's just in photocapture, it's even worse when you factor in chemical inefficies in storage and conversion of sugars back to usable atp (which it must do to use the energy)
- nightfly 3y agoPlants also are able to make more of themselves from dirt out of pennies worth of matterial
- ben_w 3y agoMostly they make themselves out of air, which is even better. The dirt has necessary trace elements, but the carbon? That's all from CO2.
- goldenkey 3y agoIn the same vein, most of our energy comes from oxygen, not the food we eat :-) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6379287/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6379287/
- throwawaymaths 3y agoOh man you've never cared for trees/plants have you. Some of em (most often the ones you "want") are total crybabies over those "trace elements". You can't have DNA without phosphorus, for example, and many plants can't make nitrogen from air. Don't get me started on magnesium (needed for chlorophyll)
- syntaxing 3y agoDoes 33% efficiency means it can generate 3.3kW per m^2?!
- philipkglass 3y ago330 watts. Sunlight is about 1000 watts per square meter at noon on a clear day.
- photonerd 3y agoThat might be easy to remember for baseline calculations but it’s actually more like 1,360 watts per square meter. So a smidge below 450W at 33%
- philipkglass 3y agoThat's above the Earth's atmosphere. At sea level it's about 1000 watts: https://acee.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/SolarDistillate_Article3.pdf https://acee.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/SolarD... The intensity of the Sun’s energy is about 30 percent greater at the top of the atmosphere, but various gases and aerosols reduce the intensity by absorbing sunlight as it travels through the atmosphere toward the Earth’s surface. Where the Earth’s surface is flat on a clear day at sea level, with the Sun directly overhead, the average intensity of direct sunlight is about 1,000 watts per square meter. Satellites have modestly better solar resources to work with since there is no atmospheric attenuation.
- GeorgeTirebiter 3y agoIt depends on the absorption bands used. One big downside of PV cells is they don't use energy in the blue. Perovskites do absorb blue. So a combo should do better than either alone. The average intensity of solar energy reaching the top of the atmosphere directly facing the Sun is about 1,360 watts per square meter. You get about 1,000 W per square meter at sea level https://www.solar-electric.com/learning-center/solar-insolation-maps.html/ https://www.solar-electric.com/learning-center/solar-insolat...
- mehdix 3y agoIt'd be in user's best interest but not corporation's best interest.
- kumarski 3y agoFor every 1 pound of polysilicon generated, you create 2-4 pounds of silicon tetrachloride. Even if the cost of a panel goes to zero, it makes no difference because the costs to dispatch and transmission energy exceed the useful capacity of solar in a large % of areas where it is deployed on the grid and the specific times in the grid, you end up consuming more nat gas per kwh than if you'd just burned nat gas from start to finish. I bought $UAN at $7-$9 and I'll continue buying between $75-$85. It's sort of a long call on natural gas - and for me a long call on ESG ridiculousness proliferating quickly. The nat gas bull run will rise again with the wide scale institutionally backed ESG funds that get pointed toward solar deployments.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoI’m sorry I lost you on the last point. Where does the natural gas consumption come from in a solar power plant, inclusive of presumably grid connectivity? I don’t understand the chemistry you state. My understanding is silicon tetrachloride is an intermediate for producing polysilicon, and is used multiple places in the process in a recycling through the hydrogenation reactor. It’s not a by product. Do you mean to produce polysilicon you need 4x the silicon tetrachloride? That’s approximately true. But chlorinated ferrosilicon is typically the route for production and this can be achieved without natural gas, if that was where you got your nat gas assertion.
- kumarski 3y agohttps://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/silicon-tetrachloride#:~:text=Silicon%20tetrachloride%20is%20a%20by,tetrachloride%20liquid%20waste%20are%20generated https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sci....
- fnordpiglet 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_tetrachloride https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_tetrachloride Read the uses section. It doesn’t make sense that silicon tetrachloride is a byproduct of purifying silicon. Why would you leave the silicon atom attached to the chlorine if the silicon atom is what you are after. The ratio makes sense - there’s one silicon atom and four chlorine atoms, but the statement that it’s a waste product is strange to me as it’s not. It is a intermediate and you do have to house it, and you can leak it and that’s not great (but as they state in the article you linked it’s not stable around water so I wouldn’t lose a huge amount of sleep over it’s pollution.
- nologic01 3y agoTaking the long term view solar panels of some sort seem like the energy technology pattern that will dominate the Earth's antropocene period. Other patterns (wind, hydro, geothermal etc) feel clumsy, high maintainance and localized. Tapping secondary feeds rather than the universal primary feed. For sure, solar panel efficiency, total environmental impact, economic costs of manufacturing and recycling, storage etc are all relevant dimensions. They see much attention and, inevitably, innovation. In the scheme of things the fossil fuel binge will be but a blip, succeeded by a long period where humanityp enters its solar powered phase.
- anon25783 3y agoThe "fossil fuel binge" has driven so many species extinct that there is no chance it will be a "blip".
- nologic01 3y agoSpecies will continue going extinct. Its the anthropocene. Our mere presence at such large numbers in every ecosystem is having a huge impact and this will continue even conditioning on us using the most benign energy technology. The "blip" refers to the fossil fuel induced climate change. Reaching sustainable equilibrium with other parts of the biosphere is still an open issue.
- anon25783 3y agoFossil fuel induced climate change on its own is very far from being a "blip", though. I'm not a biologist or anything, but there's not a doubt in my mind that more species have died from fossil fuel induced climate change (and fossil fuel extraction, too) than anyone can even predict the consequences of.
- adrianN 3y agoIf we manage to get rid of fossil fuels before technological society collapses from climate change, maybe.