15 ms·

> “Gaining 1 or 2 percent more efficiency is huge. These may sound like very tiny increases, but at scale these small improvements create a lot of value in term

by szvsw 2y ago

> “Gaining 1 or 2 percent more efficiency is huge. These may sound like very tiny increases, but at scale these small improvements create a lot of value in terms of economics, sustainability, and value to society.” It’s so easy to forget this and the massive scale and its relevance at the massive scale of the systems we need to (and are, to some extent) roll out. It also seems promising when these breakthroughs are happening in R&D groups of industry players trying to dogfood it rather than in labs. At the same time though, it’s starting to feel to me, to some extent, like we have kind of solved solar? It’s everything else around it that needs to advance, particularly grid infra, batteries and electrifying the general class of difficult-to-electrify problems (steel, concrete, freight). I might be totally off-base and blinkered with that assessment. Edit: I guess I should try to clarify my feeling after reading some of the responses below: it feels like solar tech is not really the limiting factor in renewable scaling, and that advances in solar efficiencies won’t drastically/meaningfully simplify the other challenges/limiting factors we currently face (grid infra/batteries, electrification of mfg, duck curve, etc). Children point out that space and cost savings from efficiency gains in solar may still be significant at grid scale though! Still, this is very cool progress to read about!

bluefirebrand 2y ago
Completely agree. I'm sure there's still a lot of advances left in solar panels themselves, but we really do need to solve the grid, solve storage, essentially solve the base load We won't be able to transition fully off of fossil fuels until we do
Kye 2y ago
I wonder if someone has done a science to compare the carbon impact of batteries and peaker plants. It might be that a lesser of evils fossil fuel is the solution if it's a sometimes thing and not the main thing. It also has the virtue of being supplyable in a renewable way with landfill gas recovery.
- Tade0 2y ago
  A battery made using the dirtiest grid that produces them at scale (110kg CO2/kWh of battery) breaks even compared to gas after ~200 cycles. LFP batteries commonly used as stationary storage regularly do 2000 cycles. Makes more sense to use that gas to make more batteries.
- mrtracy 2y ago
  Peaker plants are considerably less efficient than base load gas energy, because the constantly running plants use a combined cycle. In both types of plants, the fuel is burned in a gas turbine to directly generate power; however, in the combined-cycle plant the waste heat from this is used to generate steam to run steam turbines, capturing additional power; this actually generates over twice as much useable energy per unit of fuel. Peaker plants cannot effectively use this mechanism as it has a much longer start-up time. Combined cycle is a major reason that gas power plants are so attractive; the inability to use it in Peakers is a reason why they are so unattractive.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    > Peaker plants cannot effectively use this mechanism as it has a much longer start-up time. How much longer? If a plant is designed with a big priority to getting secondary generation up to speed quickly, how many hours will it need to warm up?
  - crote 2y ago
    A lot of it depends on the exact type of usage, does it not? Currently a lot of peaker plants operate a bit like "A power line failed, we need extra power NOW!" They get essentially zero warning and are expected to be at full power within 30 minutes. Dealing with that obviously leads to some issues, but in 2024 we could also fill that niche with battery storage. When it comes to the energy transition, it's a bit of a different problem. We can reasonably predict weather, so the rough output of solar and wind is known several days in advance. If the forecast is predicting an overcast day with zero wind, any "peaker" plant will have tens of hours to warm up. Combine that with minor changes to reduce startup time[0], and it seems far less of a hurdle to overcome. [0]: https://etn.global/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/STARTUP-TIME-REDUCTION-FOR-COMBINED-CYCLE-POWER-PLANTS.pdf https://etn.global/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/STARTUP-TIME-R...
hamandcheese 2y ago
In general I agree. But every efficiency gained will translate to less land used for solar, or a longer period of energy surplus every day (which means less deficit that has to be made up in other ways during the non-peak hours). Either of those things make me happy.
- ziggy_star 2y ago
  A manufacturing efficency would, this won't. The cheapest panel wins.
  - tromp 2y ago
    Not necessarily the cheapest, but the one with the best combination of efficiency, cost, durability, and possibly other properties I'm overlooking.
    - ziggy_star 2y ago
      I meant in the marketplace as bought by actual consumers. So, the cheapest.
      - szvsw 2y ago
        Isn’t GP effectively saying $/W? I assume that’s how most people evaluate price… “I want to install a system that will pay itself back in the smallest amount of time while staying below my max budget.”
        ziggy_star 2y ago
        That would be the prosumer. A consumer buys the thing with the lowest sticker price. See for example triple pane vs single pane windows.
        szvsw 2y ago
        I guess be careful how you use prosumer in this kind of thread, since it often might refer to a producer-consumer (ie someone who can get paid $$ to export energy back into the grid, as opposed to just saving $$ from avoided grid import). I assume you meant professional consumer. > See for example triple pane vs single pane windows. Bad example but I understand your point. Bad example because it takes significantly more expertise to model the savings from triple paned window with low-e coating and vacuum sealing vs double paned vs single paned (ie it requires a proper building energy model in eg EnergyPlus). Also bad because the triple paned window might be immediately disqualified by the budget constraint above. In any case, I think you are just saying people are likely to pick the thing which has the least friction, whether that friction comes from cost, installation challenges, etc etc. And yes, sometimes upfront cost is the most significant thing which affects people’s willingness to adopt a certain home energy retrofit but payback period does play a big role in people’s decision making, as well as their ability to get funding for it (government rebates), or they may simply be going with an installer who pays them to install it and they certainly care about payback period!
Angostura 2y ago
The better the solar gets, the bigger the incentive to restructure the surrounding infrastructure
phkahler 2y ago
Percentages can be funny. 2 percent higher efficiency is 10 percent more output if you go from 20-22.
- hinkley 2y ago
  If the costs aren’t too egregious that can affect the break even point quite a bit. And the situation with embodied carbon footprint. Which we pointedly do not talk about.
- Filligree 2y ago
  That would be two percentage points. Two percent, I would expect to be from 20 to 20.4%.
  - Izkata 2y ago
    Technically correct but not colloquial usage. GP got that scale right, except they've actually managed going from around 20% to around 25%.
mensetmanusman 2y ago
No, we have not. Half of the current cost is due to installation and labor, so any weight reductions will have a huge impact on cost. Perovskite solar cells have the opportunity to have a 10 X weight reduction.
- Denvercoder9 2y ago
  How much of that cost is related to the physical handling of the panels themselves, and not the electrical installation, though? Weight reduction isn't going to help there.
  - mensetmanusman 2y ago
    It’s propagates through the supply chain, loading, logistics, wear on vehicle transport etc. We should practically get to the point where someone can buy a roll of material at Home Depot and unravel it on their roof, nail it, and plug it in themselves.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - lompad 2y ago
      The currents and voltages involved are going to make that a non-starter. Do you really want random people messing with those? The solar inverters are also sized that big for a reason. At least in countries with strong regulations around working with electricity this is simply not going to be feasible. I've been in the PV business for some time now and seen a person get killed by it. It's not pretty. Still remembering that smell of burnt flesh... Now, to be fair, that was at a 12MW-installation, not on a roof. But still...
      - thechao 2y ago
        Jay Leno talks about installing solar on his house (which he did himself) and commenting that he was getting shocked a lot, bc as soon as the PVs are in the sun, they're making electricity. He said it made handling the units tricky.
tw04 2y ago
Not just grid scale. It can be the difference of panels on your roof generating enough electricity to barely meet your needs to having so much excess you can not only supply your home needs, but also charge multiple EVs at home.
- maxglute 2y ago
  I feel like that's a uniquely North American need. Most countries don't have the single family / multi car ownership structure. Still a real need. But implications of a country where large% of people can meet their own energy needs is interesting.
  - pyrale 2y ago
    The implication would likely be that the share of population that can't afford it won't be able to pay for the grid alone either. We have examples of this kind of situation in poor countries where the grid wasn't developed in the first place, and rich people use generators.
- szvsw 2y ago
  This still doesn’t address the duck curve aspect, or overnight usage. It is fundamentally impossible to use PV to directly power your wonderful super efficient heat pump to warm your home at night. You will still need batteries!
  - tw04 2y ago
    And? You can buy a rack of lifepo4 batteries for less than $10k and it will be enough power to supply you running your A/C or heat the entire night.
    - szvsw 2y ago
      Well, my original point at the top of this thread was specifically about how battery mfg/infra/costs/dispatch (especially at grid scale) and so on seem like the limiting factors/primary challenges still being worked on, not PV efficiency, so I think we are agreeing?
KptMarchewa 2y ago
We've solved energy in middle of sunny, summer day. We haven't solved it in middle of winter night.
- okaram 2y ago
  We're in the process, and may arguably already have, for the tropics. Get more panels, maybe some batteries.
- kragen 2y ago
  in antarctica you may need nuclear or ammonia storage or something, but the rest of us can just use batteries
- hackerlight 2y ago
  Winter being a problem really depends on location. Seasonal variability is much lower near the equator. Also batteries are becoming a solved tech. Also wind is anti correlated with solar, it's stronger in winter and at night. So you want 50-50 to minimize the need for storage.
- pier25 2y ago
  If you can reduce even 50% of the consumption from the grid that would be huge.
- crote 2y ago
  Luckily most people are sleeping in the middle of the night, so electricity usage is already quite low. That's why many areas already have a separate discounted Night Tariff. Additionally, the winter might not have a lot of sun, but it usually does have quite a bit of wind. Build a combination of solar and wind power, and you've solved the biggest issue. The rest can be picked up by hydro and gas peaker plants (short-term), or battery storage and other new technologies (long-term).
  - throwaway14356 2y ago
    the winter has plenty of sun and few clouds.
kylehotchkiss 2y ago
Solar would better be considered solved when the companies installing it don’t require large loans, liens on your home, and door to door salespeople. It’d be nice if having it installed was more similar to having a plumber or regular electrician stop by
- szvsw 2y ago
  I guess I meant from a technical efficiency perspective, rather than the social infrastructure around it. It’s unclear to me (and frankly seems unlikely?) that few more percentage points will fix the very real structural issues you raised! At the same time, even if we do solve those issues, and we get solar panels on the roof of every home, there are still significant challenges to overcome as it’s unlikely the average home can become fully energy independent (especially if there is electrified winter heating), and anyways, the energy demand from single-family residential housing is only one slice of the overall energy pie. In any case, it would certainly help if we did that!
- derriz 2y ago
  That's because putting solar on rooftops makes little economic sense. The overhead in terms of installation cost was relatively insignificant when PV panels cost 20 times as much - as they did 15 years ago. These days, the cost is swamped by installation costs. These days, the only place it makes sense to put PV is flat on unused or unproductive land. The 95% drop in PV panels means that it is no longer economic to bother with mechanical tracking in solar farms. Integrating panels into a domestic roof destroys the incredible cost advantages PV has over alternative power sources.
  - grecy 2y ago
    I just installed 7.3kW on my roof, for a total out of pocket cost of $8000. (after rebates and free gov money) It looks like I'll make about $1000 of power per year, so I have an 8 year payback, after which I'll have free power for another ~20 years. How on earth does that make "little economic sense"?
    - 2y ago
cletus 2y ago
> At the same time though, it’s starting to feel to me, to some extent, like we have kind of solved solar? There are many metrics that affect power generation (or anything really). A few are: - Power generation per unit area - Power generation per unit mass - Power generation per dollar - Lifetime - Decline rate (ie does the cell get less effective over time?) - Flexibility (eg can you wrap it around a cylinder) - Minimum size - Maximum size - Cost to repair Where a given solar panel fits in the above vector space will change its applications. In some cases, size is paramount. In others, cost is paramount. Sometimes you need long-lived panels. A good example if solar panels for space probes. These need to be generate as much power for as little weight and it doesn't even really matter what the cost is. Also, making such a panel last 30 years might be irrelevant if the lifetime of the mission is 5-10 years. So no, I wouldn't call solar "solved".
- szvsw 2y ago
  Fair points! I tried to clarify in my edit, but I was mostly speaking from the perspective of grid decarbonization, as opposed to more niche (to me) applications like space probes, because that is what my personal biases are towards. It seems like a few more percentage points of efficiency at the same cost/space (so ignoring something like perk pv) doesn’t meaningfully move the needle on decarbonization efforts any more and that other challenges dominate (grid infra, batteries, etc). And I actually mean “solved” in a celebratory manner - it’s awesome that we are at this point! But yes, I was totally overlooking use cases besides residential and grid-scale PV.
thelastgallon 2y ago
Solar cells that can be printed like a fabric or rolls of paper, solar cells that can be spray painted, solar cells that can be grown from microbes (fastest and cheapest!) are technologies that will make current solar technology look primitive. That may take a while, but immediately though, cost-effective solar shingles would be so much better than wasting material/labor of 3 layers. Tesla roof and GAF Timberline have products, looks like GAF costs the same as other materials with tax credits. But if this can get cheaper, its a gamechanger.
- jeffbee 2y ago
  How would a spray-on material have macroscopic structures like bus bars?
  - thelastgallon 2y ago
    https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/solar-paint-hydrogen-quantum-dot-perovskite-solar-cells https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/solar-paint-hydrogen-quant...
- davedx 2y ago
  Can you link me to the "solar cells grown from microbes" please? Not heard that one
  - thelastgallon 2y ago
    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180705084215.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180705084215.h...
- kragen 2y ago
  you'd think, but the roll-to-roll processes of 15 years ago somehow turned out to be more expensive than just slicing silicon thinner, and they've been driven out of the mainstream market
  - thelastgallon 2y ago
coffeebeqn 2y ago
It’s still too large of a surface area for anything other than large on-ground installations. When you get to potential use cases like transport it still matters a lot how efficient the panels are. Let’s say running a cargo ship with on board panels for example
- lazide 2y ago
  You’ll never be able to run a cargo ship effectively even with 100% efficient panels. [https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/transportation-and-energy/fuel-consumption-containerships/ https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/transportat...] Maximum insolation is about 1kw/square meter. Assuming a very favorable TOE/kwh equivalent (11.6 mwh/toe) and 150-225 tons of fuel oil a day, we’re talking energy consumption of 1.7-2.6 gigawatt hrs per day to power a container ships main propulsion. Assuming very favorable 10 hr insolation times, and 25% solar conversion efficiency, you’d need something like 680000 square meters - or 168 acres - worth of panels to even come close. Even with 100% efficient panels, it would be over 43 acres worth. A Panamax container ship is only 2.3 acres in size, which equates to 9.5 megawatts of solar insolation peak. So you’d need between 20-73 times more surface area, and very favorable conditions. Not to mention batteries to smooth all that out. And a chance of storms. Or not having panels aligned perfectly. Fossil fuels are incredibly energy dense, and these ships have to burn insane amounts of them already in very efficient ways to do what they do.

by szvsw 2y ago

bluefirebrand 2y ago

Completely agree. I'm sure there's still a lot of advances left in solar panels themselves, but we really do need to solve the grid, solve storage, essentially solve the base load We won't be able to transition fully off of fossil fuels until we do

Kye 2y ago

I wonder if someone has done a science to compare the carbon impact of batteries and peaker plants. It might be that a lesser of evils fossil fuel is the solution if it's a sometimes thing and not the main thing. It also has the virtue of being supplyable in a renewable way with landfill gas recovery.

Tade0 2y ago
A battery made using the dirtiest grid that produces them at scale (110kg CO2/kWh of battery) breaks even compared to gas after ~200 cycles. LFP batteries commonly used as stationary storage regularly do 2000 cycles. Makes more sense to use that gas to make more batteries.
mrtracy 2y ago
Peaker plants are considerably less efficient than base load gas energy, because the constantly running plants use a combined cycle. In both types of plants, the fuel is burned in a gas turbine to directly generate power; however, in the combined-cycle plant the waste heat from this is used to generate steam to run steam turbines, capturing additional power; this actually generates over twice as much useable energy per unit of fuel. Peaker plants cannot effectively use this mechanism as it has a much longer start-up time. Combined cycle is a major reason that gas power plants are so attractive; the inability to use it in Peakers is a reason why they are so unattractive.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  > Peaker plants cannot effectively use this mechanism as it has a much longer start-up time. How much longer? If a plant is designed with a big priority to getting secondary generation up to speed quickly, how many hours will it need to warm up?
- crote 2y ago
  A lot of it depends on the exact type of usage, does it not? Currently a lot of peaker plants operate a bit like "A power line failed, we need extra power NOW!" They get essentially zero warning and are expected to be at full power within 30 minutes. Dealing with that obviously leads to some issues, but in 2024 we could also fill that niche with battery storage. When it comes to the energy transition, it's a bit of a different problem. We can reasonably predict weather, so the rough output of solar and wind is known several days in advance. If the forecast is predicting an overcast day with zero wind, any "peaker" plant will have tens of hours to warm up. Combine that with minor changes to reduce startup time[0], and it seems far less of a hurdle to overcome. [0]: https://etn.global/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/STARTUP-TIME-REDUCTION-FOR-COMBINED-CYCLE-POWER-PLANTS.pdf https://etn.global/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/STARTUP-TIME-R...

hamandcheese 2y ago

In general I agree. But every efficiency gained will translate to less land used for solar, or a longer period of energy surplus every day (which means less deficit that has to be made up in other ways during the non-peak hours). Either of those things make me happy.

ziggy_star 2y ago
A manufacturing efficency would, this won't. The cheapest panel wins.
- tromp 2y ago
  Not necessarily the cheapest, but the one with the best combination of efficiency, cost, durability, and possibly other properties I'm overlooking.
  - ziggy_star 2y ago
    I meant in the marketplace as bought by actual consumers. So, the cheapest.
    - szvsw 2y ago
      Isn’t GP effectively saying $/W? I assume that’s how most people evaluate price… “I want to install a system that will pay itself back in the smallest amount of time while staying below my max budget.”
      - ziggy_star 2y ago
        That would be the prosumer. A consumer buys the thing with the lowest sticker price. See for example triple pane vs single pane windows.
        szvsw 2y ago
        I guess be careful how you use prosumer in this kind of thread, since it often might refer to a producer-consumer (ie someone who can get paid $$ to export energy back into the grid, as opposed to just saving $$ from avoided grid import). I assume you meant professional consumer. > See for example triple pane vs single pane windows. Bad example but I understand your point. Bad example because it takes significantly more expertise to model the savings from triple paned window with low-e coating and vacuum sealing vs double paned vs single paned (ie it requires a proper building energy model in eg EnergyPlus). Also bad because the triple paned window might be immediately disqualified by the budget constraint above. In any case, I think you are just saying people are likely to pick the thing which has the least friction, whether that friction comes from cost, installation challenges, etc etc. And yes, sometimes upfront cost is the most significant thing which affects people’s willingness to adopt a certain home energy retrofit but payback period does play a big role in people’s decision making, as well as their ability to get funding for it (government rebates), or they may simply be going with an installer who pays them to install it and they certainly care about payback period!

Angostura 2y ago

The better the solar gets, the bigger the incentive to restructure the surrounding infrastructure

phkahler 2y ago

Percentages can be funny. 2 percent higher efficiency is 10 percent more output if you go from 20-22.

hinkley 2y ago
If the costs aren’t too egregious that can affect the break even point quite a bit. And the situation with embodied carbon footprint. Which we pointedly do not talk about.
Filligree 2y ago
That would be two percentage points. Two percent, I would expect to be from 20 to 20.4%.
- Izkata 2y ago
  Technically correct but not colloquial usage. GP got that scale right, except they've actually managed going from around 20% to around 25%.

mensetmanusman 2y ago

No, we have not. Half of the current cost is due to installation and labor, so any weight reductions will have a huge impact on cost. Perovskite solar cells have the opportunity to have a 10 X weight reduction.

Denvercoder9 2y ago
How much of that cost is related to the physical handling of the panels themselves, and not the electrical installation, though? Weight reduction isn't going to help there.
- mensetmanusman 2y ago
  It’s propagates through the supply chain, loading, logistics, wear on vehicle transport etc. We should practically get to the point where someone can buy a roll of material at Home Depot and unravel it on their roof, nail it, and plug it in themselves.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - lompad 2y ago
    The currents and voltages involved are going to make that a non-starter. Do you really want random people messing with those? The solar inverters are also sized that big for a reason. At least in countries with strong regulations around working with electricity this is simply not going to be feasible. I've been in the PV business for some time now and seen a person get killed by it. It's not pretty. Still remembering that smell of burnt flesh... Now, to be fair, that was at a 12MW-installation, not on a roof. But still...
    - thechao 2y ago
      Jay Leno talks about installing solar on his house (which he did himself) and commenting that he was getting shocked a lot, bc as soon as the PVs are in the sun, they're making electricity. He said it made handling the units tricky.

tw04 2y ago

Not just grid scale. It can be the difference of panels on your roof generating enough electricity to barely meet your needs to having so much excess you can not only supply your home needs, but also charge multiple EVs at home.

maxglute 2y ago
I feel like that's a uniquely North American need. Most countries don't have the single family / multi car ownership structure. Still a real need. But implications of a country where large% of people can meet their own energy needs is interesting.
- pyrale 2y ago
  The implication would likely be that the share of population that can't afford it won't be able to pay for the grid alone either. We have examples of this kind of situation in poor countries where the grid wasn't developed in the first place, and rich people use generators.
szvsw 2y ago
This still doesn’t address the duck curve aspect, or overnight usage. It is fundamentally impossible to use PV to directly power your wonderful super efficient heat pump to warm your home at night. You will still need batteries!
- tw04 2y ago
  And? You can buy a rack of lifepo4 batteries for less than $10k and it will be enough power to supply you running your A/C or heat the entire night.
  - szvsw 2y ago
    Well, my original point at the top of this thread was specifically about how battery mfg/infra/costs/dispatch (especially at grid scale) and so on seem like the limiting factors/primary challenges still being worked on, not PV efficiency, so I think we are agreeing?

KptMarchewa 2y ago

We've solved energy in middle of sunny, summer day. We haven't solved it in middle of winter night.

okaram 2y ago
We're in the process, and may arguably already have, for the tropics. Get more panels, maybe some batteries.
kragen 2y ago
in antarctica you may need nuclear or ammonia storage or something, but the rest of us can just use batteries
hackerlight 2y ago
Winter being a problem really depends on location. Seasonal variability is much lower near the equator. Also batteries are becoming a solved tech. Also wind is anti correlated with solar, it's stronger in winter and at night. So you want 50-50 to minimize the need for storage.
pier25 2y ago
If you can reduce even 50% of the consumption from the grid that would be huge.
crote 2y ago
Luckily most people are sleeping in the middle of the night, so electricity usage is already quite low. That's why many areas already have a separate discounted Night Tariff. Additionally, the winter might not have a lot of sun, but it usually does have quite a bit of wind. Build a combination of solar and wind power, and you've solved the biggest issue. The rest can be picked up by hydro and gas peaker plants (short-term), or battery storage and other new technologies (long-term).
- throwaway14356 2y ago
  the winter has plenty of sun and few clouds.

kylehotchkiss 2y ago

Solar would better be considered solved when the companies installing it don’t require large loans, liens on your home, and door to door salespeople. It’d be nice if having it installed was more similar to having a plumber or regular electrician stop by

szvsw 2y ago
I guess I meant from a technical efficiency perspective, rather than the social infrastructure around it. It’s unclear to me (and frankly seems unlikely?) that few more percentage points will fix the very real structural issues you raised! At the same time, even if we do solve those issues, and we get solar panels on the roof of every home, there are still significant challenges to overcome as it’s unlikely the average home can become fully energy independent (especially if there is electrified winter heating), and anyways, the energy demand from single-family residential housing is only one slice of the overall energy pie. In any case, it would certainly help if we did that!
derriz 2y ago
That's because putting solar on rooftops makes little economic sense. The overhead in terms of installation cost was relatively insignificant when PV panels cost 20 times as much - as they did 15 years ago. These days, the cost is swamped by installation costs. These days, the only place it makes sense to put PV is flat on unused or unproductive land. The 95% drop in PV panels means that it is no longer economic to bother with mechanical tracking in solar farms. Integrating panels into a domestic roof destroys the incredible cost advantages PV has over alternative power sources.
- grecy 2y ago
  I just installed 7.3kW on my roof, for a total out of pocket cost of $8000. (after rebates and free gov money) It looks like I'll make about $1000 of power per year, so I have an 8 year payback, after which I'll have free power for another ~20 years. How on earth does that make "little economic sense"?
  - 2y ago

cletus 2y ago

> At the same time though, it’s starting to feel to me, to some extent, like we have kind of solved solar? There are many metrics that affect power generation (or anything really). A few are: - Power generation per unit area - Power generation per unit mass - Power generation per dollar - Lifetime - Decline rate (ie does the cell get less effective over time?) - Flexibility (eg can you wrap it around a cylinder) - Minimum size - Maximum size - Cost to repair Where a given solar panel fits in the above vector space will change its applications. In some cases, size is paramount. In others, cost is paramount. Sometimes you need long-lived panels. A good example if solar panels for space probes. These need to be generate as much power for as little weight and it doesn't even really matter what the cost is. Also, making such a panel last 30 years might be irrelevant if the lifetime of the mission is 5-10 years. So no, I wouldn't call solar "solved".

szvsw 2y ago
Fair points! I tried to clarify in my edit, but I was mostly speaking from the perspective of grid decarbonization, as opposed to more niche (to me) applications like space probes, because that is what my personal biases are towards. It seems like a few more percentage points of efficiency at the same cost/space (so ignoring something like perk pv) doesn’t meaningfully move the needle on decarbonization efforts any more and that other challenges dominate (grid infra, batteries, etc). And I actually mean “solved” in a celebratory manner - it’s awesome that we are at this point! But yes, I was totally overlooking use cases besides residential and grid-scale PV.

thelastgallon 2y ago

Solar cells that can be printed like a fabric or rolls of paper, solar cells that can be spray painted, solar cells that can be grown from microbes (fastest and cheapest!) are technologies that will make current solar technology look primitive. That may take a while, but immediately though, cost-effective solar shingles would be so much better than wasting material/labor of 3 layers. Tesla roof and GAF Timberline have products, looks like GAF costs the same as other materials with tax credits. But if this can get cheaper, its a gamechanger.

jeffbee 2y ago
How would a spray-on material have macroscopic structures like bus bars?
- thelastgallon 2y ago
  https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/solar-paint-hydrogen-quantum-dot-perovskite-solar-cells https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/solar-paint-hydrogen-quant...
davedx 2y ago
Can you link me to the "solar cells grown from microbes" please? Not heard that one
- thelastgallon 2y ago
  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180705084215.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180705084215.h...
kragen 2y ago
you'd think, but the roll-to-roll processes of 15 years ago somehow turned out to be more expensive than just slicing silicon thinner, and they've been driven out of the mainstream market
- thelastgallon 2y ago

coffeebeqn 2y ago

It’s still too large of a surface area for anything other than large on-ground installations. When you get to potential use cases like transport it still matters a lot how efficient the panels are. Let’s say running a cargo ship with on board panels for example

lazide 2y ago
You’ll never be able to run a cargo ship effectively even with 100% efficient panels. [https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/transportation-and-energy/fuel-consumption-containerships/ https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/transportat...] Maximum insolation is about 1kw/square meter. Assuming a very favorable TOE/kwh equivalent (11.6 mwh/toe) and 150-225 tons of fuel oil a day, we’re talking energy consumption of 1.7-2.6 gigawatt hrs per day to power a container ships main propulsion. Assuming very favorable 10 hr insolation times, and 25% solar conversion efficiency, you’d need something like 680000 square meters - or 168 acres - worth of panels to even come close. Even with 100% efficient panels, it would be over 43 acres worth. A Panamax container ship is only 2.3 acres in size, which equates to 9.5 megawatts of solar insolation peak. So you’d need between 20-73 times more surface area, and very favorable conditions. Not to mention batteries to smooth all that out. And a chance of storms. Or not having panels aligned perfectly. Fossil fuels are incredibly energy dense, and these ships have to burn insane amounts of them already in very efficient ways to do what they do.