4 ms·
Listening to some of the processes described for eking out that extra 1-2% efficiency, I'm curious if there's a crossover point where the energy required to get
by roughly 2y ago
Listening to some of the processes described for eking out that extra 1-2% efficiency, I'm curious if there's a crossover point where the energy required to get that last couple theoretical percentage points exceeds the lifetime return from the efficiency gain to the panel.
- szvsw 2y agoLet’s assume a system outputs 2 MWh annually at 24%. Let’s bump up to 25.5% efficiency, and we get 2.125 MWh. Let’s assume a 30 year lifespan. This gives us an extra 3.75 MWh total over the lifetime. Let’s round down to 3 MWh to very conservatively account for performance degradation. That would be the raw energy budget. It seems unlikely to me that these processes would require more than 3 MWh additional energy for a system of this size compared to the baseline 24% system, but that’s just on vibes! At the same time, it’s probably better to view it in terms of carbon, in which case the situation changes a little bit. You would need to know how carbon intensive the source power production is for the manufacturing process, and additionally how the grid decarbonizes: if the grid decarbonizes substantially due to (eg) massive wind scale up and deep geothermal breakthroughs, then the efficiency gains from PV aren’t as valuable in the future from a carbon perspective as they are in the year 2025.