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Misleading title. They have tripled the efficiency of a specific type of solar cell (organic photovoltaics), that is extremely inefficient to begin with. They
by mbell 14y ago
Misleading title.
They have tripled the efficiency of a specific type of solar cell (organic photovoltaics), that is extremely inefficient to begin with. They are still almost an order of magnitude away from the efficiency of the best solar cells that have been built.
- sp332 14y agoHowever, they are pretty cheap. Tripling the efficiency of a cheap solar cell without adding too much cost would be pretty noteworthy. Of course it remains to be seen if the decade-old manufacturing technique can really live up to the hype.
- mbell 14y agoIt'll be noteworthy when they get close to current cheap silicon PV cells (which they still need to get 3-4 times more efficient to reach). Keep in mind the efficiency they managed to achieve is only 4.4%. Not saying it isn't an important achievement, just that they have a very long way to go still to change anything in the current solar market.