Innovative Use of Plastics Could Cheaply Double Solar Cell Output 141
doug141 writes "In standard solar cells, much energy is lost (as heat) from photons mismatched to the capability of silicon to capture them. A new technique uses a pentacene layer to down-convert each hot (un-captureable) electron to two electrons that can be captured by standard silicon cells." You can read more at the University of Texas research group's web page.
Re:Power companies (Score:5, Insightful)
They'd just institute daylight-based pricing. Use of electricity during the day = $0.05/kWh. Use of electricity an night = $0.50/kWh. Now you've got to solve the battery problem AND the solar panel problem.
Improving solar cells (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Improving solar cells (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot seems to post a lot of stories about improved solar cells, but solar cells never seem to improve.
True, but only if you define a double-digit percentage drop in unit price every year as "not improving".
Re:Power companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, then all you need is batteries and a charging and inverter system. No solar panels at all. Because all you'd have to do is store electricity from the company during the day, and use it at night or when the power is down. Right now, there's no great price advantage to doing this, but the second the day and night prices diverge significantly, there would be. And THEN, if they caught on and changed it back, all you'd need to add would be panels. So this would be a very bad move for the power companies.
A lost opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
America, or even states, could require that all new homes and buildings under 4 stories, have 50% or possibly 100% of their HVAC (heating and AC required) come from on-site AE. This would actually encourage several things:
1) a number of contractors will simply throw up solar panels equal to the amount.
2) a number of other contractors would heavily insulate and drop the energy needs to the point, where a MINIMAL amount of AE is needed.
3) a number would try something like geo-thermal HVAC combined with 2 to allow them to drop it to one panel.
Basically, by adding this requirement, it would change the NEW buildings and separate them from the old ones. Considering the number of foreclosures that we have now, the last thing that we really need are new buildings that compete with many of these foreclosed buildings. At the same time, it pushes various AE without loads of incentives, while allowing contractor to move to whatever direction is economical and will sell.