Swiss Federal Lab Claims New World Record For Solar Cell Efficiency 177
Zothecula writes "Scientists based at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, have set a new efficiency record for thin-film copper indium gallium (di)selenid (or CIGS) based solar cells on flexible polymer foils, reaching an efficiency of 20.4 percent. This is an increase from a previous record of 18.7 percent set by the team back in 2011."
A tiny efficiency boost from using Unobtanium? (Score:2)
This will revolutionise electricity generation in such diverse fields as, uh... space craft and... um... space stations.
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This will revolutionise electricity generation in such diverse fields as, uh... space craft and... um... space stations.
Aerospace uses non-flexible crystalline at about twice the power output, because what matters is more or less watts/Kg. For non-panel satellites with cells mounted right on the satellite body, what really matters is watts/sq meter.
Now you need flexible cells for ... um...
Re:A tiny efficiency boost from using Unobtanium? (Score:4, Informative)
This will revolutionise electricity generation in such diverse fields as, uh... space craft and... um... space stations.
Aerospace uses non-flexible crystalline at about twice the power output, because what matters is more or less watts/Kg. For non-panel satellites with cells mounted right on the satellite body, what really matters is watts/sq meter.
Now you need flexible cells for ... um...
Easy of manufacturing, for one, but more importantly the cost of manufacture (watts/$) is very, very low.
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I'd like to see a breakdown of installed panel costs. I'm guessing the cells aren't a big factor. There's a cottage industry of people charging quite a lot of money to do the install work, and the aluminum back panel, framework edges, and glass "must" cost at least as much as a standard external "storm" door of similar quality and dimensions despite having the annoying internal electrical connections and having to be waterproof. I'm guessing that the installed cost of a panel without cells would already
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Single layer efficiency (Score:5, Informative)
Before somebody brings up 40% efficient cells, this efficiency is for a single layer. The 40%+ efficiencies are for so called multiple junction cells which are basically several solar cells stacked on top of one another. This record is for a single layer, for which 20% is really good.
Also, comparisons with petrol engines efficiency are kinda pointless since the advantages and disadvantages of solar is environmental impact and cost respectively. Nobody really cares if it is more or less efficient than petrol. What people are concerned about is environmental impact and cost, which are not easily compared by looking at the efficiency.
Price is what matters most (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the cost that matters more than efficiency. I don't need a 20% efficient panel that costs 10 times what a 10% efficient panel costs. Really I just want some inexpensive but durable panels. Something where I can recoup my costs in 3 or 4 years not a decade or so.
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I believe in survival. Spending a disproportionate amount of my income on drastically overpriced energy isn't compatible with that goal. I like to save the environment if I can do it without causing me an inordinate amount of pain. In other words, I'm not going to go bankrupt for the sake of the planet. If someone can produce a reasonably efficient panel for an affordable price I'm there. If not then coal works just fine.
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thinking like that is why the US still relies heavily on dirty energy (coal) , why the US cars eat a lot more fuel than European and Japanese cars, why the US jobs are being transferred to Asia. Lack of vision.
For a cheap energy, dirty energy causes green house effect, that in turns cause a huge amount of problems all over the world. Paying then to repair that problems (if even possible) will cost a lot more.
For more power and bigger cars, US cars spend more fuel, yet, fuel is more and more expensive, so in
yawn (Score:2)
Let me know when you can buy a 1KW panel for $50.
Re:yawn (Score:4, Insightful)
Cost per watt (Score:2)
And still polysilicon reigns as king. Why? It's because this breakthrough still hasn't changed the most important measure which is cost per watt. From a business and consumer perspective that's what matters.
When they figure out how to reduce the cost per watt of solar, let me know. We need a to reduce the cost of solar energy to at least 1/5th of what it costs now if it's to compete with coal. Even if we figure out how to make solar cells out of newspaper .. the cost of battery/storage for overnight will ke
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... Even if we figure out how to make solar cells out of newspaper .. the cost of battery/storage for overnight will keep it's cost above that of coal.....
Red herring. Widespread use of solar power does not require any batteries anywhere. It does not need to simulate the behavior of base load plants or replace them (nuclear plants are the ideal base load plant). Solar power is produced during the highest demand period, when electricity production costs are highest (due to peaking plants coming online). Modern combined cycle natural gas plants can vary their output by 50% or so, and can shutdown/startup in half an hour. Many hydro plants can throttle power as
Re:Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to the really efficient gasoline engine. Oh wait - that's only 25% to 30% efficient, and doesn't fuck up the air you breath.
Re:Crap (Score:5, Informative)
Not only are gasoline engines inefficient, they require fuel be trucked to stations wasting even more fuel.
Transmission losses like that just make it even worse.
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And with solar power, until an efficient energy storage method is created (batteries and other methods available now are crappy), transmission problem is going to last and even grow bigger. In my opinion, the only sensible solution to powering all the world from solar would be to build power plants on opposite sites of the globe, so some part of them is ALWAYS on the dayside. Transmitting their energ
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You solve that with diversification...
solar, wind, tides, hydraulic , geotermal, biofuel/biomass, etc
If really needed, some nuclear, but only as last in line.
Instead of having huge electricity production center, we should use local production from multiples sources, each one could plug the holes in production of the other.
There is no "one size fits all" and trying to do that will always create new problems
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Good luck driving to work in a solar-powered car.
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Tesla S, Nissan Leaf, and the Mitsubishi Miev seem to work just fine if you really want a solar powered car.
Re:Crap (Score:4, Insightful)
And typically get most of their power from coal.
You could stick a couple of square meters of solar panels on a typical car, which at 20% efficiency would give you about 240W on a sunny day. For a half-hour commute (fifteen minutes each way) and eight hours in the car park, that would give you about five horsepower if the battery is 100% efficient and you didn't need to use any other electrical items, like AC or headlights.
So it's potentially possible, but would be a really crappy drive.
Re:Crap (Score:5, Interesting)
I calculated that my daily commute would requite 3 kWp of panels if the end-to-end efficiency was 75% - which is what Tesla claims for the Model S. 3 kW of panels is 12 panels. That easily fits on my garage roof. This isn't as insane as it sounds.
Re:Crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Which would be great, if you leave your car in the garage all day. Most of us drive around, so if the panels aren't on the car to keep it charged they're utterly useless to us.
I can't decide whether this was a joke or not. For the benefit of those who might not take it that way, I'll point out that these cars have batteries that allow them to collect energy from their garages and (gasp!) drive around with it.
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I can't decide whether this was a joke either.
For the benefit of those who might not take it that w
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For the benefit of those who might not take it that way, I'll point out that if you actually use your car in the daytime, it's not going to be in the garage charging while the sun is up, it's going to be...elsewhere....
I don't think it was a joke, way too deadpan.
BUT, he would be correct if he were talking about a grid-tie system. Those essentially treat the grid as a battery - send surplus electricity into the grid during sunlight hours and then draw power from the grid at any point during the day.
Some states are really grid-tie friendly because they have time-of-use billing which means they pay you more for electricity generated during the mid-day than they charge for electricty consumed at night. Some even given you
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Are you mentally handicapped?
You could either store the power in batteries or sell it to the grid and buy back power later when you need it. If you are not suffering some sort of mental deficiency that should have been as obvious as the car not being the ideal place to put the solar cells.
Re:Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Crap (Score:4, Interesting)
This is key. Unless your surface area is limited (space craft, vehicles), it's not efficiency that matters, but cost per watt of capacity.
Make solar cheaper per watt than coal plants (we're getting close now), and then watch all the rooftops in the country get covered with solar panels.
Even if all the rooftops combined aren't enough to produce *all* our needs, every 300MW of solar power is one coal plant shut down, and 2400 tons less CO2 produced. Per day.
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+5 insightful. So many of the haters miss that point - We don't all live in Urban Hell. I don't care about finding a way to squeeze 99% of the energy out of the 10 square feet of sunlight falling on the south side of my apartment between the skyscrapers; I care about about the cost per Watt.
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FWIW, it's becoming fashionable in Silicon Valley to use solar panels as shade structures in parking lots. The cars get much-needed shelter, and solar panels get installed without covering up anything like lawns or gardens. It's a complete win-win.
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Make solar cheaper per watt than coal plants (we're getting close now), and then watch all the rooftops in the country get covered with solar panels.
I bet if solar, and geothermal and wind, was subsidized as much as coal and nuclear power was they'd be cheaper. And yes, both coal and nuclear power is subsidized. Here's Rep Edward Markey in 2009 practically bragging that nuclear power got $145 Billion while solar and wind got $5 Billion in subsidies. He goes on the say his bill has "Huge Subsidies for Clean Coal".
If all subsidies for clean alternative energy was added together it would not be close to how much coal and nuclear power gets. If coal had to
efficiency (Score:2)
If the input is virtually inexhaustible (sunlight), it doesn't matter how efficient it is. If you have half the efficiency, just double the solar panel area. Total cost per kW and per kWh becomes is more important. Mind you, the panels *don't* need to be on the car.
Efficiency does matter if area is a concern. A home may have enough roof space for solar PVs to charge a storage system or th power the home but may not have enough for both. Increasing efficiency may allow both to be done.
And that is if there is a battery bank big enough to allow an EV, Electric Vehicle, to have it's own battery system be charged over night. Of course with net metering the grid serves as storage during the day so the EV's batteries are charged at night from the grid.
Falcon
Re:Crap (Score:5, Interesting)
If you actually sit down and DO the math, even if you covered the US with solar panels you cannot cover US yearly electrical requirements.
Assuming your numbers are correct, lets say our solar radiation conditions are 10% of the best case. Then to provide all the electricity the U.S. needs, we'd have to cover 1.3333% of the total surface area.
Of course, we can choose the best available locations for each additional panel, so we can do a whole lot better than 10% of the best case. If we can only do half as well on average, the number comes down to .267%. And we can use at least some surfaces for their original use and for solar energy production (rooftop panels).
There are lots of difficulties between here and full solar power. I doubt we'd ever want all our electricity coming from solar power. And even .267% of the surface area of the U.S. is an enormous amount, and acquiring rights to that land would probably be impractical. But if we did need to do it, space wouldn't become the limiting factor for a long time. And if we could solve all of the other logistical problems--storage, distribution, manufacture, maintenance--we would have enough surface area to provide for the U.S.'s energy needs via solar. It just wouldn't be the best way to go about providing electricity.
Re:Crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two places were putting solar would give the best bang for the buck.
One more: parking lots. Here in San Jose, we have solar panels over several large parking lots. No additional land is needed, and you get the side benefit of shade for the parked cars.
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Of course it would make more sense to use solar thermal collectors instead of PV in many parts of the US.
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Re:Crap (Score:4, Interesting)
I saw an interesting comparison made by a professor: If you covered the entire area that was evacuated because of the Fukushima incident with solar cells, they would produce less power than the nuclear reactor did (not to mention how much more it would cost).
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You wouldn't cover an area like that with solar PV. Maybe solar thermal collectors, and wind, and in Japan geothermal. Solar PV is most suited to small scale generation, e.g. rooftops.
Picking a dumb scenario that is totally unsuited to solar PV doesn't make this "professor" right, or clever. Nuclear industry shill, perhaps.
Re:Crap (Score:5, Informative)
The fukushima evacuation zone has a 19km radius. Half of which is sea, so this gives around 500km2 of evacuated area.
The Golmud Solar Park in China with a similar latitude produces 317GWh per year on 5.64km2 and costed around 500 million dollars.
So on 500km2 you would produce 28'000 GWh per year and it would cost 44 billion dollars.
Fukushima produced according to wikipedia 29'891 GWh in the year 2009. Building a 4'800 MW nuclear reactor would cost you around 15 billion dollars. But if you include insurance, waste dispossal, dismanteling and opperating costs, you double or tripple this cost.
So your correct it would produce less energy per year, but only slightly. And the overall cost would probably be higher but also only slightly.
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with all due respect to the good professor, that's a pretty stupid comparison to make.
> (not to mention how much more it would cost)
you mean with or without the radiation disaster and evacuation?
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not 4.696 gigawatts!
4.696 Megawatt! ~ 5 Gigawatt
off by a factor of 1000
powerplant ~ 5 Gigawatt
evac zone@100w/m2 ~ 100 Gigawatt
Roof size (Score:2)
If covering 0.01% of the surface area of the US could supply 7.5% of the electricity, covering 100% of the US would supply 75000% of our power needs (under the unrealistic most optimal conditions you state). A billion square meters is only ~33km*33km, which wouldn't even take up a fraction of one of our major southwestern deserts.
There are 311 million residents, why would you only put down 3 square meters per person? The average middle class home roof is approximately 200 square meters and there's a good
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You make two claims, since they are in conflict only one can be true. Which is it?
Either 0.01% of the USA area can make 7.5% of our power or coving the whole country would not reach 100% of power generation.
Re:Crap (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, let's do the math. Total electrical consumption (not all energy usage, just electrical) for the US is about 480 gigawatts. Average insolation is about 1 kw per square meter. At 10% efficiency, that means about 100 watts for every square meter of panel. That means you need 4.8 billion square meters of panels. 4.8 billion square meters can fit into a square 69.282 kilometers on a side. That's somewhere between the size of Rhode Island and Delaware.
Even if you expand that to all energy usage, not just electrical, you're talking approximately 3 terrawatts. So, that's about 30 billion square meters of panels. That's a square about 173.2 kilometers on a side. That's somewhere between the size of Maryland and Hawaii.
So, if you actually sit down and DO the math, you can easily cover US electrical requirements and, in fact the total US energy usage (not counting food energy and not considering the fact that much of that energy usage can't currently be converted to electrical) without coming remotely close to covering the US with solar panels.
Of course, if you'd actually done the math on your own claims, you would have realized that, when you claimed that you could "optimistically" supply 7.5% of the US's electrical supply with 0.01% of the surface area, that would mean that you could "optimistically" supply 100% of the electrical supply with 0.133334% of the surface area, or even pessimistically (let's pretend that the difference between "optimistic" and pessimistic is an order of magnitude) with 1.33334% of the surface area.
So, it's pretty clear that you either didn't do the math yourself, or you just decide to bluff. If you meant something else, like that there are logistical problems in covering that much area, then say so.
Re:Crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if it is 100% coal power, it is still cleaner and more efficient than gasoline.
There is no need to put the solar panels on the car. You can put them on your garage, or buy solar power from the grid.
Re:Crap (Score:4, Funny)
At about 3" thick, and 3' x 5', I estimate I can get about 20 panels in my minivan. Should be plenty.
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Solution: mirrored roads
Re:Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Please stop perpetuating the myth that "most" of our electricity - at least in the US - comes from coal. Coal has been the source for less than 50% of our electrical supply for nearly a decade now and is still declining (Currently around 40%). Even in the worst-case scenario (Colorado, where the local electricity mix is the "dirtiest" in the country) an EV like the Nissan LEAF has the same carbon footprint as a Toyota Prius. It only improves from there.
Also, electricity is fungible. Putting solar panels on your roof to generate electricity during the daytime peak hours even if your car isn't home charging more than offsets the electricity you consume during off-peak hours at night, both in quantity and quality. If anything you are doing more good by putting PV power into the grid than by using it, since you are offsetting peak-generating capacity which is virtually always fossil-fuel based and adding load to soak up off-peak spinning reserve, improving efficiency and reducing energy waste.
=Smidge=
Re:Crap (Score:5, Informative)
Something that is fungible means any one instance of it can be swapped with any other instance of it without changing its effects - electricity is electricity, whether it comes from a solar panel on your roof or a nuclear power plant via the grid. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibility [wikipedia.org]
Re:Crap (Score:5, Funny)
It is what? I am not a native English speaker, and I have looked for this word in my dictionaries.
In that case, it means "tastes good with mushrooms". :)
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US figures given here... The single most abundant generation source is coal. However, if you combine nuclear, hydro, and renewables, coal is 37.6% vs 30.3% for "non-greenhouse" sources in 2012. If you add nat gas which is cleaner and more efficient even though it does create CO2, total generation from "cleaner" sources is 61.3% vs coal's 37.6%. In other words, it isn't such a bad thing to power your cars with electricity.
source [eia.gov]
Re:Crap (Score:4, Informative)
And typically get most of their power from coal.
You could stick a couple of square meters of solar panels on a typical car, which at 20% efficiency would give you about 240W on a sunny day. For a half-hour commute (fifteen minutes each way) and eight hours in the car park, that would give you about five horsepower if the battery is 100% efficient and you didn't need to use any other electrical items, like AC or headlights.
So it's potentially possible, but would be a really crappy drive.
Nissan Leaf gets 4.5 miles per kWh. [youtube.com] So every hour of charging would get about 1 mile, assuming your math is correct.
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And typically get most of their power from coal.
Here in Portugal, half of my electricity comes from renewable sources. 35% of it comes from wind power. 20% comes from coal. But maybe a rich and big country can't do the same things a poor and tiny country does.
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maybe a rich and big country can't do the same things a poor and tiny country does
There's a lot of truth in this. For example, Brazil invested heavily in biodiesel because it could not afford to import oil. If you have a lot of spare money, then it's much easier to just put up with the increasing prices of fossil fuels. The same thing happens on a smaller scale with companies, where a startup has to innovate to be able to compete with larger, established companies, because it has to have some edge to offset the economies of scale that the big competitor has. Similarly, the larger com
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Similarly, the larger company can rely on its economies of scale to offset inefficiencies in their workflow.
Yes, and we all know how it ends, don't we?
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And typically get most of their power from coal.
That depends on where you live. PNW is mostly hydro. France is mostly nuclear.
recharging the Solar car at work (Score:3)
Do the math on a solar powered car.....
Assume you could cover the entire top surface(s) of a small car with solar panels and let them charge batteries
all day while the car is parked at work. Assume battery charging is 100% efficient:
Panel Area ~4 m^2 (liberal, but I'm trying to make a point)
Panel Efficiency 20.4%
Time in sun 8 hours
Sun angle
Re:recharging the Solar car at work (Score:5, Informative)
You forgot one little thing, a solar powered car does not have to have the solar panels on it. The solar energy can be captured somewhere else and then the car can be recharged with this power.
Much like your current gasoline powered car does not have to drill a well every time you can to fill up.
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50KW, eh? So you're doing about 80mph on your way to the freeway? Exactly how fast do you go *on* the freeway?
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Funny how that adds up
Re:recharging the Solar car at work (Score:4, Interesting)
Do the math on a solar powered car.....
Assume you could cover the entire top surface(s) of a small car with solar panels and let them charge batteries all day while the car is parked at work. Assume battery charging is 100% efficient: Panel Area ~4 m^2 (liberal, but I'm trying to make a point) Panel Efficiency 20.4% Time in sun 8 hours Sun angle derate 50% Solar input ~1kw/m^2
Then the batteries get charged with 1*4*8*0.5*0.204 ==> ~3.26 KWH A small car engine is rated at ~200 KW (i.e. Ford Focus Spec at 223 KW) If you average using only 1/4 the available power ===> 50 KW The saved energy in the battery will move you for 60min*3.26/50 ===> ~4 minutes
So, you run out of juice about the time you hit the on-ramp of the freeway.
The point being, this isn't going to work unless you have more efficient cells, more efficient vehicles, more solar panel area, or a combination of all three.
Actually the Nissan Leaf gets about 4.5 miles per KWH. [youtube.com] So if the panels on the car really can generate 3.26 KWH in only 8 hours that's 4.5 miles * 3.26 KWH = 14.67 miles just on solar power. That's pretty significant IMHO, that would be worth adding solar panels to the car, even if you have a place to park and charge it at night. For example, let's say your daily commute is 25 miles, that's 175 miles a week. For the sake of simplicity let's say the Leaf gets 87.5 miles per charge, so the user would charge twice a week in this example. If the solar panels generate a 14.67 mile range every day, that's only 10.33 miles being used by batteries instead of the full 25 miles, so instead of charging twice a week, user would charge every 8 days. This is huge, especially for people that live in apartments or other situations where plugging your car in is not convenient, they could bring the car somewhere once every 8 days for a full charging.
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Actually the Nissan Leaf gets about 4.5 miles per KWH.
That's.... optimistic. You can get 4.5 m/kWh, but doing so requires driving quite a bit more efficiently than most people do. 3.5 m/kWh is more typical, especially for those who do much freeway driving. Still, that's 11.4 miles on solar power, assuming a 4m^2 area, which is pretty generous. I'd say half that is more realistic, so call it 5 miles on a day of solar self-charging.
In my case, my LEAF is parked indoors basically 24x7, so solar panels on it wouldn't be worth much at all. I mostly drive it betw
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In my case, my LEAF is parked indoors basically 24x7, so solar panels on it wouldn't be worth much at all. I mostly drive it between my garage at home and the underground parking garage at work.
You could have solar PVs on your roof which feeds the grid during the day, then your LEAF is recharged off the grid at night. Also though I haven't heard about it in years a number of years ago employers were installing charging stations in their parking lots, as a fringe benefit to employees.
Falcon
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I thought we were talking about the benefits of putting solar cells on the vehicle...
I actually have been looking into installing solar panels on my home, though I probably won't charge my car from them (directly or time-shifted via the grid) because I charge my car pretty much entirely at work, from the chargers provided by my employer (Google) :-)
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A small car engine is rated at ~200 KW (i.e. Ford Focus Spec at 223 KW)
The rating of a car engine (in your example, ~268 horsepower) is maximum, not typical power output.
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A small car engine is rated at 200kW? Are you smoking crack? That's 270hp, in case you aren't familiar with metric units in this setting. A small car (let's say a VW Golf) has ~80kW, and still gets from 0 - 60mph in 10 seconds. And if you are driving with your foot all the way down 1/4 of the time, you're doing something wrong.
And then there's the assumption that the only solar panel you can use is what is built into the car - we have these fancy things called transmission lines and power outlets which mean
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A small car engine is rated at ~200 KW (i.e. Ford Focus Spec at 223 KW)
You're dreaming! 223hp maybe, which is around 165kW.
A typical small car with a 2L engine would produce 95-120kW.
I know someone with a solar-powered car (Score:2)
I know someone with a Rav-4 which she charges from solar panels on the roof of her house.
However, unless there's a serious revolution in battery technology, I don't think the electric car is ever going to be practical.
Likewise, solar panels don't work at night, under trees, or when it's cloudy.
None of those are arguments against developing solar technology. Or wind power. While neither of these can ever totally replace fossil fuel power or nuclear, they make excellent supplements. Solar power is at its p
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"Oh wait - that's only 25% to 30% efficient"
In a car? More like 10%, and when considered in traffic and city driving, maybe 7 to 8%.
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Since it has no cost for fuel, I don't think we can compare it that way and get any real meaning.
If you want to compare area each tech uses to generate a given amount of power, or how much each pollutes per GigaWatt that would be valid.
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Since it has no cost for fuel, I don't think we can compare it that way and get any real meaning.
Yeah, because solar panels and batteries to store power for when there's not enough sun are free.
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That is not fuel, those are capital costs.
All power plants have capital costs. Do you think nuclear reactors just pop into being?
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That recurring cost and capital costs are not the same thing. Fuel is a recurring cost. Solar panels and batteries are like the reactor at a nuclear power plant which are capital costs.
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No one ever suggested it was, but it is again a capital cost not a reoccurring cost like fuel.
It is bootstrapable though, you could build the first X panels from whatever power then use that to build more.
In reality it does not matter, since the energy used to make the panels is such a small amount compared to what they will produce.
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Re:Crap (Score:4, Interesting)
Eventually you have to buy more power plants too.
25 years is the normal estimated panel life, but I know of panels from the 80s that still work.
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Since it has no cost for fuel, I don't think we can compare it that way and get any real meaning.
It can be done. You simply take the (time) discount value of all cash flows.
Some tech has high upfront costs (solar cells), others have high fuel costs (Coal). All would have maintenance costs. External costs (soot from coal, C02 from fossil fuels) can be handled by a pollution tax. Peak vs. Base could be priced differently. Some wold have a long life - others a short.
Then run it though a Monte Carlo simulation and presto – you have your result - a return on project with confidence internals. Pick th
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Yes, which is nothing like the comparison the GP was trying to make.
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Used to do that for a living.
Everything comes down to projected fuel price, availability, load, new generation and hydro conditions.
I can give you all the answers you describe. But like all modelers I can make the model give me the answers I want and you will not be able to catch me without spending weeks on the dataset, then maybe.
Modeling the grid (or any other non-linear chaotic system) more then a few years out is at best a guess, at worst a self serving lie.
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Serious question for you – what do you think the right answer is? In my mind there are 2 choices.
You can try to model the future – recognize the limitations – and go from there. That is a poor map is better than no map at all. I think this is the right choice. Yes, after a few years the inputs break down – but at least you know what sensitivities your system has.
Or you can buy into Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s black swan theory – that a poor map leads to overconfidence and thu
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A pollution tax doesn't work because it doesn't actually do anything about all of the greenhouse gasses and soot which damage the environment. You'd have to factor in the cost of a CO2 scrubber and permanent storage of all produced CO2, and carbon offsets of both projects in trees planted.
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Let me put forward a real life example – just to make sure I am not missing something.
Carbon capture (best guess) runs around $40 a ton. Insulating my roof costs $20 per carbon ton (in energy not otherwise produced at my local coal fired electrical plant).
Won’t a $30 pollution tax result in my putting more insulation in my roof – a rational allocation of resources which would result in the biggest change for the least dollar amount?
I have seen a lot of interesting maneuverers around altern
Re:Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, because we all know that power plants use gasoline engines to generate electricity? Yeah, no.
Oh and natural gas plants have near 60% efficiency. Coal and oil are in the mid 40s and nuclear in the lower 40s. So yeah, it's still at less than half the efficiency of other generation.
The fossil fuels burned in those power plants are nothing but stored solar energy. Given how much solar energy has had to shine on this planet for half a billion years in order to store enough coal or gas to run those generators, the overall efficiency of fossil fuel generation is absolutely abysmal.
Re: (Score:2)
"What makes it go?"
Was that physics book that Feynman loved so much written by you?
Wasn't the answer in the book "energy," which he thought was too nuanced and incomplete, while his "the Sun" example was the kind of thing he said his dad would have taught?
Re: (Score:2)
Coal and oil are in the mid 40s and nuclear in the lower 40s.
What about the power needed to extract/transport all that stuff?
A solar panel has a one-off cost but will produce that 'abysmal' 20% power for many, many years.
Re: (Score:2)
The life expectancy of a solar panel tends to be better than the life expectancy of a car. Cars and their engines also tend to be expensive to make and replace. A new engine for my sisters car would cost $3,745.00 and is 113 kg. And can produce something like 180 kilowatts optimistically. Of course, it would burn out fast actually producing at that rate. The operational life, actually running, tends to optimistically be about 7 months for a car engine in a car. So, a kilogram of car engine could be said to
Re: (Score:3)
That cell used concentrated photovoltaics, this article is about a different technology I believe.
Re: (Score:3)
This is for thin film cells (supposedly cheap, but silicon has a habit of outcheaping newcomers over and over again).
Re: (Score:2)
It's clearly stated that this is a record for "thin-film copper indium gallium (di)selenid (or CIGS) based solar cells on flexible polymer foils". Now if we talk about non flexible polymer foils, that's a whole different business :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Right. The current record for all solar cells is 44%. 27% has been achieved without rare materials.
When you see indium and gallium in the materials list, it's not going to be a high-volume product.
Re:Again? (Score:4, Informative)
Right. The current record for all solar cells is 44%. 27% has been achieved without rare materials.
When you see indium and gallium in the materials list, it's not going to be a high-volume product.
Quite the opposite. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_indium_gallium_selenide_solar_cells [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Note that anything over 30% was achieved by stacking multiple layers on top of one another, each absorbing light of different wavelength. Yes, they have higher efficiency, but obviously require disproportionately more materials. Currently I still think that sunlight is cheaper than silicon.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess this barrier was just for flexible cells?
Re: (Score:2)
It seems like every couple of months some solar cell breaks a different barrier. A slashdot story from November (http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/11/03/2010244/solar-panel-breaks-third-of-a-sun-efficiency-barrier) clocked some solar panel as being 33.5% efficient. Are they measuring on different scales or definitions of efficiency or something?
What gets me is that these stories have been posted to /. for years and years yet not many of these "break-throughs" lead to commercial applications. That is products buyers can actually buy in a store. Or an owner of hundreds of acres can build a solar farm with.
Falcon
Re: (Score:2)
There are your products:
http://deepresource.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/german-pv-price1 [wordpress.com].
Many incremental technology advances like the one in this article make these dramatic price reductions possible.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, wrong URL. Here is a working link:
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/photovoltaic-cost.jpg [thinkprogress.org]
Re: (Score:2)
You can find a more up to date graph in Wikipedia [wikimedia.org].
To me it seems like all basic PV technologies (excluding multi-junction cells, concentrated solar, and the like) are converging in performance. The question is how cheap they will be and how much manufacturing scale is possible. 20% efficiency is actually quite a lot.
Uses cheap continuous roll manufacturing (Score:2)
The point of this one is that it's a new record for the (potentially) cheap, continuous, roll-to-roll manufacturing process.
A lot of stationary sites are more sensitive to $/installed-watt and $/(installed-watt * ammortized-lifetime). If a process is half as efficient as other alternatives but an eighth as expensive, and there's plenty of surface area to pave (like on a house roof).
What would make it BIG news is if the win is enough to jump it substantially beyond breakeven vs. grid power.