lbl.gov — The realization that potentially indium gallium nitride can absorb most of the visible light from the spectrum could reduce the cost of solar cells several order of magnitudes, while increasing the efficiency dramatically. Could be revolutionary..(nice...my first digg!)
Dec 2, 2005 View in Crawl 4
mooseboyDec 2, 2005
This is a significant drop in bandgap energy. It's easily a 5-fold increase in efficiency. I hope they can solve the problems with the polycrystalline formation.
uthmanDec 2, 2005
This is very interesting.. shall have to follow
berkanaDec 3, 2005
The big question is, is it more efficient than using solar concentrators to power a Stirling engine, both in terms of energy conversion and manufacturing?
dalecozDec 3, 2005
Solar cells have been over-hyped a lot of times, and I can understand the growing skepticism as the "Solar cells on every roof" scenario keeps not happening. At the same time, solar cell prices have been dropping pretty much every year when you take inflation into account. Solar cell production and sales are both growing rather quickly--averaging 25% annual growth for the last five or six years. Production is still small compared to other energy sources, but with that kind of growth rate that will change. The big Japanese electronics companies have been spending million every year to ramp up production. As the real price of solar cells goes down, they gradually become competitive in more and more niches. At one point they were so expensive they could only compete in the satellite market. Then prices dropped so they compete in really remote areas. Now you can't go down a highway without seeing a solar powered road construction sign. Even with all of the price drops, solar cells are still far to expensive to compete economically for the suburban roof market--about 3 to 4 times as expensive as utility power in my neck of the woods. Solar cells are not totally out of reach for ecologically minded upper-middle class people anymore though, and even without the kind of breakthroughs detailed in this article solar cells will continue to get cheaper and more common. To put it in football terms, for the last 25 years solar cells have been making steady progress of the '4 yards and a cloud of dust' variety. Given a tech breakthrough like this they could score a quick breakthrough into mainstream markets. If a breakthrough doesn't happen, then they can still get into mainstream markets eventually by finding ways to cut cost ten cents here and ten cents there, and increasing efficiency 1 or 2% by minor tech tweaks.
tigerpaperDec 3, 2005
hahahaha, 2002...Great...but no digg ;(
sotlooDec 3, 2005
Cool, second bit of good news about solar this year. Remember this...Spray-On Solar-Power Cells Are True Breakthrough<a class="user" href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0114_050114_solarplastic.html">http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0114_050114_solarplastic.html</a>Best of all solar power is free and clean, take that GWB!
c0linfangDec 3, 2005
not quite understand, but the feedbacks seem interesting. i digg it 'cos i like the technology evolution/revolution.
soloroneDec 3, 2005
I'm an old dog, and do not knot know anything about furry nano tubes, but let me tell what little that I know, or believe about the solar industry.I started selling photovoltaic in 1986, selling maybe 4 small systems a year, just a hobby to fund my own system.I had 6 wholesale suppliers at that time. In the mid 90's the Europeans started buying up the companies in the US, I lost all but 2 suppliers and my friends there say they are continually being offer large sums to sell.The US has never offered any tax credit (big oil) but some states have good programs, Illinois being one, 50% I think, on everything but batteries.It is odd that the first really good panels were made by an oil company, ARCO, Atlantic Richfield. They were bought up by Siemens, again the forward looking Europeans. I was paying 226.00 for an ARCO 50 watt panel in 1986 and $255 in 2003, the prices have really fallen a great dealEurope must have very high electrical cost or very good credits for a huge % of world solar production is going there. If I order panels today I can expect delivery for 2 to 3 months instead of 2 to 3 days and then must sign an affidavit that I will not resell or send the panels to Europe.The panels are the main part, but then we need advances in battery design, they have come a long way but improvements are needed.Inverting the DC power to AC was made affordable and fine tuned by Clyde Yamamoto and his Trace engineering company, since bought out by Xantrex, which also bought Statpower (October 1999) and Heart (April 2000). So the industry continues being consolidated. This is still a very costly part of the system and the main part that you worry about when it comes to a failure. The units, in the past, were designed to/ hoped to last 18 years. I had one last 17 years.Well I am not holding my breath, but I sure would like to see a practical fuel cell developed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
jwaxDec 7, 2005
What makes me wonder is how a $35K SUV gets a buyer, but a $10K photovoltaic system, which makes money short and long term, is deemed "too expensive". Talk about wise investments.
thomasgeraetsJun 21, 2010
Old news getting new.Where now building a new factory with Genesis Solar in Spain to reduce the price to half. href="<a class="user" href="http://www.bbj.hu/?col=1003&amp;id=52255&quot;&gt;hthttp://www.bbj.hu/?col=1003&amp;id=52255" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbj.hu/?col=1003&amp;id=52255&quot;&gt; ...</a>