A consortium of research teams has achieved a new record in photovoltaic cell efficiency.
5:14 p.m., July 23, 2007-- Using a novel technology that adds multiple innovations to a very high-performance crystalline silicon solar cell platform, a consortium led by the University of Delaware has achieved a record-breaking combined solar cell efficiency of 42.8 percent from sunlight at standard terrestrial conditions.
That number is a significant advance from the current record of 40.7 percent announced in December and demonstrates an important milestone on the path to the 50 percent efficiency goal set by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In November 2005, the UD-led consortium received approximately $13 million in funding for the initial phases of the DARPA Very High Efficiency Solar Cell (VHESC) program to develop affordable portable solar cell battery chargers.
Combined with the demonstrated efficiency performance of the very high efficiency solar cells' spectral splitting optics, which is more than 93 percent, these recent results put the pieces in place for a solar cell module with a net efficiency 30 percent greater than any previous module efficiency and twice the efficiency of state-of-the-art silicon solar cell modules.
What I want to know: Are these materials inherently more or less expensive to manufacture for unit area than existing silicon photovoltaics? Do these materials lend themselves to greater cost reductions?
Big money is going to go into creation of a manufacturing prototype.
As a result of the consortium's technical performance, DARPA is initiating the next phase of the program by funding the newly formed DuPont-University of Delaware VHESC Consortium to transition the lab-scale work to an engineering and manufacturing prototype model. This three-year effort could be worth as much as $100 million, including industry cost-share.
The professors leading this effort are aiming for 50% efficiency.
The ground-breaking research was led by Allen Barnett, principal investigator and UD professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Christiana Honsberg, co-principal investigator and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. The two direct the University's High Performance Solar Power Program and will continue working to achieve 50 percent efficiency, a benchmark that when reached would mean a doubling of the efficiency of terrestrial solar cells based around a silicon platform within a 50-month span.
Some are skeptical over whether solar electric energy will ever amount to much after decades of failing to become cost competitive. But my view is that many breakthroughs took decades to achieve. The fact that researchers have been searching for cheaper photovoltaic materials for decades isn't an argument against the feasibility of this quest. Rather, the number of first class minds pursuing this quest strongly suggests the ultimate goal of cheap and high efficiency photovoltaics is achievable.
By Randall Parker at 2007 July 25 09:40 PM Energy Solar | TrackBackThe Achilles' heal of solar power isn't conversion efficiency but rather our inability to store the energy and then produce it on demand. Even with 100% conversion we can't run our civilization on a power source that goes away when the sun goes down or that disappears randomly due to inclement weather. Now matter how efficient the solar cells, they still require a completely on demand 100% redundant non-solar backup. That means that solar will never be more than a minor source of power.
If we could create some kind of super-battery that could store electricity 4 or 5 times more efficiently than current technology then we could make a go of solar power with old fashion 5% conversion photovoltaic. All this emphasis on conversion efficiency is wasted effort. We should be concentrating on storage technology instead.
Another good question is, what kind of materials are needed for the production of these high efficiency solar cells? If they require highly toxic materials for production then I doubt that people will be happy with the replacement. Further, how much energy is required for there production? Cost is still the most reliable means of measuring the effectiveness of an energy source. Renewable isn't necessarily green, and green isn't necessarily better than oil, natural gas, nuclear, or coal. Its a cool idea but...
The Achilles' heal of solar power isn't conversion efficiency but rather our inability to store the energy and then produce it on demand.
No, actually the roadblock has been that solar electricity is just too expensive. Even if storage were free right now, solar PV would not make sense (except for off-grid users).
some kind of super-battery that could store electricity 4 or 5 times more efficiently than current technology
Since existing batteries are already highly efficient, this would violate the first law of thermodynamics. The problem with batteries has not been their efficiency, but their lifecycle cost. If we had cheaper batteries today, we'd use them to level demand, not supply, so cheap baseload plants (like coal or nuclear) could supply a larger fraction of the demand.
Actually, solar cells don't have to be as cheap as baseload coal or nuclear for two reasons. First, they can be located at the point of demand, and therefore the price they have to beat is not the wholesale price of electricity, but the delivered price (at the household level, typically 2x higher). Second, solar generated electricity would look much more competitive if domestic consumers were charged for their electricity based on overall system demand at that given hour (ie, market-based prices that vary throughout the day). As the peak load in any system - the middle of the day - just happens to coincide with maximum solar energy, solar cells luckily produce energy at the time of day it is most likely to be expensive, and therefore look like peaking plants.
Storage of electricity is more of an issue for wind power, which is unpredictable in its timing and in any event has little natural timing with system demand.
Paul: I think he meant 4 or 5 times more densely or cheaply, rather than efficient in terms of input:output ratio approaching 1.
Surely current batteries don't approach physical limits on energy density (though they may approach energy density limits for their particular chemistries and manufacture methods).
Shannon, I've also read about solar towers, they use sun to heat a fluid and thermodynamic processes to produce power, The heat retained allows them to continue producing some power at night.
Now for the variability issue diminished night output, you simply create excess capacity. We'll just have to pave over 8-15 Ohios rather than 1-2 (actually, this suggests it's only about 5000 sq-mi for US consumption).
I didn't realize I had to have a generator in my back yard to get electricity. There's this thing called a power grid which you probably have access to if you have electricity. The grid is already able to transmit power over a thousand miles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inga-Shaba), and has been considered in the past to be cost effective up to 4000. The sun never sets on the earth, so the rest of the problem becomes one of cost and engineering.
By the way here is a nice little chart provided by the DOE about the cost of PV solar energy: http://www.eere.energy.gov/tribalenergy/guide/images/chart3_solar_pv.gif
The graph comes from this page: http://www.eere.energy.gov/tribalenergy/guide/costs_solar_photovoltaics.cfm
The DOE estimates that solar will be competitive with current urban power costs around 2020. If costs in urban areas continue to rise obviously solar cells will become more cost effective sooner.
The real problem with batteries and power storage is the sheer amount of resources required to make the batteries. In order to store enough electricity to power through the night, we would need so much lead and space the project would be come infeasible for even a single State. I think we should look at electrolysis as a means of storing surplus energy. The Hydrogen can then be stored or released into a jet turbine to power a generator. The real benefit to solar energy however, is it's ability to produce the most power when we need it most... during the Day!
Richard Swanson of SunPower Corporation states that for every cumulative doubling of solar cell production, prices go down 19%. As long as production growth continues at the 20-25% it has historically, we are likely to see prices fall in half every 7-10 years. Not quite Moore's law, but not bad.
I have calculated what percentage of electricity solar can contribute to the US, in the years 2030, 2035, 2050 and 2010 with various growth assumptions. Based on these numbers, I think it is likely that solar will contribute less than 5% of electricity by 2030, but it is also likely that it will contribute more than 50% by 2050. Gotta love exponential growth.
And if you are curious how much land is required to generate all the world's energy, I always find this image to be helpful. You can fit it all in deserts with plenty of room to spare.
FK:
That picture is actually pretty ugly. When added up, those dots look to cover an area the size of western europe.
Of course, that's at a conversion of 8%.
Shannon Love,
Imagine that 50% efficient solar cells could produce electricity for 1 penny per kwh. Would you refuse to install solar cells just because they don't provide power all the time? Or would you install them and use them when they provide power and use utility power the rest of the time?
We can shift demand around if the difference in price is great between different times of the day. For example, some skyscrapers in New York City have big water containers that get cooled down at night when electric is much cheaper and then air is blown over containers to cool the building air during hot afternoons. A recent article reported big savings from doing this. Air conditioning and even some heating demand can get shifted to whenever the electricity is cheapest.
But, yes, we really really need cheap, long-lasting, and high energy density batteries. Such batteries would break our dependence on liquid fuels for transportation. Great batteries would allow nuclear, coal, wind, solar, and geothermal to provide energy for transportation.
I say we are not having an energy crisis. We are having an energy storage crisis. Oil is not just a form of energy. Oil is a convenient form in which to store energy. We can extract portions of oil into gasoline and diesel and jet fuel to use to move around vehicles. But the world is running out of oil.
We need better batteries more than we need nukes, wind towers, or solar panels. Still, cheap solar will be great when it finally arrives in a decade or two.
"That picture is actually pretty ugly. When added up, those dots look to cover an area the size of western europe."
Maybe, but the areas where the disks are placed are pretty sparsely populated (unlike Western Europe). No one lives in Saudi Arabia's "empty quarter" (seriously, that's what they call it) or in that region of the Sahara or Australia. Very few people live in the regions covered in the USA and South America (those are the highest points of the Rockies and Andes, respectively).
8% efficiency is probably fair given current technology, factoring in transmission costs from Colorado to New York.
Covering every rooftop with cells is still the better solution though. You save the transmission losses and don't commit any more acreage to man's use. That's why this stuff is cool, but the advances in plastic solar cells is cooler. 10% efficient for the price of saran wrap = 100% solar power adoption. Even better than that would be an artificial photosynthetic polymer that turns sunlight into sugars that in turn run fuel cells (or a roof that's half-and-half, to cover baseload and peak usage).
A thought crosses my mind - Craig Venter invents grass that's 20% efficient. It uses 5% of the energy to grow and feeds the other 15% into the grid of wires that self-assembled from the root systems and connect to your house. Now you lawn powers your TV. If that's crazy, I don't want to be sane.
Brock,
What'll eventually drive roof top solar: The development of roofing material that is also photovoltaics. When the incremental cost gets low enough people will install solar roofing instead of conventional roofing.
This breakthrough by the U of Delaware didn't come from nowhere. Delaware had Solar 1, a demonstration house powered by photovoltaics,
"smart house" automated conservation devices, and a fuel cell to store the energy. This was in 1973. To those of us who've been following solar since then, it's taken a lot longer than we thought it would, but it's happening.
"The development of roofing material that is also photovoltaics"
has actually reached the market, although Advanced Thin Film (amorphous silicon I think) is not cutting edge for efficiency, and the cost is still high. Sunsei(TM) Construct Solar Slates from ICP Solar make various colours of solar roof tiles which look and work just like regular slates. Looking at the roof you can't tell which tiles are just stone, and which are generating electricity!
The alternative to energy storage is timing the electric load to follow production. If there is a massive excess of electric production capacity in the sunny part of the day due to high penetration of solar, then we simply turn on all our dishwashers, washing machines, air conditioners, heat pumps, etc. then instead of in the middle of the night as we are wisely doing today given the dispatchability profile of our current energy system.
The degree of innovation activity in photovoltaics technologies today is remarkable, and is orders of magnitude more than just 10 years ago. I fully expect a series of very highly disruptive innovations to thrust PV into the mainstream in the next 5-10 years, and then it is only a question of political will and commercial risk-taking appetite to see how fast it scales up.
New Solar Photovoltaic Cell Efficiency Record: 42.8%. The engineers at DBK Engineering www.dbksolar.com have proclaimed a FIL 3000 watt solar panel that is 70% efficient since 2005. They have stated that they don't care if anyone believes them or not, they perform demonstrations for interested investors that walk away unshakeable in their beliefs in these 50 lb. 1.3 sq.ft. meter panels. At their last demonstration the panels powered two 1850 watt hairdryers with the panel propped up in the shade of the afternoon. The watt meters showed they were producing 2800 watts plus with out any loading. Two of my partners flew from the east coast to California to attend this demonstration and are convinced that the Company and the panels are real. They are prepared to order one (since one replaces 18 of the nearest competitor's panels) at the cost of over $10,000.00. Also the franchise fees are $4,000.00 to reserve an area code and then $100,000.00 when you have sold $1,000,000.00 worth of systems. I will give anyone that can prove to me, so that I can prove to my partners, a $1,000.00 (One thousand dollars) that these panels and the company are a scam. If no one can do it, then I will join them and laugh all the way to the bank. If they are proven to be real then I will eat a dead crow live on U Tube after a public announcement and apology. ps. I am building a website this weekend with all the research that I have done so far. www.solarscams.com but none of it is definitive proof one way or the other. OH yea! They stated they are not interested in the Nobel Prize. George W. Penington
I visited DBK Solar in Carlsbad for a training session. They didn't get into the technical aspects of the product. They didn't get into the installation aspects either. They did show us a panel that produced 4100W indoors under a skylight and 5100W outdoors in the parking lot on a cloudy day. They downplay the output, encouraging us to stay conservatively at 3000W. I brought my own meter just for my own piece of mind. I'm not an expert, but don't you need a load to get an accurate reading of the power generated? We visited a very impressive facility that they were negotiating a lease on but they have not moved into it yet, after 6 months. I did purchase a dealership, on a gamble, and have kept in touch since. They have applied for certification in California and Florida has agreed to rubberstamp whatever California does. I can't sell the systems in Florida without the approvals, you can't apply for the rebates without approvals. The company is very secretive and odd, but I haven't given up yet. ndxtrader7@aol.com
I think a lot of people are missing the point. SolarPV panels are coming out of China at the moment at USD 3.7 per watt. They are not a cost effective way of generating electricity, but at the moment in UK we have sky high crude oil prices, Natural Gas from Russia, loads of coal but not very many clean burning coal power stations. Our energy needs have GOT to be met from alternative green energy, and I think microgeneration by SolarPV, Wind Turbines, Microhydro should all be fully supported by generous government grants,even to self install systems. Carbon emissions have to be reduced, and this is one way of doing it. Its really a lifestyle choice, rather like buying a flat screen TV, or recycling. You can get a perfectly acceptable picture on a cheap 26 inch monster tube model, but people buy flat screens because they have made that lifestyle choice.Unfortunately our ghastly government is preaching energy conservation, but you go to buy a low energy light bulb, and get charged 17.5% VAT. Outrageous. I wish I had the CA sun, I would install SolarPV tomorrow.
Wouldnt it be interesting if we could actualy have an electric cable system conecting the world together. As the sun moved around the earth solar panles continued to add power into a world Grid system, By raising outpu to a super volage to lessen the Current loss.
Just A thought any big multi national companies interested to take it on???
DBK (solar panels) won't return our money even though we have it in writing that they would return our money. $4000.
Please don't give these people any money. They have not followed through on their word.
L Nichols! Email me at america@digitalpath.net I may be able to help.
Interesting commentary on solar power [sun PV, sun TE, sun SE, wind, tidal use, geothermal, etc.]. Solar PV by itself won't amount to much, neither will the other solar approaches, wind will only be a stop gap at best. Geothermal from hot spots on the earth will make a big difference if exploited correctly. Look at Iceland and Greenland ! There is more geothermal power in Yellowstone than anywhere else in the north American continent ! Tidal makes a lot of sense as its not only regular but enormously powerful ! Remember why Big Power Utilities build big electric generation plants => Its due to the advantages of the economics and power of scaling !
Personally I think that solar PV could be used for ' peaking problems '! Seems to make sense if you consider a scale in all the roof tops being used for electrical generation ! If you live out in the ' boonies or outback ', yes, a combination of solar PV, TE or SE with wind turbines would do alright. I know of several Australians that are doing this and it seems to work for them quite well. For a conversion of our society here in the USA, its going to take one hell of a lot more to displace both coal and hydro. Remember that we have Technically Evolved from the late 1800s ! Being a physicist, I still like nuclear powered electricity the best ! Look at France !
Its cleaner and far more efficient when considering ' economies of scale '. The waste ? Its still got one hell of a lot of energy in it and can be used for a lot of things from processing waste water to pure water, sea water to fresh, processing food stuffs, industrial processes, etc., and for RTGs [radioactive thermoelectric generators] ! Just to mention a few. Our reactors have evolved too, with technology. It is possible to design and build reactors that will not only breed more fuel [U238 => Pu235 ] but minimize waste at the same time. Fusion ? Its just around the corner and in another quarter century, it will be just around the corner again ! Too many problems here, the sun is a good example of just what fusion is all about, better out there than here on Earth ! Zeyphr, Ph.D, physicist...
I heard somewhere that there are indications on improvement. A lot of reserchers are trying to look at alternative to silicon as the only widely used semiconductor.
I'll like to clarify the advantage of carbon oxides and hydrides and some other covalent compounds. these is a field that can help improve the availability and accessibility of solar power as an alternative energy.
I began to research DBK Solar after running into a DBK Solar dealer at a MA fair. DBK Solar is a scam. There is no production, no technology, no delivery. Full DBK story at link below including a peek at their 'so called' technology from a patent application I dug out by DBK principal, Darry Boyd.
http://twinkle_toes_engineering.home.comcast.net/~twinkle_toes_engineering/dbk_solar.html
One of the limiting factors of utility power is you need water to make steam and cool the steam and it turns out that 48% of the water used today is used by utility companies. Having said that solar can be stored by using water. By pumping water up a hill or back into a reservoir then the power can be used as needed using hydroelectric. There is a project in Palm Springs, CA were they will be using wind power to pump water between 2 existing mines that are 1700 feet apart in height. When there is no wind the water is released through some water turbines to produce electricity. Solar could be designed to do the same thing and in this case the water is used over and over again. A Water tower might work to store water power where no hills or mines exist.
In a residential situation extra solar power could be used to make hydrogen through electolyzers convertering water to hydrogen. Then hydrogen fuel cells convert the hydrogen back to electricity. Hydrogen is safer then you think because when there is a leak the hydrogen rises quickly. The storage of and the making of hydrogen is in a covered out side building with open air sides for safety.
There is work to be done to get the efficiencies up in both solar, electrolysers and fuel cells but the concepts are there. Just look at the change in solar efficiencies over the past couple of years. I have seen 42% and even 80% on the horizon.
What we need is an administration that has long term vision and is willing to put some money into research. We made it to the moon in less than a decade when we made up our minds that this was a worth while project and without the transistor. We just need visionaries that believe that spending money on research is more productive then spending our money on oil which is destructive to our country's economy.
Solar is free and we keep our money inside our country and solve a lot of our present national debt problems. I know the argument that this an oil economy and without oil we would destroy our economy. Well, that is why we need visionaries.
Our own energy usage only gets expensive when the air conditioner runs: when there is plenty of sunlight available for sun power.
Is there a map showing the location of photvoltaic cells used around the world to show the efficiency of these cells depending where in the world these are sited ?
regards
Chris Cowan
07768 283214
chris.cowan@jarvishomes.com
Chris,
Check out this World Insolation Map.
Curiously, England, the area around the Great Lakes, and Seattle are all about equally dim. Canada get more sunshine than most of Europe.
Note that previous map was for the worst day of the year. For the United States see various insolation maps which include annual average and monthly average maps.
