Breakthrough in solar efficiency by UNSW team

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/breakthrough-in-solar-efficiency-by-unsw-team-ahead-of-its-time-20130505-2j117.html

by mtgx • 13 years ago

81 31 13 years ago

smh.com.au

sbierwagen• 13 years ago

  At present, the best commercial solar cells convert between 
  17 per cent and 19 per cent of the sun's energy into 
  electricity. UNSW's technique, patented this year, should 
  produce efficiencies of between 21 per cent and 23 per cent.

capisce2• 13 years ago

While being able to use significantly cheaper silicon of poorer quality, was the breakthrough as far as I gathered.

just2n2• 13 years ago

A quick TLDR from the article:

    The breakthrough involves using hydrogen atoms to counter defects in 
    silicon cells ... [so that] poor quality 
    silicon can be made to perform like high quality wafers.

A 25% improvement to efficiency is a big deal. Getting that improvement with cheap silicon makes this a huge win.

But there's no reference to patents or to research demonstrating these claims, so I don't know what to think.

nairboon• 13 years ago

How is this a breakthrough when SunPower has been selling 21.5% modules? http://us.sunpowercorp.com/cs/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&... http://us.sunpowercorp.com/homes/products-services/solar-pan...

vicaya• 13 years ago

If you look at your own links, you'll see that these are monocrystalline panels, which are a lot more expensive than the much cheaper polycrystalline panels, which the research targets.

bdcs• 13 years ago

This article makes the prototypical solar energy mistake: thinking efficiency matters. It doesn't (unless you're working on satellites). There is no shortage of rooftop space. There is a shortage of dollars. The only thing that matters with solar is cost (in dollars) per installed watt (in watts). Efficiency plays a part in that; a more efficient cell for the same price is much better! But, a slightly more efficient cell for something much more expensive is not an advance at all.

This finding is technically neat, but I don't see how it is a breakthrough by any means. Admittedly, I only read TFA.

just2n2• 13 years ago

The breakthrough isn't necessarily in efficiency (the title is misleading), but rather that it is done using low quality silicon which I would suspect means the costs would come down drastically compared to current top-performing cells. There's no mention of expected costs nor comparison with a correlation between current panel efficiency and cost to show that it would have a large impact on the market, so we can't really know.

The article is definitely more hype than substance.

capisce2• 13 years ago

"Australian scientists have found a way of hugely increasing the efficiency of solar panels while substantially reducing their cost."

Did you ignore the part of TFA that was about cost reduction?

jussij• 13 years ago

Not only that but this:

Silicon wafers account for more than half the cost of making a solar cell. "By using lower-quality silicon, you can drastically reduce that cost," he said.

dredmorbius3• 13 years ago

Agreed. Tom Murphy makes that point in his blog: "Don't be a PV Efficiency Snob": http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/09/dont-be-a-pv-eff...

There's plenty of solar capacity on the planet to meet not only present electric generation demand, but the growth require for substituting much present fossil-fuel usage with electricity. Probably even bringing up per-capita energy allotments to a reasonable fraction of Western levels (1.5 - 2.5 kWh/day would make a huge difference for most people's lives).

The real challenges are cost -- building out solar capacity would require 8-9 doublings of existing capacity, at least. Financing this (or ramming through the construction regardless) is going to be the biggest challenge.

Storage though is the other bogeyman. There's very little pumped storage available. Grid batteries, likely emphasizing cost over size, weight, or efficiency, as there simply isn't enough of many common battery materials to meet requirements, thermal storage. Maybe hydrogen production, maybe electrically-powered synfuel production, flywheels.

There are a few reactor options, mostly still not commercially proven, which may help bridge the gap: TerraPower, LFTR, and other breeder designs. Relying strictly on conventional uranium fission reactors would burn through known reserves in a few decades -- 30-80 years.

wcoenen• 13 years ago

> electrically-powered synfuel production

Germany is exploring the possibility of converting excess electricity to gas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_to_gas

belorn• 13 years ago

Two common methods to store excess electricity from wind/solar is with hydroelectricity, and district heating.

It would be really interesting to see numbers on the maximum amount of excess power that could be stored if those two techniques was universal utilized for this purpose.

Tuna-Fish2• 13 years ago

> Relying strictly on conventional uranium fission reactors would burn through known reserves in a few decades -- 30-80 years.

While strictly speaking true, this is completely irrelevant. "Known reserves" refers to the surveyed amount that is technically and economically feasible to extract at present market prices. The cost of uranium ore is a vanishingly small part of running a nuclear plant -- fuel costs are less than 10%, and the vast majority of that is enrichment and processing. Uranium market prices could go up by two orders of magnitude without endangering the industry, and at that point, we have milennia of known reserves (mostly in seawater).

danmaz74• 13 years ago

Have you actually read the article? It says that the breakthrough is in achieving pretty high efficiency with low quality - and thus low price - silicon. It doesn't claim to have found the best-of-breed efficiency.

kokey• 13 years ago

They do mention that it allows for using cheaper silicon, but doesn't actually quantify it e.g. a potential x.xx% cost reduction. I'm not sure if this is because it's based on PR from Suntech, who obviously doesn't want to indicate how far prices can come down by.

short_circut• 13 years ago

It would be nice if they gave some sort of citation or linked to some sort of scientific paper.

jacquesm2• 13 years ago

In the end the only important figure in solar energy is Watt-hours generated / $invested over the lifetime of the panel.

The most efficient commercial solar cells available today are (as far as I know) the Maxeon line and their rated efficiency is 24%, so even that claim holds no water.

What I find a bit annoying is that any news item that contains the words 'breakthrough, solar, efficiency' will automatically get wide distribution.

You can probably find one such announcement per month and it usually amounts to nothing once the dust has settled.

pinko• 13 years ago

> In the end the only important figure in solar energy is Watt-hours generated / $invested over the lifetime of the panel.

Are there any meaningful differences in the toxic byproducts of manufacturing, transport, and/or disposal of the panels?

I might care about that, too, but I've heard very little about it.

jacquesm2• 13 years ago

All things being equal (same location of production and same environmental laws in effect) that should be factored into the price. If you compare say Chinese made panels with US made panels there will be a difference due to environmental issues being ignored but this will to some extent be off-set by import duties.

xutopia• 13 years ago

Are we really falling for this again? How many times do we have to go through this.

Ignore all articles regarding solar breakthroughs unless:

1) they have a sticker price on their web site, for sale immediately 2) they don't need investments to get a business off the ground 3) they have links to all research and patents that capture what the breakthrough is all about.

DanielBMarkham• 13 years ago

I agree this is getting old.

Enough with the solar power hype machine. Give it a break. Show me something with a "buy now" button or go home.

Seriously, 20 or more articles in the last year? All with some incredible breakthrough? Enough already.

SeanDav• 13 years ago

I came here to post pretty much the same thing.

If you believed the commercial success of all the solar panel breakthroughs we have been hearing about, then by now every solar panel would be the size of a postage stamp, be generating 12 KW of power by moonlight and they would have been giving away a free solar panel with every six-pack of beer...

marvin• 13 years ago

You're ignoring that the cost of PV panels has fallen dramatically over the last couple of years. Absent someone inside the industry who can give a detailed explanation to what processes are behind this improvement ("Chinese subsidies" is in itself not a sufficient explanation), it is reasonable to assume that the huge amount of research breakthroughs in solar technology has something to do with it.

So while it may be annoying to read about the 10th PV technology breakthrough of the year, there is no doubt that these breakthroughs have a real effect on the price and efficiency of solar panels. I think it's interesting to read about this.

ck2• 13 years ago

Actually, this time they seem to want to crank it out in three years:

Funding to help commercialise the technology will total about $15 million over three years, with the UNSW seeking support from the federal government’s Australian Renewable Energy Agency for part of that sum.

Most of the time these articles are very vague about any real application.

vajrabum• 13 years ago

Even for a press release the TFA has woefully little real information. After digging around I did find this one article which has a little bit more on how this is supposed to work. http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/technology/solar-discovery-...

Breakthrough in solar efficiency by UNSW team

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