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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Oct 24, 2024 10:13:57 GMT
Silicon solar power typically comes in at about 23% currently. There is a theoretical upper limit of 35% for any silicon solar cell. This limit is known as the Shockley–Queisser limit.
The definition of this term is listed in Wiki as
I mention this because the Spanish research has found a junction that can achieve a 60% Shockley–Queisser limit. The way you do this is you don't use silicon. They spent 15 years trying anything they could think of and recently they struck gold. It so happens that a titanium-gallium junction is the magic combination. The experimental cells are not suitable for production though, and one reason for this is they use gold in the substrate. I mean gallium and titanium are expensive enough, but using gold would be taking the piss! The good news is using gold is not an essential requirement and some substitute could be used, they think. They also claim the amount of titanium and gallium needed is small that we are still in the ballpark of affordability, although there is a lot of work to convert this to a manufacturable product. Who knows how long it will take, but their work proves 60% is possible.
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Post by Vinny on Oct 24, 2024 10:33:33 GMT
Great, power fuel synthesis with them and get clean petrol into cars.
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Oct 24, 2024 11:07:27 GMT
Great, power fuel synthesis with them and get clean petrol into cars. Well put it this way. I'm not against the internal combustion engine so if you like yours then that would be the answer.
Another development is Tesla's thin film solar panels. They are 200nm thick so use a piddling amount of expensive junction materials (e.g. poly silicon) and so are about as cheap as plastic film. If the panels are dirt cheap then solar energy will be as well so the issue of the efficiency after you have generated it becomes less important and will be outweighed by the convenience of being able to store energy compactly, either with synthetic fuel or hydrogen. Right now solar is the cheapest way to generate energy. It recently undercut the cost of onshore wind, which was the previous cheapest. I would prefer solar since once you have set it up there really is very little maintenance. It's like having the equivalent of a money printing press. |
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Post by Vinny on Oct 24, 2024 11:35:17 GMT
I like solar, get it on roofs everywhere and convert it into AC.
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Post by johnofgwent on Oct 24, 2024 16:34:10 GMT
I like solar, get it on roofs everywhere and convert it into AC. Well, that's ok if the raw materials are 'cheap' My worry is these replacements for silicon ... Are not Back in the 70's we saw this with 'liw cost' solar panels heating water which were simply not worth having because of piss poor efficiency, and others not worth having because their price was astronomic. I fear the net zero fantasy will cloud judgement of the upper end... |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Oct 24, 2024 21:56:02 GMT
I like solar, get it on roofs everywhere and convert it into AC. Well, that's ok if the raw materials are 'cheap' My worry is these replacements for silicon ... Are not Back in the 70's we saw this with 'liw cost' solar panels heating water which were simply not worth having because of piss poor efficiency, and others not worth having because their price was astronomic. I fear the net zero fantasy will cloud judgement of the upper end... I forgot to say, this team have been at it for 15 years trying everything they can think of. Now they have found one that works the idea they have is to figure out how it works, and having done that they might have a guide to match up more likely candidates. They add that they will use artificial intelligence to see if that helps.
They are a bit buggered though regarding gallium. It's one that China monopolises and says no gallium for the US and I think they might have restricted it in the EU as well. They announced gallium and germanium. |
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Post by johnofgwent on Oct 25, 2024 1:59:43 GMT
Well, that's ok if the raw materials are 'cheap' My worry is these replacements for silicon ... Are not Back in the 70's we saw this with 'liw cost' solar panels heating water which were simply not worth having because of piss poor efficiency, and others not worth having because their price was astronomic. I fear the net zero fantasy will cloud judgement of the upper end... I forgot to say, this team have been at it for 15 years trying everything they can think of. Now they have found one that works the idea they have is to figure out how it works, and having done that they might have a guide to match up more likely candidates. They add that they will use artificial intelligence to see if that helps.
They are a bit buggered though regarding gallium. It's one that China monopolises and says no gallium for the US and I think they might have restricted it in the EU as well. They announced gallium and germanium. Yes I can see this will be a problem, but then I suppose it was a problem back when I was working on solsr water heating. The metals that were best at that were scarce and expensive too. |
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Post by seniorcitizen007 on Oct 25, 2024 2:14:15 GMT
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Post by johnofgwent on Oct 25, 2024 12:27:59 GMT
That's very interesting, Senior
I'd compare it to the relative efficiency of using the water heating panels we were working on in the late 70's in my first real job using my degree.
It very quickly became apparent that using solar panels to heat water in the cold water mains by ten degrees C or even twenty was perfectly viable to provide a pre heated water supply well above ambient which modest lagging would preserve, and the bottom line is it takes the same number of pennies to electrically heat water from (say) 25 to 35 as it does to get it from 5 to 15, 15 to 25:etc
Of course losses rise as the water heats, but using daytime solar to create tepid water from bloody freezing saved a shedload of wonga in the university hall of residence shower supplies and I see the same sort of thing here, small amounts of energy can be captured and used to bring things some of the way, for no ongoing cost......
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Oct 25, 2024 12:47:23 GMT
I forgot to say, this team have been at it for 15 years trying everything they can think of. Now they have found one that works the idea they have is to figure out how it works, and having done that they might have a guide to match up more likely candidates. They add that they will use artificial intelligence to see if that helps.
They are a bit buggered though regarding gallium. It's one that China monopolises and says no gallium for the US and I think they might have restricted it in the EU as well. They announced gallium and germanium. Yes I can see this will be a problem, but then I suppose it was a problem back when I was working on solsr water heating. The metals that were best at that were scarce and expensive too. It might be worth looking at the physics of monoatomic layers of various atoms. In these configurations the electrons kind of glide above the surface with little to dissipate any energy, so you get a kind of superconducting effect. It's a similar thing to those quantum dots which are only a few hundred atoms and where you get odd quantum mechanical effects that can be put to use. The maths gets a bit hairy to solve for systems like this, but there are a few tricks you can apply to approximate a solution on a large computer. It's a case of equations we have known about for a long time, but not known all the possible solutions. |
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Post by Vinny on Oct 31, 2024 10:11:18 GMT
It's high time roofs were constructed where the entire roof surface is just one big solar array.
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Oct 31, 2024 10:42:19 GMT
It's high time roofs were constructed where the entire roof surface is just one big solar array. This is actually done now, but not in this country. I watched a US video on them. They are solar tiles. They look like normal tiles and as you fit them the connect up and form a solar panel. The problem is right now is they are expensive, so you might be looking at 5x the cost of doing things the usual way. It's not a particularly easy thing to do when in material science you not only have to produce something that does all it should do to produce electricity, but also has the durable properties of a roof tile. I'd say more research needs to be done to find better solutions and ways to cheaply manufacture. |
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Post by Vinny on Oct 31, 2024 10:44:27 GMT
The more mass produced they get, the cheaper they will be.
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Oct 31, 2024 10:55:42 GMT
The more mass produced they get, the cheaper they will be. Where you start with a low production run, there is a pricing strategy called "creaming off". That's what will be going on there. The Hollywood set will get them first. |
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Post by zanygame on Nov 2, 2024 19:37:16 GMT
Silicon solar power typically comes in at about 23% currently. There is a theoretical upper limit of 35% for any silicon solar cell. This limit is known as the Shockley–Queisser limit.
The definition of this term is listed in Wiki as
I mention this because the Spanish research has found a junction that can achieve a 60% Shockley–Queisser limit. The way you do this is you don't use silicon. They spent 15 years trying anything they could think of and recently they struck gold. It so happens that a titanium-gallium junction is the magic combination. The experimental cells are not suitable for production though, and one reason for this is they use gold in the substrate. I mean gallium and titanium are expensive enough, but using gold would be taking the piss! The good news is using gold is not an essential requirement and some substitute could be used, they think. They also claim the amount of titanium and gallium needed is small that we are still in the ballpark of affordability, although there is a lot of work to convert this to a manufacturable product. Who knows how long it will take, but their work proves 60% is possible.
That's bloody good Baron, but I think the costs will always outweigh the benefits as sunlight is plentiful and space not restricted. If you want to spend money on solar energy stick them in orbit and laser the energy down to earth. |
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