[HN Gopher] Inverted perovskite solar cell breaks 25% efficiency...
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Inverted perovskite solar cell breaks 25% efficiency record
Author : geox
Score : 82 points
Date : 2023-11-18 18:09 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.northwestern.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.northwestern.edu)
| Sparkyte wrote:
| The problem with a perovskite solar cell is the fragility and
| life span of the solar cell. If they can stablize the material to
| last 20+ years it would be entirely worth the cost and
| development of the solar cells. But right now it is expensive.
|
| They last about 5 years if you're lucky. Although there has been
| improvements since I last ready, but grain of salt.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Note that at this point in time it is economics, not yield-per-
| area that dominate any solar cell installation so a new cell
| doesn't necessarily have to be high yield, it has to be better
| when you compute total power generated for a given $ invested
| over the lifetime of the cell. That's pretty much all that
| matters, everything is just a distraction unless you are severely
| space constrained a couple of percent more or less isn't going to
| make a huge difference, and cost savings on existing processes
| have now compounded to the point that people are more and more
| looking at the price of inverters and installation as important
| factors. That's also why you see the push for transformerless
| inverters (those are bulky and costly so they affect both
| inverter cost and installation/shipping).
|
| I did a pretty big solar installation over the last two years and
| I decided to go for quality panels because the glass-glass
| sandwich panels have a much better economic picture than the
| glass-plastic ones even though they are more expensive up front.
| robmsmt wrote:
| can you elaborate a bit more on your setup?
| jacquesm wrote:
| 6 strings of cells, hooked up to two inverters, one handling
| two banks on a very high roof, peak production there is 4KW,
| one inverter handling four strings on covered outdoors space
| and the garage. The last four are at very shallow angles, so
| less than ideal but total surface area really makes up for
| that. We draw about 300W on average and the peak production
| capacity for the whole setup is close to 15KW (or even
| slightly higher in full sun in March). Over the last 11
| months the system produced 12 MWh on about 4 MHw consumption
| so net 8 MWh returned to the grid.
|
| 34 of the panels are brand new 370W glass-glass panels, the
| remaining 16 are much older (probably a decade old, maybe
| more) that still work pretty well rated at 265 W each (but
| probably closer to about 220 or so).
| chrisweekly wrote:
| What's your geography, and what'd it cost up front?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Netherlands.
|
| Panels cost about 210/each for the new ones and the old
| ones were pretty much free. Inverter: the one upstairs is
| a new one, 500 Euros ('second chance'), three phase 4KW,
| the one downstairs is a monster, it's 17KW with up to six
| strings and cost another 500. The panels on the high roof
| were installed, about 1000 to do the job and the rest I
| did myself, add another 500 or so in cables, tubing etc.
| The power bill went from 8500 / year to 3500 / year, and
| all of that is the remaining gas usage. We're looking
| into using any surplus in nov/dec/jan/feb to help heat
| the house to further offset the gas usage but the
| economics aren't really there yet as far as I can see.
|
| And even in November we are still offsetting about 75% of
| our electricity usage, which somewhat surprises me, I'd
| expected far worse.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, installation prices correlate very well with efficiency.
| What was always a huge problem for perovskite cells, because
| they tend to be way less efficient.
|
| They also suffer from lack of raw-material abundance and
| shorter lifetimes. But it may be possible to fix both of those
| too. The factory for perovskite cells should require much less
| initial investment, what is a huge limitation for silicon
| cells, so it could be revolutionary.
| pornel wrote:
| Grid-scale installations can probably use anything.
|
| However, more efficient cells will probably find new uses where
| space or weight is very limited.
| jwells89 wrote:
| There are some possibilities that could be opened up at certain
| efficiency thresholds, though, due to considerations that
| aren't purely economic.
|
| For instance, if small panels had high enough efficiency you'd
| probably see a lot of people who wouldn't consider roof
| installations popping them up on their back decks and the like
| since it's far less involved to do so. It'd also help work
| around rules like the one my HOA imposes, where roof mounted
| solar can't be street visible.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, when you are severely space constrained it could well
| make sense. But 25% isn't a big enough difference to enable
| that. You'd have to do _much_ better than that.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > It'd also help work around rules like the one my HOA
| imposes, where roof mounted solar can't be street visible.
|
| Bloody hell, some people just want to watch the world burn.
| theLiminator wrote:
| Wonder if they'd allow a rooftop similar to Tesla's solar
| rooftop. I totally think HOAs are pretty ridiculous in
| general.
| grecy wrote:
| > _It'd also help work around rules like the one my HOA
| imposes, where roof mounted solar can't be street visible._
|
| I feel like if we cared about climate change at all there
| would be federal (global?) laws with severe penalties making
| rules like the one above highly illegal.
|
| What is disgrace
| sroussey wrote:
| You can be very space constrained... ironically... in space.
| Well, needs to fit in the rocket.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, but that's not even close to the best that can be done
| for space applications.
|
| For that there are multi junction cells, with 30% readily
| attainable (at a cost, but still, you can just order them if
| you need them).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-junction_solar_cell
| godelski wrote:
| > Note that at this point in time it is economics ... That's
| pretty much all that matters, everything [else] is just a
| distraction
|
| What? This doesn't make any sense. How do we invent new things
| if economics is all that matters? There's a whole process. You
| prove a thing is possible (literally the thing happening,
| nothing else), then move onto making the thing reliably
| reproducible to demonstrate, THEN optimizing for being cheap.
| It can fail at any point here (and there are more between tbh).
| This is a really long process. An example might be NASA's TRL
| scale.
|
| I mean yeah, it is university press and they hype it up, but
| I'm pretty sure a big reason for that is because comments like
| this. Being shitty at something is the first step to being
| kinda sorta good at that thing. Context matters a lot and the
| context here is: done by researchers, university research,
| journal publication. This is not Apple coming out and saying
| they invented something that's going to be on the market in a
| few months. This is someone at Apple's research lab being like
| "Hey, that thing we've been researching? I reached a milestone,
| we shouldn't call it quits yet."
| passwordoops wrote:
| I was interested until I saw the .edu url. Just another regularly
| scheduled biweekly battery/renewable/cleantech PR
| bobmaxup wrote:
| https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.adk1633
| passwordoops wrote:
| Thanks for the full link, but kind of proves the point. We're
| just months removed from Science publishing room temp
| superconductivity...
|
| One paper tells other researchers to check it out. Doesn't
| mean it's:
|
| - reproducible
|
| - scalable
|
| - functional in the real world
| system2 wrote:
| I will believe it when I see it being sold on Amazon and
| AliExpress. It won't matter if they did 99% efficiency if it
| never reaches the consumers.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Some people are here for the science, others for the business
| angle.
| boulos wrote:
| As folks are saying, there are already commercially developed
| panels at 24.7% [1] that should ship within the next year. The
| existing fleet of Maxeon 3 are apparently going to be 24% this
| quarter, rather than the 22.7% in the actively shipping parts
| [2].
|
| Like cache miss ratios, it's hard to remember that 25% is a 10%
| improvement in efficiency over that 22.7% (and 4% over the 24%
| claim). But as jacquesm mentions, what matters for system design
| is either $/watt (installed!), total generation, or whatever
| other metric. Efficiency _might_ get you more panels on a roof,
| but so could different panel sizing! One more panel because the
| sizing works out could easily be 5%.
|
| tl;dr: it's interesting research, but shouldn't affect purchasing
| decisions.
|
| [1] https://mediaroom.maxeon.com/2023-06-01-Maxeon-Solar-
| Technol...
|
| [2]
| https://maxeon.com/us/sites/default/files/2023-05/sp_mst_112...
| tester756 wrote:
| Did perovskites managed to solve the problem with usage of lead?
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