As a Canadian, "I believe... that the Beaver is a truly proud and noble animal"! -- Molson's I Am Canadian beer ad, the manifesto of the best part of North America
As a chemist who has worked on perovskite-structured materials in general, and photovoltaic perovskites a bit too, I'd like to point out some small errors in the video: Perovskite mineral is CaTiO3, but this is not the "perovskite" in PV cells. Those materials are various lead halide materials, which have the same crystal structure as CaTiO3: the perovskite structure. But the chemical composition is completely different, as are the properties. You cannot make solar cells from CaTiO3
As I understand it, it is about adding the Perovskite as a layer to absorb more frequencies that somehow are passed on to the underlying normal silicon which absorbs less frequencies on its own. But then, what about the 1 micrometer film? I guess, the film is part of the sandwich that makes up the pv. How do they adhere the film to the silicon substrate? Furthermore, Perovskite here, seems to refer to the structure which is so typical for Perovskite more than to the actual atomic elements in the (perovskitian {?adjective?} structure. Unfortunately, no 1 micometer solar panel then?
@@arnoldvankampen3672 I believe the thin perovskite layer is transparent but able to collect in the blue and maybe ultraviolet wavelengths. Silicon currently does not collect this energy.
the supercool thing is, that the additional efficiency is still there in winter where the loss of energy mostly affects the infrared part of the spectrum. using them vertically on a fence or balcony still gives you a good amount of efficiency in winter. the vertical installation is not perfect in summer but it is a better balance throughout the whole year for people who live a few thousand kilometer away from the equator. and together with a sodium ion battery, you get a quite affordable setup to produce cheap energy everywhere all year. btw.: the University of Bayreuth pushed sodium ion batteries to 165Wh/kg which is fantastic!!! the future of renewables is bright!!!
And panel temperature is often forgotten. Efficiency drops at T rises, but as T falls efficiency rises. I just had a 100W panel at peak winter sun, northern latitude, ideal alignment and on a clear day at subfreezing temperatures generate 110W while on a normal sunny summer day, you never get above 90W.
I didnt know this, do you have any numbers on its potential extra gains in winter? Current panels are already efficient enough in summer where even my small system makes way more power than I can use but the worst 3 months of winter are a real struggle so even a 10% gain would make a difference.
obvioulsy not possible fromn he sun directly, therefore must be snow r frost that reflects. therefore surrounding the floor with mylar or similkar woul do he same job and your panels not get wrecked vertically haha
that is a very good point, I didn't think about it this way. since visible and ultra-violet light get scattered by the atmosphere, a visible/blue light solar panel will be more efficient when not in direct sunlight than a normal solar panel. I imagine it would also make perovskite bifacial solar panels a lot more interesting for the same reason.
As an installer, I cant wait to see some from the wholesalers as this would mean people in smaller properties could have a system worthwhile and get their bills down. They dont need to be big roofs or even face south. East West splits will work well, I do lots of them and my customers get their investment back with 5 -7 years with plenty of life to make and save a tonne of money.
I've been really enjoying this series. Thank you for going back into these old video topics to review what has happened. I feel like more often than not big headlines get published on a new idea and then it disappears into the void. Seeing where these technologies are at after the headlines have come and gone is very helpful
I have to say I love your follow ups.... its easy to just take some lab article and think "here is the breakthrough", but we learned from Tesla.... prototypes are easy, production is hard. Thank you for following up the most probable candidates...
production with perovskite is also easy and cheap. but we don't have a breakthrough that is still missing. it is longevity of the perovskite layer. this still needs to be solved.
As a person who founded her own solar installation business for remote homes 27 years ago, I have seen many wonderful improvements in the hardware necessary to get electricity to these off-grid homes. This is yet another good improvement that should benefit people well into the future. 👍 Thanks for the update.
As a homeowner living under gray Seattle skies and next to huge, shadow making evergreen trees, I'm looking forward to solar power that makes financial sense for me.
It is hard to always be cheer leading these folks involved with renewables and the new energy economy. But on the other hand we have a lot of just wait and see. This looks promising. It would be great if it all works out. Just to note what you said, solar/wind/storage IS the cheapest way to provide power in history. We don’t need to wait and see, we just need a lot of folks to get out of the way. And let folks get it done.
I expect this to be a near sure thing, as the largest solar panel manufacturers in their slides are already putting only 1 more generation of efficiency improvements to pure silicon cells, and then perovskites from then on.
it bothers me because most of these amazing technologies are fruit of capitalism and are behind patents, what slows progress. if everyone had access to each other's technologies and discoveries we could be much farther ahead, but they won't share because it may hurt their future profits. its the same bullshit as the covid vaccines. we were supposed to be working together.
Twelve years ago, I was planning to put 4kW of solar panels on the roof of my UK house, not just to save the planet, but to make the most out of the government's hopelessly overgenerous (at the time) Feed In Tarif. However, I was a bit worried what adding these panels might do to the value of my house. So, I asked a few estate agents whether such an installation might add, or detract value. And they all said..... "What are solar panels?" (!!!) I'd like to think we've moved on a bit.
My late father had a similar experience in the 1960s when trying to install loft insulation. He contacted all kinds of builders' merchants, hardware stores and the few DIY shops around at the time, and the overwhelming response was "what's loft insulation?". Always seems like "the industry" is well behind burgeoning consumer demand.
Wonderful video Dave. As someone in Solar PV, I'm eager to see Perovskite penetrate the market in the same way bifacial technology has in the last 5 or so years. With perovskite and bifacial modules, we definitely might be looking at 35% well before 2030.
The answer to our problems is shown to us everyday. We just need to harness the energy provided to us by the best nuclear fusion reactor in the solar system. PRAISE THE SUN!
Dave, I'm pleased you took the time to come back to this. One metric that is super important is how much energy and water is required to make a solar cell. I've read somewhere that Perovskite cells require something like two orders of magnitude less energy to produce per watt of generating capacity. That means that the amount of time a solar cell has to operate before it digs itself out of the energy hole created by its manufacture is significantly less.
Water is absolutely a key metric, these days, energy not so much. In China (and no doubt elsewhere) there are solar panel factories more or less being powered by solar panels. As that percentage of powered used coming from solar increases, the power demand becomes less of an issue.
@@Muppetkeeper That is correct, and the same is valid for those factories (and they are growing) that use closed loop water cycles for their production needs.
Even if that's the case, this is a multi-junction cell, which means the silicon part of the cell are gonna be comparable to others. However if the 28% number is correct, you do get another 4-7% (~15-25% increase) with little extra water usage.
The added efficiency is really a big deal considering limited roof space for many home owners in the city. Excited to see the progress and new products coming out.
Not only the limited roof and facade space is a key here, but the economics of fully installed PVP's: The cost of 1 installed panel is approximately the same while power harvested is increased!
There is another approach to further improve efficiency: With current silicon is it is cheaper to buy extra panels than to use solar tracking. But, as the kWh per panel increases with perovskite layering, presumably cost/kWh will drop while cost/panel will rise. That sets the stage for tracking technology to become economically viable in general. (It is viable in the small set of edge cases where you need a certain amount of power, but have a limited space for panels.)
I think efficiency is a bit of a non-issue assuming panels became still an order of magnitude cheaper. 10% efficiency is totally fine if the panels or film sheets cost tens of dollars. Most places are not efficiency limited in any way. What's more important in many higher latitudes is having enough extra panels to be able to make dual-sided west-east farms or have separate panel groups heading east, south and west and be completely ok with some of the panels producing next to nothing for 2/3 of the day time. Winter production also practically needs vertical panels which are not that great during the summer. If they're cheap enough so you can build a summer set and a winter set it won't matter much. Panels need to be so cheap that we can extend the morning and evening curves as far as possible. The mid-day production peak will soon be an actual problem because there is nowhere to dump the negatively priced electricity.
I like people like you that tumble the numbers and find new viable economic tipping points. Well done. I was mucking around with the idea of using my solar system to replace gasoline rather than grid electricity the other day and found that powering a car ( EV) saved me 4 times more money in gas than using to replace grid electricity. I then went a little further and thought what if I cover the entire 150 sq metre roof of my 4 bedroom home with panels and came up with this. It would cost $40k (Australian) and generate enough to power 14 EVs each travelling 400 klms each week for 20 years. The weekly solar cost of each EV would be $3.00. The cost was mind blowing enough but what really astounded me was that just one residential roof top could power 14 cars.
@@wombatillo I'm hoping the point of the video was that because of the efficiency gains, the overall cost per kwh would come down...so would maybe drop prices another 33% (assuming same manufacturing costs). The cheaper the cost/kwh, the more we can overproduce on peak and supplement shoulder periods. I like your optimism, but the video pointed out I think that we've hit the limit on solar panel frames. I hope we have another order of magnitude of price reductions on the silicon, but it's pretty far along the S curve now. Of course another halving of solar electricity is great if combined with perovskite or other multi layer technology, but 10x reduction...already costs to install on roofs is becoming the biggest issue. I hope you're right.
Things will likely go the opposite way. It is expected from perovskite solar panels to be extremely cheap, as they basically can be a film, instead of silicon+glass construction. So after the initial higher prices (where customers with limited roof area will want to pay more for the new tech with higher efficiency), the cost of silicon+perovskite sandwich should become similar to silicon-only designs as solar panel manufacturing transitions to it. And there may also be competition from extremely cheap (at a cost of much lower efficiency and product life) perovskite-only adhesive solar film products or similar.
@@markumbers5362 Australia and China may be the poster children for nation scale solar. Adelaide is always setting records for most days running entirely on solar/wind and batteries. And with heat in the north, solar output lines sort of well with air conditioning needs...(although everyone turning on AC after work is a bit of an issue...hence batteries...but batteries in EVs...better charge at work ;) I hope work charging accelerates).
@@JustHaveaThink I still want people to try for better but get something to market. Even if it is only test markets. Let us see how these differing applications fair in actual use. We will have successes and failures. Learn from all of them.
Great video as usual. The increase in efficiency from 22% to 33% sounds great but I haven't seen anyone mention the fact that is a whopping great 50% increase in power output. My 5kWp array in Spain produces around 35 kWh per day in the summer months (more than my needs) but only around 12 to 15 kWh in the winter. That 50% increase in the winter would be a real bonus.
🎶 Sunshine on my rooftop makes me happy Sunshine in my car can make me smile Sunshine in my household is so lovely Sunshine almost always makes me high 🎵 (Apologies to John Denver)
Great efforts all round and we eagerly await the commercial production of these and the cheaper tech solutions for solar for people who need it. The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades!
Yeahhhh finally!! 😍 i was following this tech for years, and now seems there are companies ready for production! Also 3Sun with Enel in Catania, Italy, also claim they are quite ready for Tandem Si/Perovskite cells!
"Imagine if we all worked together instead of competing in the "free market"" - a free market presumes cooperation in society. So you're making a false conflict there.
@@TheDanEdwards cooperation assumed, but not practiced. Competion and denegration of competing interests, conservation of existing investments and downright skullduggery in political manouvering are the defining actualities of the "free" market. Not to forget commercial and corporate takeovers creating quasi monopolies.
It will be interesting to see how perovskite on perovskite works out - potentially cheaper than silicon for both (or more than 2) bandgaps. (Acknowledging that, by "perovskite" we mean perovskite-like materials.)
I heard several mentions about breakthroughs in perovskites, but here is the a lifespan of 25 years was first mentioned. I was sincerely not expecting that much
I certainly would NOT have laughed at you!!!! I had had solar running my house except the fridge and hot water in 1991!!! I used to tell people that it was the way to go, even demonstrated water pumping from a single 40watt panel to a farmer, he thought it was just a "Gadget" Now his whole farm runs on the Sun!!
⬆️ efficiency + ⬆️ longevity + ⬇️ cost + ⬇️ weight = ⬆️ practical applications. It starts making sense to shoehorn in solar anywhere and everywhere, including areas that don't get great sun exposure or have perfect exposure angles or where weight is an issue or it's barely worth it with today's solar panels, eg tops of cars (so many people think this is an obvious idea, but for the added cost and complexity it barely adds a few miles of range per day - the equivalent of plugging in for a minute or two... assuming you've left your car in full sun all day. But if it's cheaper than paint, then it certainly makes sense!).
Heh. When I was a kid back in the '70s, I had a toy truck powered by a solar cell. It was one of the polycrystaline ones, with the silicon grains the size of your fingernail. It propelled the truck at a crawl, and I hesitate to imagine how much a megawatt of them would have cost. As a side note, many perovskites can be made to have catalytic properties.
Funnily enough, at the micro-scale is where something like this would really help. Electronics with ultra-light super efficient solar panels would enable distributed sensors in a way not currently possible. This could help farmers target irrigation to drier parts of their fields, alert logistics companies to the location of equipment like trailers and dollies, amongst other things.
I am an Albertan. We have a moratorium on solar and wind; there is fear that our electric system will become unstable because of the intermittent supply. I suggest that with solar, wind, that the government should encourage technology to allow individuals to store and release energy to provide for the needs of the grid as determined by the system operator. For example, the system operator could electronically call-out for release of electric vehicle battery energy into the grid when there is a risk of network instability. I think that forward-looking people in society would be happy to help stabilise the electric grid and get a discount on their electric bill at the same time.
Alberta's conservative government has fear that the fossil fuel era encouraging the disgusting pollution and emissions from filthy wasteful oil production from its tar sands is coming to an end. "Grid instability" is nonsense fear-mongering; the job of the grid is to balance different electrical generation sources and demands, and having new cheap electrical generation that operates at almost zero marginal cost is obviously a win, even if it's intermittent.
@@skierpageI respectfully disagree. The part that I agree about is that the government is playing politics so that it can delay the rapid change in CO2 emissions that the world needs. As a retired electrical engineer, I recognise that it is true that "grid instability" is a reality. I am also sure that there are practical solutions to be developed and encouraged by the government. We need a government that will encourage and incentivize innovative solutions of various kinds rather than put road-blocks to change. The only (laughable) attempt that the Alberta government is know for is "Carbon Capture and Storage." In other words, they have incentivized the continuing use of oil and gas and potentially ignored solutions to the grid stability issue.
@@skierpage. It’s not nonsense at all. Look up “duck back curve”. It’s a real problem and getting worse. A thermal, combined cycle plant takes half a day to a day to wind production up and down. Yes you can plan ahead, but it can’t respond to hourly variations, say intermittent cloud cover. Do you want your power going off randomly? All the time? If you want to know what that’s like, look up South Africa. They have a power shortage and have daily blackouts. (Most scheduled)
Thank you very much for those intelligent and informed subjets that are of the most importance for our survival as a species! Merci et continuez le bon travail...
I'm a long time fan of perovskite and it's so pleasing to learn they've managed to reach sufficient longevity. Looking forward to the first perovskite car paint 😀
I am encouraged to learn of multiple ventures employing people who are working so hard to bring us solutions to our energy issues and the challenges of getting past burning things to make our civilization possible. If we can somehow survive the next 30 years, then the solutions will be only 30 years away. 😁 Perhaps our grandchildren will experience these breakthroughs. Thanks again, Dave!
@@RiDu-p4m To be fair Saule are still very small but all good luck to them, their developments look highly promising. I am interested in supercapacitors and the potential for PV energy harvesting for IOT devices.
Good job, Dave. I remember doing research about solar back in 2020 and finding the "ix-junction III-V solar cells with 47.1% conversion efficiency under 143 Suns concentration" research paper.
As an aspiring off-gridder I’m almost too excited for these!! I’m saving up to buy land and build a home, by the time I’m there these should be super distributed and hopefully much lower cost.. Perovskites solar and Sodium Ion home batteries are definitely what I’m most looking forward to for the coming years
It's no wonder really that a tandem PV cell can beat the 30% limit. It's essentially two PVs in one. Call it clever or call it cheating, I'm just glad it works.
Sure! It's really cool! See also: Solar power plant mounted in multi-storey building! (for survivors in the zombie apocalypse): Shorts version: ua-cam.com/video/k9AiiCLALRA/v-deo.html Full version: ua-cam.com/video/sOskjOsl-cA/v-deo.html
They are still very expensive. About $20-30K for a house in the US. Its about a 15 year payback. which is pretty much break even if their life is 20 years and something happens like squirrels. Hopefully, things will get to where regular people can put them on their houses.
Washing lines are pretty good at drying your clothes and very simple to construct, it's Feb 12 in England today, that is winter for those that do not know, and I will have dried three fall machine loads since Sunday. It helps if it's not raining, but nothing is perfect, and you just need to keep an eye on the weather. Oh, and if you are interested, that is in North London.
I saw a video recently about a UK study on vertically oriented solar panels that produce better than st standard orientation. It might be a good topic to look into. As always enjoy your programs and look forward to watching every Sunday night!
Just a couple of comments on my own experience as a Texan and as a 5.4 watt residential solar user. 1. 10 yrs have produced 80,000 kWhr of energy from 22 panels. 👌 2. Didn't realize that having the tilt of the roof at the best angle to catch sunlight just right is important. 3. AND... having that roof facing 180° due south was the best for maximizing energy generation. BUT.. living in Texas is detrimental to any desire to get off from dirty fossil fuels. EV cars have extra and excessive annual taxes. Financial firms cannot bid on government bonds if they invest in green energy, reducing pool of bidders (=higher interest rates), and many more anti-green laws every year. 😢
Thank you, as always. Other ways of increasing the efficiency of solar production? Vertical mountings Cooling solar panels in extreme temperatures Agrovoltaics
If they all still use lead, I see that as the foremost caveat for their sustainable production and usage. But as usual with sudden technological breakthroughs that are not quiet there yet for mass usage (but there is money to be made), such as fossil fuel-based plastics which seemed amazing a century ago but in hindsight were a very bad easy solution (to "what light, stiff and relatively strong material can we manufacture with?"), we are quick to adopt and lose our heads about cleaning the mess it has left later. My point being - on wide adoption these will most definitely result in massive amounts of lead that will not be properly recycled and will just leach out everywhere.
I have been following this company for years and eagerly hoping for success. The story is tainted in that there is no UK or EU Silicon PV panel producer to compete with the flood of Chinese Silicon panels at less than half the price!
The biggest advantage of increased efficiency will be the possibility of smaller instalations enabling its use in towns on apartment buildings or smaller houses where today it just won't work.
As a Solar installer, I can with certainty tell you that Perovskite Panels would be greater seller than silicon panels in the retired market, almost all my retired clients complain that they don’t want to pay so much money for a item that would out last them, they all feel like their responsible for paying someone else’s system because they won’t ever benefit from something that would be functional for 25 years, doing the math they claim they would probably live to see 20%-30% of the silicon panel’s lifetime production, they feel its over kill for their needs, money and time. And it is understandable, sad fact but understandable, so they would certainly rather pay less for something they could still out live
Surely the problem here is that while panel prices fall, and batter prices fall - installation costs do not (either fixings and mountings or labour - it just doesn't seem to be competitive - not that sparky work ever is, seemingly, or plumbing). The real price of a solar system installed and commissioned, especially if grid connected in some way, is not falling in the way the panel graph prices suggest. We really need a way to address this.
Great video! In terms of ways to improve a solar panel, how about using all that extra energy they capture in the form of heat for something useful like heating house. Right now that triples the price of a panel. Ought to be able to improve on that.
Dear Matt. With the impressive down slope of PV cell cost and prices, it leaves a lot of people and possible investors somehow disappointed as the full cost for any installed base per KWp haven't been following this curve. I think I have identified one of the main causes of this discrepancy in the fact a dominant cost factor is actually installation (labor) and installation materials (structures) rather than the actual panel price. Going a few more steps on this line of thinking I tend to agree with your statement in the video that increasing panel efficiency by a significant degree is the only way to make things better, provided reliability and durability is not negatively impacted. While installation labor per panel more or less stays the same, this way the expected power harvest per installation labor, tooling and materials invested is increasing. With only the cost dropping further on panels the same efficiency as today, all a potential investor can do is invest in more panels for the same money, hence increasing installation labor and structure needs. Conclusion: Coming out with tandem cells at a similar reliability and durability with only a small price premium over current state of the art PV will secure a very rapid acceptance of such product in the market.
No question, the majority of our power will be generated via solar in the near future, with wind, hydro and small nuclear, making up the rest. Tandem solar cells will the standard in the next several years as the solar industry is remarkable at embracing higher efficiency and new tech.
Squad Solar is a small city car that costs less than £6k new, and has a solar panel roof that adds up to 30 miles of range a day. That's 150 to 200 free miles a week. Almost-free city driving for the life of the car. They are taking orders for the first 10,000 right now. Delivery this year. Already there are orders from city car rental apps. This car looks seriously disruptive too the ICE car system.
The Sun Belt Southwest is prime for solar collection, as well as is wind, but highway signs warn drivers of what's the dust-storm routine for staying alive. Water to wash those arrays is certainly useful for cash crops and cover crops growing beneath those. But consider that the empty hollows of wind towers would be stronger, owing to surface tension, if they were filled to the top with water. Fresh Mississippi River water, channeled to Texas via the Intracoastal Waterway, would allow pumping to those great heights in series, in a better way than oil wells have pumped that distance for a century and more. Gravity takes the spill-over from pumping and moves it to the base of a next uphill tower, some dozen or so miles distant. You see, instead of pushing water uphill for over 1500 miles of desert pipeline, the wind/solar bonus energy can pump it all one-mile vertical, in one hundred-foot-lifts at a time, in a series of several per tower. Top Ten List: 1) clean solar arrays, 2) crops beneath them 3) fresh water for industry and households 4) off-peak vertical water energy storage 5) stormproof coastal barriers 6) an end to the Delta Dead Zone 7) employment and land-use created out of wasteland 8) water for electrolysis hydrogen-to-ammonia pipelines for farmers and cracked again in distant industries, with nitrogen gas returned in the same pipeline 9) an energy corridor created that is valid for space ports, hyperloop parcel post, supersonic passenger flight safe-zones 10) cooling the planet in our most underutilized stretch of the USA.
An excellent top notch synopsis Dave, thank you! 🎉😊🌅. Cambridge seems to have hit the mark 🎯 ahead of the competition. My thoughts are ancient by comparison; I just wondered why someone hasn't simply developed a layer to convert the UV and visible spectrum light into what the traditional silicon photovoltaic cell wants, which is red light to infrared. Kind of a florescent layer that can convert sunlight to the food that the cells want.
Great video. In my point of view the higher power output per square meter is much more relevant than the cost reduction. This increased power brings applications such as (partially) solar powered boats and cars closer. Here, you will simply want more power to propel your vehicle as you can’t expand the surface area anymore. For example if previously 50% was powered by solar, you could now power 75% by solar which doubles your range on batteries.
The cost issues with solar are now around distribution and installation. PV modules are being made (with some subsidy help) for €120/KW. But put that on the roof, along with an inverter and some electricians to wire it up, and it's €1500/KW. And that price has fallen in the last two years. Improving the efficiency could help as the same installation - with the same roofers, or the same platform in a field - can yield 50% more capacity. But we still need cheaper methods to deploy and connect solar PV.
Cooling (and using) the heat solar PV panels collect increases net efficiency and lifetime. Directing sunlight by reflection will also increase the length of total daily potential for energy production. Both of these approaches will allow wider applications and lower total installed costs. The industry is cherry-picking locations rather than innovating for broader potential sites in the urban environment.
Yes and no, the more you can convert the less heat there will be in the first place. IR is the heat - so if you can take that in - the less over all heat goes to the rest of the panel it self.
There’s some new Dutch research that suggests the angle of solar panels is all wrong, would be good to hear your interpretation of that. Keep up the good work 👍
It's very good to make the solar panels more efficient as long as that eventually comes with a cost reduction overall. Like obviously you can get more solar from the same area if they are higher efficiency so if you are limited on space that's very useful especially in residential use but for business if you have a field that you are allowed to put solar panels then your choice between high and low efficiency will come down to whether the cost of land available for that purchase against the cost of difference between the 2 types. If however the new solar panels are cheaper than the old ones per watt output then you'll never see an old one be manufactured again.
Very promising indeed, but I'll believe it when I see them in mass production, at even lower prices, AND when they are proven to have longevity! They last part has always been my biggest concern with this technology. I'm sure we'll get there, but I'm not expecting this to happen this year...
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As a Canadian. I enjoy hearing people are "beavering away".
As a beaver, I enjoy people are away "hearing Canadians".
Beavering?! He said, beavering 🦫 😂. In England I thought it was "rabbiting". I like beavering better I think.
@@leemason4024
I am in England too, my understanding is;
' Rabbiting' means talking incessantly. ' Beavering' means working dilligently.👍
Moost interesting observation !
As a Canadian, "I believe... that the Beaver is a truly proud and noble animal"!
-- Molson's I Am Canadian beer ad, the manifesto of the best part of North America
As a chemist who has worked on perovskite-structured materials in general, and photovoltaic perovskites a bit too, I'd like to point out some small errors in the video: Perovskite mineral is CaTiO3, but this is not the "perovskite" in PV cells. Those materials are various lead halide materials, which have the same crystal structure as CaTiO3: the perovskite structure. But the chemical composition is completely different, as are the properties. You cannot make solar cells from CaTiO3
As I understand it, it is about adding the Perovskite as a layer to absorb more
frequencies that somehow are passed on to the underlying normal
silicon which absorbs less frequencies on its own.
But then, what about the 1 micrometer film?
I guess, the film is part of the sandwich that makes up the pv.
How do they adhere the film to the silicon substrate?
Furthermore, Perovskite here, seems to refer to the structure
which is so typical for Perovskite more than to the actual
atomic elements in the (perovskitian {?adjective?} structure.
Unfortunately, no 1 micometer solar panel then?
@@arnoldvankampen3672 I believe the thin perovskite layer is transparent but able to collect in the blue and maybe ultraviolet wavelengths. Silicon currently does not collect this energy.
They have lead
thanks for pointing that out. I had the same thought.
So perovskite does not refer to a chemical, but a shape/ structure that multiple chemicals can take?
the supercool thing is, that the additional efficiency is still there in winter where the loss of energy mostly affects the infrared part of the spectrum.
using them vertically on a fence or balcony still gives you a good amount of efficiency in winter.
the vertical installation is not perfect in summer but it is a better balance throughout the whole year for people who live a few thousand kilometer away from the equator.
and together with a sodium ion battery, you get a quite affordable setup to produce cheap energy everywhere all year.
btw.: the University of Bayreuth pushed sodium ion batteries to 165Wh/kg which is fantastic!!!
the future of renewables is bright!!!
And panel temperature is often forgotten. Efficiency drops at T rises, but as T falls efficiency rises. I just had a 100W panel at peak winter sun, northern latitude, ideal alignment and on a clear day at subfreezing temperatures generate 110W while on a normal sunny summer day, you never get above 90W.
I didnt know this, do you have any numbers on its potential extra gains in winter? Current panels are already efficient enough in summer where even my small system makes way more power than I can use but the worst 3 months of winter are a real struggle so even a 10% gain would make a difference.
obvioulsy not possible fromn he sun directly, therefore must be snow r frost that reflects. therefore surrounding the floor with mylar or similkar woul do he same job and your panels not get wrecked vertically haha
that is a very good point, I didn't think about it this way. since visible and ultra-violet light get scattered by the atmosphere, a visible/blue light solar panel will be more efficient when not in direct sunlight than a normal solar panel. I imagine it would also make perovskite bifacial solar panels a lot more interesting for the same reason.
@@jedics1 You can't expect any extra gains as the time you can expose a panel to the mentioned performance is typically very short.
As an installer, I cant wait to see some from the wholesalers as this would mean people in smaller properties could have a system worthwhile and get their bills down. They dont need to be big roofs or even face south. East West splits will work well, I do lots of them and my customers get their investment back with 5 -7 years with plenty of life to make and save a tonne of money.
Yeah. I've seen several estimates for my house over the past five years or so. Can't make it work financially.
I'd also imagine lighter panels would be appreciated as a general safety and convenience benefit to your employees too.
Joe, agreed! On a lot of houses, the bit of roof facing south isn’t that big!
@@meganegan5992 i doubt its gonna be lighter as the perovskite is additional to the silicone ones.
@@teekanne15most of the mass is made of glass, plastic and the aluminum for support structure. The photodiode part weighs very little.
I've been really enjoying this series. Thank you for going back into these old video topics to review what has happened. I feel like more often than not big headlines get published on a new idea and then it disappears into the void. Seeing where these technologies are at after the headlines have come and gone is very helpful
Cheers. Glad you like them!
I have to say I love your follow ups.... its easy to just take some lab article and think "here is the breakthrough", but we learned from Tesla.... prototypes are easy, production is hard. Thank you for following up the most probable candidates...
production with perovskite is also easy and cheap. but we don't have a breakthrough that is still missing. it is longevity of the perovskite layer. this still needs to be solved.
Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it :-)
@@stefanweilhartner4415 In fact this is to be solved prior to mass production! That's why production is hard.
As a person who founded her own solar installation business for remote homes 27 years ago, I have seen many wonderful improvements in the hardware necessary to get electricity to these off-grid homes. This is yet another good improvement that should benefit people well into the future. 👍 Thanks for the update.
I know somebody like that… you're not in San Luis Obispo, are you?
As a homeowner living under gray Seattle skies and next to huge, shadow making evergreen trees, I'm looking forward to solar power that makes financial sense for me.
@@nomadMik Hi. NomadMik. No, I’m in Colorado. 🌞
@@cathyhaynes2903 maybe on the south side of the trees?
That would be my neighbors roof. Not sure he'd go for that!
It is hard to always be cheer leading these folks involved with renewables and the new energy economy. But on the other hand we have a lot of just wait and see. This looks promising. It would be great if it all works out.
Just to note what you said, solar/wind/storage IS the cheapest way to provide power in history. We don’t need to wait and see, we just need a lot of folks to get out of the way. And let folks get it done.
Subsidies is what works
Storage how?
@@EdSurridge We're past that point aren't we? Governments should be putting all their resources behind this research.
I expect this to be a near sure thing, as the largest solar panel manufacturers in their slides are already putting only 1 more generation of efficiency improvements to pure silicon cells, and then perovskites from then on.
it bothers me because most of these amazing technologies are fruit of capitalism and are behind patents, what slows progress. if everyone had access to each other's technologies and discoveries we could be much farther ahead, but they won't share because it may hurt their future profits. its the same bullshit as the covid vaccines. we were supposed to be working together.
As always a clean concise informative and entertaining presentation, in my book one of the Top UA-cam presenters currently on the planet 👊🏻
Twelve years ago, I was planning to put 4kW of solar panels on the roof of my UK house, not just to save the planet, but to make the most out of the government's hopelessly overgenerous (at the time) Feed In Tarif. However, I was a bit worried what adding these panels might do to the value of my house. So, I asked a few estate agents whether such an installation might add, or detract value. And they all said..... "What are solar panels?" (!!!) I'd like to think we've moved on a bit.
My late father had a similar experience in the 1960s when trying to install loft insulation. He contacted all kinds of builders' merchants, hardware stores and the few DIY shops around at the time, and the overwhelming response was "what's loft insulation?". Always seems like "the industry" is well behind burgeoning consumer demand.
@@broadsword6650 I think it was just getting established here in Canada around that time. My parent's house had a whopping R6 or R7 in the attic.
Wonderful video Dave. As someone in Solar PV, I'm eager to see Perovskite penetrate the market in the same way bifacial technology has in the last 5 or so years.
With perovskite and bifacial modules, we definitely might be looking at 35% well before 2030.
Here's hoping!
Fingers crossed :-)
we dont need toxic lewd solar panels. really bad idea.
The answer to our problems is shown to us everyday.
We just need to harness the energy provided to us by the best nuclear fusion reactor in the solar system.
PRAISE THE SUN!
IT'S A HELIOCENTRIC WORLD!
Dave,
I'm pleased you took the time to come back to this. One metric that is super important is how much energy and water is required to make a solar cell. I've read somewhere that Perovskite cells require something like two orders of magnitude less energy to produce per watt of generating capacity. That means that the amount of time a solar cell has to operate before it digs itself out of the energy hole created by its manufacture is significantly less.
It's not super important, since the payback time for the energy invested is down to a couple of years. The EROEI objection was valid... 20 years ago.
@@skierpage if the panel was made from scratch, if it was recycled its even shorter.
Water is absolutely a key metric, these days, energy not so much. In China (and no doubt elsewhere) there are solar panel factories more or less being powered by solar panels. As that percentage of powered used coming from solar increases, the power demand becomes less of an issue.
@@Muppetkeeper That is correct, and the same is valid for those factories (and they are growing) that use closed loop water cycles for their production needs.
Even if that's the case, this is a multi-junction cell, which means the silicon part of the cell are gonna be comparable to others. However if the 28% number is correct, you do get another 4-7% (~15-25% increase) with little extra water usage.
The added efficiency is really a big deal considering limited roof space for many home owners in the city. Excited to see the progress and new products coming out.
Not only the limited roof and facade space is a key here, but the economics of fully installed PVP's: The cost of 1 installed panel is approximately the same while power harvested is increased!
I REEEEAAAALLY love your videos and how there aren't any ads! Thank you!!
There is another approach to further improve efficiency:
With current silicon is it is cheaper to buy extra panels than to use solar tracking. But, as the kWh per panel increases with perovskite layering, presumably cost/kWh will drop while cost/panel will rise. That sets the stage for tracking technology to become economically viable in general. (It is viable in the small set of edge cases where you need a certain amount of power, but have a limited space for panels.)
I think efficiency is a bit of a non-issue assuming panels became still an order of magnitude cheaper. 10% efficiency is totally fine if the panels or film sheets cost tens of dollars. Most places are not efficiency limited in any way. What's more important in many higher latitudes is having enough extra panels to be able to make dual-sided west-east farms or have separate panel groups heading east, south and west and be completely ok with some of the panels producing next to nothing for 2/3 of the day time. Winter production also practically needs vertical panels which are not that great during the summer. If they're cheap enough so you can build a summer set and a winter set it won't matter much. Panels need to be so cheap that we can extend the morning and evening curves as far as possible. The mid-day production peak will soon be an actual problem because there is nowhere to dump the negatively priced electricity.
I like people like you that tumble the numbers and find new viable economic tipping points. Well done. I was mucking around with the idea of using my solar system to replace gasoline rather than grid electricity the other day and found that powering a car ( EV) saved me 4 times more money in gas than using to replace grid electricity. I then went a little further and thought what if I cover the entire 150 sq metre roof of my 4 bedroom home with panels and came up with this. It would cost $40k (Australian) and generate enough to power 14 EVs each travelling 400 klms each week for 20 years. The weekly solar cost of each EV would be $3.00. The cost was mind blowing enough but what really astounded me was that just one residential roof top could power 14 cars.
@@wombatillo I'm hoping the point of the video was that because of the efficiency gains, the overall cost per kwh would come down...so would maybe drop prices another 33% (assuming same manufacturing costs). The cheaper the cost/kwh, the more we can overproduce on peak and supplement shoulder periods.
I like your optimism, but the video pointed out I think that we've hit the limit on solar panel frames. I hope we have another order of magnitude of price reductions on the silicon, but it's pretty far along the S curve now. Of course another halving of solar electricity is great if combined with perovskite or other multi layer technology, but 10x reduction...already costs to install on roofs is becoming the biggest issue. I hope you're right.
Things will likely go the opposite way. It is expected from perovskite solar panels to be extremely cheap, as they basically can be a film, instead of silicon+glass construction. So after the initial higher prices (where customers with limited roof area will want to pay more for the new tech with higher efficiency), the cost of silicon+perovskite sandwich should become similar to silicon-only designs as solar panel manufacturing transitions to it. And there may also be competition from extremely cheap (at a cost of much lower efficiency and product life) perovskite-only adhesive solar film products or similar.
@@markumbers5362 Australia and China may be the poster children for nation scale solar. Adelaide is always setting records for most days running entirely on solar/wind and batteries. And with heat in the north, solar output lines sort of well with air conditioning needs...(although everyone turning on AC after work is a bit of an issue...hence batteries...but batteries in EVs...better charge at work ;) I hope work charging accelerates).
Thank you for the commentary.
Sometimes perfection gets in the way of good enough.
Couldn't agree more!
@@JustHaveaThink I still want people to try for better but get something to market.
Even if it is only test markets.
Let us see how these differing applications fair in actual use.
We will have successes and failures.
Learn from all of them.
Unless your name is John B Goodenough. Perfection would never get in his way.
@@world_still_spins I mean currently 6 fett of dirt are getting in his way, so perfection is the least of his problems.
Great video as usual. The increase in efficiency from 22% to 33% sounds great but I haven't seen anyone mention the fact that is a whopping great 50% increase in power output. My 5kWp array in Spain produces around 35 kWh per day in the summer months (more than my needs) but only around 12 to 15 kWh in the winter. That 50% increase in the winter would be a real bonus.
Nature sure has a sense of humor.
Getting older isnt the best part of it however.
its been fucking with us since we invented science.
🎶 Sunshine on my rooftop makes me happy
Sunshine in my car can make me smile
Sunshine in my household is so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high 🎵
(Apologies to John Denver)
Listening to him and this guy changes gloom and doom to positivity! That's good! "Coming home to a place I've never been before!" Marvelous!
The Danny Kaye version.. soo funny
Depending on petrol makes me crash.
Think John would have loved it. Thanks@@edbail4399
I think you would like the song "Faces to the Sun" by Mango Grove.
Thanks for another great video. Sounds rather promising with Oxford. Cheers
my exact thoughts!
Cheers. I hope so :-)
Thanks Dave!
Great efforts all round and we eagerly await the commercial production of these and the cheaper tech solutions for solar for people who need it.
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades!
Thank you for, as ever, giving the thumb nail overview of these technical developments. 😊👏👏
Thank you. Always enjoy your videos.
If we get to 35% efficiency, it might start making sense to install PVs on EVs and get almost 2kW on sunny days, being able to recharge ~10 km/h.
Excellent research as per...
Nature does seem to enjoy a laugh at our continued insistence on living linearly within her circular systems.
Yeahhhh finally!! 😍 i was following this tech for years, and now seems there are companies ready for production! Also 3Sun with Enel in Catania, Italy, also claim they are quite ready for Tandem Si/Perovskite cells!
Well, perovskite photovoltaic panels are already in early stages of deployment by Saule Technologies:
ua-cam.com/video/vaXsYQuOMYs/v-deo.html
Imagine if we all worked together instead of competing in the "free market", we'd have solved all our problems already.
Indeed so.
"Imagine if we all worked together instead of competing in the "free market"" - a free market presumes cooperation in society. So you're making a false conflict there.
@@TheDanEdwards cooperation assumed, but not practiced. Competion and denegration of competing interests, conservation of existing investments and downright skullduggery in political manouvering are the defining actualities of the "free" market. Not to forget commercial and corporate takeovers creating quasi monopolies.
Thanks for the update Dave, keeping us on top of renewable tech developments as always, much appreciated ❤
Good update on the tech. Ty!
It will be interesting to see how perovskite on perovskite works out - potentially cheaper than silicon for both (or more than 2) bandgaps. (Acknowledging that, by "perovskite" we mean perovskite-like materials.)
This would imply you have 2 different Perovskites that have this much different bandgap. Not sure if that comes any time soon.
I heard several mentions about breakthroughs in perovskites, but here is the a lifespan of 25 years was first mentioned. I was sincerely not expecting that much
I certainly would NOT have laughed at you!!!! I had had solar running my house except the fridge and hot water in 1991!!! I used to tell people that it was the way to go, even demonstrated water pumping from a single 40watt panel to a farmer, he thought it was just a "Gadget" Now his whole farm runs on the Sun!!
Super interesting news big supporter of PV have had them on every house I've owned so far
⬆️ efficiency + ⬆️ longevity + ⬇️ cost + ⬇️ weight = ⬆️ practical applications. It starts making sense to shoehorn in solar anywhere and everywhere, including areas that don't get great sun exposure or have perfect exposure angles or where weight is an issue or it's barely worth it with today's solar panels, eg tops of cars (so many people think this is an obvious idea, but for the added cost and complexity it barely adds a few miles of range per day - the equivalent of plugging in for a minute or two... assuming you've left your car in full sun all day. But if it's cheaper than paint, then it certainly makes sense!).
Your channel is so very entertaining. And of course informative.
Greetings from the Antipodes.
Thanks
Thanks for your support. Much appreciated!
Very informative and, dare I say it, slightly encouraging! Thanks Dave
One of the few great sources of information whose voice I can stand listening to. Love you don’t shy away from being real
I work just across the road from Oxford Solar PV - hello from First Light Fusion! :D
Got some insode info for us? And how soes one succeed with a venture?
I am from Pakistan. Your videos are really interesting and I love to watch your videos.
5:03 - there are almost no solar panels on the roof of the factory making the solar panels!
Yeah, things like that are so annoying.
If you really believe in your product it ought to be deployed on your premises, right?
they have to build the factory first to make the panels to put on the roof
Duhuh, they have to build the factory and panels first
@@BrattoesIt is an existing solar panel manufacturing facility. They have built a new line to manufacture the perovskite panels
Heh. When I was a kid back in the '70s, I had a toy truck powered by a solar cell. It was one of the polycrystaline ones, with the silicon grains the size of your fingernail. It propelled the truck at a crawl, and I hesitate to imagine how much a megawatt of them would have cost.
As a side note, many perovskites can be made to have catalytic properties.
Funnily enough, at the micro-scale is where something like this would really help. Electronics with ultra-light super efficient solar panels would enable distributed sensors in a way not currently possible. This could help farmers target irrigation to drier parts of their fields, alert logistics companies to the location of equipment like trailers and dollies, amongst other things.
What are they used to catalyse?
Quality update
I am an Albertan. We have a moratorium on solar and wind; there is fear that our electric system will become unstable because of the intermittent supply. I suggest that with solar, wind, that the government should encourage technology to allow individuals to store and release energy to provide for the needs of the grid as determined by the system operator. For example, the system operator could electronically call-out for release of electric vehicle battery energy into the grid when there is a risk of network instability.
I think that forward-looking people in society would be happy to help stabilise the electric grid and get a discount on their electric bill at the same time.
Alberta's conservative government has fear that the fossil fuel era encouraging the disgusting pollution and emissions from filthy wasteful oil production from its tar sands is coming to an end. "Grid instability" is nonsense fear-mongering; the job of the grid is to balance different electrical generation sources and demands, and having new cheap electrical generation that operates at almost zero marginal cost is obviously a win, even if it's intermittent.
@@skierpageI respectfully disagree. The part that I agree about is that the government is playing politics so that it can delay the rapid change in CO2 emissions that the world needs. As a retired electrical engineer, I recognise that it is true that "grid instability" is a reality. I am also sure that there are practical solutions to be developed and encouraged by the government. We need a government that will encourage and incentivize innovative solutions of various kinds rather than put road-blocks to change.
The only (laughable) attempt that the Alberta government is know for is "Carbon Capture and Storage." In other words, they have incentivized the continuing use of oil and gas and potentially ignored solutions to the grid stability issue.
@@skierpage. It’s not nonsense at all. Look up “duck back curve”. It’s a real problem and getting worse. A thermal, combined cycle plant takes half a day to a day to wind production up and down. Yes you can plan ahead, but it can’t respond to hourly variations, say intermittent cloud cover. Do you want your power going off randomly? All the time? If you want to know what that’s like, look up South Africa. They have a power shortage and have daily blackouts. (Most scheduled)
Thank you very much for those intelligent and informed subjets that are of the most importance for our survival as a species! Merci et continuez le bon travail...
I'm a long time fan of perovskite and it's so pleasing to learn they've managed to reach sufficient longevity. Looking forward to the first perovskite car paint 😀
Nice video as always, many thanks
Thanks Veronica. Glad you enjoyed it :-)
Random comment for channel interaction.
Thanks for another great video
Glad you enjoyed it :-)
I am encouraged to learn of multiple ventures employing people who are working so hard to bring us solutions to our energy issues and the challenges of getting past burning things to make our civilization possible. If we can somehow survive the next 30 years, then the solutions will be only 30 years away. 😁 Perhaps our grandchildren will experience these breakthroughs. Thanks again, Dave!
Saule Technologies, Poland, is another. They develop inkjet-printed, ultra-thin, and flexible solar cells based on perovskites.
Yes, he missed to show the company that have already deployed commercial installation.
ua-cam.com/video/vaXsYQuOMYs/v-deo.html
@@RiDu-p4m To be fair Saule are still very small but all good luck to them, their developments look highly promising. I am interested in supercapacitors and the potential for PV energy harvesting for IOT devices.
Good job, Dave. I remember doing research about solar back in 2020 and finding the "ix-junction III-V solar cells with 47.1% conversion efficiency under 143 Suns concentration" research paper.
As an aspiring off-gridder I’m almost too excited for these!! I’m saving up to buy land and build a home, by the time I’m there these should be super distributed and hopefully much lower cost.. Perovskites solar and Sodium Ion home batteries are definitely what I’m most looking forward to for the coming years
Another excellent presentation, thanks. 😁👌👌👌❤️❤️
It's no wonder really that a tandem PV cell can beat the 30% limit. It's essentially two PVs in one. Call it clever or call it cheating, I'm just glad it works.
Great and informative video. Well done.
Sure! It's really cool! See also: Solar power plant mounted in multi-storey building! (for survivors in the zombie apocalypse):
Shorts version:
ua-cam.com/video/k9AiiCLALRA/v-deo.html
Full version:
ua-cam.com/video/sOskjOsl-cA/v-deo.html
They are still very expensive. About $20-30K for a house in the US. Its about a 15 year payback. which is pretty much break even if their life is 20 years and something happens like squirrels. Hopefully, things will get to where regular people can put them on their houses.
Washing lines are pretty good at drying your clothes and very simple to construct, it's Feb 12 in England today, that is winter for those that do not know, and I will have dried three fall machine loads since Sunday. It helps if it's not raining, but nothing is perfect, and you just need to keep an eye on the weather. Oh, and if you are interested, that is in North London.
I saw a video recently about a UK study on vertically oriented solar panels that produce better than st standard orientation. It might be a good topic to look into. As always enjoy your programs and look forward to watching every Sunday night!
Just a couple of comments on my own experience as a Texan and as a 5.4 watt residential solar user.
1. 10 yrs have produced 80,000 kWhr of energy from 22 panels. 👌
2. Didn't realize that having the tilt of the roof at the best angle to catch sunlight just right is important.
3. AND... having that roof facing 180° due south was the best for maximizing energy generation.
BUT.. living in Texas is detrimental to any desire to get off from dirty fossil fuels. EV cars have extra and excessive annual taxes. Financial firms cannot bid on government bonds if they invest in green energy, reducing pool of bidders (=higher interest rates), and many more anti-green laws every year. 😢
Oxford PV - an exciting and promising UK company stating production in Germany. Another loss to the UK economy to chalk up to Brexit?
Yep this is the year I'm finally going solar. It's cheap enough that it would be dumb not to.
👍If you can, get a battery with it
A small little addition: copper based modules, instead of silver, may very well lower the price even further.
Thank you ❤
Thank you, as always.
Other ways of increasing the efficiency of solar production?
Vertical mountings
Cooling solar panels in extreme temperatures
Agrovoltaics
Dear friend, thanks for an excellent and comprehensive presentation. Today I learned. Oh, and greetings from New Mexico🙂
Well done, it looks like we are all looking at a good 40% additional increase in efficiency.
If they all still use lead, I see that as the foremost caveat for their sustainable production and usage. But as usual with sudden technological breakthroughs that are not quiet there yet for mass usage (but there is money to be made), such as fossil fuel-based plastics which seemed amazing a century ago but in hindsight were a very bad easy solution (to "what light, stiff and relatively strong material can we manufacture with?"), we are quick to adopt and lose our heads about cleaning the mess it has left later.
My point being - on wide adoption these will most definitely result in massive amounts of lead that will not be properly recycled and will just leach out everywhere.
what is most tantaliazing to me is that pervoskite can be from seemingly easily accessable materials. Thanks
Thanks for the mental bath.
I have been following this company for years and eagerly hoping for success. The story is tainted in that there is no UK or EU Silicon PV panel producer to compete with the flood of Chinese Silicon panels at less than half the price!
Is this a combination of scale & labour costs?
Gracias
The biggest advantage of increased efficiency will be the possibility of smaller instalations enabling its use in towns on apartment buildings or smaller houses where today it just won't work.
As a Solar installer, I can with certainty tell you that Perovskite Panels would be greater seller than silicon panels in the retired market, almost all my retired clients complain that they don’t want to pay so much money for a item that would out last them, they all feel like their responsible for paying someone else’s system because they won’t ever benefit from something that would be functional for 25 years, doing the math they claim they would probably live to see 20%-30% of the silicon panel’s lifetime production, they feel its over kill for their needs, money and time. And it is understandable, sad fact but understandable, so they would certainly rather pay less for something they could still out live
Even Dave's "TLDR" was more thurough than most others full contemt. 😂
Surely the problem here is that while panel prices fall, and batter prices fall - installation costs do not (either fixings and mountings or labour - it just doesn't seem to be competitive - not that sparky work ever is, seemingly, or plumbing). The real price of a solar system installed and commissioned, especially if grid connected in some way, is not falling in the way the panel graph prices suggest. We really need a way to address this.
Wonderful.
Thank you! Cheers!
Great video! In terms of ways to improve a solar panel, how about using all that extra energy they capture in the form of heat for something useful like heating house. Right now that triples the price of a panel. Ought to be able to improve on that.
Dear Matt. With the impressive down slope of PV cell cost and prices, it leaves a lot of people and possible investors somehow disappointed as the full cost for any installed base per KWp haven't been following this curve. I think I have identified one of the main causes of this discrepancy in the fact a dominant cost factor is actually installation (labor) and installation materials (structures) rather than the actual panel price.
Going a few more steps on this line of thinking I tend to agree with your statement in the video that increasing panel efficiency by a significant degree is the only way to make things better, provided reliability and durability is not negatively impacted. While installation labor per panel more or less stays the same, this way the expected power harvest per installation labor, tooling and materials invested is increasing.
With only the cost dropping further on panels the same efficiency as today, all a potential investor can do is invest in more panels for the same money, hence increasing installation labor and structure needs. Conclusion: Coming out with tandem cells at a similar reliability and durability with only a small price premium over current state of the art PV will secure a very rapid acceptance of such product in the market.
Hi efficiency is important for specialized applications, the more important number for most is price per watt.
Tony Seba fan and he has been spot on relative to disruptive technology adoption for electric transport and renewable energy!
No question, the majority of our power will be generated via solar in the near future, with wind, hydro and small nuclear, making up the rest. Tandem solar cells will the standard in the next several years as the solar industry is remarkable at embracing higher efficiency and new tech.
Squad Solar is a small city car that costs less than £6k new, and has a solar panel roof that adds up to 30 miles of range a day. That's 150 to 200 free miles a week. Almost-free city driving for the life of the car.
They are taking orders for the first 10,000 right now. Delivery this year. Already there are orders from city car rental apps.
This car looks seriously disruptive too the ICE car system.
The Sun Belt Southwest is prime for solar collection, as well as is wind, but highway signs warn drivers of what's the dust-storm routine for staying alive. Water to wash those arrays is certainly useful for cash crops and cover crops growing beneath those. But consider that the empty hollows of wind towers would be stronger, owing to surface tension, if they were filled to the top with water. Fresh Mississippi River water, channeled to Texas via the Intracoastal Waterway, would allow pumping to those great heights in series, in a better way than oil wells have pumped that distance for a century and more. Gravity takes the spill-over from pumping and moves it to the base of a next uphill tower, some dozen or so miles distant. You see, instead of pushing water uphill for over 1500 miles of desert pipeline, the wind/solar bonus energy can pump it all one-mile vertical, in one hundred-foot-lifts at a time, in a series of several per tower.
Top Ten List: 1) clean solar arrays, 2) crops beneath them 3) fresh water for industry and households 4) off-peak vertical water energy storage 5) stormproof coastal barriers 6) an end to the Delta Dead Zone 7) employment and land-use created out of wasteland 8) water for electrolysis hydrogen-to-ammonia pipelines for farmers and cracked again in distant industries, with nitrogen gas returned in the same pipeline 9) an energy corridor created that is valid for space ports, hyperloop parcel post, supersonic passenger flight safe-zones 10) cooling the planet in our most underutilized stretch of the USA.
An excellent top notch synopsis Dave, thank you! 🎉😊🌅. Cambridge seems to have hit the mark 🎯 ahead of the competition. My thoughts are ancient by comparison; I just wondered why someone hasn't simply developed a layer to convert the UV and visible spectrum light into what the traditional silicon photovoltaic cell wants, which is red light to infrared. Kind of a florescent layer that can convert sunlight to the food that the cells want.
Great video. In my point of view the higher power output per square meter is much more relevant than the cost reduction. This increased power brings applications such as (partially) solar powered boats and cars closer. Here, you will simply want more power to propel your vehicle as you can’t expand the surface area anymore. For example if previously 50% was powered by solar, you could now power 75% by solar which doubles your range on batteries.
Nice animation! Glad you hire someone to help you
The cost issues with solar are now around distribution and installation. PV modules are being made (with some subsidy help) for €120/KW. But put that on the roof, along with an inverter and some electricians to wire it up, and it's €1500/KW. And that price has fallen in the last two years.
Improving the efficiency could help as the same installation - with the same roofers, or the same platform in a field - can yield 50% more capacity. But we still need cheaper methods to deploy and connect solar PV.
The caveat for perovskites is always stability, eh?
Thank you 🙂
Coal is the greenest fuel when you take into consideration contamination from mining all the "Green" minerals.
Said germans to shutdown their nuclear power plants...
The ones from "our friends over in the P.R.C." are great. They come with free microphones and Wi-Fi 🤣
Exciting news. Thanks for bringing it.
You bet!
Cooling (and using) the heat solar PV panels collect increases net efficiency and lifetime. Directing sunlight by reflection will also increase the length of total daily potential for energy production. Both of these approaches will allow wider applications and lower total installed costs. The industry is cherry-picking locations rather than innovating for broader potential sites in the urban environment.
Yes and no, the more you can convert the less heat there will be in the first place. IR is the heat - so if you can take that in - the less over all heat goes to the rest of the panel it self.
There’s some new Dutch research that suggests the angle of solar panels is all wrong, would be good to hear your interpretation of that. Keep up the good work 👍
It's very good to make the solar panels more efficient as long as that eventually comes with a cost reduction overall. Like obviously you can get more solar from the same area if they are higher efficiency so if you are limited on space that's very useful especially in residential use but for business if you have a field that you are allowed to put solar panels then your choice between high and low efficiency will come down to whether the cost of land available for that purchase against the cost of difference between the 2 types. If however the new solar panels are cheaper than the old ones per watt output then you'll never see an old one be manufactured again.
Very promising indeed, but I'll believe it when I see them in mass production, at even lower prices, AND when they are proven to have longevity! They last part has always been my biggest concern with this technology. I'm sure we'll get there, but I'm not expecting this to happen this year...
Thank you. The weekly light before the end of the tunnel.. 😂