Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Solar Cells reach 42% Efficiency

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SpectroLab achieve 42% efficiency
in PV Solar Cells


SpectroLab Inc., part of the Boeing organisation, have got their "Concentrator Solar Cells" to the amazing level of 42% efficiency. Plus they expect to push that still further in the next couple of years.

This is one of two major field of play in Solar Cell development, "thin flexible film solar cells" being the other. I have covered both in previous posts.


Solid State v/s Mechanical

I believe these are among the most exciting and important segments of sustainable energy technology being developed. Many of the other development involve mechanical devices such as wind turbines etc., and as most of us know, anything with moving parts will inevitably wear-out and cause problems. Whereas with "Solar Cells" because these are "solid state" there is nothing to wear out.

Wind turbines, wave generators, bio-mass driven steam turbines, even geo-thermal, all need an army of maintenace people to keep them running. They are also technically difficult to install, have an impact on the enviornment in terms of looks, noise etc. But with solar cells you have zero noise, little difficulty in installation, and almost zero maintenance.

This is an area to watch.



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1 comment:

Don Hennick said...

Lets give it a name
I say Global Carbon March
Inter our exhaust


I don’t see any mention on your web site of Pyrolysis or Agrichar . Do you have projects in the planning stage on the carbon sequestration front?

The more you learn about this ancient technique of soil restoration the more you'll see how elegant this solution can be for carbon sequestration, for us all.
Imagine putting the carbon tax funds into the hands of millions of peasant farmers all around the world, building their soil and their net worth at the same time. Please search "AGRICHAR" “BIOCHAR” or
“TERRA PRETA”