40.7 Percent Efficient Solar Cell Announced By DOE |
5 Comments |
| By Steve Balogh in Peak Oil, Solar, Tech Innovations | December 7, 2006 | |
Via Cryptogon:
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner today announced that with DOE funding, a concentrator solar cell produced by Boeing-Spectrolab has recently achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7 percent, establishing a new milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance. This breakthrough may lead to systems with an installation cost of only $3 per watt, producing electricity at a cost of 8-10 cents per kilowatt/hour, making solar electricity a more cost-competitive and integral part of our nation’s energy mix.
(Emphasis definitely freakin’ mine.)
Not to out do Kevin’s exuberance, this is definitely a huge deal. $3 per watt to install? A 62% reduction in installation cost for PV panels? Huge.
Billy Fuccillo Huge:
I mean a breakthrough of this magnitude, stipulating that it could be produced in an appropriate scale, could revolutionize our nation’s energy grid. Currently sagging infrastructure would not need extensive repair, local grids could be set up by neighborhood. The lists go on and on. Again, that is a large stipulation, but a bummed out peak oil boy can dream can’t he?
I’ll leave the behind the scenes conspiracies to Cryptogon (I have to admit following through his links did give me pause). Here is the link to the original DOE release.
Great find Kevin. Thoughts, readers?
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Greg said,
Looking forward to this being commercialised! With this an the ever improving storage capacities, we’re well on our way to redundancy of the grid!
NYCO’s Blog » Other people’s blogs said,
[...] Speaking of candles, I found this neato invention via Groovy Green, a “sun catcher” (really just a solar powered light housed in a cute jar, like the walkway lights you see on your neighbor’s lawn, but cool anyway). Writing at Groovy Green, Steve is currently so excited over recent revolutionary developments in solar cell efficiency, that he is invoking Billy Fuccillo. [...]
Ka-bar said,
I think some of Kevin’s conspiracy theory ties back to the notion that the cutting-edge research stuff is kept under wraps by the military, and they only trot something out once they’ve got something better already developed.
40.7 Percent Efficient Solar Cell Announced By… | Solar Panels Blog said,
[...] Original post by GroovyGreen.com Start Today : Save Tomorrow and software by Elliott Back [...]
Patrick Kilhoffer said,
I recently saw where a company in California is projecting sales of $100 billion per year in their solar cells by the year 2015, and the cost per watt for the cells will be under a dollar. That’s not the installed cost, but still, that’s pretty impressive.