08-03-2008, 07:18 PM
Quote:I'm just going to comment on a couple points here real quick. I looked over the numbers you are supplying and at a quick glance they seem to be based off the present silicon designed panals. You say that if huge breakthroughs occur we could get efficiencies of up to 60% but those theoretical effeciencies are already possibilities. Here's the problem though, the 60% efficiencies are using Nanocrystal technology and the present 30% efficiencies are using the silicon technology. The difference is with the silicon tech each proton collision yields 1 electron and some excess heat while the nanocrystal tech has an increased chance to yield an extra electron instead of the wasted heat. Thus the efficiencies aren't equatable between the techs. A theoretical 100% efficiency with the nanocrystals would be 200% efficiency for the silicon panals. Even if you got to 60% efficiency with nanocrystals you would have already surpassed the maximum offered by the silicon.
There are many things to take into consideration and should not be mixed up.
Efficiency of a solar cell (amount of incident light that is converted to electrical energy). This is I believe around 20% for the high purity silicon devices sold now, and maximum 13 % for dye sensitized solar cells (which are not available on the market yet). There is tremendous amount of research done on these (and polymeric) cells and the price will be very low. So low that they may be cheaper than nuclear energy.
The other problem is the total amount of harvestable energy (what does the sun deliver per area). I think it means that putting giant solar cell fields in desert might not help us....the losses of transporting the energy to where people live will be massive. Solar cells need to be place where we live. Luckily the new type of cells can be made transparent and will be incorporated in windows, furthermore on roofs on top of cars etc. etc.
Solar WILL gives us a large part of our energy needs in the future (no doubt about it) but it will not give us all our energy. Many things will be better when done using liquid fuel (airplanes). Nuclear fission I think is already a thing of the past...it can gives us a few years, but then it is gone. Fussion like in the ITER project that Kandrathe mentioned......nobody knows but I am very skeptical. Making a working fusion reactor will be a far greater achievement than putting a man on the moon.