Clear solar panels

[Xist]

Search did not turn up anything here, either.

The best silicon solar cells are 25% efficient. "Meanwhile, a new [and cheaper] class of opaque solar cell materials, called perovskites, are closing in on silicon with top efficiencies of 22%."

For at least four years, a team at Michigan State University has worked on clear UV-absorbing solar panels that are .5% efficient, and they believe they can achieve 4% efficiency.

I am waiting to be impressed.

However, this could power self-darkening windows, saving utilities.

The same team developed infrared-absorbing panels that are 5% efficient and they think they can achieve 20%.

Five percent is not great and windows are generally a terrible angle for absorbing solar energy. Still, the sheer amount of window glass gives vast opportunities.

Another team developed panes of glass with quantum dots embedded in them. "[Q]uantum dots, which are tiny semiconductor particles, absorb light at UV and infrared frequencies and re-emit it at the wavelengths that traditional solar cells capture. The re-emitted light is concentrated and shunted sideways, through the glass, to solar cell strips embedded in the window frame." They state this is 3.1% efficient.

Next Energy Technologies in Santa Barbara, California, developed self-darkening windows that are 7% efficient as solar cells.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018...ww.google.com/

Have a great day!

[redpoint5]

0.5% efficient in capturing total solar radiation, or only the UV portion of the radiation? Either way, that isn't impressive. At best, that represents 5 watts of power per square meter of directly sun facing window.

Might as well tap hamster wheels for power.

[Xist]

As someone calling himself "Elhigh" said in the solar roads article, you do not compare the new technology with the best solar panels, but with what is being used instead, which does not generate any electricity.

Hamsters! Of course! A single hamster can power up to three LEDs! Three!

https://www.otherpower.com/hamster.html

[redpoint5]

Well, my coffee cup doesn't do my taxes currently either, so perhaps we should pursue this problem too.

I'm all about killing 2 stones with 1 bird, but even more I'm about the right tool for the job.

[oil pan 4]

You freeze the bird, fire it out of a cannon at the rocks and bust the rocks. I'm not saying it's impossible, just improbable.
I think all it proves is there's a sucker born every minute.

[Xist]

"The sun is [...] currently the only energy source capable of supplying the energy consumption of the human race" https://phys.org/news/2016-11-techno...effective.html

Is this that "Fake news" that the annoying kids keep complaining about? In how many decades could solar produce 100% of our electricity (during the day?) I know that it would probably take decades to create enough nuclear power, but at least it would work at night, during an eclipse, and when there is snow on the panels.

Anyway...

Solar panels supposedly absorb the full range of visible light, about 46% of the light that the earth receives. Ultraviolet is 7% and infrared is 47%.
https://www.solarpoweristhefuture.co...nels-use.shtml

Is infrared as energetic as visible light?

Not if you believe everything that you read on-line. Red has more energy than infrared, violet has the most energy of the visible spectrum, and ultraviolet has still more. https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/scienc...spectrum1.html

The source that I read before said that silicon cells were up to 25% efficient, but the first article that I linked in this post says 30%, and then described a process that sounds like the quantum dots, converting infrared and ultraviolet light into the visible spectrum.

Supposedly that would make the panels up to 50% efficient, but that would also mean that only 50% of irradiation would create heat, compared to 70%. Unfortunately, they do not feel that they will have a prototype until 2021.

I would be curious to see panels that turned ultraviolet and infrared light into the visible spectrum without solar panels. That could brighten up normally dark rooms.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Xist

I would be curious to see panels that turned ultraviolet and infrared light into the visible spectrum without solar panels. That could brighten up normally dark rooms.

Phosphors turn UV into visible light. All fluorescent lights emit UV, and convert that light into visible with the white phosphor coating the glass. Many white LEDs use a phosphor to convert the blue light into white.

[freebeard]

Clear solar panels
Search did not turn up anything here, either.

[proceeds to provide sources]

Energy varies with frequency.

"The sun is [...] currently the only energy source capable of supplying the energy consumption of the human race"

For certain values of human race. Today's population? Tomorrow's? All coal-rolling Bubbas? All virtual hipsters?

For certain other values, Moon Power would be enough.