produce more electricity in much less space than their predecessors did.
More Pages:
- Solar Turbines: What Are The Drawbacks To Using Wind Turbines Or Solar Panels For Providing All Power To A Home? (4/24/2011)
- Solar Turbines: What Is The New Solar Power Technologies? (6/4/2011)
- Solar Turbines: What Is The Solar Power Technologies Of Today? (6/13/2011)
- Solar Turbines: What Are The New Solar Power Technologies Of Today? (6/19/2011)
- Solar Panel: What Is The Maximum Power A Solar Cell Can Provide? (6/23/2011)
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Who says? The panel manufacturers?
Certainly MORE efficient. “Extremely efficient” requires some sort of benchmark to compare with.
Solar panels make use of about 25% of the energy they receive from the sun, and this efficiency goes down as the temperature increases. They are photo(light)voltaic, not thermo(heat)voltaic.
There hasn’t been a breakthrough, just a gradual evolution.
In the 70′s, my Ford Pinto got 30 mpg, and you would be doing pretty good to get a commercial panel at 6% efficiency (and it would cost a king’s ransom, too). Today, an 18% panel is commonplace, and you can buy one for a few days’ pay (or a few hours, if you make a lot). The Pinto is long gone, but our relatively modern car is getting maybe 32 mpg.
One panel manufacturer came out with a panel process that boasted a 19 percent efficiency, http://www.solarfeeds.com/ecofriend/14142-imec-creates-solar-cells-with-19-efficiency http://www2.imec.be/be_en/press/imec-news/siliconsolarcellvalencia.html and claimed the status of the most efficient panels on the market, and to make such a claim with hard numbers of 19. and 19.4 are easy to verify, so I doubt they are exagerating at all. It does not apper it was independently verified, but I believe it to be true, as the other panels are made conventionally hovered around 16 percent at the top end. To date I had seen and tested the product of Powerfilm, and it did very well, but it is still is below that 19 percent level.
While the 19% is an improvement, the average square foot illuminated by the sun is exposed to roughly 670 Watts of solar energy. So that should tell you something about efficiency.
The technology is developing and evolving so that solar panels harvest more energy more efficiently. Its still very expensive but as the technology develops it will be more cost effective.
here’s an excellent article that deals with the issue of highly efficient solar cells
http://www.renewables-info.com/interesting_energy_articles/highly_efficient_solar_cells_-possible_or_not.html