Thank you to the Oxford PV team for sharing your work with me! And thank you to Opera for sponsoring this video. Click here opr.as/Opera-browser-DrBenMiles to upgrade your browser for FREE!
With all the negativity i see on twitter, and the selfishness I see of world leaders, Im so grateful to even PEER into the work these people do. I really lifts my spirits and hopes for the future. Brilliant minds such as these should be the ones lifting and leading us to better lives.
@@vinny142 Absolutely! It’s truly inspiring to see such brilliant minds pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. While negativity can often overshadow the great work happening in the world, it's these groundbreaking advancements in solar efficiency that remind us of the incredible potential humanity has to create a brighter future. Let's celebrate the innovators and visionaries who are leading the charge toward sustainable energy solutions! Together, we can shine a light on hope and progress!
For a roof installation, when you take the cost of scaffolding, wiring, inverter, roof frames, labour, and profit, a solar panel that is 40% more expensive (for example) might only push the costs up by 20%. People doing price comparisons often often miss this point. The panals are only part of the overall system installation costs. Throw a home battery in and the costs work even more in favour of more efficient cells.
Type 0 is such an arbitrary measure, in particular because early humans used way more energy than just their camp fires. All the energy that fell on the earth and was absorbed by the plants that the humans or their animals would then eat, for example
Most plants and animals were unavailable to humans for usage, early humans used a very small part of said energy. Even then plants absorb a very small part of the light energy that falls on their leaves and when animals eat said plants they absorbed a small part of the energy stored in those plants. When humans ate said animals they again absorbed a very small part of the energy stored in those animals. So, the total energy absorbed through eating was(still is) an extremely small part of the total energy coming from the sun(and all of this not accounting for the fact that most solar energy falls on ocean water where mostly nothing lives). There is also the fact that gaining energy through eating limits how said energy can be used compared to getting it in form of something like fire or electricity for example, so this would decrease the available energy even more. All in all, yeah early humans used more energy than produced by their camp-fires but it wasn't that much more than what type-0 predicts.
It would be interesting to learn how long these new cells last and how recyclable they are. Recycling doesn't sound like a big deal until you realise that current panels only last 20 years before they have to be replaced. Every panel that you see being installed today will have to be recycled 20 years from now. In the Netherlands we current get 400.000 new rooftop installations a year and that number will grow. That means that in 20 years time we'll have 400.000 old rooftop installations that need replacing and recycling every year. That's 4mln panels a year. That's a problem.
Current panels last rather 25 to 30 years. The EU and the members have or should have already laws that adress recycling plus there are already PV recycling companies for "normal" silicon PV panels across Europe. But yeah, i agree that there are still questions to be answered how recycling friendly those new ones will be and how long they last.
More efficient but as mentioned deteriorates more rapidly. It can be protected from some things. But one thing that can't be avoided that causes it to deteriorate is sunlight - LOL ...Seriously, a big downer for a solar cell, but I guess they have solved that?
I don't understand why the pyrovskite doesn't need the same perfection in the crystal structure that the silicon does? You mention that "obviously" it still needs to be tuned, but how is that obvious when you just went over how the defects in the crystalline structure of this compound doesn't matter?
The Kardashev scale never made much sense to me. We don't even know what would happen to the solar system if we blocked just 1% of the sun's energy and converted it to our needs artificially, let alone 100% of it. If the temperature on Earth was 2 degrees hotter or cooler, then life on Earth would change drastically. That's how delicate nature is. We shouldn't think this balance is only important here on Earth.
efficiency is great and all, but the real energy gainer would actually be applying these kinds of systems. we are currently vastly underusing solar panels, so solar panels that are even 100% more efficient wouldn't make that much difference in overall power production.
100% efficient solar panel would be something then it would be very viable, todays panels are around 20-23% efficient, at 100% that would be 1000w per sq metre, tho plenty of people buy it id say dependy on country
@@MrRacerhacker "100% efficient solar panel would be something then it would be very viable," And it would be invisible because all the light that falls on it would be transformed to electricity. Are you AI?
@@vinny142 no just bit tired do agree 100 aint viable but tho would be alot more usefull at 80-90% tho myself run 3kw myself in the nordics work well but also got some space for it
The technologists spent 30 years to make the OLED resistant to common ambient conditions. I expect that the solubility and oxidation problems of perovskites will require their time to be overcome...
Dr Miles - great report here... I haven't been following this field for a while, I feel caught up. Can I ask a question? I'd long begun to believe that there was a theoretical limit to PVs of somewhere in the low 30 percentiles. I'd understood that is a trade-off of energy absorption and the operational temperature of the PV cells. In theory, a 'perfectly' efficient cell would be operating at zero Kelvin (or as close as possible). The range of frequencies being absorbed is maximised by being 'black'... and, as a consequence, will absorb IR spectrum and 'heat up'. Is my understanding close to correct? If so, we are pushing closer to a theoretical maximum - and a cornicopian view shouldn't presume that the efficiency heads much higher than 30% I've followed the progress of CSP (concentrated solar power) at scale - living in Australia, we have plenty of empty land to expose CSP plants to lots of sunlight. As was expounded by Dr Nate Lewis (who I'm sure you would know), using CSP or other renewables to make liquid fuels plays a role possibly way more important than an electrified world (ammonia as a precursor to fertilisers or as hydrogen 'carrier' - anything that helps us needing to rush into rebuilding every bit of ICE machinery) If the theoretical max of PVs remains in the 30s, then, I'm not sure if the game changed as a Step Change?
That energy scale where a civilization harnesses all their suns energy is silly though. If we turned all the energy that hit our planet into electricity, then we'd live on an ice rock
If we had the technology to do that we would allocate some of it to keeping our world nice and comfortable. In fact, we'd end up making even more of the planet habitable than it is today. Think about it, if we had the tech to use all the energy coming from the sun it would be a piece of cake to direct it to where we want it to go.
It doesn't say turn it all into electricity it says control it all. If you had a dyson sphere you could easily program it/design it to leave the very small portion of energy/light leaving the sun that actually hits the planet in question alone and let it through the dyson sphere's network. Also a dyson sphere capable civilization could just use dyson tech in solar systems with no planets with desireable habitable conditions. And only use partial dyson rings in their home system. Given the area of our sun for instance, you could host untold billions or trillions in a structure the size of a dyson sphere.
28% ?????? But is your electric bill low enough to not only pay for the monthly cost of the solar panel but also be a source of passive income per month above the cost of the solar panel. That is the true "SAVINGS' NUMBER. This is the number that is crucial to its success in helping humanity.
And how that doesnt matter today for electricity production. Coal, gas and nuclear power need a smaller surface and are far more efficient than solar power.
I'll also add 100% efficency isn't exactly amazing For domestic plumbing for example Combi Boilers are 96% efficient. Meanwhile Heat Pumps can have a 400% efficency
@@alexanderkesselring3621 At 100% efficiency they'd convert all light that falls on them into electricity. What that electrical current then does is not part of the efficiency rating. Only superconductors don't get hot when a current flows through them.
Energy is just like work on a schedule, humanity's energy needs will always scale to the most we can reasonable get the same way a task scales to the most time it can be allocated with (or more if you're bad at planning :D). If solar get better and better that just means carbon capture for fuel manufacturing becomes viable. If we get more and more energy we can manufacture antimatter for fun science. The only limiting factor is technology and cost we'll easily find ways to burn of energy even at K3 and beyond :D
The most efficient way is a bio augmentation on a plant hybrid.. either itemizing a pressure system of the pla t or its energy and move.ent systems to generating usable energy.. but meh.
Cool. I’ve have personally measured some of these cells and can confirm according to ANSI standards, we’ve reached 43%. And yeah it’s quite impressive. I can’t speak for the cost or robustness though
43% is maximum in theory. But it was never measured. Maximum till now was about 33% (STC) higher than 40% measured only under concentrated light conditions (CSTC). So I believe you have measured 43% but not under realistic conditions. 🤔 ANSI you mean ASTM?
Very nice practical approach! I hope the reliability proves out as this could be a very big deal. Btw - I loved your throw-away reference to “high 5 machines” 😃
There needs to be strong pushes from government and individuals to ensure oweness is put on the manufacturing companies to ensure the lead in upcoming commercial perovskite devices is contained and handled properly! I fear this mimics leaded gasoline in the potential downside to our natural environment should perovskite cells become abundant.
This is a valid concern. HOWEVER, 85% of silicon cells currently are connected with lead-based solder. Hopefully more people become aware of the risks. Lead free solder is more expensive and non-lead perovskites have been lower performing. Too bad we don't have as many lobbyists for human health as we do for corporate greed.
We heard you like solar panels so we put solar panels on your solar panels so you can solar panel while you solar panel. Probably Xibit at some point lol when we going to start a new event? Pimp my Solar lol
Increasing solar cell efficiency is amazing for climate change. Not only does it reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, it also reduces the conversion of solar rays into ambient heat which at scale will help slow the planet's warming!
" it also reduces the conversion of solar rays into ambient heat " A) these panels still get hot when the sun hits them B) just how much of the surface of the earth do you think these panels can cover?
The concept of Dyson sphere is kinda ridiculous and arrogant. Its like trying to imagine modern communication systems we have now when we were caveman using the cave man technology.
I agree about the rediculousness. A dysons spere will be impossible to construct even by hundreds , thousands of generations of humans......fairytale....will never happen
The sun cannot output just 2 billion times what reaches earth. Draw a sphere with a radius of 1AU. Its surface is much more than just 2 billion earths!
Earth is 93 million miles from the sun. A sphere with that radius is 1.08E17 sq miles. Earth radius is 4000 miles, so surface facing the sun is 2E8 sq miles. Divide the first by the second. 500,000,000. Factoring in what the atmosphere absorbs, a factor of 2 billion seems reasonable.
I wondered if your sun energy on earth vs sun energy within the orbital sphere at one AU was correct so I calculated and asked an LLM to verify your number. We both arrived at 2 billion as you did. The LLM thought for 1 minute and 25 seconds versus my 25 minutes and 1 second. :)
Framing videos like this is so obnoxious. TL;DW: their cells are 20% more efficient. Not 20% of the sun's energy more, but 20% of the efficiency of conventional solar cells, aka less than 5% more of the sun's energy. And it's not like we couldn't reach this efficiency before, or even do much better, but simply that reaching it wasn't cost effective.
🤔 Hmm This is not the first techt I see that claims to be the next best thing. However. I've seen @Mat Ferrell also talk about this type of cell...We wil see
I hate to be that guy, but for years we got along just fine by burning old car tires in our backyard, now all of a sudden we need 'science' to keep us warm ?
Perovskite solar panels will never be available in the market because it is just hype. Perovskite may be efficient, but it's up-front cost is too expensive. Regular thin-film photovoltaics cost around $0.40 to $0.69 per watt, while GaAs technology has a cost of $50 per watt. All of these prices far surpass the low $0.16 per watt cost for perovskite solar cell.
LEDs use to be expensive before we scaled up the manufacturing. Now will this solar panel get cheaper in 5 years or 50 years, that's the question. Some technology stays too expensive for too long to the point they are still obsolete when cheaper.
New tech is always expensive at first. Scalability is a more accurate way to measure if something is viable tech long term. Don't get hung up on the price today.
I think for the calculation of how many sun light we really absorb or transform we schould as civilization acount for all plant hatnesting to from the sun and transforming this energy to food that we thenn harnest as energy for us so yeah i think we could make better then thoose 0.16%
