Solar panel efficiency
Posted by Solar energy guru | Filed under Solar energy facts
One thing that people who scoff at solar power like to point out is that solar panel efficiency averages only 20%. What that means is that most photovoltaic (PV) panels convert only about 20% of the captured solar energy to electricity. Even the most advanced designs using silicon are only able to operate at around 40% efficiency.
When it comes to converting that energy to light, the efficiency actually ends up being dramatically lower. Let’s look at what happens if the solar panel efficiency starts at 20%. That energy starts as direct current which must be converted over to alternating current to be used in the home. This conversion process loses another 20% of the resulting energy. This alternating current now goes on to an incandescent lightbulb which is typically only 5% efficient. From all the original solar energy captured, you end up with only a fraction of usable energy.
Solar panel efficiency is obviously poor when it comes to lighting up our homes. Using the sunlight directly through daylighting techniques would use approximately 80% of the sunlight available – clearly much more efficient than first converting the solar energy into electricity. The most intelligent way to utilize solar energy is to make use of direct sunlight through daylighting and passive solar heating technologies and then using the highest efficiency solar panels for the rest of our energy needs.
Scientists who work on solar panel efficiency believe that the 40% level is the highest efficiency that can be achieved with the standard silicon materials in most solar cells. Instead of focusing on making them more efficient, the current focus is on how to manufacture PV panels less expensively. However, new technologies have recently been developed that may make solar panels that are much less expensive while achieving an incredible 80% efficiency.
Steve Novack of Idaho National Laboratories has come up with a unique way of creating a cheap, foldable solar panel that has so far topped all records for solar panel efficiency. This new technology utilizes nanotechnology by printing the material’s surface with tiny nano-antennae. These nano-antennae capture infrared radiation which is the part of the solar energy normally utilized with traditional photovoltaic panels but the nano-antennae are able to harness much more than the silicon solar cells.
The only problem with this new technology is that so far there isn’t any way to use the energy being captured. The scientists are now working on putting a mini-capacitor into each tiny antenna. That means that each separate antenna would have its own little AC/DC converter. They believe that they can do this while maintaining the solar panel efficiency and keeping the price of the panel inexpensive.
Another new technological development for improving solar panel efficiency has been developed by researchers at MIT. They have created what they call a solar concentrator using inexpensive dyed glass and some fiber optic technology. The concentrator is supposed to be placed over traditional solar panels and assist in capturing more of the wavelengths of visible light.
The dyed glass absorbs the sunlight and then guides the energy generated to the edges of the glass sheet. Eventually researchers hope to replace the expensive silicon cells with the special sheets of glass that direct the energy similar to the way fiber optic technology does. This would allow for smaller amounts of silicon to be needed for generating the usable energy.
As scientists continue to work on increasing solar panel efficiency, the cost of switching to solar power will keep coming down. Although solar energy currently costs more than other types of energy to produce, new developments continue to bring prices down. Soon home solar power will be as cost effective as other forms of energy.
October 14th, 2008 at 8:31 am
I am very tired of companies promoting products that are years out in development or have yet to be close to providing any form of economical mass production. All this is doing to the uneducated average American is keeping them on the hook for another number of years WAITING for something that may or may not happen. It is good for venture capital envestors but not good for the american economy or our use of foreign oil. Although they are not perfect we need to stop hiping and start installing solar panels on every house in America,,, just like the Germans are doing.
January 8th, 2009 at 5:07 am
To the extent that solar panels absorb more solar radiation than the surface on which they are placed was previously absorbing, they must in principle increase, not decrease, global warming. In the limit, if the whole earth’s surface were covered in solar panels, there would be a fast global warming runaway.
A small point, but if there were a choice between a solar panel and another heating system which used solar energy which had already been absorbed in the past – like fossil fuels – but in a way that did not emit carbon, then the latter should be preferred.
July 20th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
I agree, and i’m looking for more information about solar panel and the application for the air conditioning. I live in Miami FL. and i need some information thank you and appreciete if you send me something
July 30th, 2009 at 12:07 am
I agree, and i’m also looking for more informations about solar panel and the application for the air conditioning on board the ship. I live in Singapore now. Thank you and I appreciate if you send me something about it. ^_^
October 5th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
In regard to the paragraph about the MIT research, it makes no sense.
Who wrote it? Whoever that person is would make a terrific editor for Alice in Wonderland.
Next, the Idaho research: again, who writes this nonsense? Does the writer (or the editor) understand what a capacitor does? No, from the article. What they need in Idaho is a diode that can switch efficiently at infrared frequencies. That is somewhere in the soft X-rays end! Then they can use a capacitor.
Such a diode, which doesn’t exist yet, is no mean little bugger to invent, let alone to make it operate efficiently.
Regards
NR
October 27th, 2009 at 8:34 am
I think that solar energy could be useful at night. I don’t think that anyone has yet considered the possibilities and potential of a system that is used for 24 hours. If we were to install lunar panels alongside solar panels, I think we could make the whole process more cost-efficient for all.
Booyah!
December 17th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
I think the author is just making this stuff up. I don’t think there is a single commercially available solar panel that has a 20% efficiency and anything that got 40% is strictly development.
February 24th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Everyone that has commented so far, and the author himself, need to learn to use Google properly to dispel their crackpot theories, faulty logic, and get advice based on real facts. And when you find results that back up your opinion, look at the opposing arguments to see if they seem more rational, authentic, and fact-based.
I somehow stumbled upon the url of stupid, one of the many spreading disinformation through spectacle and willful ignorance. Will (no.7) is partially right, but sadly all the others are fools, apparently incapable of skeptical independent research. 2 smart comments for 6 dumb ones is a bad ratio… doesn’t bode well for humanity.
March 5th, 2010 at 7:55 am
I have yet to find a solar panel that will give 20% efficiency. As a matter of fact I have yet to find cos that will consistently give 15~17% of efficiency. I think solar research has to go a long way before it becomes commercially available at acceptable rates.
May 22nd, 2010 at 7:43 am
seems like a better alternative is to use 12 volt LED based lighting.
(you also didn’t count the 25% loss when you use the panel to charge the battery that powers the lights when presumably no sunlight is available
June 2nd, 2010 at 4:51 am
I know that this is not really the place but maybe spark a few minds there is a engine I found in youtube that runs on heat. There is a Mirror that can focus 4 feet of mirror into 2inch beam and focused on the Engine and you have free power all day if you have it hooked up to a generator check it out and its way more powerful then solar
June 10th, 2010 at 12:46 am
WHAT!!! Please do not use youtube for research or examples.
July 29th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
You pay for fossil fuel. You pay for the delivery cost to the power plant. Then it is burned to produce energy and pollution. Conversion to electrical power after that initial inefficiency is only about 33%. Now it gets worse. The fossil fuel power plant will then lose at a minimum 50% of the power generated before it gets to your house. This loss is called line loss. We pay for the fuel cost and the wire and the line loss too, it is embodied in the cost of the system.
Conversion of chemical energy to heat is and then heat to mechanical energy is poor typically about 33% after huge embodied costs.
You pay to put panels on your roof. The panels on your roof will not have any measurable line loss. There will be no pollution. There is no fuel cost. At best there will be only 20% conversion to electricity. When it comes to delivering the solar energy produced by the solar panels, however, it is better than fossil fuel! That energy starts as direct current which must be converted over to alternating current to be used in the home. This conversion process loses another 20% of the resulting energy according to the article. From all the fossil fuel sources you lose 50% post generation and from the solar energy source you only lose 20% to the DC to AC inverter. So Solar energy on the rooftop is more efficient.
Both fossil fuel and Solar light up the same light bulb. Clearly this is a STUPID article. It is distorted but worse than that the logic is corrupt.
September 23rd, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Photovoltaic conversion of sunlight does not seem to follow the same pattern of conventional fossil fuel consumption. This I believe is the most fundamental reason we need it on and around our homes.
Traditional forms of electrical production ask us to look at energy purely thru the eye of cost, and no focus or awareness on the actual consumption of that energy.
Less energy forces one to consider first the idea of using less energy, the real culprit related to our money issues.
September 24th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
if a person within the united states, or any country for that matter, was to own a single piece of land and create enough energy for themselves there would seem to me to be little reason to work in a conventional manner for money.
when i say energy i mean two forms of it: food for nourishment of the body, and electricity for care of the physical shelter and self.
given enough land mass, the general output would exceed a single persons needs.this could benefit said person in the form of the sale back into given markets. the energy that said person uses to collect and distribute that energy, i believe, would be considerably less than the energy the common man spends in the office.
given today’s current resources and technology this lifestyle is available.
February 12th, 2011 at 8:32 am
Reading one of the earlier comments about “solar panels absorb more solar radiation than the surface on which they are placed was previously absorbing, they must in principle increase, not decrease, global warming.”
How is it possible to draw that conclusion? Global warming is caused by the greenhouse effect in which radiation REFLECTED by the Earth is trapped by gasses, there by preventing the loss of energy. If it is ABSORBED it can’t be REFLECTED. Thus it would reduce global warming simply by being in the sun.
April 12th, 2011 at 3:41 am
I think that solar panels are required for today’s world to cut off the pollution. We see many adverse effects of pollution in our surroundings. scientists have tried their level best to come out with a solution to the existing problems caused by the use of technology, but the problems still exist in reduced form. That’s why I think that solar panels cut off, if not, save us from pollution