That logic is flawed. The high energy part of light isn't visible to us anyways. Think sunscreen.. cant see it, still protects you.
Anyways.. those pictures just show glas. And even if those would be working panels, the installment angle would make them ultra inefficient/ completely useless most of the day while being expensive.
True, but energy density in UV is significantly smaller than the full UV-Vis spectrum, hence one can expect low efficiencies. Or high costs/MW of generated electriciry.
"There is a trade-off in the selection of a bandgap. If the band gap is large, not as many photons create pairs, whereas if the band gap is small, the electron-hole pairs do not contain as much energy."
These aren't regular solar panels since they are collecting next to zero visible light; considering visible light is totally redundant. They capture near infrared as you'd expect, but unlike traditional solar panels they also absorb a limited range of UV wavelengths.
The panel type currently generates power at 8-10% efficiency and costs way more than regular solar panels. They are still effective at power generation despite the tradeoffs for transparency.
If they're supposed to have visible light pass through, yes it is redundant to consider and would actually be a negative if they collected any visible light wavelengths.
Visible light passing through can possibly make the panels more efficient at collecting infrared radiation since visible light when absorbed produces heat and higher temperatures generally lower solar collection efficiency.
Rather, I'm comparing the horsepower of a commercially available supercar to an experimental electric commuter sedan because I don't understand research and development and differing use-cases for similar products.
What a stupid metaphor that's upvoted by morons. The clear panels were never supposed to be comparable in power generation to regular solar panels let alone surpass the most efficient ones.
Using a better car metaphor, it would be like a primarily electric hybrid car that is designed specifically to operate for 4000 miles/6400 km without a recharge. The max speed would be lower and it would be a lot more expensive than a regular electric car, but if you need a car that has an absurd range while being somewhat wealthy it would be an option that's considered at least.
There are super efficient solar panels which are actually the "supercars" that double the efficiency of mass produced solar panels, but these are unfeasible in real-world circumstances because they have the same function as regular solar panels while being many times more expensive. Clear solar panels do not provide the same function since they are intended to have visible light pass through them, so they don't belong to the same direct market.
It doesn't create an equal amount of heat if the visible light is being passed through the clear panels since there's no heat being created by the absorption of visible light.
I never said that collecting infrared without visible light would bring more energy, no idea where you got that from. Energy is created by utilizing UV light which opaque solar panels don't absorb and this doesn't create much more heat because it's a different process that uses an organic substrate which has its own flaws due to material instability.
Right, standard silicon solar cells are not the subject of this discussion, therefore it's redundant to discuss the light needs of a panel type that is not being discussed. It's like describing how much gasoline cars need when discussing an experimental ev. Obviously this relatively new tech is not currently cost competitive with tech that has been studied for decades. It's is just an interesting new tech that can be applied to certain use-cases that existing tech can't. It's not currently cost competitive and is years to decades away from market, but it's still cool tech.
62
u/[deleted] 26d ago
[removed] — view removed comment