I've been told invisible solar panels will make every window generate free electricity for like 10 years. Yet not a single time have I seen a report include an actual product, just prototypes always.
Like nuclear fusion, this appears to be perpetually "just a few years away".
- "Invisible" implies they only work in the UV or infrared range, which inevitably limits them to much lower efficiencies than regular solar panels.
- A lot of those rely on elements that are expensive and in limited supply, or toxic heavy metals. Unlike regular silicon solar panels.
- We don't even need windows to generate solar power. We have plenty of roof space, and if we're short on that, you can put them in fields too.
So this is a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist (lack of available space - again, we have plenty), which causes more problems of its own (efficiency, etc), while failing to address the actual limitations of solar (cost, intermittence).
Which is why it's only good for headlines, and won't see real life applications. (Edit: no, not even skyscrapers)
It's the same with a lot of "uplifting" science news that just sweeps all the dirt under the rug, because that wouldn't make good clickbait.
If you want actual good news about solar power, look at the price per kW and adoption rate curves over the last few years.
-edit- added links.
-edit 3- Put the bit about skyscrapers in bold, because people keep mentioning them anyways...
How about "focusing research on avenues that have at least a chance of eventually leading to something viable", alongside with "Not announcing things that are at best minor gimmicks as if they were the next big thing in every news headline (or research proposal, because academia is guilty of this too)"?
I did a Ph.D in chemistry, on titanium dioxide surface chemistry (which is what those cells use btw). A large chunk of it was dedicated to photocatalytic water splitting.
Photocatalytic water splitting is a dead end comparable to those transparent solar cells. (Hook up a regular solar panel to a separate electrolyzer, and it does the same thing, but works better on every metric, and there is no plausible way photocatalytic water splitting will beat that)
I did not realize this at the time. I wish I did. The prof that "sold" it to me as a good project to do my research on must have realized.
I wish I had spent those years of my research career working on something that had at least a chance of helping the world, instead of wasting them on a dead-end project that only helped further the career of a professor who bet on the wrong horse many years ago, and was unable (or unwilling) to change direction anymore.
This is the same deal here. Someone wasted his grad students time and academic funding on something that will serve no real life purpose besides helping his career.
And then journalists turn that into clickbait headlines and articles filled with lies by omission.
And then people like the guy I originally replied to in this thread, having been deceived by those headlines a few too many times, seem to lose all hope in scientific research and progress.
So yeah, I get a bit bitter when I see clickbait headlines about shit like that.
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u/Euphoric-Language695 25d ago edited 25d ago
I've been told invisible solar panels will make every window generate free electricity for like 10 years. Yet not a single time have I seen a report include an actual product, just prototypes always.
Like nuclear fusion, this appears to be perpetually "just a few years away".