Re:Solar energy breakthrough could reduce need for solar farms
by euroderf on Friday August 09, 2024 @11:23AM
(#41202748)
> they degrade quickly when exposed to oxygen/air/the atmosphere
Can this be fixed with (for example) some kind of spray-on acrylic ?
Re:Solar energy breakthrough could reduce need for solar farms
by AtlasBarfed on Saturday August 10, 2024 @11:03AM
(#41210015)
I'm not a solar cell researcher, just know that perovskites have had the lead content and degradation on exposure to air as their fundamental commercialization blockers, well, and the usual efficiency scaling.
I'm assuming a thing sprayable film which you would most certainly want to be lead-free and inherently would have a higher surface area of air exposure has addressed both, so this would be very promising at 20%+ efficiencies.
The article kind of sucks, like most gee-whiz solar reporting. Battery reporting IMO has gotten a bit better where they actually address cycles/density/materials.
Multijunction solar is still ridiculously undeveloped industrially, and perovskite or silicon+perovskite multijunction could lead to a lot of progress.
What's important about these articles is that solar, which is already exceptionally cheap in LCOE terms, still has runway to likely drop 50% in price in the next 10 years.
I continue to be frustrated with the cost of home/residential solar, which I think is a key part to avoiding excessive grid restruction, increasing resilience in disaster scenarios, double-utilizing already-industrialized/developed land/structures rather than using "pristine" land, and providing key competition to inherent-monopoly utilities.
So cheaper spray-on or coating-based solar might help close the residential vs grid solar gap.