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A comment on 20% more powerful perovskite solar panels enter commercial use. Parent comment

Re:20% more powerful perovskite solar panels enter commercia... by qwertox on Monday September 09, 2024 @01:23PM (#41490943)
Yes. Old cells are 20%, new cells are 24%.

To me, this means that the new cells are 4% more efficient.

To their marketing team it means that they are 20% more powerful.

Edit: Got it, the marketing team is accurate.

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Re:20% more powerful perovskite solar panels enter commercia... by guillermin on Monday September 09, 2024 @01:38PM (#41491143)
I'm afraid you are wrong, what you are referring to are percentage points [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentage_point

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Re:20% more powerful perovskite solar panels enter commercia... by qwertox on Monday September 09, 2024 @01:41PM (#41491171)
Perfect. Thanks!
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Re:20% more powerful perovskite solar panels enter commercia... by aidenn0 on Monday September 09, 2024 @01:29PM (#41491032)
They are certainly both 20% more efficient and 20% more powerful. Let's say that a certain size panel gets 100W of insolation. If you move from 20W to 24W then you are generating 20% more power from the same amount of insolation, so you are 20% more efficient.

People seem to treat percentages differently from other numbers, when all it means is "divide by 100." Nobody complains when you say going from 9% to 18% is "doubling in efficiency" but if you say it is "100% more efficient" or "200% as efficient" then people complain.

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Re:20% more powerful perovskite solar panels enter commercia... by creato on Monday September 09, 2024 @01:31PM (#41491058)
If you were going to buy these, you'd find you need 20% fewer panels (of the same area) to generate the same amount of power.

Sounds like the marketing team is right about this one.

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Re:20% more powerful perovskite solar panels enter commercia... by aktenlage on Monday September 09, 2024 @01:36PM (#41491119)
Your 4% are not percent, but percentage points. The marketing team is right about this one.
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Re:20% more powerful perovskite solar panels enter commercia... by fragmede on Monday September 09, 2024 @01:33PM (#41491073)
4 / 20 = 0.2 aka 20 percent.
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