We are over 60 years out on the learning curve for silicon cells and the costs have fallen over 99%. The high efficiency cells in the lab and used in space (35%) will NEVER reach the consumer. Have not and never will.
These high efficiency cells have been around for decades. Every year they add a % or so. And the space industry is willing to spend 500 times more per cell than for a silicon cell, because their $100M missions need the power and so spending $1M to get twice the power of the satellite is worth it. Cost is no obstruction. BUT! And here is the deal. When next year's +1% cells come out of the lab, then those big spenders immediately move all their billions over to the new cells, and last year's 35% cells have *zero* market. And since ast year's 35% cells still cost 500 times more than silicon cells and little demand, there is no way they will ever get down on the learning curve to approach home solar (500 times cheaper). It will ALWAYS be this way. That’s because in space, it costs hundreds of millions of dollars just to "install" the panels (get them into space) compared to any terrestrial application where it is only a few hours labor. So the 500 to one cost difference will never go away. So the person that is "waiting for" higher efficiency cells will die in the dark and will never get there. Even the 220W panels that cost me $500 five years ago and only cost $175 now, would have been of no value for me to wait. Because the $500 panels of 5 years ago have already produced more electricity than the difference in cost. So that is one thing about solar. If you have a roof, and sun on it and will live there for a long time, every utility bill you pay from now on is just throwing away money for nothing. When you could be having free electricity for life. http://aprs.org/solar-now.html Bob, WB4APR -----Original Message----- Sent: Monday, September 21, 2015 12:23 AM Subject: Re: [EVDL] EVLN: Perovskite solar cells may power electric cars Unfortunately the only useful bit of information is missing: how much efficiency is expected in future with this technology? At this moment the efficiency of just over 12% is underwhelming, because mass produced cheap silicon PV easily reaches 15% and in labs there have been versions that go to the 30% range. The issue with recharging on the car itself is the limited area requires an order of magnitude better efficiency than existing silicon PV to be practical as main energy source. Which means that the efficiency must be well above 50% at low mass-produced prices, in order to make on-car PV practical. Since the article does not mention the expected limit of efficiency or even the next steps, it does not help but to give me a feeling that this is a "different but not better" alternative to the same problem as silicon PV. I may be wrong. In fact, I hope I am. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
