Anti-Reflective Solar Panel Coating Absorbs 96% of Sunlight, Called Photovoltaic ‘Game Changer’ by Developer
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY on 11. 6.08
image: Rensselaer/Shawn Lin
This is why Shawn-Yu Lin of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute thinks he can change the solar power game:
To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun’s position in the sky. Our new antireflective coating makes this possible.
Think this is mere enthusiasm, maybe not. Read on:
Seven Coating Layers Enhance Each Other’s Ability to Absorb Light
Lin says that he’s gotten around the problem of solar panels absorbing only part of the light which hits them by develop a seven-layer coating which allows the panel to absorb 96.21% of the sunlight that falls on it. This compares to untreated panels which may only be able to use about two-thirds of the light hitting them.
What’s more, because this coating allows the panel to do this with all angles of light hitting it, it could eliminate the practice used by some solar arrays of using mechanical trackers to follow the sun throughout the day.
Each Layer 50-100 Nanometers Thick
Further describing the multi-layer coating, RPI’s press release stated,
The seven layers, each with a height of 50 nanometers to 100 nanometers, are made up of silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide nanorods positioned at an oblique angle — each layer looks and functions similar to a dense forest where sunlight is “captured” between the trees. The nanorods were attached to a silicon substrate via chemical vapor disposition [...] the new coating can be affixed to nearly any photovoltaic materials for use in solar cells, including III-V multi-junction and cadmium telluride.
More details of the research were published this week in Optics Letters (account required for full article).
via: RPI
New Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell Efficiency Record
In other solar news: Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, working in conjunction with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, have announced that they have achieved a new efficiency record for dye-sensitized solar cells of 10%. More on this from: Live Science.
Solar Power
15 Photovoltaics Solar Power Innovations You Must See
Doubling the Efficiency of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells
30-Fold Increase in Solar Power Possible by 2016, If Solar Industry and Utilities Collaborate to Make it Happen
I hate statements like solar array will return the money back in 10years or 15 years.
They don compare similarly with existing sources, why should we make it just for renewables
Each improvement like this takes closer to shut their mouths.
I suspect that this coating process might work with all kinds of PV materials. If so, it could bootstrap even low efficiency (and low cost) cells into practical energy production.
No efficiency mentioned, obviously expensive process. What game does this guy think he is changing?
The more I read about this technology and the more I fear it's just vapour-ware.
They always claim to improve the absorption of light but that doesn't necessarily mean that you create more electric energy. You may convert all this excess light into heat and that won't be that helpful for solar cell.
This coating could even worsen the electric efficiency of solar cells by decreasing the amount of light absorbed by the silicon crystal.
If they really wanted to convince everyone they should have applied the coating on a real solar cell and demonstrate a real increase in efficiency.
Then all's ok on the absortion front, lets concentrate on the conversion part.
Note that it won't really do away with the need to have mechanical trackers - it's a matter of the amount of area exposed to the sun. Having the solar cell face the sun directly means that the cell's area is exposed to the maximum amount of sunlight. Being at an angle, even if all of the light is absorbed, still reduces the amount of light that the cell is exposed to. If the coating eventually turns into something that works, it will simply eliminate the double penalty that you pay because of more light reflecting at a high angle of incidence.
Engineers came up with a good math system on better efficency on PV panels. A little trig some geometry with the hypotenus of a triangle figured in ,dealing with what lattitude youre on, and finding the maximum inclanation of the sun from summer to winter. servo motors and a computer program to figure in all of this is another big hit.