A Group of Materials Called Perovskites Could Be a Game-Changer For Solar Power (independent.co.uk) 62
Researchers from Australia have discovered that the widely acclaimed mineral perovskite can be used to transform the solar industry through cheaper and more efficient photovoltaics. The Independent reports: Perovskite, which is forged deep within the Earth's mantle, has been hailed for its unprecedented potential to convert sunlight into electricity. Researchers have already improved its sunlight-to-energy efficiency from around 3 per cent to over 20 per cent in the space of just a few years. "It's unbelievable, a miracle material," Z. Valy Vardeny, a materials science professor from the University of Utah, said about perovskite in 2017. At the time it was thought that it would be at least 10 years before it reached a point that the material could be used in commercial solar cells, however the latest breakthrough could see the wide uptake of the technology much sooner. "It was one of those unusual discoveries that you sometimes hear about in science," said Dr Hall from the University of Melbourne.
With the help of researchers at the University of Sydney, the scientists were able to use computational modeling to solve the problem of instability within the material when exposed to sunlight. The unlikely solution was to undo the disruption caused by light at lower intensities by focussing the light into a high-intensity beam. Dr Hall added: "What we've shown is that you can actually use the material in the state that you want to use it, for a solar cell - all you need to do is focus more light onto it." The research could also have significant implications for data storage, with perovskites offering a way to dramatically increase a device's potential capacity. The study has been published in the journal Nature Materials.
With the help of researchers at the University of Sydney, the scientists were able to use computational modeling to solve the problem of instability within the material when exposed to sunlight. The unlikely solution was to undo the disruption caused by light at lower intensities by focussing the light into a high-intensity beam. Dr Hall added: "What we've shown is that you can actually use the material in the state that you want to use it, for a solar cell - all you need to do is focus more light onto it." The research could also have significant implications for data storage, with perovskites offering a way to dramatically increase a device's potential capacity. The study has been published in the journal Nature Materials.
Pb source... (Score:5, Informative)
Cool technology, but... Probably not for your rooftop... They may leech ppb amounts of lead into the environment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
This seems to solve that (Score:1)
They may leech ppb amounts of lead into the environment.
The article lists a way in which the material is rendered much more stable (concentrating light) and the wiki article lists the lead problem as arising from it being unstable... so if it's stable that would mean the lead problem goes away or is so greatly reduced it's not an issue.
That also seems like way more a problem for wherever dead solar cells go to than your house, so as long as they are properly recycled - again, not an issue.
Re:This seems to solve that (Score:5, Interesting)
They may leech ppb amounts of lead into the environment.
The article lists a way in which the material is rendered much more stable (concentrating light) and the wiki article lists the lead problem as arising from it being unstable... so if it's stable that would mean the lead problem goes away or is so greatly reduced it's not an issue.
That also seems like way more a problem for wherever dead solar cells go to than your house, so as long as they are properly recycled - again, not an issue.
Much more stable in not breaking down in sunlight? Or much more stable vs leaching Pb when exposed to the environment? Those are two separate types of "stable".
They're likely going to be enclosed with a covering of some sort as well. The problem is... It doesn't take much lead to be a problem. Rain falls on your solar panels, flows into the gutters, and then hits the soil around your yard. Now you have a lead contaminated soil problem, possibly where your kids play. Lead contaminated soil is a persistent problem. It doesn't go away after your panels get recycled, and you can really only treat it by trucking the soil away at absurd costs. It won't stop at your fence line either. You can get lead contaminated soils from your neighbor. The lawyers will love hearing that...
I'm not disparaging the technology, or belittling the advancement. It's very interesting research. But all of them use lead halides, so they need to approached with extra caution, planning and foresight.
They are the same (Score:2)
Much more stable in not breaking down in sunlight? Or much more stable vs leaching Pb when exposed to the environment?
Yes... the whole point is if the material is not stable in both senses, it will not be used in a solar panel as you'd have to replace them too frequently.
They're likely going to be enclosed with a covering of some sort as well. The problem is... It doesn't take much lead to be a problem
I agree, but between being encased and the stability, I just don't see there would be any issue... especial
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Cool technology, but... Probably not for your rooftop... They may leech ppb amounts of lead into the environment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I read the article you linked. I am still not sure how serious a problem this is, compared to major lead pollution sources, such as lead oxide pigments, lead water pipes, and organo-lead petrol additives. Should we remove all lead from church roofs and stained glass windows? I presume lead compounds must leech from those sources, due to weathering
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In other words you think it's a tiny addition to the sorts of problems that have been implicated in damaging children's cognitive development and plausibly blamed for the decades long crime wave in the United States. And the fall of the Roman empire.
There are other problems with things like this besides whether it leaches in norma
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Which is in tiny quanties per the amount of energy generated, and kept sealed up by design (unlike just about any other power source, where we scatter the waste widely and pretend it's not there-- that includes photovolatic manufacture, by the way, and would also include lead compounds leaking from perovskites).
Chemical toxins like lead have an infinite half-life. And the hotter radwaste decays faster: sealing it up for even just 50-100 years ma
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I speak entirely of the still not operating Yucca Flats, which already has demonstrated contamination of the Colorado River via dye transfer testing.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, every single "dry cask" is wet with transmutation products NOT remaining bound in the glass
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Which is in tiny quanties per the amount of energy generated
Enough to make it a big issue for Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, France and other countries, some of which decided to discontinue nuketricity. As to keeping it sealed, it's not that permanent [nature.com], as it turns out. And MSR wonders are not happening on Earth outside experiments. Ever.
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Nice link dude: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/8408... [us02web.zoom.us]
(1) This is a hypothetical problem with something that i
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Cherry-picked! Out-of-context! But what about--
Dude, this is exactly the way trump-heads argue. Mimic the form of rational debate, and always accuse the other guys of what you're doing.
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In other words you think it's a tiny addition to the sorts of problems that have been implicated in damaging children's cognitive development and plausibly blamed for the decades long crime wave in the United States. And the fall of the Roman empire.
I have read up more on Perovskite solar cell technology. I had not realised the chemistry is so unstable. Once moisture gets in, it appears to be as dangerous as lead-based pigments in paints. So I agree with you that this is technology is currently unsuitable for widespread adoption.
Not news (Score:5, Informative)
This is not news. Perovskites have been the hot material in solar cell research for most of the last decade.
Check out the 92,000 papers on google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/sch... [google.com]
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Why would moisture be a problem? Typically you encase solar cells in glass, since moisture also does horrible things to electrical components.
Maintaining perovskite performance is hard (Score:5, Informative)
Perovskites are extremely sensitive to moisture, and also have other stability problems over periods of months to years. That's not to say that these problems will never be overcome, but to quote Jenny Chase, head of solar at Bloomberg New Energy Finance:
"I will get excited about perovskite solar cells when a significant crystalline silicon module manufacturer makes a significant investment or even is willing to disclose a strategic partnership. And not before." ... the existing silicon module industry is an extremely challenging place to stay in business, look at the history of bankruptcies in this sector. Solar manufacturers are always looking for anything which will give them the edge over their competitors. None of them have taken the plunge yet.
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Seems an odd choice - like waiting to take electric vehicles seriously until a significant ICE manufacturer makes a significant investment in them. Or waiting to take solar seriously until the oil companies start significantly investing in them.
I mean, yeah, that's probably a good indicator that they should be taken seriously, but they're likely to be among the last to do so.
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Re:Not news (Score:4, Interesting)
Empty headline aside, how many of those papers are about the fact that you can solve one of perovskites big problems simply by increasing the illumination intensity? Especially good news since concentrated solar is one of the big potential solar cost savers (though maybe not so useful for rooftop installations)
Re:Not news (Score:4, Informative)
Empty headline aside, how many of those papers are about the fact that you can solve one of perovskites big problems simply by increasing the illumination intensity? Especially good news since concentrated solar is one of the big potential solar cost savers (though maybe not so useful for rooftop installations)
Concentrated solar is only a potential cost-saver when the cells themselves are expensive, and the whole value proposition around perovskites is that with sufficient manufacturing scale they should be dirt-cheap. And even when the cells are expensive, the potential has never managed to manifest itself in reality. Finally, the cheaper and more efficient silicon solar cells become, the smaller and more exotic the window of opportunity becomes for concentrators: A silicon solar cell that costs $0.18/W now has the same efficiency as a low-end GaAs cell that costs 500X more.
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But this offera BOTH. Dirt-cheap AND concentration being possible.
Concentration [Re:Not news] (Score:3)
But this offera BOTH. Dirt-cheap AND concentration being possible.
Concentration is ""possible" with pretty much any PV technology.
What this is saying is that concentration is necessary.
Concentration adds a whole boatload of additional issues and complexity-- you need tracking, you can't concentrate scattered light, you need to think hard about thermal issues, you need to worry a lot more about dirt (on a flat plate, all that you care about is dirt that obscures light. For a concentrator, dirt that scatters light is just as bad. Think about the difference between a dirty w
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Depends on the concentrator. Reflective foil or linear fresnel lenses are likely to always be far cheaper to produce per square than even the cheapest solar cell, it's the installation costs that can be troublesome, as so far nobody has spent a lot of effort developing cheap concentrator installations beyond the DIY stuff, which is mostly only cheap if you consider your labor free. No doubt due in large part to the fact that silicon solar cells mostly don't like high concentrations of light without expens
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Depends on the concentrator. Reflective foil or linear fresnel lenses are likely to always be far cheaper to produce per square than even the cheapest solar cell
Up until high-efficiency perovskites started being produced, you would have been right. The point of perovskites is that they're really cheap
And the price disadvantage of concentration is that you need tracking.
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Depends on the concentrator. Reflective foil or linear fresnel lenses are likely to always be far cheaper to produce per square than even the cheapest solar cell,
I admit it's been awhile since I priced linear fresnel lenses, but I seem to recall they were substantially more expensive than $25/square meter, which is about what you'll pay for a mainstream high-efficiency silicon solar cell nowadays. Could be less for the fresnel lens nowadays -- like I said, it's been awhile -- but solar cells have gotten so cheap that the sum total cost of the extra hardware associated with CPV is looking pretty high in comparison to simply adding more flat-plate solar modules.
so far nobody has spent a lot of effort developing cheap concentrator installations beyond the DIY stuff
Sunpow
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Sounds like you may be a bit more informed than I.
>but the way I read this, I think you're saying that a 1X solar cell with, say, 250 cm^2 costs the same per cell as a 10X solar cell with 25 cm^2 area
Let me try rephrasing: two solar panels,
- #1 covers 1 m^2 and reliably produces... whatever, call it 250W.
- #2 covers only 0.1 m^2, but reliably produces the same 250W, thanks to a concentrator providing it with 10x the density of sunlight.
My feeling is that there's not going to be a huge amortized price d
Re:Not news (Score:5, Interesting)
I have been involved in the largest concentrating conference for academics during the last few years, personally know several of the main researchers in the field and worked at a large solar research institute. There are fewer and fewer papers every year and research is dying out at a rapid clip. It is not cost effective, you need a tracker and trackers are expensive and mechanical things that are prone to breaking. Concentrating PV is pretty much dead, used for niche stuff (space applications) only.
Concentrated Thermal is another matter though
Re:Not news (Score:5, Informative)
The issue has been durability. Perovskites were always cheap, and now they're efficient too, but if this new work helps them stay efficient for more than a few weeks/months then perovskites might finally reach commercial acceptance.
Interestingly, this recent study [ornl.gov] in hot-carrier perovskite cells promises to more quickly convert charge carriers to electrons before they're lost to heat, increasing potentially efficiency up to an impressive 66%. Whether that is, or can be made, durable enough for widespread application isn't discussed, but it's a tantalising thought.
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There has been research showing this is an issue with all solar panels. For some reason, all panels will lose up to 20% of their efficiency in the first few weeks of being exposed, hence why the better manufacturers will claim 18% efficiency, even though the panel is more than 20% efficient when produced, while you can get 'cheap' panels that claim upwards of 20% but will instantly fall off below that number.
The biggest problem with perovskites is the lead leaching. This is a problem with all panels, since
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Most decent panels have a first-year drop-off of under 1.5%, according to these NREL studies [nrel.gov], and median annual loss is about 0.5% from there. Expected performance for modern panels after 20 years is around 90% of new. I've never heard of even the cheapest panels losing 20% in a year; that seems huge.
Re:Not news (Score:4, Informative)
I read the summary and it's pretty clear they aren't saying perskovites are now. Indeed ...
With the help of researchers at the University of Sydney, the scientists were able to use computational modeling to solve the problem of instability within the material when exposed to sunlight. The unlikely solution was to undo the disruption caused by light at lower intensities by focusing the light into a high-intensity beam.
See that? The problem of instability. Perskovites have a lifetime problem: they are great for only a short while, but these folks appear to have taken a step towards fixing that.
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May be made obsolete by increasingly cheaper silicon photovoltaics too. Reportedly, solar farms in sunny countries can now produce the kwH for 3 cents or even less. By now, I think the bigger problem is in storing an adequate amount of energy for the times when renewables are weak (winter and calm winds).
Still waiting for my thin film solar cells (Score:2)
who were promised to me 20 years ago. =/
I was in line ahead of you (Score:1)
I'm in this line ahead of you — first, I'll get my flying car. Thank you very much.
Re:Still waiting for my thin film solar cells (Score:5, Informative)
Amorphous silicon and CdTe/CdS thin films solar cells are widely available, there's no reason to be waiting. Head on over to your local Harbor Freight and pick up a cheap thin film solar cell.
Of course, it won't last long as cheap thin-film solar cells degrade at around 5% per year when exposed to sunlight.
A US company called First Solar [wikipedia.org] was supposedly the first to drop solar costs below $1 per watt. Naturally, all their production capacity was purchased by utility companies, and for some strange reason they've never expanded production. So, unless you are a utility company, you'll not be buying cheap First Solar thin film cells. How odd....
Perovskites are also the foundation of high temperature superconductors, YBCO being the first discovered. Perovskites are definitely nifty, and have been known to possess interesting material properties for quite some time.
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But at a low enough price, you don't have.to. Get a new set every 5 years, return the old ones for refurbishing for a partial refund, save even more.
Re:Still waiting for my thin film solar cells (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you not see the problem with this model from a sustainability point of view - not to mention the carbon footprint of mining the rare mineral from the earths mantle, manufacturing them, transporting them, replacing them ad infinitum ?
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Re:Still waiting for my thin film solar cells (Score:5, Informative)
A US company called First Solar [wikipedia.org] was supposedly the first to drop solar costs below $1 per watt. Naturally, all their production capacity was purchased by utility companies, and for some strange reason they've never expanded production. So, unless you are a utility company, you'll not be buying cheap First Solar thin film cells. How odd....
They were, in fact, the first to cross the $1/W threshold, and they stayed ahead of silicon for a little while. And then they got stuck, and silicon zoomed past them. Much of it appears to be related to the difficulty of depositing a uniform, high-quality thin film over a large area, so First Solar was limited for awhile in how large it could make its modules. They found a solution and converted their manufacturing lines to a larger size a few years ago, but they still seem to be behind silicon on cost and price. Another facet is that First Solar is pretty much the only game in town when it comes to thin film, so they develop all of their own processes and manufacturing equipment. Their competitors, on the other hand, source similar equipment to one another from a small range of equipment vendors, so there is common learning and knowledge diffusion between companies, allowing them to scale and reduce costs much faster than First Solar.
As for your other point, the reason their capacity was purchased by utility companies is that consumers heard "cadmium telluride" and thought, "I don't want cadmium on my roof!" There is a lot of misinformation about the safety of First Solar panels simply because they contain a cadmium compound (which, I should mention, is not the same thing as if it contained elemental cadmium, though it's often difficult to convince people of that). Some countries also restricted how CdTe modules could be deployed. First Solar initially tried to address this by instituting a recycling program -- to this day, they take back all of their modules for recycling -- but eventually made a strategic decision that the consumer market was a waste of time. They started to develop their own solar farms, which they would build using their own panels, and then sell to utilities and IPPs. This was their principal business model for years. More recently, they have shed the solar farm business and I understand that they are now trying to sell their modules into all markets. They're struggling to compete against cheap silicon modules in the utility business, where module prices are lowest, and therefore trying to get back into the rooftop market where margins are higher.
Oh, and by the way, they have expanded production by quite a lot over the years, including a 1.2 GW factory that opened in Ohio last year. If I recall correctly, between Malaysia and the US their production capacity has roughly doubled since 2015 and they're currently around 5-6 GW total, but I could be off by a bit. Still, that makes them pretty small compared to the largest manufacturers of silicon panels.
These are not the answer (Score:3)
My girlfriend is a PhD student that works on perovskites and they are not the answer until some really basic chemistry can be worked out. They currently use lead which is a problem but it gets far worse. They are unstable in the presence of water or temperature extremes. With the heat waves we have hitting 100F these things don't last very long. They are mostly tested in a lab under ideal circumstances. The problem is that no material is going to prevent water intrusion long term which just normal outside temperature changes.
Long term so long as they use lead they should not be used outside of research. They represent too much risk to the environment.
Re:These are not the answer (Score:4, Informative)
Even at 40C they degrade over the course of days to hours. These things also break down ridiculously fast on contact with water. Most things we seal against water we just have to keep most of it out and tiny micro fractures are not that big of a problem but these can basically have none in them.
So far from some of the talks I have listened to on this and the papers written I am aware of the VAST majority is scientists trying to understand them better and make them marginally better but not much in the way of engineering.
They are an interesting material and they do have some interesting applications but they really look like a poor fit for solar panels.
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These things also break down ridiculously fast on contact with water.
Speaking as an engineer designing kit to work out of doors in all weathers, this has got to be a major problem. I only have to deal with water getting in and shorting out my electronics. Just send an engineer out to replace the kit. With Perovskites based on lead, there is a problem that waterproofing will break down (which it nearly always does), leading to a heavy metal ground pollution problem.
I must admit, I thought this Perovskite technology looked really good on first reading, as it does not use exoti
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WAT... First of all, what solar cells are NOT completely isolated from humidity woth glass and everything.
And second of all, this very damn article.is ABOUT how yoi solve the degradation problem by putting MORE lighz into it. That is the whole.point of it being news!
Are you drunk, or just /so/ full of yourself?
Maybe go ask yoir girlfriend who actually got a PhD. Even if for insanely evil businesses.
Re:These are not the answer (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing about perovskites compared to silicon is that they have extremely high absorption constant. Thus, the active layer of a perovskite cell can be less than a micron thick. The amount of lead in that is going to be trivial.
She's right, though, the extreme sensitivity to humidity so far has been the real issue. May be solvable, but right now that's what's keeping the out of production.
where's the battery? (Score:3)
Greenwashing (Score:3)
From the article :- "Perovskite, which is forged deep within the Earth's mantle."
How do they plan on extracting it and transporting it without causing Ecocide and CO2 pollution. Fossil Fuels used by heavy machinery and transportation .
If this technology was scaled up to the level needed to make a difference how can we justify the above ?
As usual nobody is asking theses questions - and until they are answered it can only be described as #Greenwash , a Band Aid , moving the problem to somewhere else equally destructive.
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Lol. Oh noes, we have to dig something out of the ground to make solar panels. Greenwashing! Clearly we have no choice but to continue burning stuff we dug out of the ground until we can build solar panels and windmills without digging a single hole!
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I believe Perovskites can be synthesised in the lab, with no need to dig rare minerals out of the earth.
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The article (well, TFS; having RTFS, I don't see any reason to RTFA) is written very badly. The perovskite structure was a matter of discussion in my mantle petrology class back in the mid-80s, because a structural transition from olivine+pyroxene to a perovskite mineral (of somewhat variable composition) was considered a plausible an
Australia did this? (Score:2)