this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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Technology

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I am not going to pretend to be smart enough to understand any of it but I think it’s good news?

I would be keen to have solar panels or a solar array on my property but they are so damn expensive.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The theoretical limit we can get out of the sun with panels is 40-45% so we are getting pretty close to that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Do you know what is theoretically limiting it to 40-45% in the physical process we are using?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The materials that do the absorption are not effective across the entire wavelength spectrum of the sun. They can only absorb at a certain wavelength range, but the spectrum range of the sun is very wide.

Edit. Also other reasons, like recombination rate where the photon hitting the panel generates an electron-hole pair which is then collected and used for evegy, but electrons and holes tend to want to recombine, after which we cannot use them for evergy. We want this rate to be zero, but it never is, it is a probabilistic process. So even if you can absorb everything, you can't utilise everything you absorb.

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