Optical Furnace Bakes Better Solar Cells

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory just announced that they have found a way to create more efficient photovoltaic cells using 50% less energy. The technique hinges upon a new optical furnace that uses intense light instead of a conventional furnace to heat silicon to make solar cells. The new furnace utilizes 'highly reflective and heat-resistant ceramics to ensure that the light is absorbed only by a silicon wafer, not by the walls inside the furnace.'"

The idea of removing impurities is cool...

[Wierdy1024]

The idea of removing impurities using light is cool if it increases the efficiency of the completed pannel.

The premise of saving energy in the manufacture of the panels isn't really relevant. Currently producing silicon uses lots of energy, but it needen't really. The process really only involves heating and cooling of relatively small volumes of silicon, and if you were to design a machine to do it continuously, you could do it with nearly no energy. The raw materials are cold, the output is cold, and the processing in the middle is hot - use the energy from the finished product cooling down to heat new raw materials in a continuous process, as already done in a water Heat Exchanger.

The reason this currently isn't done is because energy is a tiny cost in the production of silicon, and other things are far more important than recapturing a tiny amount of energy while the silicon cools down.

Re:Arghh...

[ibsteve2u]

Seeing as this breakthrough is as yet not even on the NREL RSS feed... http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/rss/rss.xml [nrel.gov] I reckon either somebody is "talking out of school" which likely means this technology will indeed show up in production in some other country other than NREL's source of funding first or it does not, indeed, exist.

Still, one can always hope that Big Carbon's throttling grip may one day be broken...or even act upon that desire: http://cleanenergy.harvard.edu/ [harvard.edu]

Re:So, what? A month, six months, a year?

[ibsteve2u]

lolll...no, the Roman Empire - its power structure, and so its government - took about three decades to decay [tacitus.nu] to the point that Alaric could sack Rome on August 24, A.D. 410.

About as long as "flood-up/trickle-down" economics has been dictating policy in the U.S., in fact.

Re:Arghh...

[ibsteve2u]

Further tracing of the story reveals it came out of a MIT publication on December 13th way back in 2011 [technologyreview.com] ;^)

A much more creditable provenance regardless of the lack of information at NREL's website.

Already done.

[Colin Smith]

Virtually all caravan and recreational vehicle/motor home devices are 12v.

The problem is the amperage with a 12v supply.