Optical Furnace Bakes Better Solar Cells 93
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.'"
Re:The idea of removing impurities is cool... (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea of removing impurities using light is cool if it increases the efficiency of the completed pannel.
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Probably not. Getting very pure silicon is relatively easy. Even if it did, solar panel efficiency is so abysmal a few percentage points more isn't going to help.
What they need to focus on is producing inverters more efficiently. Those things are *expensive*, and required if you want to rig solar panels into your existing household AC lines (and sell energy back to the grid.)
Re:The idea of removing impurities is cool... (Score:4, Interesting)
IGBT's are cheap. Capacitors are cheap. PWBs are cheap. Microcontrollers are cheap. You don't need big and expensive magnetics (transformers/inductors) if you are not doing voltage level up shifting. Inverters can be made very inexpensively if development costs are spread over enough units, but the material and production costs are relatively low compared to what companies charge for them, so the prices for these could fall significantly given enough competition in the market.
Re:So, what? A month, six months, a year? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The idea of removing impurities is cool... (Score:4, Interesting)
Solar panel efficiency is nearly good enough to make a lot of applications viable. If they can make the jump they claim from 16% to 20%, that would be huge. Needing 20% less roofspace/panels for the same power, and with the panels themselves cheaper to boot? It could bring the price of rooftop solar into the reach of millions more American households.