Comment on Breakthrough barium titanate solar panels are 1000x more powerful than existing panels

fr0g@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Current solar panels are about 25% efficient, so 1000 times that would be 25.000%. I think Mr. Boltzmann and Mr. Maxwell might have some objections here.

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  • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

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  • Liz@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Now that’s what I call efficient!

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• SteveKLord@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Thanks for clarifying that. That publication can be prone to clickbait style headlines it seems but they also publish some good information overall and I thought it was worth noting

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• henfredemars@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Indeed, this seems impossible. Current solar panels are surprisingly efficient as it stands.

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• ZeroGravitas@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Thanks for the reality check. Still a huge result if it translates well into mass production.

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• RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It says in the article

  compared to pure barium titanate of a similar thickness, the current flow was up to 1,000 times stronger

  And in the referenced paper

  In addition, the photoresponse from SBC222 is 1000 times higher than that from BTO

  Neither sound like a measure of efficiency to me. But I’m also no expert and the paper went well beyond my head.

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  • Tiresia@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    “Strong current flow” is informal language, but both it and photoresponse refer to the electrical power that comes out. In theory you would just divide that by the incoming solar flux and get the efficiency. For now it’s only in a lab setting, though, so we’ll have to see what the practical efficiency will be if this is actually incorporated into a reasonable solar cell.

    So yeah, apparently barium titanate solar panels used to be extremely terrible, and now they might become competitive with further research.

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  • Malgas@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s not a measure of efficiency per se, but efficiency is a limiting factor:

    In order for a solar panel to put out 1000x more power, the baseline you’re comparing it to must be at most 0.1% efficient, because otherwise the new thing would have greater than 100% efficiency and that isn’t possible.

    And that’s a purely thermodynamic argument. The actual limit for solar efficiency is likely less.

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• finley@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Even a few hundred percent improvement would be great.

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  • MotoAsh@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If it’s over 400%-500%, it’s fake news, because that’d be generating more energy than is emitted by the sun (per area at distance).

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