Novel invention could mean cheaper source of energy from solar power

Science in Africa ^ | 3/1/06 | Mikey_1962

[Mikey_1962]

Energy security has become one of the hottest political topics in the last few years with the prospects of skyrocketing oil prices and shortages. Along with the looming dangers of climate change, the urgency of alternatives to CO2 emitting energy sources is becoming more obvious by the day. One of the most important actions to counter these challenges is the establishment of alternative energy sources such as solar energy. Latest research by South African scientists have taken us one step further to realising these goals.

Solar power has traditionally been differentiated into solar thermal and solar photovoltaic systems. The photo-voltaic effect is a phenomenon that depends on quantum physics, and allows specific materials to directly convert solar radiation to electricity. The photo-voltaic effect is used in solar panels, that have been powering spacecraft for decades and have recently been making their presence felt in supplying electricity to free-standing locations on earth, like telephone towers and pump systems on farms.

However, the panels available commercially today are almost all based on high-purity silicon as the photo-voltaic material, and these panels are much more expensive than the equivalent amount of coal, petrol or gas.

The only way to make photovoltaic energy more widely used, is to make devices (including solar panels) that are much cheaper than the current silicon-based devices. The most promising PV material identified to date is Copper-Indium-Gallium-Diselenide (CIGS).

CIGS is much more efficient than silicon at converting incident sunlight into an electric current: Less than one micron of CIGS absorbs more than 99% of available incident solar energy, compared to 350 microns of silicon to do the same job.

Despite the excitement around CIGS, significant cost savings compared to silicon were not achieved, despite 20 years of research. However, a new development has made the picture considerably brighter.

[festus]

Well Bully for them. If this worked it'd be a great thing.

But I'll not bet the farm just yet.

[festus]

I still think the most promise lies in concentraing the light and heat from the sun .... and chasing ants !!!

[Tunehead54]

Reference bump. I do know people in AZ that are completely off the grid and yet have AC, lights, PC and H2O pumps ... maybe we're all getting closer? If my bill is under $300/month I'm surprised and happy. I'm only happy about 3 months a year! ;-)

[chaosagent]

Bookmarked

[mississippi red-neck]

You have hit on the reason we havn't had energy independent homes or an energy independent country. We should have had solar homes fifty years ago.

It's not Arab's we need to be free from but the power of the big oil companies and their monopoly of the energy market.

Do you not think that a country when challenged in the early sixties to go from struggling to put a grapefruit sized object in orbit around the planet to men on the moon in seven years could not developed solar energy which was showing great promise back then into a viable cheap inexhaustible form of energy by now?

We won't have any source of plentiful renewable energy until something is done about them and the strangle hold they have on our elected officials and the world's energy market since the early 20 century, unless it is a new source controlled by them.

[ll_t]

True true-

I also think that when energy becomes so massively available that it can't be controlled we'll see a major class leveling in society. The cost of production will effectively drop by the amount that was being spent on energy, which will cascade through the economy. Who knows - with the effect on the economy, maybe it will be possible to raise a family on a full-time job again.