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"Using computer modeling and a variety of advanced chip-manufacturing techniques, they have applied an antireflection coating to the front, and a novel combination of multi-layered reflective coatings and a tightly spaced array of lines — called a diffraction grating — to the backs of ultrathin silicon films to boost the cells’ output by as much as 50 percent."

I saw a show recently on either Nat Geo, or The Science Channel that was all about "alternative Green" energy.

IIRC, when the show talked about "solar energy", it was shown that as long as "solar cells have been around (say at least 20-30 years) that the come from somewhere in Europe, and that they have managed to get a solar cell that ACTUALLY can gather and use up to and astonashing EIGHTTEEN PERCENT of the sun's energy that hits it!!!!!!!!!

Hmmm....so if these folks have increased that 18% by 50%........WOW boys and girls!!!! We've managed in 30 years to finally get a solar cell to use almost 28% of the frickin' sun's energy that hits it!!!!!!!!!

NOW I know why the dems don't wanna bother drillin' no place!!!!!!!!!!!

Do you know how much havoc it can cause to suck nearly 30% of the available solar energy out of the climate sustem?

DOOOoooooom!

We must ban solar NOW....

We’ve already done in oil; coal nearly so; nukes is dead; wind kills bats & birds, and causes imaginary syndromes....

Yah-hah-ha! We’ll have these capitlist creeps back in caves eating raw veggies before they know waht hit’m, boys!

"We've managed in 30 years to finally get a solar cell to use almost 28% of the frickin' sun's energy that hits it!!!!!!!!!"

Only in the computer.

Actual manufacturing costs would increase 1500%.

yitbos

Well let’s say it is 28% efficient (I don’t know what it really is). Here in central California the sun’s energy is about 720 watts per square meter on average for 6 hours a day in the summer. 28% of that is about 202 watts generated per square meter for 6 hours a day. So that’s about 1.21 kWh of electricity per day per square meter.

That 8500 BTU air conditioner should take about 950 watts to operate depending on its efficiency. If it is on (that is actually running) approximately 20% of the day it should take about 4.56 kWh of electricity each day.

Therefore it would take about 4.2 square meters (or a little less than 7 feet by 7 feet) of these cells to generate the needed energy to power a 8500 BTU air conditioner including a 10% loss getting from DC to AC.

And the sun shines for more than 6 hours a day here.

Actually, these are thin-film photovoltaics and the thin-film solutions are only in the 8%-12% efficiency range. Those using polysilicon are in the high-teens with the best being from SunPower at 22%-23%. Poly versus thin-films are apples & oranges!