Supercooled solar panels?

[Red Squirrel]

Just a random thought, what if you encased solar panels in a highly insulated glass enclosure (double pane glass I guess) and super cooled them with liquid nitrogen or something. Would you get crazy high efficiency out of them, like 50%? I kinda want to try it.

If you could get them to absolute zero I think you would see some serious "stuff" (got an infraction for using swear words, but you know what goes there. )

 

[lxskllr]

I think you'd use more energy keeping them cool than you'd gain by increasing efficiency.

 

[Naer]

Love solar nuclear, geothermal, wind, and hydro energy. We need to transition from oil and fossil fuels imo

 

[Red Squirrel]

I think you'd use more energy keeping them cool than you'd gain by increasing efficiency.

Yeah probably, otherwise it would probably be a thing already.

 

[sdifox]

Just heat water directly

 

[Harrod]

Wouldn't you have about the same thing as the space station? I wonder if their panels are more efficient due to not having to deal with the atmosphere?

 

[Darwin333]

Wouldn't you have about the same thing as the space station? I wonder if their panels are more efficient due to not having to deal with the atmosphere?

I don't think they are actually more "efficient" they just receive a fuckload more sun so they generate far more power per SF of solar panel.

 

[feralkid]

Just heat water directly

I saw this from the window of an airliner. It was fairly easy to guess what it was. From 35,000 ft altitude and probably 30 miles away it still was like looking at a welding arc.

Almost unearthly.

Ivanpah solar steam turbine farm, Mojave desert, California.

 

[sdifox]

Wouldn't you have about the same thing as the space station? I wonder if their panels are more efficient due to not having to deal with the atmosphere?

Much more. They also get more damage due to direct impact by space debris. plus you need to cool them cuz vaccum is a good insulator.

 

[Imp]

I saw this from the window of an airliner. It was fairly easy to guess what it was. From 35,000 ft altitude and probably 30 miles away it still was like looking at a welding arc.

Almost unearthly.

Ivanpah solar steam turbine farm, Mojave desert, California.

Those things are amazing... Not so great for birds though.

 

[BUTCH1]

Just a random thought, what if you encased solar panels in a highly insulated glass enclosure (double pane glass I guess) and super cooled them with liquid nitrogen or something. Would you get crazy high efficiency out of them, like 50%? I kinda want to try it.

If you could get them to absolute zero I think you would see some serious "stuff" (got an infraction for using swear words, but you know what goes there. )

And you would need a lot of refrigeration to keep those temps so no, worthless idea.

 

[Howard]

Those things are amazing... Not so great for birds though.

http://www.birdcontrolpro.com/zon_mark4_cannon.htm

 

[jagec]

Those things are amazing... Not so great for birds though.

Fuck birds, all they do is crap on your car anyway.

 

[Brian Stirling]

No, super cooling wouldn't be effective, but if you made a concentrating collector of, say 200:1 you'd need to cool them to keep them alive and the energy removed might be used to drive a steam turbine to generate even more electricity. More practically a concentrating collector could use higher cost high efficiency solar cells and the water cooling could be used for home heating and hot water. So, if you used, say, 30% cells and were then able to reclaim 30% of the waste energy for hot water and heating the net efficiency would be closer to 50%.

We're not too far away from the point where solar becomes pretty much the cheapest source of energy. If every home and building complex covered the roof with 20% cells you could generate just about all the energy the country needs without requiring any additional land. We are not quite at 20% for general consumer (low cost) just yet but we're not far off at 15%. There are demo units in the lab at over 43% with concepts that go up to about 60%.

There is little wonder that the oil/gas/coal industries are terrified of solar and that explains the huge investment they've made to politicians to keep them from pushing solar.

The single biggest downside to solar is the need to build energy storage systems as about 35-40% of energy consumed is consumed at night. The new Tesla home battery system, scaled up to about 50Kwhr of usable storage may well be a game changer in this regard.


Brian

 

[DrPizza]

Just a random thought, what if you encased solar panels in a highly insulated glass enclosure (double pane glass I guess) and super cooled them with liquid nitrogen or something. Would you get crazy high efficiency out of them, like 50%? I kinda want to try it.

If you could get them to absolute zero I think you would see some serious "stuff" (got an infraction for using swear words, but you know what goes there. )

Actually, the OP is close, and this is currently being done, sort of - it's being done to the point that actually makes sense - putting the cells on a heat sink. Some of the cutting edge chips will function at fairly high temperatures, and light can be concentrated on their surface with little loss of efficiency. But, the chips are being placed on a heat sink, rather than cooled with liquid nitrogen. Cooling them isn't going to increase their efficiency though.

Nonetheless, as I pointed out in another thread, I'm not sure that some of the technologies for multijunction cells with very high efficiencies (currently pushing 50%) will be used for terrestrial purposes of powering homes, etc. It's a matter of "yayyyy! We have these cells that are twice as efficient as the ones currently on the market. It's just that they cost 200 times as much." There is plenty of space. Wouldn't it be wiser to cover 200 acres with cheap panels than 10 acres with concentrators and smaller panels, when the latter costs several multiples of the first? (Including the land costs) We already have the infrastructure for transporting electrical energy, and we have plenty of space. I don't think mass manufacturing of the higher efficiency chips will ever be able to reduce the costs to anywhere near what it costs to manufacture solar panels today.