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Comment by phtrivier | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone keeping a track of those "breakthrough" articles in the "breakthrough-y" topics (energy generation / storage, AI, autonomous vehicles, cancer treatment, etc...), with a timeline of "where are 10 / 20 / 30 years later" ?

I don't mean that in a snarky way - it's perfectly normal that not all innovations bear their fruits, that industrialization is harder than expected, etc...

Even if only a fraction of them work, it's called progress.

But I'm curious to know if someone compiles this kind of list.

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It depends a lot on context.

For example perovskites, which are the focus of this article have gone from having 3% conversion efficiency to 25% efficiency in the last 15 years.

That's amazing progress in the lab but deployment into standard PV markets is effectively zero.

This might change this year, hence articles about deployment, but still only 1GW or so predicted this year.

And even that is "just" tandem cells where you have a layer of standard PV and perovskites working together.

Some of the real sci-fi possibilities of perovskites are of being able to print them easily and cheaply onto flexible lightweight structures entering whole new markets.

But with wider context, it's weird this gets brought up so often in regards to solar PV and batteries which may actually be two of the most impactful technical revolutions in human history, totally reshaping the whole world right now at a breathtaking speed that surprises even enthusiasts that are paying attention.

First patents on solar energy were granted in 1860s. First solar panels were created in 1883. It wasn't so long ago - I still remember - that everybody thought solar energy would stay way too expensive and would never compete with coal or gas, and look what happened.

Solar doesn't compete with coal or gas - it's still not reliable enough to replace base load requirements, and skewed economics around solar have killed new or replacement base load projects. Indeed, the California and Texas screwed up politics and economics are chief contributors to their power instability. My favorite is in CA - mandatory switch to electric cars then ban people from charging them due to electricity shortages. You can't make this stuff up.

Renewables don't do reliable baseload _yet_, that is true. But not being able to completely replace gas does not equate not competing at all. That is a fallacy. For example, we are a laggard on renewables (Netherlands), but are catching up nicely:

https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2024/10/nearly-half-the-electr...

If you look at the chart it is clear that as renewables are rising (both wind and solar), fossil based electricity declines (including gas).

This is easily understood when you consider that gas is used to generate way more than the baseload. When solar energy is producing, it is more often than not cheaper than gas, and when it isn't it is easy enough to supplement with gas. That means solar competes, but doesn't replace.

There are lots of problems with the transition we are making, some are real, some are due to stupidity and others to greed and malice. It doesn't help that the solutions have become so politicized. I'm convinced that at the end of the transition we'll have an abundant amount of cheap, renewable and clean energy.

I certainly hope these spray/use/coat-anywhere perovskites are lead-free, and there isn't much info on the other key issue with perovskites: they degrade quickly when exposed to oxygen/air/the atmosphere.

The article kind of sucks, like most gee-whiz solar reporting. Battery reporting IMO has gotten a bit better where they actually address cycles/density/materials.

Multijunction solar is still ridiculously undeveloped industrially, and perovskite or silicon+perovskite multijunction could lead to a lot of progress.

What's important about these articles is that solar, which is already exceptionally cheap in LCOE terms, still has runway to likely drop 50% in price in the next 10 years.

I continue to be frustrated with the cost of home/residential solar, which I think is a key part to avoiding excessive grid restruction, increasing resilience in disaster scenarios, double-utilizing already-industrialized/developed land/structures rather than using "pristine" land, and providing key competition to inherent-monopoly utilities.

So cheaper spray-on or coating-based solar might help close the residential vs grid solar gap.

> they degrade quickly when exposed to oxygen/air/the atmosphere

Can this be fixed with (for example) some kind of spray-on acrylic ?

I'm not a solar cell researcher, just know that perovskites have had the lead content and degradation on exposure to air as their fundamental commercialization blockers, well, and the usual efficiency scaling.

I'm assuming a thing sprayable film which you would most certainly want to be lead-free and inherently would have a higher surface area of air exposure has addressed both, so this would be very promising at 20%+ efficiencies.

Looks like they are up to 34.6% with tandem cells.

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2024/06/17/longi-claims-34-6-eff...

It's fairly common for undergrads and graduate students to compile reviews of research technologies to see what is getting commercialized and what isn't.

If you search google scholar or similar for the area you're interested in, and limit it to the last year or two, you can probably find plenty of info.

As an example, here is a search for "commercialization of novel solar technologies" since 2023 and it has plenty of good looking papers: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2023&q=commerciali...

http://solartribune.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/...

Original source keeps this up to date and provides interactive versions:

https://www.nrel.gov/pv/interactive-cell-efficiency.html

I made a point of tracking Solid Energy Systems back when they were young and were just announcing their “break through” battery technology.

What’s interesting was that they seemed to go off the radar when they got their investments and initial customers. Hard to find articles and news about them. Recently I found an interview where they talked about that they had been selling batteries to some niche applications with very specific requirements. Now they seem to be coming into the limelight again and have shipped prototype EV battery packs.

In fact it seems like several solid or semi solid state battery techs are just about to reach mass market these days. It’s what.. like 10 years ago we saw all these break through articles (and the obligatory complaints about break through articles)?

Just yday learned something about microwaves (kitchen appliance). First produced by Raythreon in 1947 were big and expensive ($68,000 in 2023 dollars). By 1986, roughly 25% of households in the U.S. owned a microwave oven, up from only about 1% in 1971. Same goes with solar - it's so cheap now everybody can get small installation. So it's breaktroughs, then incremental improvements in efficiency and production cost. Commercial availability allows scaling and further fall in production cost. It takes time...

Commercially available solar has gotten a lot better and batteries have too, so clearly some breakthroughs are ending up on shelves eventually.

it's called a "press release". they are often written by the University own public relations or marketing department and sent en masse to newspapers.

simply printing the press release with minor word and paragraph order change ("cooking the press release") is frowned upon but very common.

usually when you see one of those, the very first thing you do is make a note to never go back to that news company, or at least the journalist signing it. but often cooked press releases are not signed.

there are places which compile press releases as a service to journalists having to fill pages.

OP. You know, I made a diligent effort to find a primary source, whether a paper or whatnot. It seems like Oxford is trying to get across the idea there has been a general “breakthrough” or at least recent dramatic improvement, but it doesn’t seem tied to any particular paper. Sometimes it’s hard to tell from paper titles or even abstracts.

On the other hand, it’s Oxford, source of some of the greatest achievements in human history. If they want to trumpet something that’s going on, I’d give them the benefit of the doubt it’s worth a sniff. And here at HN, people who know might chime in.

So, I don’t do this all the time, but I made an exception and floated it, apparently reasonably.

I also had a personal connection, which was the micron thin film aspect, which my dad worked on at a megacorp for his whole career. Would have been great to be able to chat with him about it, ach well.

There are regular articles about breakthroughs. Solar power drops in price quickly. You don't need to compile a list in order to connect the dots.

I'm still waiting for a tesa data storage device!

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