Waste-based perovskite solar cell achieves 21.39% energy efficiency
techxplore.com
techxplore.com
!?
The Earth's crust is 28% silicon by mass. It's literally the second most abundant element. I'm not a professional, but isn't most of the cost of solar outside the panels now anyway - installation, cabling, inverters, permitting, storage for use during peak hours, etc?
With the cost of big-ass 400W solar panels as low as they are now, in the pallet load or container load, much of the cost is actually the labor and the mounting.
$150 per panel x 22 on a pallet = $3300
For a ground mounted PV system, you can easily spend far more than 3300 on the foundation work, concrete, steel erection and frame than the raw solar panel costs now. Randomly chosen 40kW theoretical would be $15000 in panels plus LTL truck cargo, the rest of the costs for a working system would be much more than 15k.
It's also possible for a roof mounting system to cost more than the panels in materials and labor and time.
[0] https://electrek.co/2022/12/12/texas-solar-farm-flat-on-the-...
Interestingly he said the efficiency loss from having panels mounted at the ‘wrong’ angle is essentially nothing particularly when you consider the increased density and reduction in site prep/installation. They can literally install a couple hundred kW in an afternoon
[0] https://5b.co/
The website says "shallow ground penetration" which sounds to me like some sort of anchors that are drilled into the surface then bolts run down into them (such as with a construction team using the largest size of battery operated Milwaukee hammer drills?), or similar.
I think it comes in pretty useful at temporary sites and for disaster relief but not sure if it’s been deployed for that yet
This is also why 2-axis and 3-axis tracker mechanisms are rarely seen these days, the cost of foundation/structure to build a thing on a concrete and steel pier that can 'steer' just six 1.65x1.0 meter size panels is extreme. It's like a big sail in wind loading so it takes a lot of steel and structure to resist that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/18p1q...
https://www.naturaecoenergy.com/robotic-solar-panel-cleaning...
How frequently really depends on the local climate, but at least a few times a year even in a place that doesn't have dust storms.
A couple of hundred panels just laid on the ground.
Even strong winds didn't lift them.
But after just a few months they're kinda covered in mud.
Probably. The fix would be for the panels to be an intrinsic part of the roof, meaning they don't have to be separately installed.
... a key factor in industrial-scale silicon production (microchips, PV, or otherwise) is the purity of the raw material. It may well be that high grade silica is fundamentally scarce, or that access to it may be restricted or limited by other factors. Sand theft is an issue that's emerged as a concern, largely as it's a huge industrial input, particularly in concrete, and the most suitable sands are found in riverbeds, rather than either deserts or beaches, both of which are far more abundant. Discussed five years ago on HN here:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21758301>
There are abundant materials whose useful stock or rates of production are limited by other factors. Nitrogen fertiliser is a canonical example: the raw element is abundant in air (70% of the atmosphere), but its fixation is extremely energy intensive, relying most keenly on natural gas supplies and prices. Ammonia and ammonia-based product costs (fertilisers, cleaning supplies, explosives) tend to fluctuate strongly with natural gas prices, despite the underlying abundance of nitrogen itself.
The raw material itself is CaTiO₃,[1] which are three fairly abundant elements, though how that compares with sufficiently pure silica isn't clear to me. My general feeling (from what I've read and experience with other strongly-promoted energy alternatives) is that applications are more likely to be niche, where conditions specifically favour perovskites' specific advantages.
Those seem to be greater incident sunlight conversion efficiencies (~30% vs. 15--20% more typical of silicon PV, which is often less significant than might at first be apparent), and potentially lower manufacturing costs. As is noted in the discussion, panel cost itself is increasingly dwarfed by less-fungible labour and infrastructure costs (e.g., physical support, see <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43135371>).
Worth keeping a finger on the pulse, but not something I'm getting particularly excited about. Pace of development has lagged hype/expectations over the decade or so I've been hearing about the tech.
________________________________
Notes:
1. See: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perovskite_(structure)>
PV tech to date has a presumed lifespan of about 20 years, at which point it's both typically degraded to 80% of nameplate functionality and cheaper to replace with newer, more functional, components.
That said, extending life by a factor of 50--100% could be a game-changer, particularly where PV is a major (or majority) factor of electricity generation or all energy inputs. At that point, needing to replace 5% of all installed capacity every year becomes its own daunting task. Reducing that to 2.5% would be a tremendous win if that could be achieved at a competitive cost.
I've done some reading on both how and why panels fail and durability/lifespan testing (much of this comes out of NREL in the US), and as it's due to multiple degradation pathways achieving greater lifespans isn't a trivial task, and the 20-year benchmark is itself quite dependent on specific experiences. E.g., a heavy hailstorm won't much care how old your panels are, but on average the expected incidence of such events is factored into the 20-year life expectancy (along with other similarly variable factors).
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/02/17/organic-inorganic-per...
This system appears based on tin, not lead, so that's a plus for not generating as much toxic waste. However the lifetime report - 10% efficieny loss over 1000 hour - is why people vastly prefer monocrystalline silicon cells, whose lifetime is easily 200X as long (more like 1000X, but other components of the PV module than the silicon will degrade more on the 200,000 hours timeline).
You'd have to replace these once a year or so to retain >90% of the initial power output, versus mono-Si which lasts for 25 years+.
https://undecidedmf.com/how-record-breaking-perovskites-are-...
Important note, it's not waste, it's manufactured from waste.
Your assessment may be correct, but it's not informative.
Where do they get these people?
I've found that every time I post something complaining about a "science journalist", or a "tech journalist", not having a basic understanding of the stuff they write about, or not doing meaningful research, I reliably get downvotes.
Sorry, if you are reporting on a "science" beat, I do expect you to recognize the word "furan", because you either took organic chemistry or have paid some attention to the world around you. You don't have to be able to sketch it, but come on.