Stanford Heats Up Solar Power With New Harnessing Technology

Stanford Heats Up Solar Power With New Harnessing Technology





2010



A Stanford University research group
says it found a way to more than double current solar power production
efficiency. The technology uses both light and heat from the sun and is
inexpensive enough that, if it pans out, it might be able to compete
with oil.
Most current technology can either convert light into electricity at
relatively low temperatures, or convert the sun’s heat at very high
temperatures. Stanford engineers claim they developed a way to do both.
The photon enhanced thermionic emission, or PETE, works best at high
temperatures, where current photovoltaics struggle. Solar panels usually
use silicon to convert photons to electricity, but only from a certain
portion of the light spectrum. Unused photons generate heat in the
cells, making them perform poorly and losing up to 50% of the energy
reaching the solar panel.
Professor Nick Melosh, who led the research group, says PETE works
best at higher temperatures, making it most effective when used with
solar concentrators like parabolic mirrors used in solar farms, rather
than as rooftop solar panel replacements. If installed in solar farms,
PETE could also pass any waste heat it can’t convert to a solar farm’s
thermal conversion system. The team’s vision is to attach PETE devices
to existing systems.
Solar panels are often expensive because they require a lot of
silicon, but one PETE device needs only about a six-inch wafer of
semiconducting material, reducing the amount of investment capital
needed to get it off the ground.
According to the research team’s estimates, the devices could reach
60% efficiency on solar farms. Falling short of that goal could still
have significant effects. The team said if they can boost efficiency to
30%, it could make the cost of solar power comparable to oil.
This video from Stanford explains more about the project:

Revolutionary Solar Energy Conversion Process Developed