well, adding lenses kinda requires motorizing the panels to track the sun, right? otherwise the "hot spot" is going to move around across the day/year

is there a way to shape the lens to mitigate this?

It does. Also seems weird nobody thought of a magnifying glass before.

But its also the beauty in science. Now somebody else thought about it, and they might work harder to fix the next problem: Heat.

If that gets better now, solar panels will increase in output even more. There are so many technologies going into one product, and each field have its own experts.

I'm excited.

Hey it's those guys that invented MP3s.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/24690127

Solar energy experts in Germany are putting sun-catching cells under the magnifying glass with astounding results, according to multiple reports.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems team is perfecting the use of lenses to concentrate sunlight onto solar panels, reducing size and costs while increasing performance, Interesting Engineering and PV Magazine reported.

The "technology has the potential to contribute to the energy transition, facilitating the shift toward more sustainable and renewable energy sources by combining minimal carbon footprint and energy demand with low levelized cost of electricity," the researchers wrote in a study published by the IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics.

The sun-catcher is called a micro-concentrating photovoltaic, or CPV, cell. The lens makes it different from standard solar panels that convert sunlight to energy with average efficiency rates around 20%, per MarketWatch. Fraunhofer's improved CPV cell has an astounding 36% rate in ideal conditions and is made with lower-cost parts. It cuts semiconductor materials "by a factor of 1,300 and reduces module areas by 30% compared to current state-of-the-art CPV systems," per IE.

Hey it's those guys that invented MP3s.

Grid forming will just mean the keep running the house when the power goes off, it's not safe for them to be pushing power when it's disappeared, that has been set by regulation in many countries.

I have not read the article yet, but I will be doing so after posting this. But from what I understand, concentrated cells via lenses already exist. The problem with them was keeping them cool.

Going to go read the actual article now.

Edit: Well, the article was very sparse on details. From what I understand of the comments, what's really been done here is making cells that can stand the kind of heat that would be focused onto them from the glass.

I want to say I saw a video about this a year ago or so, but it was more solar thermal, where you focus a bunch of mirrors onto a single point high up on a tower, and it's cooled by molten salt. But as I said, that's solar thermal, not solar power electricity.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/24690127

Solar energy experts in Germany are putting sun-catching cells under the magnifying glass with astounding results, according to multiple reports.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems team is perfecting the use of lenses to concentrate sunlight onto solar panels, reducing size and costs while increasing performance, Interesting Engineering and PV Magazine reported.

The "technology has the potential to contribute to the energy transition, facilitating the shift toward more sustainable and renewable energy sources by combining minimal carbon footprint and energy demand with low levelized cost of electricity," the researchers wrote in a study published by the IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics.

The sun-catcher is called a micro-concentrating photovoltaic, or CPV, cell. The lens makes it different from standard solar panels that convert sunlight to energy with average efficiency rates around 20%, per MarketWatch. Fraunhofer's improved CPV cell has an astounding 36% rate in ideal conditions and is made with lower-cost parts. It cuts semiconductor materials "by a factor of 1,300 and reduces module areas by 30% compared to current state-of-the-art CPV systems," per IE.

"The lens makes it different from standard solar panels that convert sunlight to energy with average efficiency rates around 20%, per MarketWatch. Fraunhofer's improved CPV cell has an astounding 36% rate in ideal conditions"

Why would I want to compare one panel's average efficiency to another panels efficiency in ideal conditions?

Even crazier that it's a logarithmic graph.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/24690127

Solar energy experts in Germany are putting sun-catching cells under the magnifying glass with astounding results, according to multiple reports.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems team is perfecting the use of lenses to concentrate sunlight onto solar panels, reducing size and costs while increasing performance, Interesting Engineering and PV Magazine reported.

The "technology has the potential to contribute to the energy transition, facilitating the shift toward more sustainable and renewable energy sources by combining minimal carbon footprint and energy demand with low levelized cost of electricity," the researchers wrote in a study published by the IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics.

The sun-catcher is called a micro-concentrating photovoltaic, or CPV, cell. The lens makes it different from standard solar panels that convert sunlight to energy with average efficiency rates around 20%, per MarketWatch. Fraunhofer's improved CPV cell has an astounding 36% rate in ideal conditions and is made with lower-cost parts. It cuts semiconductor materials "by a factor of 1,300 and reduces module areas by 30% compared to current state-of-the-art CPV systems," per IE.

You make them convex.

You can shape them that no matter how the light falls on it, it will align to the center. Kind of like how satellite dishes work but in reverse.

Marketing. Fresnel lenses are not going to do well with diffuse light.

Could have some refraction or hologram thing that bends the light the right way, maybe? Or like a matte glass that equalises the load.

Or why not just use (big) mirrors?

Won't help with heat ofc!

That was Fraunhofer IIS not ISE.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/24690127

Solar energy experts in Germany are putting sun-catching cells under the magnifying glass with astounding results, according to multiple reports.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems team is perfecting the use of lenses to concentrate sunlight onto solar panels, reducing size and costs while increasing performance, Interesting Engineering and PV Magazine reported.

The "technology has the potential to contribute to the energy transition, facilitating the shift toward more sustainable and renewable energy sources by combining minimal carbon footprint and energy demand with low levelized cost of electricity," the researchers wrote in a study published by the IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics.

The sun-catcher is called a micro-concentrating photovoltaic, or CPV, cell. The lens makes it different from standard solar panels that convert sunlight to energy with average efficiency rates around 20%, per MarketWatch. Fraunhofer's improved CPV cell has an astounding 36% rate in ideal conditions and is made with lower-cost parts. It cuts semiconductor materials "by a factor of 1,300 and reduces module areas by 30% compared to current state-of-the-art CPV systems," per IE.

Yeah the problem has always been that solar panels only really like to operate within a very narrow temperature band. It's why you can't just plate the Sahara desert in solar panels. In theory that would generate loads of power but the heat of the desert is way outside of their operating range.

There's been loads of ideas to heat/cool solar panels, the problem up until now has always been to do that without cutting into the panel's efficiency so much that it isn't worth doing.

But there's been videos on YouTube of people cooling solar panels with plasma cooling and phase change materials for a few years now.

They probably did, but like they said, the heating is probably the issue.

I can see them adding a cooling element. Maybe even water cooling.

Oh don't worry, I'm sure the capitalist system will manage to fuck it up somehow.

Would a UV filtering lens help? Do solar cells generate more power from certain parts of the light spectrum?