Saturday, January 03, 2009

New solar cell developed: Solar becomes viable?

I don't often say so here, but I am a huge fan of both the school science fairs and of solar energy. It is assumed, in my home, that both children will be doing science fair projects every year. (This year my son is working on a mathematics project related to computer chess playing, and my daughter is working on a solar energy project which is unrelated to the big breakthrough in this post.)

I was happy to see that a 12-year old boy, with a photo of him standing next to what sure looks like a science fair project board, has taken solar to the next level: his new design for solar cells is roughly 500x as efficient as current solar cells. It has a few innovations in it, but one of the more encouraging is this: it absorbs UV rays also: i.e. it works on cloudy days. Which is to say, solar should shortly become a viable energy source. I wish I could sign up to be a beta tester for the prototype ...

2 comments:

LoieJ said...

Our house is passive solar. We used to have storage (water) tubes, but that was before we could afford carpeting. We were supposed to have active solar, but the guy went bankrupt before he got them in. But I will say that having lots of insulation is half the battle for low cost house heating.

I will try to follow this new development in solar.

Weekend Fisher said...

I've been window-shopping (ok, browser-shopping) for solar systems for awhile. What do you think of yours?

Take care & God bless
Anne / WF