Just wanted to drop a comment.
I love solar. It's the best form of energy that's attainable by the average person.
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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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.
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.
I've been thinking about getting solar for a while, how bad is the efficiency loss at -30C to -20C?
They gain efficiency at lower temps. Cool, clear days are best. At negative 20C you're looking at ~15-20% increase in power output from the panel itself. Look for the "temperature coefficient" on a solar module spec sheet.
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How does concentrating the sunlight like this not start a fire? Or wouldn’t this at least cause panel electronics to overheat?
I would imagine they're not concentrating maximally. Just enough to increase efficiency.
Concentrating solar cells have been around for decades, but I suppose the efficiency Fraunhofer achieved here is nothing to sneeze at.
The issue here in NL is with the power grid, not the price of the panels. The installing of them is already one of the most expensive parts of getting panels since you need to build scafolding for most houses.