←back to thread

Lightcell: An engine that uses light to make electricity

(www.lightcellenergy.com)
113 points curl-up | 1 comments | 14 Jan 25 13:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
Show context
josefritzishere ◴[17 Jan 25 20:02 UTC] No.42742646[source]▶
The solar panel conversion of sunlight to usable energy to around 20%, with a theoretical max of 30%. So it's better than that.
replies(3): >>42742971 #>>42743106 #>>42743330 #
1. audunw ◴[17 Jan 25 20:51 UTC] No.42743106[source]▶
But sunlight is wide spectrum, and a lot of the reasons why the efficiency of regular solar panels is low, is that they don’t absorb all of the spectrum equally well. That’s why there’s all this talk of tandem solar cells with perovskites these days. The two solar cells can be tuned to extract energy from different wavelengths of light.

Since the light they’re making is nearly monochromatic, it’s a lot easier to get higher efficiency. That’s kind of the whole point of the invention.