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Lightcell: An engine that uses light to make electricity

(www.lightcellenergy.com)
113 points curl-up | 2 comments | 14 Jan 25 13:36 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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.
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qayxc ◴[17 Jan 25 20:34 UTC] No.42742971[source]▶
That can't be true. The current record for non-concentrating cells is 39.5% efficiency using triple junction cells [1]

Concentrating cells are at 47.6% [2]

[1] https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00191-X

[2] https://publica-rest.fraunhofer.de/server/api/core/bitstream...

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1. MalbertKerman ◴[17 Jan 25 22:57 UTC] No.42744128[source]▶
It's only true for a single junction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limi...

Multi-junction cells beat that limit, but they're still horribly expensive to manufacture which confines them to niche uses like spacecraft.

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2. DaniFong ◴[18 Jan 25 01:53 UTC] No.42745100[source]▶
we're bootstrapping off the multijunction production while using just a single junction that matches the sodium D light well