Researchers from the Wuhan University of Technology in China have designed and synthesized a new non-fullerene acceptor for organic solar cells. One of their fabricated devices achieved the highest certified efficiency ever reported for single-junction organic solar cells.
Hey ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆, thanks for bringing up organic solar cells.
I’m 100% for a total solar / wind transition, i.e, the energy consumption of the world is completely swapped to low-cost solar panels / wind turbines, backed by low-cost lithium or sodium batteries (preferably solid state).
However, the problem right now is that the Chinese have sufficient production capacity for 4% replacement (given lifespans of 25 years before a panel drops to 80% output) of 60% of planetary energy demand, and we are stuck at the 10 cents per watt module level (which translates to 20 cents per installed unit of capacity in China itself, not including UHV lines, but installed prices skyrocket overseas).
This means that Swanson’s Law effectively breaks down as China can no longer expand production to further lower prices, and China’s currency is about 45% (188% PPP GDP vs nominal GDP) undervalued.
The problem is then that with solar being stuck as it is, we need newer solar technologies to continue the price decline (the American EIA projects frackgas, in the United States, to drop to a price of 1.6 cents per kWh LCOE, from a current 3.8 cent price).
The technology that most people in the West favor is perovskites, usually lead-based perovskites, since China doesn’t have a supply chain built up for it, and lead-based perovskites can be extremely cheap.
But the problem with perovskites is that, ummm, it’s lead-based, degrades rapidly, and you are almost guaranteed that perovskite panels will begin leeching lead into groundwater, especially since a solarized world will have massive panel deployments (you can’t guarantee that none of them will crack, same as how mass-deployed nuclear is unsafe for the same reasons).
Organic solar cells, purportedly “4th generation” solar cells, offer an alternative, although currently efficiencies are far lower than perovskites, and this is not just a factor of technology development, but a fundamental limitation of the technology (band-gap is at the wrong point for Sol’s insolation).
Hopefully, organic solar cells, given their exceptional cost advantage (they’re essentially plastics), can mature and eventually prevent the dominance of perovskites.
Right, lower efficiency is offset by the fact that the cells require less resources to manufacture, so you can just make more of them with lower environmental impact. It’s also worth noting that China is pursuing a broad spectrum of options for energy production. It looks like nuclear will act as the backbone of the grid, and it will be supplemented by solar, wind, hydro, etc at local level.
Why do people favour solar and wind over nuclear? You wouldn’t need as much land for the nuclear output and it can reliably generate huge amounts of power…
Nukes generate waste, have small meltdown odds (thus medium or larger meltdown odds the more you deploy them), and also the technology chain can be modified for uranium enrichment.
Solar and wind are also popular because their generation can be decentralized, but this is less of a concern for MLs who favor planning.
The actual dangerous waste is less than 0.1%. intermediate and low level can be reprocessed. Nuclear is also more capacity efficient than solar.
We also have reactors that do not have the ability to melt down, with the development of molten salt and thorium coming ever closer.
The problem is that capitalist nations cannot be trusted with nuclear; as they will fleece construction, regulation and qualifications every single time. Compared to Chernobyl; which was a design flaw in the early, ancient reactors of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, incompetence and decadence run deep here and has been responsible for accidents here for that exact reason before.
I still believe nuclear is the way and there are plenty of much more worth it advantages to nuclear power for grid-use or military-use. I believe China is developing these organic panels as a form of “grid self-sufficiency” for rural areas, possibly. The less houses/homes in a nation of a billion connected to energy is more power for all. Could also be used in cars, space (Their first outer-solar system launch is coming up), etc.
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Solar + batt in China is currently cheaper than coal and natgas.
Solar is a 100% mature technology that promises to provide further cost savings over existing technologies, and has reasonable odds of reaching the 1 cent per kWh point, where solar is competitive with fusion.
Fission can’t scale to that point; the main point of fission is that it can produce reactors for warships and submarines, as well as uranium for fission, boosted fission, and thermonuclear weapons.
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Iirc my math was for 3x overbuilding on solar and using massive battery banks, although the 4 cents per kwh figure assumes 1.5x overbuilding and enough batteries to capture all of a summer day’s generation.
Fission and solar are actually enemies because the extreme intermittency of solar overloads the grid in the summer, and provides no energy at night. Coal and natgas have fast generation spoolup, whereas nuclear takes too long, hence solar forces nuclear off the grid.
Ultimately, solar is here. At present prices, in China, at least, panels with battery can compete with natgas and coal for total generation.
With further reduction in battery prices (40 USD is the marginal cost of batteries), and multi-junction carbon or carbon silicon, we probably can get solar + batt to completely replace all existing fossil fuels, as well as limit fission and fusion to baseload or strategically crucial power supplies.