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Please leave a comment with any topics you'd like to see covered and subscribe and hit the bell icon to see future content! Video Transcript: The Earth receives enough energy in a single hour of sunlight, to power all human activity for an entire year [1]. This is an absolutely mindblowing amount of energy, freely available for us to harvest and to power our planet with minimal environmental impact compared to fossil fuels. However, solar cells account for less than 1% of global energy production [2]. So what’s holding us back from using the technology we already have? The transition from fossil fuels to solar cells and other renewables has been a slow process over the last few decades, with non-renewables still dominating global energy generation. Until there is enough political will and renewable energy sources are consistently cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives, the world is very unlikely to make a significant enough transition to renewable energy. Since the price of energy sources varies wildly in different parts of the world, it is good to compare a metric called the ‘Levelized cost of electricity’ for a region, which accounts for the cost of building, operating and eventually decommissioning a power source for every kilowatt hour of energy produced. In the UK, natural gas is the cheapest fossil fuel source and has a levelized cost of 66 £/MWh, whereas solar cells have a cost of 80 £/MWh. However, in the US these costs are 36$/MWh and 32$/MWh respectively, which is very promising. [3] The vast majority of solar cells used today are crystalline silicon; these are what we are used to seeing on rooftops and in solar farms. The price of crystalline silicon solar cells has dropped rapidly since their inception in 1977 and is already becoming competitive with non-renewable energy sources, and strong research and engineering efforts continue to drive prices down. Although, whilst silicon solar cells are making great strides forward, they are not without their shortfalls. But before discussing these, we have to quickly explain some basic solar cell physics. Solar cells are made from a class of materials called semiconductors. In a semiconductor, the electrons sit within a region called the valence band. When particles of light, called photons, enter the solar cell, some of these electrons can use this energy to jump up to a region called the conduction band. The gap between the two regions is called the band gap, and is very important for the solar cell’s efficiency. Once an electron is in the conduction band, it is free to move and do work on a circuit, providing energy. Silicon solar cells can achieve power conversion efficiencies of up to 26.7% for a single crystal cell [4], relatively close to their theoretical maximum of 29.3%. However, this high efficiency can drop off rapidly with small defects, or blemishes in the material. Therefore, they have to be processed at extremely high temperatures, which makes them very expensive and time consuming to manufacture. In fact, it is estimated that it would take around 170 years to produce enough silicon solar cells to generate the energy required to power the Earth [1]. Another key problem with silicon solar cells is that they are an ‘indirect band gap’ material, meaning that each time the material absorbs a photon, it also requires a very specific kick in vibrational energy, called a phonon, at the same time to absorb this photon. This is quite an unlikely event at the atomic level, so the silicon solar cells must be made very thick to increase the chances of absorption, this massively increases the overall cost. So how can we reduce the cost of solar cells, while maintaining or even increasing their energy generation? Whilst it is clear that Silicon solar cells will, and already do, play a major role in renewable energy generation, they don’t paint the full picture. An alternative to inorganic silicon are organic solar cells; which are made from molecules containing different combinations of primarily carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen [5]. Organic solar cells can be made from liquids, in a similar process to die coating or inkjet printing; materials like this are known as being solution processable, and can be manufactured at very high throughput and at very little cost, and even on top of flexible materials. Further, because of the different combinations of molecules we can choose from, we can modify the band gap; which is very important for achieving higher efficiencies; the lower the bandgap, the more light that can be absorbed, but more energy is lost to sources such as heat, so there is a balance to be achieved. Unfortunately, organic solar cells, in their current development , are inefficient and often quite unstable, decomposing over time under heat, excessive moisture or exposure to UV light. They are therefore not the best sole long term solution and unlikely to be widely commercialised. However, there is a new technology with the potential to combine the best two qualities of inorganic silicon and organic solar cells, known as perovskite solar cells. Perovskite solar cells have achieved remarkable growth since their inception a decade ago, sharply increasing in efficiency from 3.8% to 25.2% [4]. These are made from a crystal of the form ABX3 where A is any single positively charged inorganic atom or organic molecule, such as caesium, methylammonium or formamidinium, B is a metal with a two plus charge such as lead, tin or germanium and X is a halide ion, that is, an atom such as iodine, bromine or chlorine, with a single negative charge [6]. Generally speaking, successful perovskite cells are a combination of an organic A site and inorganic B and X sites; combining the best of both worlds when it comes to their material properties [7]. Perovskites, like organic solar cells, are solution processable and also very defect tolerant, so they can be manufactured at very low temperatures, very quickly and can also be printed on flexible materials. The two inorganic components of perovskites give it an edge over other organic solar cells in development, as they allow the material to achieve very high efficiencies. Unlike silicon solar cells, perovskites have a direct bandgap behaviour, which doesn’t require a phonon, and additional useful physical properties allowing solar absorber layers to be very thin. Due to the different combinations available, these solar cells can also have an array of different band gaps. This means they can be used in what is called a tandem solar cell, in which different solar cells of different band gaps are stacked on top of each other. The bigger band gap material sits on top, catching the high energy light efficiently and allows the lower energy light to pass through to the lower band gap material [8, 9]. Silicon-perovskite tandems have already reached 29.1% efficiency, but are still a developing technology and will likely continue towards the theoretical maximum of around 38% efficiency [10, 11, 12]. The combination of all these properties allow for perovskite solar cells to be a very cheap, high performance solar cell, which could very well drive the paradigm shift from fossil fuels to solar cells in the near future. Of course, we are yet to see perovskites dominating the solar market, with cells on our roofs and in solar farms, so why is this? Ultimately, perovskite solar cells are just too new a technology to be seen in commercial applications yet. The vast majority of exciting results throughout this video and the field in general have been conducted in well controlled lab experiments with very small solar cells the size of a ‘postage stamp’ [1]. The first main challenge here is to be able to scale up these solar cells to be large enough for solar panels, which poses both a very significant engineering and scientific task. The second main challenge is to be able to have these solar cells last for a long time; silicon solar cells already last reliably on rooftops for around 30 years. Developing perovskites that can avoid being broken down by moisture, oxygen and UV light is another significant task needed before perovskites will challenge silicon and ultimately fossil fuels. A third important challenge is to replace toxic lead from the system, as it could be damaging to health, this can be replaced by other similar metals, such as tin, but is also a relatively new research area. Perovskites are likely to play a significant role in the near future of renewable energy generation, and will hopefully be a key component in bringing the price of solar cells consistently below the price of fossil fuels and transform the energy harvesting landscape of our planet, massively reducing the anthropogenic contribution to climate change. We’d love to explore other topics in renewable energy and climate science, so please leave a comment on what topic you’d like to see next, subscribe, and click the bell icon to be notified of our future videos on these topics. Please also check out our other social media and, as always, Look after yourselves, each other and most importantly, the planet around you. Thanks again, OurEden
You have some chemistry shown in the video, you know Quantum Computers will solve things in that field much faster? Also check this out. ruclips.net/p/PLAUtk-Q2DF7yi5Xj7aFEdC2axvmVhggwp After you are done watching that playlist, if you want ideas on how to improve the solar panels, you can see the guy in a video there from the website "fanaticalfuturist". Watch his video and ask him for more info on how to improve solar cells. No seriously, you can clearly see from in his video that he has the info for 80% solar energy with solar panels. And then look into 2 videos on my other channel. Flash Graphene 100 dollars "per ton". ruclips.net/video/s-4m4ul-waA/видео.html Large machines to scale up Flash Graphene fast and cheap enough. ruclips.net/video/hKIqgD-Aeds/видео.html After that, check my channel with 2 simple steps for my other channel, go to the "About" tab of the channel I'm commenting with now and read the info with a link found there to save to your browser's favorites.
I find Cryobatteries (Highview Power), RedoxFlow Batteries (JenaBatteries) and high temperature Superconductors (Theva) interessting. All three of them are ready to market.
I like the format and appreciate that it seems like a balanced approach to this technology. Most videos about new tech leave me going "no downside mentioned, usually means there is a big downside"
Thank you, I'm glad you appreciate it. I agree, generally too many videos just focus on the exciting topics to make an entertaining video, but we don't want to mislead the audience into thinking any one technology, or technology in general, is enough to tackle climate change.
Thanks Lucy, nice channel, we've subbed to you! Hope we can gather more female (sorry if assumed the wrong gender) fans like yourself as we mainly see males fans on our channel.
Excellent video! Exciting development for renewable energy. It would be interesting to know how it stacks up in regards to the mining for materials needed to produce the cells.
My knowledge isn't fantastic, but generally speaking, the materials cost for perovskites is extremely low! Partially due to the very thin films used, but also due to the use of mostly cheap materials.
Could graphene be added to give structural integrity as a defense against corrosion .Also graphene is also flexible and conductive. I would have thought it to be at the top of the list for sustainability. Also what will happen with the existing solar panels; will they become another nightmare for toxic waste dumping. As a reliable source to graphene becomes available i always assumed it would propel most modern technology into the future.
There's a relatively recent paper discussing using graphene to improve the stability of a perovskite here: pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsaem.8b01606?casa_token=4_bv48Nm4S4AAAAA:7jsVmcEue6h9lWWAq0QmEjkNhk4snALubijKqibSZ72MOntbUkceUPU3yq3kiJLDxPenDMIBJXqizoKn When you say current solar panels, do you mean silicon?
@@OurEden Pretty sure he does mean current silicon panels. I would be interested to see a video regarding how the disposal of old panels is being handled, all the different generations of panels that have been sold in large quantity to date to be clear. I hope they can get perovskite into production soon especially the thin film printable since it will be less pollution at end of life. Thanks
Thanks for sharing. Of course the idea of self-sufficiency is very attractive to an Englishman whose home is his castle. The current solar technology goes a long way towards energy independence but with a high 7 to 10 year payback period, it is not competitive. However with the new cells pushing 30% efficiency (compared with the current 20%) we might reach the tipping point some day soon. Studies in agriphotovoltaics (APV) have synergies in plant life and improved power of 180%, so the driving force and momentum is towards self sufficiency. Now if we can just replace the pesky globalists with self sufficient politicians we might be able to avoid 1984.
Since some of the light goes right through the cell would it make sense to have a reflective surface on the back to send that 'unused' light through the cell a second time? I think the effect would be the same as doubling the thickness of the cell.
Yeah, there are actually some examples of that! Some solar cells have 'zig-zagged' borders to increase light absorption. Generally though, most light is not absorbed through the band gap as the energy is too low, so sending these through twice wouldn't solve it sadly!
Lovely, important update and education, thank you! I would love to learn more details of how phonon spectrum/propagation enhances absorption coefficient when wells are displaced...perhaps too in-the-weeds, but this was a novel and intriguing concept for me. Great work!
Great explanation. Recent subscriber to your channel and I have now watched all of your videos; not sure why you don't have more subs. Regarding perovskite solar cells -- I hope it doesn't become one of those.. "it's only a decade away" technologies that never comes to fruition, but from what you've said, it looks promising. On a tangent, it'd be good to see some more videos from you, as they are well researched with the relevant sources attached -- there is obviously a lot of work that goes into them. There are so many videos for you to make, but I guess picking a topic and researching it takes time, be it nuclear, direct air capture, energy storage, negative affects of "green" tech, transport, forestry, agriculture, land requirements, water etc.. and the biggest question of all, can we actually avert disaster? The list goes on and on!
Thank you Magnus! Glad you're enjoying our videos. I am actually a PhD student working on Perovskite solar cells, so am a bit biased, but I think there is a large potential there and don't think it'll be another 'only a decade away' technologies in this case. The research community around perovskites is massive! Those are some great suggestions, I was thinking of writing a video on nuclear energy soon actually, possibly on thorium.
@@OurEden Thank you for working on projects that will change our planet; it's extremely encouraging to see your enthusiasm on perovskite.. I'm glad there are intelligent people like you working on these things and then explaining them to a layman like me. Thorium LFTR has immense potential and I really feel we need to get over our aversion to nuclear energy. Thorium would produce so little HLW compared to uranium (even uranium doesn't produce much) and it is abundant. We just need to figure out suitable reactor materials for LFTR to prevent corrosion; they were working on high-Nickel and Molybdenum along with Manganese and other additive content, but it's difficult to find information about this. Personally, I'm really hopeful that hydrogen can take us away from fossil fuels -- as electricity alone cannot fulfil all applications and we need a fuel to replace fossil fuel in areas such as aviation, freight, agriculture etc. Hydrogen is proven technology and if produced via renewable and nuclear powered electrolysis -- is a truly green fuel. R&D could bring efficiency and cost comparative to fossil fuels. We just need to figure out containment with hydrogen behaving the way it does. TL;DR I'd love to see you make videos on hydrogen and nuclear energy.
@@magnusjohansson4272 I agree, I think it's important to discuss, as well as the reason public perception is largely negative to anything with the word 'nuclear' in it. Hydrogen is interesting too, another one of our writers has done research alongside people working on fuel cells, so he may be able to write a good video on this!
Question for you Sir. I was told that it would take four to five solar cells to equal the amount of energy one cell can get from heating of hot water ????? Can you tell me if that is true ??? Thanks
@@OurEden Since solar is about 20 plus percent efficient roughly. How does that compare to using the same size panel, one panel would compare energy to solar panels. In other words, would you get more heat energy than electric energy from the one panel compared to five solar panels ??? Thanks OurEden.
In this video, the cost per 1MWh of solar power is presented at $32. Are you sure? The average household electricity consumption is 10,000 KWhs or 10 MWh, and the bill for it is $200-300 per month.
Yes, this is the cost to JUST generate solar power. However, what the consumer is charged is based on many other factors such as maintenance and operation of the grid, environmental emissions charges, cost to pay power company staff, investments, R&D, administration, cost of electricity meters, maintenance etc. and is also rarely just from solar power but from many other sources.
Here from reddit as well! Super well done video! My Question is what would be most helpful in support for this effort? Most of us can't just jump into a lab and begin recording data. Thanks and best of luck!
That's a very good question! Honestly, from the point of a voter and consumer, I think the main things you can do are support a party that prioritises renewables in elections in your country, as well as choosing a renewable energy supplier for your personal energy use. If enough people transition to these two things, governments and big companies will be persuaded to transition to renewables.
Solar energy output varies across the USA depending on the amount of sunlight received. Same is true for wind energy. The DOE has maps showing the amount of energy output for wind and solar in various areas of the country. Also, without a means to store massive amounts of energy utilities will have to provide back up power when solar and wind output is low unless you allow brownouts and blackouts to become the norm. This means shutting down industry, etc. More efficient solar cells is great news but the renewable energy subject is far more complex.
I agree entirely, and unfortunately we didn't have enough time to discuss that side of things in this particular video, I wanted to dig deep into the science of the materials, we'll definitely be bringing out future videos on the topics of energy storage, nuclear energy and the energy mixes of different countries.
@@OurEden I wonder about Thorium as a safe way to generate electricity. The reactor design is apparently fail safe, is 90+ per cent efficient (vs. about 5% for nuclear) and generates not much waste compared to nuclear. The USA had a Thorium reactor in the late 1960's that produced energy for quite a while and then was defunded by Nixon. There is a video of the program. How about a video on Thorium? It is not a renewable but is constant in supply, apparently safe (?) and generates less (?) radioactive waste than nuclear.
@@frankd8957 Interestingly I was thinking of writing a video on Thorium energy! There are many potential upsides compared to Uranium energy, but there are still engineering tasks required to get there it seems. We have a lot of ideas on the go, but hopefully this can be included soon!
Yeah, it's an interesting one, commercial solar cells such as silicon already have lead in their encapsulation, so it's not a new phenomena. Because the active perovskite layer can be made so thin, this reduces the total lead content. There is a lot of research (especially in my research group actually!) in studying tin based or mixed lead-tin perovskites to try to reduce or get rid of any lead, but there are various problems such as decreased stability due to oxidation.
@Craig Whitley Indeed, it is recyclable. The issue with them is that these solar cells can degrade in moisture, leading to the possibility of water soluble lead leaking, which is potentially worrying. There are promising encapsulation techniques available to stop this though. We'll have to see how the development of encapsulation and tin based perovskites compete in the future
Always the way with science. Someone might have already figure something like this out but never thought to apply it to lightning. Wonder if anyone has ever tried?
I read some article where researchers made a solar cell entirely out of carbon based materials. The efficiency was 1% though but they claim they could improve on it exponentially.
There's a good chunk of research in what are called 'organic photovoltaics', and is maybe what you're thinking of! People in my research group are working on them, and efficiencies have reached around 18% now!
Thank you for making this video. I am a master student in the energy and sustainability field and this video helped me a lot. Maybe a video on the use of PSC for water splitting technologies and producing solar fuels? Keep up the hard work!!
Do you have any weigh in on Perovskite vs multi junction cells? I saw on the NREL website that their potential efficiency is extremely high (47.1%), but I don't fully understand the challenges or opportunities compared to Perovskites. Love your video by the way!!
Glad you enjoyed it! Multi junction cells are any cell that have multiple layers, for example we talk about silicon-perovskite tandems in the video, these are an example of a multi junction cell. The high efficiency cells you mention have many layers of very expensive semiconductors. Which is a fantastic choice if all you need is high efficiency, whatever the cost, such as in space applications. Whereas single junction cells will usually give you a better energy/cost ratio, which is why most commercial PV tech uses single junction silicon. The hope here is to replace this with the very cheap perovskite material or use the perovskite and silicon together, as a multi junction cell.
HI Kon, Good idea, it's still in the early stages, but I was at a conference last week about commercialising these. Right now, the main company I can name is OxfordPv, who are confident they'll see commercial cells at the end of this year. materialseurope.com/solarinnovations/assets/pdf/Organic-Solar-Cells-Tentative-Program.pdf Page 3 of this conference booklet gives a good ideas of the others involved too!
Thank you so mutch for the transcript! It's a super video you did. New techs are so intersting. Do you work in this field? If not, how do you keep up to date and disciver these techs? How do you think we will overcome the issue of intermittency of pv and eolian? Keep up the good work ;)
Your welcome, we hope it helps with finding references and other info! Yeah, I (One of the three running this channel) am actually a PhD student in perovskites, so it makes it very easy to keep up to trends in this specific field! Otherwise, we use reddit/news etc to find web articles, then look at research articles for more depth. The issue of intermittency in both cases will likely have to be solved by a very diverse energy harvesting grid and/or extremely efficiency energy storage. By no means is solar or wind going to be the single solution to clean energy, but hopefully it'll play a key role.
Hi, thanks for the suggestion. We have been discussing that alot recently, as one of our team wants to buy an electric car and has been looking into their carbon footprint. So we'll have a video for you on this soon!
Natural gas has such a low cost because it doesn’t include the trillion dollars that will be needed to remediate the environment. That’s an overlooked decommissioning cost.
The main issue in the utilization of solar energy based upon the interception of sunlight on earth is available land size. With present population levels and breeding rates, evermore more land space will be needed to feed the people. There can be no cheap land to put the collectors!
Land space is an issue for sure, there are many ways to combat this, including a change to the way we source food. Perhaps reducing meat consumption, which uses much more land and has a much higher carbon footprint. There is a great section in 'There is no planet B' about this, I would recommend reading it if you're interested.
This is quite a difficult question to answer, and I am not an expert in this exactly, so hopefully somebody else can comment here. If you were to take perovskite solar cells and use them today, they would likely be very expensive and potentially unstable. On the other hand the material cost due to quantity is extremely low, so the excitement is in the potential, once these are scaleable and stable they will be very cheap compared to current PV technology.
Ending our reliance on fossil fuels is very simple. If our government would only grant the Koch Brothers rights to harvest all energy produced by the sun and the right to charge people to use that energy, the use of fossil fuels would end abruptly and CO2 emissions would be drastically reduced.
@@OurEdenA and B are cations and X is an anion, if we assume the perovskite unit cell a cube, the A cation should be placed in the middle of the cube with no bonding to B or X, the B cations should be placed in cube corners. In this video what you mentioned was vice versa!
@@photonics.tutorial9494 It doesn't actually matter where you define it from, if you transpose my unit cell proportionally by (0.5, 0.5, 0.5) you'd end up with your unit cell. So they both actually describe the system correctly!
Haha. My optimism with my PhD came and went like the tides, never even mind the whole field! My topic was in using a technique called density functional theory (and some surrounding techniques) to understand the electronic properties of different perovskites, with a focus on using tin as the B site. Sure: pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.jpclett.0c03699
@@OurEden thanks for the reply! I rarely find any use for what I learned in semiconductors class, so this brought back memories. (Not enough though) Is it uncommon for perovskites to present this non-linear behavior in the bandgap when changing the composition? Also, do you think the stability issues in perovskites will be solved soon? For a while there seemed like tandem Si perovskites were going to be the new multi junction solar cells, but cheaper.
I think future artificial sun back up alreadied achieved so solar is feasible but must had good power cinversion to prevent remote interference and also it help wifi and GPS and weather are best but should not conentrate for too large production scale but rather small to medium size so save the cost of transmission
In a sane world green nuclear should be a major source of power for now and the future. Solar is OK when the sun is shining, battery back ups are an ongoing environmental disaster.
I think nuclear is an important low carbon short to medium term solution to be replaced in future with nuclear. I do agree now that a combination of nuclear and renewables such as solar is *needed* instead of fossil fuels, which is ultimately the real competition
We pumped so much money in renewable , why don't we give nuclear energy a try. We would not be limited by the theortical maximum of solar panels . We could produce a thousand times that.
I agree with some of your sentiment but disagree with a lot of what you have written too. Nuclear energy is likely going to be one of the low carbon sources we use to combat climate change, but we are already using it quite widely. The theoretical limit on solar cells may be 30ish%, but the light incident on Earth is 10,000 times what we need, so the theoretical limit of what we could generate it *much* higher than we need.
@@m.c.4674 I disagree. UV makes a good portion of the solar spectrum, but my figure was indicative of the total solar flux, not just UV. UV light is of higher energy than visible, thus any solar cell that absorbs visible light will also absorb UV light too.
ENLIGHTENED capitalism would invest and further energy tech development and deployment. It’s ignorant, short-sighted government ‘leaders’, put in office by like-minded (low IQ) populace, that has hindered move to better solutions - for both the environment & economy.
Lol "Since their inception A DECADE AGO." Translation this is one of those "Breakthroughs" where 15 years from now you'll still be wondering why the hell it has no application in our practical everyday reality
@@jakestevens7283 I agree it takes a long time, but it's not constant for all technologies. If you compare the development of perovskites to silicon for example you'll notice a much more rapid growth. Of course it doesn't mean we will see rapid commercialisation and development, but I'm optimistic.
@@OurEden I definitely hope you're right! I just paid a lot of money for Renogy Eclipse panels but I wouldn't even feel bad if this technology was unleashed tomorrow and my investment became horrible timing, the positive news for humanity would just be too great for me to feel bad. Plus my whole life is a financial disaster so it would just be par for the course for me 😂 😂
If you really think about it, the solar power system is really only for one thing!! Recharging the batteries!!! Without the battery system the solar power grid system is about as worthless as tits on a bull!!!
That's a big hurdle that renewables will need to jump in the upcoming years, a hybrid solution with nuclear power may be an alternative to avoid the 'duck curve' problem in solar cells, or hopefully a continuation of the great improvements of energy storage technology.
The opening shot showed vast expanses of FREE water. Called oceans. It is FREE guys and accessible to all. So why don't we use it to water deserts? Same as sunlight, available to all and free. So why don't we use sunlight? Think about it. The answer is the same for both. Too freaking expensive.
I disagree, prices of solar cells are dropping rapidly, and that's ignoring the advances in perovskites which may hopefully shift that. Solar cells are not going to provide 100% of the worlds energy in the near future due to manufacturing demands, but they are a key (and now cost plausible) solution to reducing carbon emissions by replacing fossil fuels.
@@OurEden 24 hour power, voltage and frequency control and other subtle requirements are required. It is NOT about Levelised Cost Of Electrecity..it is about the SYSTEM Cost of Electricity. What you suggest is like saying the cost of tyres is going down therefore transport is cheaper forgetting you need the rest of the car.
I would agree with this statement on almost all subjects, except for ground breaking technologies. In gerneral, for new technologies, having good potential or even a proof of concept is not enough to start manufacturing commercial devices. Decades of expensive R&D is required to develop new tch and not many companies/governments wants to make that investment on something that could so easily fail. Remember it took about 30 years for the first commercial silicon solar panel to be developed, after its inital discovery. Alternatively, if we had a less risk adverse economic system perhaps companies would take the chance and develop technologies like these rather than leaving it to academic institutions would absolutely do not care about commercial applications.
I down voted this video, not because the topic and information weren't compelling, but because I had to stop watching the video due to the incessant droning of your background noise/music, or whatever the hell it is. It drowned out your voice to the point where I had a difficult time trying to hear your voice. Why the hell would you put that background noise in there? Do you think that it sounds cool? or professional? or are you afraid that we might actually hear what you are saying if there is no noise?
Thanks for letting us know why you disliked the video. The vast majority of high quality RUclips productions use some form of background music and we think it improves the video, on our various headsets/monitors the audio is mixed well, could you let us know what audio device you used? Thanks.
@@OurEden I have the top of the line HP laptop with Beats Audio. You are obviously a serious professional about this if you have that level of care, that you responded to my concern. Kudos. I removed the down vote.
Yes this is one of the challenges of this material, or any organic devices actually. But with enough research effort in appropriate encapsulation techniques we should overcome this within the decade if not sooner.
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Video Transcript:
The Earth receives enough energy in a single hour of sunlight, to power all human activity for an entire year [1]. This is an absolutely mindblowing amount of energy, freely available for us to harvest and to power our planet with minimal environmental impact compared to fossil fuels. However, solar cells account for less than 1% of global energy production [2]. So what’s holding us back from using the technology we already have?
The transition from fossil fuels to solar cells and other renewables has been a slow process over the last few decades, with non-renewables still dominating global energy generation. Until there is enough political will and renewable energy sources are consistently cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives, the world is very unlikely to make a significant enough transition to renewable energy.
Since the price of energy sources varies wildly in different parts of the world, it is good to compare a metric called the ‘Levelized cost of electricity’ for a region, which accounts for the cost of building, operating and eventually decommissioning a power source for every kilowatt hour of energy produced. In the UK, natural gas is the cheapest fossil fuel source and has a levelized cost of 66 £/MWh, whereas solar cells have a cost of 80 £/MWh. However, in the US these costs are 36$/MWh and 32$/MWh respectively, which is very promising. [3]
The vast majority of solar cells used today are crystalline silicon; these are what we are used to seeing on rooftops and in solar farms. The price of crystalline silicon solar cells has dropped rapidly since their inception in 1977 and is already becoming competitive with non-renewable energy sources, and strong research and engineering efforts continue to drive prices down. Although, whilst silicon solar cells are making great strides forward, they are not without their shortfalls.
But before discussing these, we have to quickly explain some basic solar cell physics.
Solar cells are made from a class of materials called semiconductors. In a semiconductor, the electrons sit within a region called the valence band. When particles of light, called photons, enter the solar cell, some of these electrons can use this energy to jump up to a region called the conduction band. The gap between the two regions is called the band gap, and is very important for the solar cell’s efficiency. Once an electron is in the conduction band, it is free to move and do work on a circuit, providing energy.
Silicon solar cells can achieve power conversion efficiencies of up to 26.7% for a single crystal cell [4], relatively close to their theoretical maximum of 29.3%. However, this high efficiency can drop off rapidly with small defects, or blemishes in the material. Therefore, they have to be processed at extremely high temperatures, which makes them very expensive and time consuming to manufacture. In fact, it is estimated that it would take around 170 years to produce enough silicon solar cells to generate the energy required to power the Earth [1].
Another key problem with silicon solar cells is that they are an ‘indirect band gap’ material, meaning that each time the material absorbs a photon, it also requires a very specific kick in vibrational energy, called a phonon, at the same time to absorb this photon. This is quite an unlikely event at the atomic level, so the silicon solar cells must be made very thick to increase the chances of absorption, this massively increases the overall cost. So how can we reduce the cost of solar cells, while maintaining or even increasing their energy generation?
Whilst it is clear that Silicon solar cells will, and already do, play a major role in renewable energy generation, they don’t paint the full picture. An alternative to inorganic silicon are organic solar cells; which are made from molecules containing different combinations of primarily carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen [5]. Organic solar cells can be made from liquids, in a similar process to die coating or inkjet printing; materials like this are known as being solution processable, and can be manufactured at very high throughput and at very little cost, and even on top of flexible materials. Further, because of the different combinations of molecules we can choose from, we can modify the band gap; which is very important for achieving higher efficiencies; the lower the bandgap, the more light that can be absorbed, but more energy is lost to sources such as heat, so there is a balance to be achieved. Unfortunately, organic solar cells, in their current development , are inefficient and often quite unstable, decomposing over time under heat, excessive moisture or exposure to UV light. They are therefore not the best sole long term solution and unlikely to be widely commercialised.
However, there is a new technology with the potential to combine the best two qualities of inorganic silicon and organic solar cells, known as perovskite solar cells. Perovskite solar cells have achieved remarkable growth since their inception a decade ago, sharply increasing in efficiency from 3.8% to 25.2% [4].
These are made from a crystal of the form ABX3 where A is any single positively charged inorganic atom or organic molecule, such as caesium, methylammonium or formamidinium, B is a metal with a two plus charge such as lead, tin or germanium and X is a halide ion, that is, an atom such as iodine, bromine or chlorine, with a single negative charge [6].
Generally speaking, successful perovskite cells are a combination of an organic A site and inorganic B and X sites; combining the best of both worlds when it comes to their material properties [7].
Perovskites, like organic solar cells, are solution processable and also very defect tolerant, so they can be manufactured at very low temperatures, very quickly and can also be printed on flexible materials. The two inorganic components of perovskites give it an edge over other organic solar cells in development, as they allow the material to achieve very high efficiencies. Unlike silicon solar cells, perovskites have a direct bandgap behaviour, which doesn’t require a phonon, and additional useful physical properties allowing solar absorber layers to be very thin.
Due to the different combinations available, these solar cells can also have an array of different band gaps. This means they can be used in what is called a tandem solar cell, in which different solar cells of different band gaps are stacked on top of each other. The bigger band gap material sits on top, catching the high energy light efficiently and allows the lower energy light to pass through to the lower band gap material [8, 9]. Silicon-perovskite tandems have already reached 29.1% efficiency, but are still a developing technology and will likely continue towards the theoretical maximum of around 38% efficiency [10, 11, 12].
The combination of all these properties allow for perovskite solar cells to be a very cheap, high performance solar cell, which could very well drive the paradigm shift from fossil fuels to solar cells in the near future. Of course, we are yet to see perovskites dominating the solar market, with cells on our roofs and in solar farms, so why is this?
Ultimately, perovskite solar cells are just too new a technology to be seen in commercial applications yet. The vast majority of exciting results throughout this video and the field in general have been conducted in well controlled lab experiments with very small solar cells the size of a ‘postage stamp’ [1].
The first main challenge here is to be able to scale up these solar cells to be large enough for solar panels, which poses both a very significant engineering and scientific task. The second main challenge is to be able to have these solar cells last for a long time; silicon solar cells already last reliably on rooftops for around 30 years. Developing perovskites that can avoid being broken down by moisture, oxygen and UV light is another significant task needed before perovskites will challenge silicon and ultimately fossil fuels. A third important challenge is to replace toxic lead from the system, as it could be damaging to health, this can be replaced by other similar metals, such as tin, but is also a relatively new research area.
Perovskites are likely to play a significant role in the near future of renewable energy generation, and will hopefully be a key component in bringing the price of solar cells consistently below the price of fossil fuels and transform the energy harvesting landscape of our planet, massively reducing the anthropogenic contribution to climate change.
We’d love to explore other topics in renewable energy and climate science, so please leave a comment on what topic you’d like to see next, subscribe, and click the bell icon to be notified of our future videos on these topics. Please also check out our other social media and, as always,
Look after yourselves, each other and most importantly, the planet around you.
Thanks again,
OurEden
Love the transcript as well! Subscribed! Keep up the great work.
👍
Came from reddit
Lol me 2
Same here.
Thank you!
Thanks :D
Thanks :)
Very well explained you brought a complex topic down to a level that was understandable!
Thank you :D
You have some chemistry shown in the video, you know Quantum Computers will solve things in that field much faster?
Also check this out.
ruclips.net/p/PLAUtk-Q2DF7yi5Xj7aFEdC2axvmVhggwp
After you are done watching that playlist, if you want ideas on how to improve the solar panels, you can see the guy in a video there from the website "fanaticalfuturist".
Watch his video and ask him for more info on how to improve solar cells. No seriously, you can clearly see from in his video that he has the info for 80% solar energy with solar panels.
And then look into 2 videos on my other channel.
Flash Graphene 100 dollars "per ton".
ruclips.net/video/s-4m4ul-waA/видео.html
Large machines to scale up Flash Graphene fast and cheap enough.
ruclips.net/video/hKIqgD-Aeds/видео.html
After that, check my channel with 2 simple steps for my other channel, go to the "About" tab of the channel I'm commenting with now and read the info with a link found there to save to your browser's favorites.
Not me.. I would have to work with you tube for a few years to know enough.. I'm new..
I find Cryobatteries (Highview Power), RedoxFlow Batteries (JenaBatteries) and high temperature Superconductors (Theva) interessting. All three of them are ready to market.
Yes these technologies are very interesting and we would be keen to make case study type videos on them
I like the format and appreciate that it seems like a balanced approach to this technology. Most videos about new tech leave me going "no downside mentioned, usually means there is a big downside"
Thank you, I'm glad you appreciate it. I agree, generally too many videos just focus on the exciting topics to make an entertaining video, but we don't want to mislead the audience into thinking any one technology, or technology in general, is enough to tackle climate change.
Are they more, less or equally toxic/hard to recycle? I notice they use lead but want to avoid it.
I am not really an expert in this area, but found a good open source paper discussing it: www.cell.com/joule/pdf/S2542-4351(17)30020-X.pdf
Great video!! And thanks for citing my work 🙂
No problem 😊, great work!
@@OurEden Thanks 😊
Thank you for making this video! Its really cool and your level of expertise shines through
Thanks Lucy, nice channel, we've subbed to you! Hope we can gather more female (sorry if assumed the wrong gender) fans like yourself as we mainly see males fans on our channel.
Excellent video! Exciting development for renewable energy. It would be interesting to know how it stacks up in regards to the mining for materials needed to produce the cells.
My knowledge isn't fantastic, but generally speaking, the materials cost for perovskites is extremely low! Partially due to the very thin films used, but also due to the use of mostly cheap materials.
This is nice! I hope this gets more attention.
Thank you!
Could graphene be added to give structural integrity as a defense against corrosion .Also graphene is also flexible and conductive. I would have thought it to be at the top of the list for sustainability. Also what will happen with the existing solar panels; will they become another nightmare for toxic waste dumping. As a reliable source to graphene becomes available i always assumed it would propel most modern technology into the future.
There's a relatively recent paper discussing using graphene to improve the stability of a perovskite here: pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsaem.8b01606?casa_token=4_bv48Nm4S4AAAAA:7jsVmcEue6h9lWWAq0QmEjkNhk4snALubijKqibSZ72MOntbUkceUPU3yq3kiJLDxPenDMIBJXqizoKn
When you say current solar panels, do you mean silicon?
@@OurEden Pretty sure he does mean current silicon panels. I would be interested to see a video regarding how the disposal of old panels is being handled, all the different generations of panels that have been sold in large quantity to date to be clear. I hope they can get perovskite into production soon especially the thin film printable since it will be less pollution at end of life. Thanks
Nice video! Hope your future projects go very well!
Thanks for sharing. Of course the idea of self-sufficiency is very attractive to an Englishman whose home is his castle. The current solar technology goes a long way towards energy independence but with a high 7 to 10 year payback period, it is not competitive. However with the new cells pushing 30% efficiency (compared with the current 20%) we might reach the tipping point some day soon. Studies in agriphotovoltaics (APV) have synergies in plant life and improved power of 180%, so the driving force and momentum is towards self sufficiency. Now if we can just replace the pesky globalists with self sufficient politicians we might be able to avoid 1984.
This is a really good video! Hopefully we could implement the perovskite sometime soon to lessen the impact we have on our environment
Since some of the light goes right through the cell would it make sense to have a reflective surface on the back to send that 'unused' light through the cell a second time? I think the effect would be the same as doubling the thickness of the cell.
Yeah, there are actually some examples of that! Some solar cells have 'zig-zagged' borders to increase light absorption. Generally though, most light is not absorbed through the band gap as the energy is too low, so sending these through twice wouldn't solve it sadly!
Lovely, important update and education, thank you! I would love to learn more details of how phonon spectrum/propagation enhances absorption coefficient when wells are displaced...perhaps too in-the-weeds, but this was a novel and intriguing concept for me. Great work!
Great explanation. Recent subscriber to your channel and I have now watched all of your videos; not sure why you don't have more subs. Regarding perovskite solar cells -- I hope it doesn't become one of those.. "it's only a decade away" technologies that never comes to fruition, but from what you've said, it looks promising.
On a tangent, it'd be good to see some more videos from you, as they are well researched with the relevant sources attached -- there is obviously a lot of work that goes into them. There are so many videos for you to make, but I guess picking a topic and researching it takes time, be it nuclear, direct air capture, energy storage, negative affects of "green" tech, transport, forestry, agriculture, land requirements, water etc.. and the biggest question of all, can we actually avert disaster? The list goes on and on!
Thank you Magnus! Glad you're enjoying our videos.
I am actually a PhD student working on Perovskite solar cells, so am a bit biased, but I think there is a large potential there and don't think it'll be another 'only a decade away' technologies in this case. The research community around perovskites is massive!
Those are some great suggestions, I was thinking of writing a video on nuclear energy soon actually, possibly on thorium.
@@OurEden Thank you for working on projects that will change our planet; it's extremely encouraging to see your enthusiasm on perovskite.. I'm glad there are intelligent people like you working on these things and then explaining them to a layman like me.
Thorium LFTR has immense potential and I really feel we need to get over our aversion to nuclear energy. Thorium would produce so little HLW compared to uranium (even uranium doesn't produce much) and it is abundant. We just need to figure out suitable reactor materials for LFTR to prevent corrosion; they were working on high-Nickel and Molybdenum along with Manganese and other additive content, but it's difficult to find information about this.
Personally, I'm really hopeful that hydrogen can take us away from fossil fuels -- as electricity alone cannot fulfil all applications and we need a fuel to replace fossil fuel in areas such as aviation, freight, agriculture etc. Hydrogen is proven technology and if produced via renewable and nuclear powered electrolysis -- is a truly green fuel. R&D could bring efficiency and cost comparative to fossil fuels. We just need to figure out containment with hydrogen behaving the way it does.
TL;DR I'd love to see you make videos on hydrogen and nuclear energy.
@@magnusjohansson4272 I agree, I think it's important to discuss, as well as the reason public perception is largely negative to anything with the word 'nuclear' in it.
Hydrogen is interesting too, another one of our writers has done research alongside people working on fuel cells, so he may be able to write a good video on this!
Considering the silicon shortage world wide, we need a change of material in solar cells pronto!
Question for you Sir. I was told that it would take four to five solar cells to equal the amount of energy one cell can get from heating of hot water ????? Can you tell me if that is true ??? Thanks
Depends largely what you mean by heating of hot water?
@@OurEden Since solar is about 20 plus percent efficient roughly. How does that compare to using the same size panel, one panel would compare energy to solar panels. In other words, would you get more heat energy than electric energy from the one panel compared to five solar panels ??? Thanks OurEden.
In this video, the cost per 1MWh of solar power is presented at $32. Are you sure? The average household electricity consumption is 10,000 KWhs or 10 MWh, and the bill for it is $200-300 per month.
Yes, this is the cost to JUST generate solar power. However, what the consumer is charged is based on many other factors such as maintenance and operation of the grid, environmental emissions charges, cost to pay power company staff, investments, R&D, administration, cost of electricity meters, maintenance etc. and is also rarely just from solar power but from many other sources.
Here from reddit as well! Super well done video! My Question is what would be most helpful in support for this effort? Most of us can't just jump into a lab and begin recording data. Thanks and best of luck!
That's a very good question!
Honestly, from the point of a voter and consumer, I think the main things you can do are support a party that prioritises renewables in elections in your country, as well as choosing a renewable energy supplier for your personal energy use. If enough people transition to these two things, governments and big companies will be persuaded to transition to renewables.
I saw your Reddit post good luck on your PhD 😃🖖
Solar energy output varies across the USA depending on the amount of sunlight received. Same is true for wind energy. The DOE has maps showing the amount of energy output for wind and solar in various areas of the country. Also, without a means to store massive amounts of energy utilities will have to provide back up power when solar and wind output is low unless you allow brownouts and blackouts to become the norm. This means shutting down industry, etc. More efficient solar cells is great news but the renewable energy subject is far more complex.
I agree entirely, and unfortunately we didn't have enough time to discuss that side of things in this particular video, I wanted to dig deep into the science of the materials, we'll definitely be bringing out future videos on the topics of energy storage, nuclear energy and the energy mixes of different countries.
@@OurEden I wonder about Thorium as a safe way to generate electricity. The reactor design is apparently fail safe, is 90+ per cent efficient (vs. about 5% for nuclear) and generates not much waste compared to nuclear. The USA had a Thorium reactor in the late 1960's that produced energy for quite a while and then was defunded by Nixon. There is a video of the program. How about a video on Thorium? It is not a renewable but is constant in supply, apparently safe (?) and generates less (?) radioactive waste than nuclear.
@@frankd8957 Interestingly I was thinking of writing a video on Thorium energy! There are many potential upsides compared to Uranium energy, but there are still engineering tasks required to get there it seems. We have a lot of ideas on the go, but hopefully this can be included soon!
I read somewhere the amount of lead in these panels is negligible! so all in all it is the way to go~
Yeah, it's an interesting one, commercial solar cells such as silicon already have lead in their encapsulation, so it's not a new phenomena. Because the active perovskite layer can be made so thin, this reduces the total lead content. There is a lot of research (especially in my research group actually!) in studying tin based or mixed lead-tin perovskites to try to reduce or get rid of any lead, but there are various problems such as decreased stability due to oxidation.
@@OurEden I wonder how Perovskite Technology affects LED... in terms of colors & Luminous efficacy !
@Craig Whitley Indeed, it is recyclable. The issue with them is that these solar cells can degrade in moisture, leading to the possibility of water soluble lead leaking, which is potentially worrying. There are promising encapsulation techniques available to stop this though. We'll have to see how the development of encapsulation and tin based perovskites compete in the future
Almost the same for one bolt of lighting!! If we could only figure out how to harness that power!
Always the way with science. Someone might have already figure something like this out but never thought to apply it to lightning. Wonder if anyone has ever tried?
I read some article where researchers made a solar cell entirely out of carbon based materials. The efficiency was 1% though but they claim they could improve on it exponentially.
There's a good chunk of research in what are called 'organic photovoltaics', and is maybe what you're thinking of! People in my research group are working on them, and efficiencies have reached around 18% now!
Thank you for making this video. I am a master student in the energy and sustainability field and this video helped me a lot.
Maybe a video on the use of PSC for water splitting technologies and producing solar fuels?
Keep up the hard work!!
Do you have any weigh in on Perovskite vs multi junction cells? I saw on the NREL website that their potential efficiency is extremely high (47.1%), but I don't fully understand the challenges or opportunities compared to Perovskites. Love your video by the way!!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Multi junction cells are any cell that have multiple layers, for example we talk about silicon-perovskite tandems in the video, these are an example of a multi junction cell. The high efficiency cells you mention have many layers of very expensive semiconductors. Which is a fantastic choice if all you need is high efficiency, whatever the cost, such as in space applications. Whereas single junction cells will usually give you a better energy/cost ratio, which is why most commercial PV tech uses single junction silicon. The hope here is to replace this with the very cheap perovskite material or use the perovskite and silicon together, as a multi junction cell.
@@OurEden That makes sense now! Perovskites really are the next generation solar cell tech. Thanks so much for your response!
I would have liked to know any companies that are commercially developing this. Thx. for the video.
HI Kon,
Good idea, it's still in the early stages, but I was at a conference last week about commercialising these.
Right now, the main company I can name is OxfordPv, who are confident they'll see commercial cells at the end of this year.
materialseurope.com/solarinnovations/assets/pdf/Organic-Solar-Cells-Tentative-Program.pdf Page 3 of this conference booklet gives a good ideas of the others involved too!
@@OurEden Very interesting - thx. very much.
Thank you so mutch for the transcript!
It's a super video you did. New techs are so intersting. Do you work in this field? If not, how do you keep up to date and disciver these techs?
How do you think we will overcome the issue of intermittency of pv and eolian?
Keep up the good work ;)
Your welcome, we hope it helps with finding references and other info!
Yeah, I (One of the three running this channel) am actually a PhD student in perovskites, so it makes it very easy to keep up to trends in this specific field! Otherwise, we use reddit/news etc to find web articles, then look at research articles for more depth.
The issue of intermittency in both cases will likely have to be solved by a very diverse energy harvesting grid and/or extremely efficiency energy storage. By no means is solar or wind going to be the single solution to clean energy, but hopefully it'll play a key role.
@@OurEden thanks for the answer :D
Need to achieve high efficiency without toxic Pb, and long stability.
You could make a video about how to replace fossile fuels in cars
Hi, thanks for the suggestion. We have been discussing that alot recently, as one of our team wants to buy an electric car and has been looking into their carbon footprint. So we'll have a video for you on this soon!
Hey Jannik, we have now uploaded this video if you're interested!
From reddit.
Thanks :D
Learnt something. Thanks
No problem, glad you liked it
Natural gas has such a low cost because it doesn’t include the trillion dollars that will be needed to remediate the environment. That’s an overlooked decommissioning cost.
emperor's new groove!
The main issue in the utilization of solar energy based upon the interception of sunlight on earth is available land size. With present population levels and breeding rates, evermore more land space will be needed to feed the people. There can be no cheap land to put the collectors!
Land space is an issue for sure, there are many ways to combat this, including a change to the way we source food. Perhaps reducing meat consumption, which uses much more land and has a much higher carbon footprint. There is a great section in 'There is no planet B' about this, I would recommend reading it if you're interested.
So how cost-efficient perovskite is as of now?
This is quite a difficult question to answer, and I am not an expert in this exactly, so hopefully somebody else can comment here. If you were to take perovskite solar cells and use them today, they would likely be very expensive and potentially unstable. On the other hand the material cost due to quantity is extremely low, so the excitement is in the potential, once these are scaleable and stable they will be very cheap compared to current PV technology.
Only if it can be made usable.
Ending our reliance on fossil fuels is very simple. If our government would only grant the Koch Brothers rights to harvest all energy produced by the sun and the right to charge people to use that energy, the use of fossil fuels would end abruptly and CO2 emissions would be drastically reduced.
Great video
Glad you enjoyed it
Thanks again for sharing!!
I wonder if they project a date for selling it like for RV solar panel
talking speed should be slower. in this one, it is like reading from somewhere without emphasizing anything with a robotic tone.
Thanks for the feedback :)
Good
Thank you :)
You gotta looove science!
We Loooove science!
Amazin video!👏👏👏
Do these figures include subsidies because that changes a lot.
Could you do a video on fluorescent solar collectors?
I'm not too familiar with fluorescent solar collectors, but will look into it!
@@OurEden Thank you!! I think they're also called luminescent solar concentrators but it depends on where you look
Will ultraviolet solar cells receive energy through the clouds?
Is the price for solar the real price or price after goverment subsidices?
Thanks for sharing, but I think you described the perovskite structure wrong!
How would you explain it instead?
@@OurEdenA and B are cations and X is an anion, if we assume the perovskite unit cell a cube, the A cation should be placed in the middle of the cube with no bonding to B or X, the B cations should be placed in cube corners. In this video what you mentioned was vice versa!
@@photonics.tutorial9494 It doesn't actually matter where you define it from, if you transpose my unit cell proportionally by (0.5, 0.5, 0.5) you'd end up with your unit cell. So they both actually describe the system correctly!
What was the subject of your PhD? Any publications you can show us? My optimism on perovskites comes and goes like the tides ahaha
Haha. My optimism with my PhD came and went like the tides, never even mind the whole field!
My topic was in using a technique called density functional theory (and some surrounding techniques) to understand the electronic properties of different perovskites, with a focus on using tin as the B site.
Sure: pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.jpclett.0c03699
@@OurEden thanks for the reply! I rarely find any use for what I learned in semiconductors class, so this brought back memories. (Not enough though)
Is it uncommon for perovskites to present this non-linear behavior in the bandgap when changing the composition?
Also, do you think the stability issues in perovskites will be solved soon? For a while there seemed like tandem Si perovskites were going to be the new multi junction solar cells, but cheaper.
I think future artificial sun back up alreadied achieved so solar is feasible but must had good power cinversion to prevent remote interference and also it help wifi and GPS and weather are best but should not conentrate for too large production scale but rather small to medium size so save the cost of transmission
That's alot of Data
You should see our electric vehicles video :P
Magnetic generation of energy is the only way to go geothermal for power plants
stock ticker for 1000% from solar ,,,or??
Reddit guided me
hey, what was ur undergrad?
Physics!
Duh! You harvest sunlight, or food? Besides, the scorched Earth in the shade of the panels. Maybe we could drive over them.
In a sane world green nuclear should be a major source of power for now and the future. Solar is OK when the sun is shining, battery back ups are an ongoing environmental disaster.
I think nuclear is an important low carbon short to medium term solution to be replaced in future with nuclear. I do agree now that a combination of nuclear and renewables such as solar is *needed* instead of fossil fuels, which is ultimately the real competition
What about the sand...
What sand is that?
Someone invents a way to use kinetic energy from raindrops and we could power Europe from the UK alone.
😂😂
Here is a suggestion, turn off the ignoring background sound,
Do you mean the music?
Please, we are listening to your voice.
We pumped so much money in renewable , why don't we give nuclear energy a try. We would not be limited by the theortical maximum of solar panels . We could produce a thousand times that.
I agree with some of your sentiment but disagree with a lot of what you have written too. Nuclear energy is likely going to be one of the low carbon sources we use to combat climate change, but we are already using it quite widely. The theoretical limit on solar cells may be 30ish%, but the light incident on Earth is 10,000 times what we need, so the theoretical limit of what we could generate it *much* higher than we need.
@@OurEden that would be ultraviolet light not visible light and I have not seen any ultraviolet solar panel
@@m.c.4674 I disagree. UV makes a good portion of the solar spectrum, but my figure was indicative of the total solar flux, not just UV. UV light is of higher energy than visible, thus any solar cell that absorbs visible light will also absorb UV light too.
@@OurEden yes
Солнце наш мозг енергия И база Инопланетяан
Nicely explained! Thanks for the video. Will subscribe. Capitalism will hold you back though.
Thank you so much :) Please see our comment below to Brett Billingar on capitalism.
ENLIGHTENED capitalism would invest and further energy tech development and deployment. It’s ignorant, short-sighted government ‘leaders’, put in office by like-minded (low IQ) populace, that has hindered move to better solutions - for both the environment & economy.
Lol "Since their inception A DECADE AGO." Translation this is one of those "Breakthroughs" where 15 years from now you'll still be wondering why the hell it has no application in our practical everyday reality
I'm guessing you're saying this with a wealth of knowledge regarding transitioning R&D to application then.
@@OurEden doesn't matter which angle I'm saying it from, we're basically agreeing with each other that the R&D takes 190 years lol
@@jakestevens7283 I agree it takes a long time, but it's not constant for all technologies. If you compare the development of perovskites to silicon for example you'll notice a much more rapid growth. Of course it doesn't mean we will see rapid commercialisation and development, but I'm optimistic.
@@OurEden I definitely hope you're right! I just paid a lot of money for Renogy Eclipse panels but I wouldn't even feel bad if this technology was unleashed tomorrow and my investment became horrible timing, the positive news for humanity would just be too great for me to feel bad. Plus my whole life is a financial disaster so it would just be par for the course for me 😂 😂
@@jakestevens7283 Haha well I hope so too! Best of luck with them! :)
If you really think about it, the solar power system is really only for one thing!! Recharging the batteries!!! Without the battery system the solar power grid system is about as worthless as tits on a bull!!!
That's a big hurdle that renewables will need to jump in the upcoming years, a hybrid solution with nuclear power may be an alternative to avoid the 'duck curve' problem in solar cells, or hopefully a continuation of the great improvements of energy storage technology.
The opening shot showed vast expanses of FREE water. Called oceans. It is FREE guys and accessible to all. So why don't we use it to water deserts? Same as sunlight, available to all and free. So why don't we use sunlight? Think about it. The answer is the same for both. Too freaking expensive.
I disagree, prices of solar cells are dropping rapidly, and that's ignoring the advances in perovskites which may hopefully shift that.
Solar cells are not going to provide 100% of the worlds energy in the near future due to manufacturing demands, but they are a key (and now cost plausible) solution to reducing carbon emissions by replacing fossil fuels.
@@OurEden 24 hour power, voltage and frequency control and other subtle requirements are required. It is NOT about Levelised Cost Of Electrecity..it is about the SYSTEM Cost of Electricity. What you suggest is like saying the cost of tyres is going down therefore transport is cheaper forgetting you need the rest of the car.
Capitalism is holding you back.
That's quite a statement. What do you propose ?
@@0v3rflow3rr0r resource based economys seems like a good place to move.
Edison : if we can't beat them, join them
*monopolies are holding it back
I would agree with this statement on almost all subjects, except for ground breaking technologies. In gerneral, for new technologies, having good potential or even a proof of concept is not enough to start manufacturing commercial devices. Decades of expensive R&D is required to develop new tch and not many companies/governments wants to make that investment on something that could so easily fail. Remember it took about 30 years for the first commercial silicon solar panel to be developed, after its inital discovery. Alternatively, if we had a less risk adverse economic system perhaps companies would take the chance and develop technologies like these rather than leaving it to academic institutions would absolutely do not care about commercial applications.
I down voted this video, not because the topic and information weren't compelling, but because I had to stop watching the video due to the incessant droning of your background noise/music, or whatever the hell it is. It drowned out your voice to the point where I had a difficult time trying to hear your voice. Why the hell would you put that background noise in there? Do you think that it sounds cool? or professional? or are you afraid that we might actually hear what you are saying if there is no noise?
Thanks for letting us know why you disliked the video. The vast majority of high quality RUclips productions use some form of background music and we think it improves the video, on our various headsets/monitors the audio is mixed well, could you let us know what audio device you used? Thanks.
@@OurEden I have the top of the line HP laptop with Beats Audio. You are obviously a serious professional about this if you have that level of care, that you responded to my concern. Kudos. I removed the down vote.
Oil is abiotic and renewable. The science on this is widely available, but you've just never looked for it.
Feel free to send a link to the research articles here please.
Perovskite is going nowhere. It's been researched for decades.
Metal halide perovskites have been researched for just over *one* decade, perovskites in general have been researched for many decades for other uses.
A solar cell that degrades in UV... Um... 🤷♂️
Yes this is one of the challenges of this material, or any organic devices actually. But with enough research effort in appropriate encapsulation techniques we should overcome this within the decade if not sooner.
@@OurEden , Maybe one should capture all that Hi Energy UV instead
of reflecting it......
great video