>The researchers said that achieving greater than 30 per cent efficiency with the four-terminal tandem device marked “a big step in accelerating the energy transition” and would improve energy security by reducing fossil fuel dependency.

>“This type of solar cell features a highly transparent back contact that allows over 93 per cent of the near infrared light to reach the bottom device,” said Dr Mehrdad Najafi from the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO).

>“This performance was achieved by optimizing all layers of the semi-transparent perovskite solar cells using advanced optical and electrical simulations as a guide for the experimental work in the lab.”

The following submission statement was provided by /u/NickDanger3di:

>The researchers said that achieving greater than 30 per cent efficiency with the four-terminal tandem device marked “a big step in accelerating the energy transition” and would improve energy security by reducing fossil fuel dependency.

>“This type of solar cell features a highly transparent back contact that allows over 93 per cent of the near infrared light to reach the bottom device,” said Dr Mehrdad Najafi from the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO).

>“This performance was achieved by optimizing all layers of the semi-transparent perovskite solar cells using advanced optical and electrical simulations as a guide for the experimental work in the lab.”

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/xukl1z/solar_power_world_record_broken_with_miracle/iqvwnei/

Makes me proud to be Dutch

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Fingers crossed it can be scaled up as always! I for one do you believe we’ll be able to tech ourselves out of most issues.

Researchers made a two-junction solar cell with silicon and perovskite. To my knowledge, this is the highest efficiency solar cell which uses perovskite. However, this is still a multijunction cell, and the problem with multijunction cells over pure silicon or other single-layer cells is that despite potentially doubling the efficiency of the cell, it increases the cost by an order of magnitude simply because of the added manufacturing complexity. The problem with deploying PV en masse is cost/watt, not area/watt. Only satellites and other PV vehicles can benefit from the smaller area and mass of multijunction cells to the degree needed to offset the massively higher fabrication cost.

That being said, if this technology can be applied cheaply, that is, for less than double the original price of a cell, then the improved power density may actually be worth it, at least for small installations such as rooftop or canopy PV.

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Pretty sure we broke 30% using perovskite already? The question is longevity.

That's not entirely fair, there are perovskite PV available, they are just pricier than regular cells. It's unclear if that gap can be breached but they have been commercialised to some degree.

Meh we have current tech to supply humanities energy needs 1000x over, we should look for improvements in production and scalability

or simply use a better source of electricity? offshore wind farm are far more effective than solar, coal and gas powerplant are more effective than wind and nuclear beat everything

coal and gas will deplete within this century, solar and wind even if affordable right now will be more difficult to afford in a couple of years as petrole get more expensive and so transport get expensive as solar and wind require an absurd amont of material per kwh compared to fossile and nuke

and unfortunally nuclear gen4 aren't ready same for fusion, gen3 is still enough as long only a couple of country use it as uranium will also deplete this century (unless we develop gen4, thousand of years worth of uranium if we do)

if you own every mine to build solar/wind go for it otherwise build nuclear or if you don't care about climate stick with gas, german said it's "green" anyway

How else would the wafers have their sweet honey taste in every byte?

They are making serious progress on the stability of perovskites cells though. They still don’t last very long at all, and I don’t think we’ll hit a year+ lifetime too soon, but they’ve made orders of magnitude increases already

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Wrong. Nuclear is about to become the most expensive. Solar is the cheapest. You got basically everything just the wrong way around. source

I believe some perovskite solar is being commercialized now. And, that they solved the longevity issues...

Time to never hear or see this miracle material ever again.

"Miracle" is when Jesus walks on water or raises the dead. Achieving over 30% efficiency is great and all, but not a miracle.

Sorry, words are a pet peeve sometimes

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You also need 2x the solar controllers which are also not cheap.

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I was born there, but I'm American. Parents didn't go to the trouble of getting me dual citizenship. You wanna hook me up with a work permit? Please?

For comparison sake, 'efficient' ICE are at 33% and some change

I share that belief. With enough energy, almost anything can be solved.

But it's pointless. They can't get perovskite to survive in the environment. Until it can last 10+ years. What's the point

It gets out the lab. Just decays into a toxic nightmare and ends up Killing us all

Miracle Material? As far as I can tell, Perovskites have been a hot topic for a LONG time. Like a really long time in terms of a topic remaining trending in research. Its nice to see reports on progress in solar cells but calling it miracle material is too exaggerating.

There's one company in the UK. But I've been watching it for years.

My grandparents were Dutch, but my dad joined the navy so no citizenship by descent for me. I'll take a work visa too.

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It turns out science and engineering is hard.

It is even harder without sufficient funding.

The first reported perovskite based solar cell was in 2013:

National Center for Photovoltaics

I’d say 9 years to see the progress that’s been made so far is great.

All forms of renewable energy other than photovoltaic cells still produce power via generators, aka "spinning inertia". Costa Rica has run on 100% renewable energy for over 300 days straight in the past, and this year, supplied 98.58% of it's power requirements via renewable sources.

“Miracle material” that we test and discover once a month but without any practical application or longevity, cool!

Indeed! Shame we've gotten most our energy for solving self-inflicted problems from burning more and/or different stuff.

Why, do you think he's the only one researching perovskite solar cells..? So tired of this obsession with proving ourselves and superficial ego-stroking.

Edit: I have to remind myself of the age of the average (Dutch) redittor...

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And EVs are around 80%-90%

Wind, hydro electric, solar thermal power plants, etc. All of them except PV cells, and if you want to be pedantic, also excluding Peltier junction generators.

That's right, most, but not all: And the belief in "tech saves us" will be our downfall in 2050 and the years after.

The missing key now is making those motors and batteries without ransacking thousands of tons of earth for ounces of material that need further refinement. Then comes shipping 87k times to make a final product.

I would say the key is building extensive electric based public transportation like buses and trains so most of those cars never need to be built. But good luck convincing the US to do that anywhere at least. Everyone wants their own car.

Shouldnt be a problem considering it takes 20,000 lbs of gas to get a 30 mpg vehicle to 100,000 miles and we have relatively no issue finding that material. Material prices on EV batteries could 4x and auto cost on new EVs would be affected less than gas swinging 10% on any ICE

Reducing material consumption by 10s of thousands of lbs should be easier than you think. Especially considering that material can be recaptured, repurposed, and recycled in the future. Unlike oil and gas

Yeah, that is a 100 yr problem. Our generation likely wont see the Us having transit like Switzerland and japan have now. EVs will be fixed over the next 20 years. Eventually we will have fusion and mass transit, hopefully

To be fair, i don't really want to commute in those japanese trains where the last few people had to be pushed in...

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> The grid needs spinning inertia to be stable. You will not be able to ever run 100% renewable with today's technology.

This is a solved engineering problem. Synchronous condensers are in use throughout the world for exactly this purpose. Battery storage can also be used to achieve the same effect.

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You moved the goalposts pretty substantially there. Your original statement was "You will not be able to ever run 100% renewable with today's technology" When this was proven false, you've narrowed the field to the US, as though the US is the only country that has this problem, and your only point appears to be that the US is bigger than some other places, and that parts of the US don't have much renewable generation yet.

Some forms of renewable energy provide spinning inertia themselves, and as I've pointed out above, spinning inertia can be provided from storage rather than generation. The technology already exists and is in use elsewhere.

This made me laugh, and I completely agree. I would love to know if there are real world applications in 15 years for these two materials. I hope/assume there will be, but I swear it's been more than a decade of hearing about graphene is about to revolutionize...all sorts of things.

We're so far away from overcrowded trains in all but one city that it shouldn't be a concern whatsoever

>You understand Costa Rica is the size of West Virginia and has more opportunities to use thermal power and wind power than the majority of the world?

Scotland. 97% powered by renewable sources in 2020. Similar time period to Costa Rica for number of days powered 100% by renewables.

>The grid needs spinning inertia to be stable. You will not be able to ever run 100% renewable with today's technology.

That's what you wrote. I'm pointing out that there is "spinning inertia" even with renewables, and it is possible to supply power with 100% renewables, contrary to your claim.

> My only point was that right now in the United States we can't go 100% renewable.

Then why didn't you write that, instead of what you actually wrote?

>There isn't enough renewable spinning inertia to do it

All renewable sources except PV have "spinning inertia". And it has been proven to be possible to supply 100% of power via renewable sources.

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Sorry guys I don't have visas to give away. I work in administration at a generic company

Exactly, the car industry is pulling the wool over all of our eyes, they don’t want public transportation to scale up

Where my Chinese government hackers at? You know they're smiling and rubbing their hands when they saw this article...

I hate it when they use "miracle" to describe an innovation. People worked hard to develop this. It isn't magic or divine intervention, it's a team of scientists working and testing and discovering. Great job! Hope it ends up being viable and/or progressing the field.

This is such an original comment that adds so much to the conversation.

The problem with using fossil fuels isn't just the combustion. It's also spreading petroleum products and by-products over millions of miles of roadways. Lithium production keeps improving. Batteries and storage keep improving. As far a pollution goes, I find the tire particles we're all currently breathing a more pressing issue.

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Different metric - solar energy efficiency means you’re capturing X% of solar radiation, which is both massive and free.

EV efficiency means you’re converting X% of input electricity to power. The input electricity comes from power plants, and is costly.

I always caution against comparing solar cell efficiency to other technologies.

FYI Solar cell efficiency hits theoretical limits around low-30% for single junction, maybe 50% or so for dual junction. World record is a 3-junction around 39% I think from the company Solar Junction.

Silicon-perovskite solar cells are cool, but A) this is not a new idea (many, many companies are doing this), B) this isn’t a world record, not even for 2-junction (I used to work at a company that made 30+% single junction GaAs cells), and 3) perovskites don’t have an efficiency issue… they have a stability issue.

This is cool, but please watch the language and accuracy because some of this is incorrect.

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Im comparing the EV to the ICE comment

We lack the population density that other countries have. For general scale, Germany is a bit bigger (land size) than the state of Georgia. Georgia has around 11 million people. Germany has 85 million. It’s extremely difficult to build cost effective infrastructure that doesn’t bankrupt a municipality because not enough people use it to cover the costs.

It’s far easier to convert people to purchasing EVs or some alternative fuel vehicle.

Public transportation doesn’t magically solve the problem. I live in the downtown of a midsized city, and the nearest grocery store is 5 miles away. Nearest hardware store 4 miles. In fact most of the business I frequent are between 4 and 10 miles away. I’m not walking to the bus stop, waiting for the bus, going 5 miles, turning a 10 minute drive into a 25 minute ride, getting several bags of groceries, and then waiting outside in the snow for the next 20 minutes for the next bus to come.

Now, I’ve lived in Chicago without a car, so I’m not against the idea in principle. But all the businesses I needed on a daily basis were available within a 15 minute walk from where I lived, and an EL stop was 10 minutes away. This is all possible because the population density is high enough to support businesses clustered in walkable neighborhoods.

In most of middle America, the population density is typically not high enough in an area to support these types of walkable communities. So everything is spread out, designed for communities with POVs.

It would take a massive redesign and rebuilding of communities for the public transportation thing to be viable.

I don't understand - are you comparing the efficiency of solar cells at converting sunlight into electricity to the efficiency of an ICE at converting hydrocarbons to mechanical motion? Aren't those completely different types of processes with no relation to each other?

the Chicago Red line has entered the chat

I think I figured out the confusion - ICE can mean “internal conversion efficiency” in the context of a solar cell (and in fact 33% is a good number for 2-junction solar conversion efficiency).

But the comment above was about “internal combustion engine” (also abbreviated ICE).

Hence your EV comparison makes sense.

Apologies for the misunderstanding!

Agreed. It’s a total apple to oranges comparison.

I would like to point out that in addition to reducing air pollution due to fuel burning EVs also reduce pollution due to braking because they can use regen to recapture energy rather than wasting it with friction brakes.

Great now I'm just waiting for the 'carbon fiber' revolution...

Glass has been around for a long time; still a miracle material.

Yah, this is easily one of the dumbest comments I've seen on this sub. That and the person that said to ban EVs.

Explain how this is relevant, please

How old are quantum dots? They seem ripe to replace this. Instead of trying to capture all the spectrum in multiple layers; capture one wavelength efficiently and convert the rest with quantum dots.

They did similar shit with phosphors back in the day.

you mean like we do for oil and uranium.

Maybe. But maybe not.

graphene is out of the lab as meterial reinforecement and for capacitors.

We do it all for the resources, there's a huge bounty waiting between Mars Jupiter ⛏️

I understood that reference.

i love seeing this type of thing ever 5 years and nothing ever comes from it.

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Ransack the Moon!

That's a whole lotta h3 man, lol

Ima Apples to Mangos guy myself.

I just like cookies

And what about my weekend car?

Silicon based solar cell lasts over 20 years. Perovskites are promising but the stability is a problem that needs to be ironed out before getting out of the lab.

Yeah yeah yeah. We hear of this solar miracle breakthroughs once a month production 0.1 of watt at high efficiency in a lab somewhere. Only never to be heard of again.

Produce something commercial available that’s purchasable at volume, then you’ll get an upvote from me.

Full article

Researchers have passed the 30 per cent efficiency barrier with silicon solar cells for the first time by combining them with the so-called “miracle material” perovskite.

A team from various universities and institutes in the Netherlands made the breakthrough with a tandem solar cell that compliments traditional silicon-based cells – which have an energy conversion efficiency of around 22 per cent – with the widely-acclaimed properties of perovskite.

The researchers said that achieving greater than 30 per cent efficiency with the four-terminal tandem device marked “a big step in accelerating the energy transition” and would improve energy security by reducing fossil fuel dependency.

“This type of solar cell features a highly transparent back contact that allows over 93 per cent of the near infrared light to reach the bottom device,” said Dr Mehrdad Najafi from the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO).

“This performance was achieved by optimizing all layers of the semi-transparent perovskite solar cells using advanced optical and electrical simulations as a guide for the experimental work in the lab.”

Perovskite has been hailed for its potential to transform an array of industries, ranging from ultra-high-speed communications to renewable energy production.

The researchers behind the latest solar cell record now hope to commercialise the technology to achieve a widespread roll-out.

“Now we know the ingredients and are able to control the layers that are needed to reach over 30 per cent efficiency,” said Professor Gianluca Coletti, program manager of Tandem PV.

“Once combined with the scalability expertise and knowledge gathered in the past years to bring material and processes to a large area, we can focus with our industrial partners to bring this technology efficiencies beyond 30 per cent into mass production.”

The results were presented at the World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion (WCPEC-8) in Milan.

I heard it has a base-plate of prefabulated amulite

I'll believe it when I see it in patents and production

Why are you on the futurology sub if nothing ever comes from anything you see here?

In every one of these threads there's some idiot on a computer that fits in his pocket talking about how technology never advances.

Like getting me out of bed in the morning without wanting to commit sodoku?

Yeah but you can still compare them.

If the book Tuf Voyaging has taught me anything, it is that!

No, the world record solar efficiency is 47.1% https://www.nrel.gov/pv/cell-efficiency.html

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Classy fella

Yeah solving those puzzles is rough! Seppuku

You can convert W | VA to HP although there is a multiplier. I don't understand the comparison much either, as solar beats ICE in carbon footprint every time.

It's been around for a good while and is pretty widely researched

More like apples to the internal combustion engine.

AND it’s surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing

While this is awesome, the title reads like an annoying advertisement for an awful app.

More like apples to rocks. Sometimes they are both roundish.

i don't think you understand my point, solar is cheaper as other energy source allow it to be cheaper and gouvernment fund

when petrole will become more and more scarse it's price will get more and more expensive, an energy source such as solar that need a lot of material per kwh compared to more concentrated source of energy will become too expensive for country that don't have any mine as we import everything

european for exemple won't be able to maintain their energy policy for decade, solar and wind are just temporary, concentrated source of electricity will become far more attractive in a world that suffer from scarcity, that make nuclear the most interesting choice and you better pray we research gen4 fission or better fusion before it happen

people seem to focus too much on climat that they forget fossile energy made our civilisation, soon they will dissapear and the world isn't prepared

Graphene production is actually progressing at an impressive rate. Same with spider silk protein and polymers.

We are already making these materials by the metric ton this year. By 2025 production levels should be in the 100s of 1000s of tonnes.

No, sudoku is a number based puzzle. You're thinking of Sudowoodo.

I'd like to see a strong public transit backbone with some cars thrown in that are owned by the government that are electric self-driving that you can use using a public credit system wherein you get free uses up to a point and then have to pay and then hard locked.

Fyi Germany is roughly double the area of GA

I don't wanna rely on public transportation. I wanna get in my car, blast my music, do and go where I want at my own liesure or urgency, not worry about schedules, other people and other public trans bullshit. I don't currently have a car, and I still refuse to get on a bus. I hop on my bike, crank up the headphones, or BT speaker, and do all that other stuff. I don't like living on a bike either, but it's still better than some bus, or tram. But yeah, I'm all for better public trans if more people use it, and it doesn't inconvenience the rest of us, who don't use it.

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Still better than God will save us

Subsidies are not included in that statistics. Solar is cheap by its own. And luckily we start to return to electricity based transportation, so no society collapse is to be expected „soon“ (at least caused by petrol scarcity)

Nuclear is getting more and more expensive as we currently mine only the high concentration ores. With higher demand we would need to tap into low concentration or deeper mines. Next gen reactors could help with that. So will next gen solar panels what this thread is about.

But yes, it is the first time I hear solar and wind being called an intermittent energy source. Bold statement considering it is the cheapest form of electricity, renewable and dezentral. With a dezentral energy source being more valuable in the future as the energy hasn’t to be transported through the whole country but can be produced where it is needed

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Probably because solar power is energy return over 20-25 years, while oil wells front load their energy return giving ~50% in the first year of operation.

So you are correct they aren't really comparable...which is a real problem for energy security and the viability of solar in EROI terms.

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Oh I’m obsessed with LED. In 2010 I spent almost $500 outfitting my house with LED bulbs and LED retrofits, everywhere. Back when they were $25-$35 each.

My most expensive LED flashlight is $350. And yes I also have solar on my roof and 14kWh of LFP backup batteries for the house.

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We've had the tech to solve energy problems since the 50s. Nuclear power is our best bet and always has been

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Our biggest enemy is ourselves

My 99 year old dad said that he felt the current zeitgeist was like when he was a young man & people just got up & did amazing things after WWII.

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> But yes, it is the first time I hear solar and wind being called an intermittent energy source. Bold statement considering it is the cheapest form of electricity, renewable and dezentral. With a dezentral energy source being more valuable in the future as the energy hasn’t to be transported through the whole country but can be produced where it is needed

then you lack information about how renewable energy work in an energy grid, there a reason germany still use gas or coal and it's not because they love gas or coal but because renewable is intermittent and unnable to provide electricty h24 7d7 unlike fossile or nuke, this is also why gas company give money to anti-nuclear like greenpeace or politic directly as it secure their business

also solar is inneficient and there no reason technology will change that as there a physic limitation how much power they can generate, not because of it's material but the atmosphere itself, good luck changing that, this make solar less efficient than other energy source, sure right now you can gain some % with technology but once you hit the physic limitation it's over (unless you build a solar powerplant in space but it's EXTREAMLY expensive and certainly not avaiable for all humanity)

to replace petrole we either need a massive supply of hydrogen, something difficult as to produce hydrogen you need to spend 2x the energy it will provide, for 100MW of hydrogen you need 200MW from any source (fossile, nuke, renewable) or electric generator directly but still you need to increase the electricity generation of your continent just to replace petrole, this mean far more solar/wind farm this mean far more material as those ressource use an absurd amont of ressource (and rare metal on top of that) you get why it's a bad idea as ressource scarcity will become far worse in the coming year no?

Well.. no.. you don’t know why decisions where made regarding gas as it seams. Gas is the intermittent energy source until renewables are fully built. AND it is there to take peak loads. Same is required for nuclear as well - you can’t just tune nuclear down and up on a hourly basis to match the demand. You still need something for the peaks. So nuclear is intermittent as well in your logic?

nuclear can run h24 7d7 it's not the case for renewable but yes nuclear use a very small source of other energy to stabilize the demand on the grid, i'm french, historicaly we used hydroelectric for that purpoise but gas do it well as it's extreamly fast to activate

only renewable are intermittent as a lack of wind or a couple day of rain/clouds will ruin it, that's why country with lot of renewable have far more fossile powerplant installed to produce electricity when their renewable isn't available (once again, germany)

Sudowoodo is one of those big speakers that goes on the floor. You're thinking of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Even at double, the population density still holds. GA doubled would be 22 million vs 85 million. I could have chosen Montana, which is slightly larger than Germany. They have just over 1 million inhabitants.

wow the pop science on this is hardcore. Yes it is cool they made a dual junction cell with silicon and perovskite, but triple and quad junction cells have been doing better than pure silicon cell for a long time.

Perovskite panel has a much smaller lifespan and is quite fragile currently.

That's the main scale-up issue.

Graphene is used in non-hyped low-tech industries already.

"Miracle" material discovered in 1800s and has been in labs for pv cell research for two decades.

nuclear HAS TO run 24/7.

You have to assume a worst case fluctuation per day. Quick search shows 85 to 120 MW in summer during the day(src - in thousands MW for DC in US, just for simplicity I'll leave out the thousands as only the comparison between the values matters). That means almost 50% of the "base load" need to be added during the evening hours (18:00 peak), which we actually still see significant solar production during that time. And in spring your base load is only ~61MW - you won't ever built nuclear for anything above 70MW in that case as it would mean you got significant nuclear reactor capacity "idling" and still causing the same cost as when it was running. There you get a gap of about 50MW. What is your plan for this? 50MW is 10 times the total german gas production of yesterday (peak 71t MW with gas 4.6t MW and 22t MW solar - including 18t MW overproduction for export. But as you can see in my source even in automn, the peak production of solar matches the time of peak load)

I'm not saying solar can solve all issues and is the sole solution, but at least an "idling" solar panel won't cause economic loss, and thus industries will still invest into it. Nobody wants to invest in idle nuclear plants, especially when solar is the cheaper way.

While solar needs a solution for energy storage, nuclear has its own book of issues, dangers and problems. A combination of all, is the only thing for the future. And no, solar and wind won't disappear. And when they don't disappear, they are not an intermittent solution. Nuclear will disappear when fusion is viable(some day in forever 25 years), as there is no reason to run fission when you got the other highly centralized energy production which is fusion. So, nuclear fission is the intermittent one here, right?

On top of that, my house has a planned independence from the grid of over 80% without any extra space required, just the roof (don't have actual numbers yet). Can't have that with nuclear either.

The belief in “tech saves us” follows the exact same line of belief as saying “believing in tech saves us will be our downfall”. There is functionally no difference between the two, as both act as if it’s guaranteed. The only way for Humans to live through climate change is to keep our options open to tech advancements whilst simultaneously working on lowering our carbon emissions, as acting as if one is wrong and should be preferred over the other is how you get monopolies over the government.

You'll only find immature redditors here blindly downvoting you. These echo chambers will never be realistic about anything.

i don't think you understand what intermittent mean based on how you use this word and try to mix it with nuclear, fission have always been a temporary solution just like gen3 were supposed to be temporary, scientist knew that one day uranium will deplete that's why gen4 are researched and that's why fusion are researched the holy grail of energy generation, until we find better (if possible) and that's not what intermittent mean

as for nuclear reducing it's power depending the energy grid demand, it's "normal" as nuclear just like fossile coal and gas isn't tied to wind or solar to work, you tell them to produce the amont of power you need and that's it

i'll add that the finish EPR that took 17year to build and 11billion will take 4-5year to pay itself, it's supposed to live for 60 to 80years, do you really think maintenance cost matter? obviously not, also the "danger" you mention is only created by fear of unknow and nothing else just like fukushima show, the nuclear incident didn't cause any death or sickness from radiation and like the UNSCEAR rapport show the evacuation was exagerated and poorly executed, it created fear and panic that caused far more death than the incident itself (mostly elder people)

in short if a nuclear incident happen the most reasonable thing to do is...nothing, maybe evacuate the very close area around the powerplant but that's it, the "danger" only exist for the press and politic to exploit but in reality it don't exist anymore with our modern reactor

Ok, maybe it is lost in translation and interim energy would have been better. Great for you, the first time your "you don't understand" argument, you start every post with was right. And you finally got the intellectual high ground you want to put yourself on. And yet you failed to EXPLAIN what the error was and explained interim and not intermittent. Good job. Not.

The fact that you say "you tell them to produce the amount of power you need an that's it" shows me, you don't understand how nuclear reactors work, neither did you address the wasted money for idle nuclear reactors. Just because something is possible, it still might not be profitable.

And you keep telling nuclear would pay for itself - well, look back at the graph. Solar pays twice for itself in the same time and that while only running half a day. Good job, go to your boss and tell him you need only half your salary from now on, you will still make profit from your work! Just because something is profitable in the long run, it might not be the most profitable solution.

No Danger? You say active fighting in europe's biggest nuclear reactor isn't a matter of danger? A fight in a random forest would be just the same? Chernobyl costed about $700 billion in damages - not including Russian troops digging trenches in the radioactive soil as that study is from 2016.

Yes, the panic was oversold in most cases. No, you shouldn't do nothing. Otherwise seat belts above 100 miles an hour could be abandoned as well. Won't make a big difference anyways? Chernobyl exposed 10 million people to radiation, reaching as far as south Germany, where you still are not supposed to eat wild mushrooms in some regions. Lucky for you, that you are in a region that wasn't affected. Fukushima was lucky with its wind directions for example.

​

And "it don't exist anymore with our modern reactor" - you ever heard of that unsinkable ship named Titanic? Yeah, couldn't sink, because it was modern. ...

​

And to bring another topic into the game: France has 1.700.000 cubic meters of nuclear waste. How much of this is in its final storage place? Afaik Bure is not yet active. Did you factor into your calculation of profitability the decade long search for a final storage solution? Did you factor in the cost to transport that 1.700.000 cubic meters radioactive waste? Just because it was not funded by the company that is building that reactor, it still has to be payed by the people using the energy. Be it in taxes or fees.

If it was so profitable, you wouldn't need that massive lobbying you can observe in France. Why the need for state control in EDF? Why the need for 2.1bn€ subsidies for EDF? Why are you arguing for something and bashing solar in a solar based threat when nuclear was so superior and self selling?

nuclear waste cost are already included in the electricity cost of any european country, the most iradiated waste part isn't even the size of a football field and that's for more than 50year of exploitation, yes bure isn't ready yet as "pro-environment" made the project take more time it would (bure wasn't the first choice)

you can't compare chernobyl and our current reactor as they are completly different, chernobyl could and have exploded, it's impossible now, physicaly impossible, using the titanic or driving at 100 km/h without belt as an argument won't change that fact

yes solar are profitable now, less when you include energy storage but still, they are profitable especially with an energy crisis,but it wasn't my concern, i said that relying on a energy source that use an absurd amont of material per kw/h was a mistake when your country don't own any mine that produce those material especially when the entire world will enter a scarcity era and country that export those material will no longer export them for their benefit

the same way europe need to develop the electric vehicle and public transport as we don't have a single drop of oil, and so we need to multiply our electricity generation by 2 at least, relying on gas and coal was a mistake, everyone see that with ukrain/russia war, now what will happen if china and taiwan start a war? china have the majority lf all rare earth metal in the world including lithium, i don't mind using renewable now that's profitable but it should only be temporary and nuclear should be favored as it provide far more independance in that regard

EDF is state owned and nuclear as a whole depend of a state as nuclear isn't capitalistic unlike other source of electricity including renewable, it's easy to build a couple of solar and wind farm as it's far cheaper and faster, it's morz difficult to invest in a project that require 10billion and take 10years, will facebook still exist in 10years? amazon? who know, France existed for thousand of years and will continue long after my death, that's why nuclear is state owned, and i don't even talk about national security, you can build bomb with them, nuclear bomb, dirty bomb even poison

i guess we will stop here as it become silly

>nuclear waste cost are already included in the electricity cost of any european country

that's why you land at double the cost for nuclear - invalidating all your arguments against solar.

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>chernobyl could and have exploded, it's impossible now

Until it isn't impossible - unsinkable, unexplodeable.. same story.

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And then you argue FOR electric cars as "society will collapse and we can't have oil anymore". Cars will for ever need energy storage. Light weight. As if there are the resources for that in Europe. Like the rare earth you mentioned from china we need for solar?

In what world is building cars with batteries more resource independent than building solar panels?

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>we don't have a single drop of oil

Don't we? I'm pretty sure there are about 26 oil rigs around the north sea.

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>i don't even talk about national security, you can build bomb with them, nuclear bomb, dirty bomb even poison

You don't say. Almost as if having nuclear near population could be used by terrorists or terrorist states?

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And one last time I'll cite the reason why EDF is state owned for you:

>The government hopes nationalising the debt-laden company will help secure energy supplies in the country after the war in Ukraine left countries hunting for new sources of power to replace Russian imports.

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And then you talk about panic and media with nuclear - but your "the oil society will crumble" view is completely sane and not panic driven? Almost as if there was some lobby behind that view as well.

Multi-junction silicon cells are very unlikely to ever be commercially viable for the mass market. The advantage of silicon-perovskite tandem cells is that it's only a small production price increase over current solar cells.

Quantum dot solar cells are a long way off commercialisation. They are difficult to reliably produce at scale.

> The problem with deploying PV en masse is cost/watt

Labour and transport costs are now a significant portion of solar installation costs. More watts/panels therefore improves cost/watt.

Let's say most of the total cost of a PV array are from installation with option A. Let's say that option B shifts the balance towards panel price because it's easier to install, but the panels are more expensive. Option B is better than option A if, for the same price, more capacity can be installed. Therefore, if option B increases the price of the panels by more than it reduces the price of installation compared to A, it is worse. Let A have a levelized, $/kw installation price of $20 and a panel price of $80. If B is twice as easy to install than A, for instance, it requires half as many panels to be installed, then as long as the price of the panels increase by less than $10, or ~12% of the price of the panels in A, it is the preferable option.

Here's the problem: even if the panels installed themselves, you can only save a maximum of 20% over option A without also making the panels cheaper on a per-watt basis. Unless panels get obscenely expensive to install compared to the price of each panel, it is very difficult to decrease cost by increasing the efficiency of the panel, because high efficiency, tandem cells such as the one in this article cannot be manufactured more cheaply than existing silicon cells. CVD is obscenely difficult and slow compared to mono-silicon production.

Is it the lack of sufficient spectrum coverage? Certainly Red and Green are commercially viable since they’re hitting TVs.

Does anyone know what primary spectrum of current PVs absorb is? If quantum dots let us focus on high energy blues and violets/ultraviolets then it could be worth it from cell degradation alone. Assuming the quantum dots don’t deteriorate over time. I have no idea, I just assume they’re solid state since they are allegedly better than phosphors.

Yeah your point still stands for sure, just wanted to throw it out there

I used to be able to work there but the idiots in my country took that option away. As you can see, it's worked out just brilliantly since.

Ooh, this opens the door for a discussion for those who actually believe in gods and miracles and those who don't. As someone that doesn't believe in a particular god I don't really believe in miracles either. Not in the biblical or fantasy sense of the word. I've got no problem with calling something a miracle if it's something unexpected though. Even if I don't believe in them.