The only thing slowing down the transition from fossil fuels to renewables is the same impediment it has always been: oil money protecting itself.
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
522 points (96.8% liked)
Technology
72826 readers
2981 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Wait for something fucking idiotic like:
"U.S. government to implement 5,000% tax on new solar technology...."
"also, revenue from new tax will be used to build new coal mines staffed by concentration camp inmates 1"
Solar panels are already quite cheap. What we need is much cheaper grid forming inverters so we can stop destabilizing the grid with solar.
If the cost of panels drops significantly, there would be more capital available to spend on inverters, even if they stay at the current prices, still decreasing the cost of deployment. But yes. 😄
Grid forming will just mean the keep running the house when the power goes off, it's not safe for them to be pushing power when it's disappeared, that has been set by regulation in many countries.
What you describe is more like black start, providing power to the grind when it is down. This has to be controlled well, and only a few plants need to be capable of it.
Grid following means something like whatever the grid does, the inverter injects power supporting it. A grid forming generator or inverter also follows the grid somewhat, but tries to get it to an optimal condition. This entails things like voltage control by reactive power, frequency control by operating reserve, fault ride trough capability and so on. Many of those are naturally provided by large conventional power plants using synchronous generators like gas, nuclear or hydro. For inverter based systems, they have to be considered explicitly. For battery storage most are relatively easy to implement, some also in solar inverters. The tech exists, but yes, in some countries the regulations have not kept up with rapid expanse of inverter based power generation in the last years.
load more comments
(1 replies)
What are concentrating photovoltaics? One of the ways to increase the output from the photovoltaic systems is to supply concentrated light onto the PV cells. This can be done by using optical light collectors, such as lenses or mirrors. The PV systems that use concentrated light are called concentrating photovoltaics (CPV). The CPV collect light from a larger area and concentrate it to a smaller area solar cell. This is illustrated in Figure 5.1.
Also, from the article - 33.6% efficiency in real-world conditions:
A 60 cell-lens prototype was studied for a year. In "real-world" conditions, CPVs achieved up to 33.6% efficiency. The 36% mark was posted at 167 degrees Fahrenheit. The prototype showed no signs of degradation, according to IE.
A lighthouse uses the same lens, just with the light coming from the inside. Since this is old knowledge, what is the drawback? Why isn't this widespread?
My completely uninformed guess:
-
The lens and assembly costs too much compared to just more solar panels
-
The lens/panel combo is so bulky/prone to failure it becomes unreasonable to actually install/use.
Adding to what Eldest_Malk said: They aren't just putting a new type of lens over standard solar cells, they are also designing/fabricating custom cells to work with the lenses. [I'm not a PV expert, but the fact that the IEEE paper focuses so much on the cells and not just the lenses leads me to believe that the lenses can't just be used with whatever standardized solar cells are on the market]
load more comments
(1 replies)
id guess a lot went into designing a solar cell that could take being heated to 167F without losing efficiency or breaking. I think most common house solar panels have a temperature coefficient listed on their datasheet that measures how much its ability to generate power decreases per every degree above 77F
load more comments
(1 replies)
They mention standardisations and cost savings in their paper, as well as solving the heat load per cell problem by decreasing cell size. They also mention that there's been a lot of micro-CPV module designs but that they haven't been scaled up. Some quotes below:
Various researchers and developers have been exploring different micro-CPV module designs [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13]. Most approaches have been tested on small prototypes or minimodules, while fewer have been realized with aperture areas (Aap) above 200 and 800 cm2,[...]
By decreasing the sizes of the primary optics and the solar cells, the heat load per cell is minimized. This reduction allows for sufficient heat spreading via the circuit board, enabling the direct assembly of solar cells onto the circuit board on glass.
At Fraunhofer ISE, we have developed a micro-CPV module concept [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], which is based on parallelized manufacturing processes and commercially available components.
The final module features a panel size of 24” × 18”, which is a standard in the microelectronics industry, facilitating machine adaption without necessitating special adjustments.
The article states that it’s smaller and cheaper. The reason it’s not widespread is that they just invented it.
It is interesting that someone just recently thought to use a fresnel lens with photovoltaics when they’ve existed for hundreds of years
It isn't that. They have been talking about Fresnel lenses on PV for decades. It's solving the heat issue and the size issue. A Fresnel lens gathers a large area of light and focuses it down, including focusing the heat. Normal PV cells cannot handle that amount of heat.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(4 replies)
Just wanted to drop a comment.
I love solar. It's the best form of energy that's attainable by the average person.
I am not a scientist so please correct me if I am off base, but did it really take them this long to attempt to focus light onto PV cells using a fresnel lens?
My hobby as a 15 year old was buying broken projectors to harvest the fresnel lenses in the lamp on top. They could focus sunlight so powerfully that you could burn shit. I didn't do that, surprisingly. I was like Marge Simpson, I just thought they were neat.
Adding to what the others wrote, solar cells become less efficient at power conversion (light -> electricity) as the temp of the solar cell materials (semiconductors) increases. So the issues is how to get more photons to the semiconductor without heating it up.
Would a UV filtering lens help? Do solar cells generate more power from certain parts of the light spectrum?
load more comments
(1 replies)
OK, take that Fresnel lens that you were using to melt pennies and then focus it on a PV cell that is also made of metal. What might be the expected response? The science in this case is making PV cells that can handle the intense heat.
That makes sense. If I understood everyone clearly, it's not the idea to use a fresnel that's new here, it's the fact that we just haven't yet had anything capable of withstanding those temperatures and still allowing for the piezoelectric effect to happen.
IIRC, this sort of thing has been floated before. The issue is that you can't just focus that much light on the solar cell. It'll burn out.
Not being any kind of solar energy expert, my initial thought was how the cell’s would hold up under the increased heat, and what technology (if any) they’d be using to monitor/mitigate. The article does briefly mention the cells achieving ~33% @ ~167° F, and does mention (what seems to be tangential) technologies that allow for cells to be nailed down as if they were shingles.
My guess is that it isn’t that they finally using techniques that seem obvious to us, but that they’ve developed supporting tech to mitigate the detrimental effects of using magnification.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Concentrating solar cells have been around for decades, but I suppose the efficiency Fraunhofer achieved here is nothing to sneeze at.
Remember gang, stuff like this means 10-15 years before you see it in market.
What was the stuff like this of 15 years ago ?
Honestly solar panels and electric cars. I know those existed over 15 years ago, but they weren't serious market options until like 5 or so years ago.
First known electric car was built in 1837. Yes, 1837, not 1937. In 1910's and 1920's there were tens of thousands electric cars in USA and Europe. So electric cars has been here for a long time right now.
First (known) solar panel was built in 1954.
Yes, hence the name motor vehicle. His point was modern implementations of EVs and solar panels. 10-20 years is very common for transition to production. It takes time to scale up manufacturing and that's only after the manufacturers have actually decided/agreed to take on the risk of a new product line. Lithium ion batteries were invented in the 80s, but didn't see broad deployment until the 00s.
load more comments
(1 replies)
If I had a penny for every time I heard about new advancements about to revolutionise solar panel technology, I'd have glazed the bloody Sahara with them by now.
Would the cost chart of PV cells look something like this?
is it a real thing or an obligatory overestimated result to get grants because the system is fucked?
I just skimmed the IEEE paper (peer-reviewed, solid journal); The usage of 'slash costs' in the title is entire sensational. The tech gave a SLIGHT increase in efficiency (which is good news - marginal improvements are still very good and can be game-changing if scaled up), but there is no cost/benefit analysis in the paper regarding the additional costs of lenses and whether the increased PV efficiency would offset those costs at scale.
load more comments
(6 replies)
I feel like this is one of those discoveries thats like, well duh of course it would work that way
Wouldn't this be negated by the fact, that the same area of roof now has less actual PV cell on it? Since the light gets concentrated on a smaller area?
I think the idea is that it’s the same amount of light is being used but the actual expensive part of the solar cell is cheaper and designed to take the increased heat. So the same size “solar unit” on the roof collecting the same amount of light and generating the same amount of energy but cheaper overall. At least that was my take. Correct me if I’m wrong.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)