I worked with three of the cited authors in this video on Gallium vs Boron doped Si to eliminate this degradation in my PhD thesis. Lovely to see it acknowledged and explained eloquently on TH-cam 8 years later :-) Awesome channel, keep up the great work!
Would this be avoidable if the production was done in a straight nitrogen environment? May be a stupid question, but I know it works in reducing oxidation of hydrocarbon lubricants.
Everything I've ever read about solor panels has talked about basically just one frequency , many modern military industrial complex weapons can see and target in multiple wave lengths of light at once so could there be some kind of hybrid silicone we could try that might be able collect electrons from non visible light???
@@MeatandTatersGaming54 You may be able to separate the infrared to a different panel but you'd need a lot of resources for it to be worth it for just 18% of the solar energy
The only way to cool solar panels is actively don't fall for thisth-cam.com/video/HMFFkIj6uo0/w-d-xo.html fake news. Batteries are the only way to store energy. Don't fall for this highviewpower.com/ fake news. Also the solar panels are just for show because if they worked they would do this th-cam.com/video/WYtRuOz4Wvw/w-d-xo.html When did you notice I was joking?
As someone who designs and makes solar cells for a living I have to say I'm really impressed with how well you covered this topic! It's a complicated subject with a lot of subtleties and you did a great job explaining it to a general audience! Nice work!
@ Substances like glass and semiconductors generally aren't recycled. Because it usually takes more energy to melt them down and separate their elements than to just make a new batch. Most electronics recycling is actually concerned only with recovering the gold, silver, copper, and rare earths - the precious stuff - while the rest of the toxic plastic metal silicon garbage is discarded.
@@peterfrying4933 I'm a physicist by trade and now I work in academia researching new materials and designs of solar cells. I did a degree in physics and basically looked for any research group I could find who worked on solar cells and did a PhD with them (it's surprisingly easy to get into a research group as a phd student as you are essentially free labour. Getting funding is the hard bit!). Now I have a PhD I am (slowly) trying to get my own research group started. It's a tough field to work in and there is a lot of competition, but it does at least have job satisfaction!
There is no comparison really, because the extraction, transportation, and storage of coal creates a great deal of waste, and then there is the consequent removal and disposal of ash. Consider also that solar power does not necessarily mean photovoltaic panels, solar thermal plants work on basically the same principle as any fossil fuel powered plant, except the boilers are replaced by solar troughs and heat exchangers. Since solar generation does not require the transport, delivery, and storage of fuel stock, and consequently no rail sidings, docks, etc. (and the carbon emissions associated with all those ancillary activities) all that doesn't even enter into the picture.
@ TLDR - About 90 % of silicon solar cells go to landfill right now, but this is a big field of research right now so it is likely to improve a lot in the future. -By most metrics solar power wins by about a factor of 10 in terms of lifetime costs of energy production, but this can vary a lot depending on what factors you take into account. Full disclosure - I work mostly on prototyping new materials and designs on the small scale rather than dealing with the large, industrial-scale issues. However I can give you what I have learned at conferences etc. The energy costs of production can vary massively depending on the type of solar panel you are describing, but I shall assume you want to know about monocrystalline silicon since that is the most common kind of solar cell. Thin-film technologies use about 1000 x less material to produce than a silicon cell so they have the potential to improve upon the below stats, but they come with their own problems which i won't go into. Silicon cells are made of about 75 % glass, 10 % polymers, 8 % aluminium, 5 % silicon, and the rest is small amounts of copper, silver, and other metals. There is also a small amount of toxic lead and tin because solar panels are allowed to use leaded solder (unlike most other electronics) so this is obviously also a concern. Currently there are no regulations on disposing of solar cells outside of europe, so about 90 % go to landfill because it's currently not profitable to recycle them. There is a lot of research going into this though because it's a potential goldmine if you can make it profitable. The detailed recycling processes are often closely guarded secrets, but the basic process is you heat the cell up and then peel off the glass panels which make up the bulk of the cell, then you burn away the polymers using sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide, and finally you use various acids and chemicals to selectively dissolve all the remaining materials one by one. Hence you can recycle them, but the materials you get out of them are currently worth less than the costs of recycling. Regulation and further research is expected to help with this. It is hard to find unbiased data on lifetime carbon footprints, and it is easy to skew the data by conveniently forgetting certain parts of the life cycle (e.g. the mining costs for coal or the production costs for solar.). Burning coal, you fundamentally get about 340 g of CO2 per kWh of electricity, purely based on how much energy is in coal per molecule and the efficiency of a power station. This does not take into account mining costs or whether you capture the carbon (most places dont capture carbon). A 1 kW solar panel takes between 400 and 500 kg of CO2 to manufacture, and should probably assume that it will only produce an average of about 10 % of its rated output over its lifetime (accounting for night, clouds etc.). Hence this panel will produce about 17,000 kWh over its 20 year lifetime, which works out to about 29 g per Kwh. This ignores the installation costs, space costs, and costs of recycling, but even if these triple the impact then solar still wins. Plus this also doesn't take into account the other pollutants and environmental damage assosciated with coal, so in my view it's hard to argue that solar is worse than coal environmentally. However I'm obviously biased so you should probably look at the arguments I make rather than my own opinion. Solar panels have their own version of Moore's law called swanson's law, where the costs of making them halve roughly every 5 years, so hopefully it won't be long before solar power is no longer a political issue and just one which makes good financial sense. They are already profitable without subsidy in certain places, and once they get cheap enough there will be basically no reason not to integrate them into a new building or whatever (why would you turn down free cash?). It looks like we are approaching that day pretty quickly too! :)
I'm an EE student and I'm literally studying a subject with semicondoctors, diodes and transistors now. I'm really glad to actually see all of the theory in play. Your explanation was spot on for understanding the basics. Another great video from one of my favorite youtubers
No Solarpanel-Flaw is bigger than BUREAUCRACY. Theres some real 'Accident-Scandals' where good People just wanted to give back Stuff and arent allowed for nonsense-reasons.
I couldn’t agree more. I was a little worried a few months back but this video is outstanding. Niche point but, I watched it on my new oled tv and the video quality is stunning. A LOT of work went into this and it shows. Bravo
Agreed! Such a well-made video. And the segue to Brilliant was also one of the best I've ever seen, doing much to convince me Brilliant can be a truly useful tool, beyond supporting idle curiosity or entertainment. The tragic coincidence of Nicola's troubles occurring so soon after the Real Engineering video encouraged me to re-watch the video: All it's major points still stand, despite using Nicola as the example. The biggest risk, also mentioned, concerns the source of Hydrogen, which prior Real Engineering videos have covered quite nicely. Covering both the uses of Hydrogen and its sources are important: We can only hope they meet well enough to make a functional infrastructure possible.
This video is one of the very best explanations of the workings of solar cells I have ever seen. I teach teachers how to teach science to tiny kids in an elementary teach education program and this video has helped me understand how solar cells work better than anything else I have come across. I'm excited about sharing this information with my students and helping them develop the confidence to share it with their students. (Just a thought.) There is one thing that should be considered in my opinion. The word, "holes." The understanding that most people have about "holes" is a lack of something in a body of something. A hole in a sheet of paper. A hole in a field of grass. A hold in a wall. "Moving holes" is a concept that does not resonate with many people. No one has ever had a hole in a sheet of paper move to a different part of a sheet of paper. Etc. I know that "holes" are a term used as a short cut for a "position" in the semiconductor lattice that has an overall positive charge. But a student trying to understand this information for the first time can get completely turned around on just this one critical term. I think "holes" needs to be replaced with something else that doesn't have so much conflicting baggage.
Love your description of basic electronic theory. P-N junctions are what makes transistors and other devices work and almost no one in our population knows this basic information. Thanks again.
This was the perfect rick roll that I watched all the way through. I clutched my chest and said, "omg he got me at 100% efficiency to watch the ad versus 18% with Linus Tech Tips."
I think that the idea of floating solar panels, for use in pumped-hydro reservoirs, is a good one. The panels are cooled, and evaporation of the water decreases as more surface area is covered by the panels. Also, the infrastructure for distributing the power produced is nearby in the hydro plant.
actually I have this topic in high school never understood it like he did explain also when he's talking about fermi level I strangely understood it, the way he explaining things are "brilliant"
@@z3lop59 It's good enough for a short solar video. There are entire college courses devoted to semiconductors; not the easiest to fully explain in three minutes.
This is high school chemistry level presentation though. The physics is not actually fully known here. (Go ask about Quantum Hall effect, and that's the more known part.) The electron-hole model is known to be an invalid approximation.
Dust is a highly underrated problem on solar panels that I never see mention of in panel efficiency. It necessitates very hard, very expensive labor to keep up with dust settling. Simply rinsing is not enough, the panels must be rinsed with distilled water or well dried to prevent lime deposits. Improperly drying panels with tap water will make them lose efficiency permanently, so workers must be well supervised.
I recommend visiting any other power generation plant. The sheer volume of skilled workers is significant compared to the few people needed to "wash the car".
SOLAR HEAT FROM 1943: My house, in Florida, had a solar powered water heater installed in 1943. The solar unit was a steel box, about 3 inches deep, with a sheet glass on the face. (This box was about 12 feet long and 2 feet wide, but these dimensions can be as big you want.) This box had a 1 inch copper pipe that zigzagged though out the box, with about 3 inches between the rows. There was also a sheet of copper lining the back side of the box. Both the pipes and the coper sheet were painted black so as to absorb the heat of the sun. The box was placed at a 45 degree angle, facing to the south. The pipe then went to a normal electric water heater, which heated the water on cloudy days. This was a simple, but efficient, system that was still in use when the house was sold in 2009.
@01 % ok ok m8 this was about solar cells and advertising you might be on wrong site i think you might be looking for UP IN SMOKE by Cheech and Chong or some other more " plant " based site
All is extremely well explained, thanks! I thought the 19th century solar panel was a joke, it blows my mind! Way before the photoelectric effect was explained by einstein. I love old innovations of the late 1800s, they just tried everything about energy vs mobility (trolley, comprenssed air, kinetic, and so on.)
Becquerel and Hertz discovered it decades before Einstein, what Einstein did was the Planck constant with you guessed it Max Planck.......... (the quasi scale for Quantum Mechanics)
Well the 1800's solar panels were real, you aren't wrong in thinking they were a joke; they actually kinda were, having an efficiency of only around 1%
@@RandomGuy0400 I think not appreciating their curiosity and innovativion is a tasteless joke . Now that your armed with a lot more info it seems that way. Think about it If you were to meet yourself a 100 years later you can go on ranting you could have done this and that and what not but the fact is that was the start . At that time the electron was not experimentally verified ... It was a different era . Electromagnetism was just picking up the pace .
Exactly(!), the great masquerade begun at the beginning of the 19th century, which transformed planet’s societies into what they are now. It transformed Monarchies into Republics, which replaced all monarchs, convincing peoples on earth, through misleading propaganda, that even the good monarchs were blood thirsty plutocratic tyrants. The great masquerade led initially to the First World War, which began 1914 and ended in 1918, and during this period of caos, the Soviet Communist Revolution (1917) was also achieved, by the Bolsheviks led by Lenin, Trotsky et caterva. The great masquerade did not replace the totality of European Monarchies with democracies. In reality it transformed monarchies into communist, nazi or fascist dictatorships, what lead to the Second World War. After the end of WWII, began the implementation, and consolidation of communist regimes throughout the world, (e.g. Iron Curtain, China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, just to mention the most important), which was achieved by a blood bath never seen in beforehand in the planets history.
Thank you! I'd been a tech helping design semiconductors since 1983 and 16 months after you published this video I saw and for the first time learned of "shallow acceptors".
@@RealEngineering It's a difficult balance of talking fast enough to not drag on, and not talking so fast that people can't understand you. I think you're struck a pretty good balance here. You might be able to go up be 20% or so, but I definitely wouldn't go any slower. Thanks for the quality content though. :D
I like how no one mentions the damage done to the environment during the production of solar panels. Nuclear is way more reliable and clean. And thorium is safer compared to uranium. There is a relentless lobbying against research regarding plants using thorium for fuel..
Until something goes wrong with the nuclear power plant. How much pollution is created then? How much pollution is created with nuclear waste? Where do we put it? Seems that no matter what we do, there is a problem with it.
@@markchidester6239 Oh, the one where TEPCO didn't bother to protect the backup generators from a tsunami - in a major fault zone? That's your idea of a well run plant? Meanwhile, a dam failure triggered by the earthquake killed more residents than the nuclear plant did. Guess you should start crying about dam construction as well.
@@Slicerwizard I never said it was well run. My point was that it polluted the planet. YOU said that a well run nuclear power plant doesn't pollute if it is well run. I don't understand how nuclear waste isn't pollution, but what ever. You know all.
I am a PhD student working on semiconductors, specifically on large area electronics (PV solar cells are in this group) and i totally recommend this video on this topic. Well done Real Engineering! Big thumbs up from me! 👍🏻 (Also subscriber of your Nebula channel)
Germany is held up as the world’s solar and wind capital by “renewables luvvies” but Germans are freezing through winter due to “millions of solar panels blanketed in snow” and turbines sitting idle,no wind this is happening now
N.B: selenium cells generate electricity by the photoelectric effect, which is not the same as a in a photodiode. An important factor not considered in this video is that silicon has an indirect bandgap; thus, the generation of an electron is necessarily accompanied by a phonon (lattice vibration) which represents another source of inefficiency. This is a fundamental property of the material which cannot be altered. Also note that oxygen is an intentional impurity in silicon made by the Czochralski method, which makes the wafers stronger. Without oxygen, large wafers would be too weak to handle during the manufacturing process.
Yup you're correct. That's why now we (Solar cell researchers) are moving on from Silicon based Solar Cell to 2nd Generation thin-film and 3rd Generation organic Perovskite Solar Cell. Both are direct bandgap and can be built thinner and more flexible.
@@msb3235 true. But the organics and perovskites are way too sensitive to atmospheric conditions. Exposure to the air and humidity instantly kills them. They need proper encapsulation which further reduces efficiency and increases cost and manufacturing complications. Inside labs these materials are only worked on in a glove box. Sadly we have yet to reach a breakthrough. Cuprous oxide was once thought of as a good candidate but seemed like that research direction is no longer present.
@@EXtREMeBuLLsHyTS & @MS_B Both true! It is a really tough problem. Silicon, as you well know, is cheap as chips, and it works, so if you have the space, then it is not a great hardship to add some extra solar panels to compensate for low efficiency.
20% efficiency is for panels installed on a dual axis solar tracker. In a fixed position installation a realistic efficiency conversion rate is around 14% , taking into account the incident angle modifiers, plus losses due to external temperature, cables and inverter.
All solar cells underperform their stated (nameplate) power generation rate. Typical actual production rates are about half of what the solar cell is rated to produce. This does not include the fact that they only work about half the time. They also slowly degrade over time. While they are appropriate in locations where more reliable power is expensive (islands without fossil fuel resources) they are still much more expensive than a gas turbine or coal-fired power plant.
Prem Bajaj sure, this could be possible using a premium brand and panels that are at the top of the range, which possess the best efficiency rate, low degradation over time and longer longevity. Certainly these premiums come to a higher capital costs compared to the average panel used in commercial applications.
Loren Wilson good points! We have come a long way but we certainly need to improve their quality, conversion efficiency and reliability! Let’s hope we can achieve that in the near future as we really need to move away from all forms of fossil fuels.
Pretty cool to take a time machine back to see how old solar panels used to work. All the stuff I install now is boron free in the doping process and doesn’t have light induced degradation.
Amazing content. Super clear ! The PV panels are a complicated matter that mixes mathematics, Physics and some chemistry. This content is important to explain in less than 15 minutes what is the current state of the PV panels, the limitation, efficiency and even a little bit the possible future evolutions. Great content ! Keep on the good work !
Very nicely made video! Would like to give you a second thumb up for the fact that you clearly say that you have some missing knowledge to explain it 100%. This makes you likeable! And you explained it well enough to have now a much much better understanding whats going on in these cells! Thank you very much!
Yes, but without the complicated explanation of how the things work, the fact that they do work in large numbers even with some deficiencies means the future with them is still very bright.
I've worked and researched in solar in several years and I'm super impressed that you were able to create such and excellent and detailed introduction to photovotaics after a couple weeks of research. This is so clear without skipping on vital details. There only thing that bothered me was that silicon does not balance spectral constraints the best. Thr ideal bandga0 for a solar cell is 1.3-1.5 eV
Space elevators are dynamically unstable - try to pull a weight up and the end of the string changes speed. It doesn't take much time before your end point is half a orbit off, even with very large end masses. You can calculate the change in speed from the force you have to apply to raise your object. This is from conservation of angular momentum. And don't talk about capturing masses in space to send down while your payload goes up, the relative speeds and energy to synchronize motions of objects in orbit is insanely large.
Finally an excellent way to tie in the sponsor. I saw it coming before you mentioned brilliant, but that didn't matter. What mattered, is that for the first time I've encountered, you showed an actual problem that you solved with the help of brilliant. This might not be a problem I'm facing, but this type of tie in still deserves a ton of more respect than the usual bad puns that are so common with sponsors. Good job!
I'm taking a solid state devices class right now and you are 100% correct in the fact that they assume you already know advanced topics and skip over steps.
@@Marahute0 It was a joke. A simple silly joke, you walking humor deficiency. You seem to be having either a very bad day or are very insecure, but I do hope your day improves if it's the former. Hopefully if it does you'll stop policing comment sections for inaccuracies or lighthearted humor like an anemic, constipated killjoy.
Excellent article. In Upstage NY I see solar farms covered in snow on bright, sunny days. I'm completely off grid and I can tell you that there is zero power produced when panels are snow covered. Must lose enormous amounts of energy after a snowstorm
you decided not to bother describing how the cells are basically Diodes and when heated the voltage across them drops, hence the power available drops. that is a basic and useful bit of info.,
Well... he didn't use the word diode but -- Diode: and electronic device that allows current to flow in only one direction. Which he did say. I suspect that anyone who knows that definition and understands the upshot didn't need the word used at them, they immediately went, "Oh, a diode." Yeah. It'd have been simple enough to have said it. Also, adding "this is the basis of transistors and other solid-state devices" would have been a good stimulant for people to realize they'd just been taught a bit about a now ubiquitous technolgy... leading some to study futher.
Commercial solar power is a CANCER on the planet. The technology when paired with the use of FAKE money causes a wealth transfer from the working class to the elite class. Be careful of what you wish for.
@@zucadasilva937 Solar panels cause Toxic waste during their manufacture. The resources that go into the manufacture and installation of solar panels, require mining companies to pollute and burn hydro carbons, like diesel and gasoline. The mining companies dig holes that don't need to be dug. The panels have a 25 year operating life span, then part of the solar panel ends up in the land fill forever. YUCK, I don't like toxic waste.
Perhaps you need to compare that toxic waste against the amount of toxic waste that is prevented by reducing the amount of electricity that needs to be generated by other means.
@@listerdave1240 Let's not forget that the main ingredient, silica, is made by Mining high purity quarts and mixing it with coking coal, and then firing the mixture in a electric blast Furness. I also submit that the thermo/electrical energy consumed is also greater that the pannel will ever produce in the pannels life cycle. You people need to come to your senses. You are destroying the planet when think that your helping it.
@@davidbruce2159 I think you may need to recheck and/or update your calculations with regards to how much energy PVs produce compared to the energy needed to produce them. What you state would have been true about forty to fifty years ago. Today it takes well under a year for a typical PV to offset its carbon footprint. Also, if you were to consider the carbon footprint of building a standard thermal power plant (coal/oil/gas) you will find that even building the thermal plant has a higher carbon footprint per megawatt of capacity even before it starts consuming fuel to produce electricity. Thermal power plants need vast amount of steel, concrete and other materials produced in blast furnaces, kilns and such. The only issue with solar panels is that they currently only offer a partial solution and therefore can only be used to substitute part of the fossil fuel production rather than all of it. That is likely to change very soon though with the introduction of liquid metal batteries and possibly other storage systems.
Maybe. The video's information is still accurate. This is an engineering channel, so I don't really know what I could add to the conversation. I avoided talking about Trevor Milton in the video, despite my apprehension about the guy.
@@RealEngineering Most might be accurate. But there are many relevant issues brought up in the comments, that you have decided not to address. Limits on weight vs volume where storeing hydrogen fx. I understand that the feedback was overwhelming, but still there are so many comments that goes directly to the engineering there.
Instead of anti-reflective surface treatment to _block_ reflected light, what I'd do is _enhance_ its reflectivity -- but do so selectively. I'd use a dichroic reflector that would _pass_ that part of the spectrum for which silicon cells are most effective (blue), and _reflect_ the _rest_ of the spectrum (green, red, infrared) -- which would have two benefits: It would prevent the photocells from heating up so much, and, it would allow the heat to be _captured_ for a _secondary_ power generation system (i.e., the central _"molten salt tower"_ concept as used in the Sahara).
@@vikraal6974 -- Yawn... then pick the best color. Case Closed. PS: Decades ago, when I had a camera repair store/shop, silicon photocells were introduced as a replacement for the then-universal CdS (resistive) photocells. They were as I recall described as "silicon blue" cells that required filtration to counter the silicon photocell's blue sensitivity. I guess the technology has changed in the past nearly half-century. Go figure.
@@This_is_my_real_name "prevent the photocells from heating up so much" Photocell heat is not a problem in real-world installations. "Yawn...Case Closed" Your imagination isn't the final arbiter. "photocell's blue sensitivity" So the blue light was filtered OUT, while you want to filter red and green light OUT. Nonsense.
TBH the sun is a bit overrated. At least the moon gives a bit of light off at night. The sun only shines in daytime, when it’s light outside anyway so it is.
@@ayushagarwal7631 there is much power in the light of the moon, for 'tis only under the pale silver light that we can unlock our true nature. The sun sits out more energy, yes. But it's energy is destructive to us. It interferes with he bio-chemical bounds which enables our transformation. - some werewolf
Great video, on an important topic applicable to the vast majority of currently available PV modules (mostly mono PERC). Just a small correction : typical LID of modern PV modules is 2%, meaning that after initial sunsoaking the PV module performance would be 98% of its initial one. So 98% of the initial ~20% efficiency. Which means a 0,4% decrease of efficiency, not 2% decrease. In terms of energy production the loss due to LID is then 2% and not 10%.
@@deus_ex_machina_ The loss is .5% of the remaining efficiency, meaning multiply .5% times the current year's efficiency, and subtract that amount to get the next year's efficiency. So it is exponential decay, not linear.
@@randyalvarado6401 The solar expert meant to say "the panels would have 50% of their initial efficiency" or they would be only half as efficient as when they were new.
"The problem solving website that teaches you to think like an engineer" - oh man, great! I really want to get a buzz out of writing a risk analysis of breathing
@@xiro6 Not an engineer (just a thinker), but I'm thinking that would be a 2% loss... But I also completely understood what he was getting at, and isn't THAT what truly matters in our interactions with one another (not nitpicking innocuous malaprop or semantic paraphasia)?
As a paper reader I have to say the level of information legibility is driven to NIL just to appease graphic designers like yourself who only care about stuff "Looking cool". Seriously blurring the letters, incidence angles, FOV that only obscures information. Hah.
@@nemou4985 tf you mean? He has all the sources referenced in the description. If your boomer brain can't grasp knowledge through video format, read that.
@@apacheattackhelicopter8778 Lol, you mad? probably a graphic design "student"? OK, I will answer your baseless trolling: The point of a VIDEO is to present information in the VIDEO format. If that information is distorted, blurry, and unreadable because of a "fashion statement", then the point is lost. Special effects are for action movies, not the presentation of scientific papers.
This explained how solar cells work in a way I don't think I've ever heard before. It's interesting that your intention was to explain a certain flaw, but better explained the fundamental functioning better than anyone else (that I know of).
What an amazing video. I'm an Electrical Engineer and I did a course during my graduation about photovoltaic energy generation and yet I didn't knew about all of this theorical limitations of the so photovoltaic cells. I use to thought that the low efficiency was due to technological limitations. So, can we all agree that fission nuclear power plants are the best way to produce clean energy by far?
I tried to tak a course on brilliant on solar energy but i just started 8th grade so i didn't understand most of the things there but you managed explain in a way that even i can understand some of it you are amazing
Really well done. I don’t comment much but since I have a masters in electrical engineering specializing in high efficiency solar cells, I really wanted to say nice work! Next step talk about tandem cells and see how they can push the efficiency limits to the 40% range (expensive - only for space or concentrator purposes). Also it would nice to mention that there is NO theoretical lifespan for photovoltaic cells. Unless physically damaged they’ll last forever! So also a big area of research is in better encapsulation so no moisture get in which is the typical failure mechanism.
Does this mean that the existing solar PV is not worth getting until the issues addressed in the video have been addressed?? They don't seem to be very efficient at all.
Dorothy Madden no. Solar PV is quite good currently. It is exponentially reaching the LIMIT of efficiency. This means there won’t be massive gains anymore unless somebody can break physics (or discover new physics :) ) This means that you shouldn’t skimp on cheap products though. As better workmanship and manufacturing will likely outlast any 20 year warranty they provide.
You’re right. The term I was looking for was logistic growth. As it’s approaching an upper bound as an inverse exponential rate. Thanks for making me find the right term. I had forgotten it.
Great video, and this has been a strange problem. Although I would add that the biggest issue with solar power isn’t panel efficiency (although improving it would certainly help) but actually storage technology since power production is intermittent throughout the day. If we can develop a better battery that doesn’t have the limitations of lithium ion tech, etc., that would allow us to to build economical utility-grade storage plants that could supply on-demand power needs at all hours. Until then, the limiting factor of a 100% renewable grid in the US is still the need for stable baseload power, which means either fossil fuel sources or nuclear.
Yep. I'm an Electrical Engineer. We care less about efficiency and more about storage when it comes to practical applications. After all, batteries are much more expensive than solar panels and solar panels are efficient enough these days.
what about using all that surface area to sandwich an insulating material between two conductors to create a parallel plate capacitor behind the solar panel?
Feels like we’re going to have a major reckoning when PV panels have to be recycled. Electrification is great but there are a lot of intermediate steps to take place
Don't have to worry for another 40 years or so. glass and crystalline and the frame can be recycled and the back coating may also find a way to be reused.
The final nail in the coffin for solar panels for me was the fact that their thermal efficiency drops when they get hot. I mean, what is the freaking point??? You mow down the desert's natural habitat and vegetation (yes there is life in the desert) to stick acres of panels there, where sunlight is abundant... and they don't work.
That's not exactly a "final nail". Even with the loss in efficiency, solar is still the cheapest way of generating electricity. Plus, as stated in the video, you can cool the cells. I mean, he actually states in the video what they do to recover some of the efficiency - not sure why you are ignoring that. Thing is, in cooler countries such as England or Germany, Solar PV's can be extremely effective and crazy cheap. My father-in-law has solar on his roof, and it's bonkers cheap and very effective. I'd have it on my roof if I didn't live in a ground-floor flat with no access to the roof. Plants are less than 2% efficient. Anywhere that plants can live, you can be sure that solar PV will work very well.
@@antontaylor4530 I get the feeling you're talking about something completely different. If not, what are you on? Solar Panels are NOT cheap. They have large amounts of high-purity silicon which is expensive to manufacture. They require installation from qualified workers (you can't set these up yourself, because otherwise you could screw up the inverters and electrical protection).
@@abloogywoogywoo I'm "on" reality. As I said, we just installed Solar panels on my father-in-law's roof. Just over €100 per panel, 200w per panel. It wasn't difficult and we didn't screw anything up. Probably another few hundred euros for the inverter, batteries, brackets, power cables and charge controller. Your assumptions are wrong, and show very clearly that you don't have real world experience with PV. You're making assumptions and then presenting those assumptions as if they're facts. They're cheap. At the rate that dad's panels are making power, the system will have paid for itself in a year or two, and then it's free electric for another 18 or more years. If you think solar is expensive, then you have no real world experience with solar PV. And just for clarity - solar power is now officially the cheapest way to make electricity. www.carbonbrief.org/solar-is-now-cheapest-electricity-in-history-confirms-iea Perhaps look in the mirror if you want to see the person who's "on something".
@@antontaylor4530 Cheapest with massive subsidies. It's not reliable enough for most Americans. They don't provide enough electricity for day and night use for an American family. I have a large family in a 5 bedroom house. It gets very hot in the Summer and very cold in the Winter. Summer is frequently upwards of 38 C while Winter can get to -18. We use 2700 watts just for air-conditioning. Solar cannot meet our household needs. It can't for most Americans. Typically a coal or natural gas plant has to stay throttling manage dips in grid capacity for solar here. That negates much of any real emissions savings or total grid cost. Solar energy analysis typically doesn't include that necessary expense when calculating the cost of solar energy.
Installed Solat is about 1.8% of the total national load. giving BIG numbers as in the start of this video does nothing unless you include percentages or a pie chart. This is NOT putting fossil fuels out of business at all.. yet... Someday it might make a dent but not yet.
@@somedumbozzie1539 I once did the math comparing the total required acreage, build time, cost, ongoing maintenance, materials required, etc. of a 2 GW nuclear power plant versus 2 GW worth of solar panels (actually, more than 2 GW worth of solar panels, since they are useless all night, during harsh weather conditions, etc; whereas a reactor outputs 24/7 in all weather conditions). Nuclear is far, far, ABSURDLY better than solar in every metric. The cost, acreage, manpower, materials, etc. needed to install and maintain 2 GW (constant) of solar panels far exceeds what is necessary to install and maintain a 2 GW nuclear plant. As far as acreage goes, nuclear's footprint is a postage stamp, whereas solar's is a subway wall poster. Of course, fossil fuels are also far more energy-dense than any form of green energy. ANY DAY NOW green energy will take over, and we'll save the planet! Certain people have been saying that for at least twenty years, and it hasn't happened. Never mind that all of the R&D and manufacturing that goes into "green energy" technology wouldn't be possible without the incredible energy provided by a fossil fuel and/or nuclear economy, and couldn't even self-sustain. The guy who runs this channel seems to be fully hoodwinked by the usual suspects of politicized environmental issues, despite supposedly being an engineer of some kind. I find it difficult to trust or respect an engineer who doesn't understand the basic realities of energy production, but then again, he's not the only one who's deluded.
@@0SuicideBoy0 To simply put it, if you care about the planet, solar seems to be the right choice, but if you're thinking about the lives & livelihoods of millions, of running industries & nations, traditional sources are still unbeatable. Not to forget, that most people around the world fight for the basic right to electricity, and simply don't have the 'luxury' to accept the solar as a reliable source yet. However, as grids become smarter, where one can source renewable energy from different sources, solar & wind etc will start powering our future cities, whereas nuclear (or hopefully, something less controversial) will power the industries away from the human settlements. Green may not take over, per se, but may just become rightfully useful at some point in the process.
@@anshumanabhisek PV Solar panels aren't even the best 'green' choice when you consider the full product life cycle of solar panels; rare metal mining, processing, the land being used for PV solar farms that can't be used for other things like forests, and of course disposal (since recycling is a joke).
@@anshumanabhisek something to keep in mind though is those green energy sources would bring other problems pretty much the opposite of fossil fuels, cover most of the planet with panels and planet will freeze. we really need fusion :P
@@anshumanabhisek I have grave doubts as to whether or not solar and wind energy (two focuses of green energy) can actually sustain themselves, without fossil fuels and nuclear to help them. In order to construct photovoltaic solar panels, we must mine silicon, copper, iron, silica, and miscellaneous other materials. Mining requires heavy transport vehicles, heavy machinery, workers (who all use energy and electricity in their personal and professional lives), and so on. These materials then must be transported to refineries where they're refined, then the refined materials are shipped to factories where they're machined into parts, and then the parts are assembled. Factories require massive amounts of energy and workers to run. Then, installing the solar panels requires more vehicles, more workers, planners, R&D, and so forth. So by the time the materials have been mined, refined, turned into parts, turned into solar panels, and the solar panels transported and installed, how many decades until they pay back the huge energy debt that went into their creation? Keeping in mind they'll require maintenance the entire time. Right now, almost all of the energy used to run those heavy trucks, the heavy machinery, the factories, to sustain the workers, etc. comes from fossil fuels directly or from electricity generated by fossil fuels. No one seems to be smart and/or brave enough to address these hard realities on their TH-cam channels.
10:45 slight correction here, actually electrons move from n-type to p-type and also from +ve terminal to -ve terminal. What you have shown is direction of flow of current, electron flow is in reverse direction of current flow.
Nicely done. I applaud you for providing insight and understanding. Question - as solar technologies age (panels) and are replaced, these old panels...how are they disposed of? Do they provide a real hazard to us and the environment. Much like the disposal of CRT tvs and computer screen, computer components themselves, nuclear fuel and even the cars and its components, we've learned its disposal provides hazards. For all its good intended values do the solar technology components have a 'dark side' in its after life.Is this too being managed?
No one really recycles old panels as they are past use by dates. So, disposing of panels is a massive future issue. Not to mention 2 things the Greenies will not mention. 1. The resources needed from the planet to build them. Simply put we need to rape and pillage the earth so it is probably more environmentally friendly to stick with coal fired plants or nuclear 2. And destroying acres of land to put solar farms is just dumb and defeats the purpose. Then to this add electric car manufacturing. What a environmental catastrophe that is. Refer to recent talks from Manhattan Institute。
10:15: I don't get how does an electron accelerate from P-type to N-type, the electric field due to the formed junction should oppose this motion instead of accelerating
I'm an electrical engineer. The crystal lattice of n- and p-type silicon wafers start off with neutral charge, ie. there is an equal number of atomic nuclei and electrons in the material. Then you bring the n- and p-type wafers together, allowing the electrons that don't fit neatly in the n-type wafer to recombine with the holes in the p-type wafer. There aren't any holes or electrons left over that can freely move. HOWEVER, now your n-type silicon has more nuclei than electrons (they're all in the p-type wafer now), therefore it's positively charged and the opposite is true for the p-type silicon (more electrons than nuclei --> negative). We've now created a pn-junction, ie an electric field along the boundary going from the n-type silicon (+) to the p-type silicon (-). This is the electric field that works like a valve for electrons.
cause it seems, that he messes up. From what i've seen he switched up p and n-type. qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-790f41823de9c577aadc1ccd828ec3e1 And it seems, that it is the electrons in the depletion layer, that are getting exited by the photons, which causes the flow.
I can feel the satisfaction from how you first said the energy (Si = 1.1eV) needed to push out an electron from it’s valence band to it’s conduction band then, later revealed that it was a surprise to you when you first read “band gap”. ❤️💯 For those asking, a simple explanation of band gap is the distance (in terms of energy) of the valence band to the conduction band. Think of the valence band as the ground state of an electron around an atom and conduction band is when that electron is energized out of the shell “ENOUGH” for us to be able to use it.
“Installed capacity” of 630,000 MW translates into 126,000 MW or less of actual capacity, if the sun is shining and the panels are new. It is an open question whether a solar panel makes enough energy to manufacture, install, decommission and dispose of itself in its lifetime. If it does not, then every single solar panel represents a backward step in energy efficiency.
This is true, however there is value in the research and fabrication techniques that is very difficult to quantify. We also can't know whether or not it's "worth it" until we push the technology to its limits. Unfortunately that's the reality for any technology.
It is worth noting that solar cell prices have been dropping like crazy, to the point that even without subsidies, the payback for installing a cost-effective roof mount system in a reasonably dry sunny climate is now as low as 7-10 years.
@@theredscourge I don't know what country you're in, but here in Australia we have some of the highest electricity prices on earth and the payback can be as little as 2-5 years
So how much efficiency is lost world wide just due to dirty panels? Its a larger variable then a few procent more efficiency, >30% drop in output is very common due to dust and dirt accumelation. Also the glass is the first barrier, and it reflects as well.
Hey RE == Gods but is Really SATAN== loves Carbon ! PV & Wind == BIG FAULT== UNREILABLE! AND NO BATTERY CAN TAKE CARE OF THAT, except NATURAL??? gas==METHANE BERNieing EGEN is the Battery SATAN Loves EMISSIONS=Asthma, Cancer, and a Global Warmed earth turned to HELL!! Only NUCLEAR POWER can lift ALL Humans out Poverty, while protecting the natural environment !!! love Satan == pv
@@DrTed3 Hey RE == Gods but is Really SATAN== loves Carbon ! PV & Wind == BIG FAULT== UNREILABLE! AND NO BATTERY CAN TAKE CARE OF THAT, except NATURAL??? gas==METHANE BERNieing EGEN is the Battery SATAN Loves EMISSIONS=Asthma, Cancer, and a Global Warmed earth turned to HELL!! Only NUCLEAR POWER can lift ALL Humans out Poverty, while protecting the natural environment !!!
Being a solar engineer myself i can vouch on the efficiency of this video. Beautifully done ! Btw there is also LeTID which is a growing concern in PERC cells due to hydrogen passivation. Maybe you could do an immersive video like this on it sometime.
@@Broxine Where LID is a consequence of formation of Boron Oxygen complexes LeTID has been observed as a consequence of (to put it simply) too much hydrogen content in the form of rear side passivation. With increased temperature and illumination on field the hydrogen atoms are freed into the Si-Bulk this is just another way of saying that the free electrons available are reduced by the presence of extra hydrogen. This effect accelerates and is visible when perc modules are subjected to high irradiation and temperature. Ask a manufacturer about it..and they will either have no clue or will simply deny this. I don't know why. With more than 10% of the global industry immersed in PERC technology this is something that should have been studied extensively and the least they can do is educate the public about it.
@@Broxine that is not an option since the industry is slowing moving towards this technology. The best thing to do would be to have a strong legal contract which ensures that you're covered on linear warranty in the event that the degradation is very high
I think he's trying to show that some percentage of the energy is reflected. Earlier he has the portion of the arrow post-reflection as faded-out to illustrate it.
Green energy activists, among a lot others, need to watch this. There are just too many people without proper knowledge doing things only they themselves think are good.
@mPky1 I would say more investigation is needed. Honestly, if solar is greener than other options (not necessary absolutely 'green'), it should be all right.
@mPky1 We're way too late to try and mine enough rare earths and sand and purifying it to make solar panels a viable energy source globally. HVDC is missing and current high voltage lines are insufficient for transferring power from solar-efficient countries. Even USA which has the best mix for wind and solar cannot power itself nor deploy enough panels in 50 years, and we're already 40 years late and are now only mitigating the damage.
People need to not use emotions when it comes to any decision, if people where being objective we would get the bulk of are baseload power from nuclear, hydro electric and geothermal. Solar and wind are good for small scale production like the ones that go on roofs. It fails and destroys huge swaths of land when used any other way. I would prefer land be left to be natural then turned into solar farms. Turn cities into solar farms, leave land to be forests, marshes etc these are much better co2 reducers. If your not doing that at least turn that land into farms.
@mPky1 I guess that you agree that Trees are green. Trees function solely on mixing water with Carbondioxide, through a function known as Photosynthesis. This means that as trees are green, that CO2 is green, and our main source of CO2 is North Sea oil, which is plant based oil from a singular plant known as Mosquito Fern(Azolla Azolla), hence converting said oil into CO2 is green, hence environmentalists can go fuck themselves because they have no idea how the world functions. Kthnxbai.
@Miss Cute Nuclear Waste... Billions of Years... Well sorry to tell you this hun, but there is no such thing as Nuclear Waste, Unless you talk about Lead... Lead is Nuclear Waste. Well at least if we talk about fission, otherwise for Fusion, it's Iron. Oh and whatever you classify as Nuclear Waste is actually unspent nuclear fuel. Which could been used if people didn't scream less nuclear reactors as soon as a new one with a lot better design and more fuel options available than Uranium-238 is ever mentioned. The environmentalists have only themselves to blame for that. And you could have a multifuel reactor, that enriches Uranium into U-238 and the Uranium that turns into Thorium could be then used to create more Uranium-235 which will then resupply the U-238 chain again. We could also make Molten Salt generators, for the "Nuclear Waste" not as efficient as regular reactors but have no failure conditions, meaning although they generate a lot less, they're infinitely safer, and everything you throw in it can be used as fuel as long as it's radioactive. Do some fucking research before you even go spew forth lies will you.
630 Gigawatt figure is extremely misleading for solar power. For example, that figure would only be actually effective 15% of the time, this is called the capacity factor. This means that per annum only an average of 160 Gigawatts of actual power are generated, not the total 630 installed capacity.
@@dakotastwits Why wait? There are other things that can be used as storage or battery. A water heater is one of them and is storing energy as hot water turning electricity into hot water with almost 100% efficiency. Or you can use the solar power directly without storing it, like I do with my 80 watt attic fan system that has no battery. Just a 100 watt solar panel and a 80 watt 12 volt fan.
@@jeffmellow Yes, And I am proud of this. This was an example and if you wish you always can make and use more solar power directly for other things. I started this and other experiments years ago to use solar power directly as much as possible and I still use some of them and I added new ones. A combination of both direct and battery power is best, use as much solar power directly and as little power as possible from batteries. I do not think that they had a attic fan in 1880 that saved them 25% on their cooling bill or anything that saved them $30 a month trying to dry cloth. I done many other things for years to save power and the power company noticed it and checked my meter twice before they replaced the meter the third time. Why give money to the power company if not needed. I use 1/3 of the power now that I used to use and every bit helps to reduce power even more. You joke about the 100 watts, but that panel generates 13,500 watts a month and like you said it is not much but will add up in time and don't forget that I still save a lot of my cooling cost with it which is a lot more savings than that panel ever will generate. Electric batteries gotten better but the price went up with it too and avoiding a electric battery is a cheaper round. I even thought using capacitors instead which have a long life, but they are expensive like a electric battery now and have a small capacity per space occupied. I call it a electric battery because anything that can store energy is considered a battery including a water heater or tank that can hold that hot energy for example.
Just a small correction: As far as I understand it, the electric field that forms at the PN junction due to the potential difference is just electric not electromagnetic, because that field is static, so no magnetic component is present.
Five years from now commercialized installations of the SAFIRE Project will have begun to render large solar panel farms uncompetitive. Small solar devices will remain valuable for their portability, but solar panels to feed the grid will be a footnote. th-cam.com/video/7GFFfmBGb5U/w-d-xo.html
@@hshs5756 Although the SAFIRE Project looks promising and I hope it makes it to the market, you're assumption that this will render large scale solar farms "obsolete" is incorrect. There are an exponential number of factors that you haven't considered and are jumping to conclusions. SAFIRE is still going the the testing phase and while it has demonstrated a working proof of concept that the technology works, it still has many more tests and hurdles to see if it's commercially viable. Will it be actually be cost effective to build or will it be like the petroleum industry in which the FOP (Factors of Production) keep the costs high and the only way to turn a profit is to constantly produce energy which would put unnecessary strain on the reactor. Years of safety tests and demonstrations still need to be done to ensure potential investors, governments and the average person that this is a technology that is genuinely safe for us to use. Then there is the regulations that will have to be created to protect which ever countries implement this technology. Which also address the elephant in the room, those who would see this technology not come on to market and change the status quo via political entrepreneurship( If you can't innovate, legislate basically). Also, you think solar technology will just stand still or become more efficient at the current pace? As technology gets more advanced, so does the implementation of it and while SAFIRE will probably gain traction, keep in mind that solar technology already has that same tech advancement edge plus the benefit of being available to the masses. Is SAFIRE better as a central technology similar to coal plants as the focus on the grid? Or can their be regional smaller power plants located within city limits? Because many average people will interpret it as the current electric company monopolies as a way of keeping their power over them. I'm not saying I hope SAFIRE fails, I've just seen a lot of "game chaining energy sources" not come to market because a whole host of factors people never considered.
@@VinceroAlpha Watch the recent documentary _Planet of the Humans_ and pay particular attention to the solar segments of it, keeping in mind that the film was made by a life-long environmentalist and alternative energy backer. I seriously examined putting solar on my house a year ago until it became apparent that the numbers were not there. The systems are too expensive and have too short a lifespan to even begin to compete with coal-fired grid electricity. Every new technology has teething problems and I expect that for plasma energy. But solar (and wind, and biomass) have had years to work out their problems and so far can't even prove they have a positive EROEI.
I’m surprised by how advanced we were in the 1800’s, it seems so many of the technologies we consider cutting edge such as battery operated cars, solar cells, etc were invented at that time. I wonder how many more interesting technologies were developed in the 1800’s & 1900’s we forgot about.
There were also early versions of electricity producing windmills and the first commercial grade hydropower systems that involved into megaprojects like the Hoover dam. Unfortunately, the technology versions available then were not enough to remove the need for the giant steam engines known as power plants.
G series I think he’s talking about the “Baghdad batteries”, scholars think they were used in some capacity in the ark of the covenant so that touching it would be shocked and believe they had a powerful religious experience.
I still have a solar cell I used on a crystal radio I made in high school in 1967, it's output is hilariously puny compared to the solar cells recharging the batteries on the garden lights on my balcony. But I learned the basics of both solar technology plus how radios worked. I later made my own transistor radio, I had to make the printed circuit board, install the transistors, and fit it all into a small plastic storage box. The speaker and battery were the biggest parts, plus some space set aside for the ear bud. It worked and a couple of years ago I took it out, installed a new battery and let my grand-daughter play with it. My question is, why did schools do away with industrial arts, or as we called it; shop?
@@BaltimoreAndOhioRR No that is not the reason. Critical race theory is not taught in high school, it is an optional course in college only. Too many people thought that the future was in computer use. I told the local board of education in 1980 that in the future everyone would be able to use their own computer and professionals would not be needed. They didn't listen to me and continued to teach data processing which soon became useless. While math and science are very important, not all students are Einsteins. History, music and art are also important, and kids should learn basic skills in using tools and how things work. Thankfully more and more schools are coming around to this idea and bringing back industrial arts and vocational training. AND in addition learning how to be tolerant of people who aren't like them.
@@stopvoting4oldppl952 Yup, ill informed desperate people are easier to mislead. Our Labor started being exported in the 1980s (the chilly war was quickly a forgotten fraud). When we are sufficiently poor and desperate, most of our land will have been taken by those with all the money and then suddenly; we will be the new labor force that saves money for those bosses.
I used to work at Sunpower, these brings back memories. I work In manufacturing so I understand everything you said. I still remember every step how we manufacture our solar cells. And how to break the 30% efficiency barrier? They already know what's the problem, unfortunately there is no solution yet.
No "yet" about it. The maximum theoretical efficiency is around 29%-27% depending on which limits you choose to measure by. We will never exceed this with single junction silicon solar cells.
Quantum Dot film. Look it up. It's on the way already, and could allow 35%. Question for you though, if a person works at Sunpower are they able to buy / purchase a Sunpower panel without giving a home address you plan to install them on? Because Sunpower panels aren't up for purchase directly by consumers unless you supply them a home address. I have pleaded with them to sell me some as I live in an apartment, but they simply tell me no because they only sell them to home owners. :|
I’m not sure I agree. Limiting knowledge and education to things that can be explained “simply” is self-limiting. Explaining things like Relativity or Quantum Mechanics will remain difficult, especially without mathematics, because we cannot analogize these topics easily using our simian senses and brains. How much more science is out there that cannot be “simply” explained? Probably most of it, really. It may be that a lot of the universe will eventually be, not explained, but still manipulated using AI for things that simply won’t fit well into our brains. It may never be simply explained.
tandem solar cells can kinda do that. They use one material to capture the lower energy photons and another material to capture the higher energy photons. This way, the high energy electrons have a material that can better absorb their energy. If that answers your question
Kexmonster Yes but then the photons coming in with lower energy would be less likely too hit electrons with too high a work function as they have been liberated by the high energy ones and so you'd get more free electrons total and therefore a greater PD
The reason why higher energy light does not produce more electricity is because of the particle nature of light. Only 1 photon can interact with 1 electron, and transfer all its energy to it.The energy of the photon has to be greater than the threshold energy/work function for the electron to get excited, but the exact energy of the photon does not really matter. Therefore we want as low work function as possible so that even lower energy photons (long wavelengths of light like infrared) can be absorbed by the electron and get it excited. High energy photons will interact with both high work function and low work function materials and have the same effect.
Love your channel ! Your videos have truly reignited my passion for science, reminding me of the importance of continuous learning. As a mechanical engineer in a 9 to 5 routine, it's easy to feel stagnant, but your content has shown me the value of investing my free time in further education. I'm excited to explore platforms like Brilliant and continue expanding my knowledge. Thank you for the inspiration!
its as if the band gap between Videoband and Adband is decreasing, video is doped with Ad. its nice for new comers but someone whos an old subscriber not earning shit and unable to pay for such things and seeing it on every video its kinda annoying.
energy storage techniques: Flow batteries, water reservoirs, flywheel energy storage, graphene supercapacitor, liquid metal batteries and thermal energy storage (to mention a few) but you could also convert solar into hydrogen or some other fuel.
@@MacGuyver85 To be fair. Li-ion is bad for the environment and poor countries because it has to be mined, which destroy the ecology and tamper the water supply. Graphene supercapacitors and liquid metal batteries on the other hand seem less bad. *After all:* graphene is just carbon and liquid metal batteries can be made from abundant materials. The video "Donald Sadoway: The missing link to renewable energy" gives a good explanation about this.
Good grief, so many incorrect assumptions. I don’t know where to begin. Li-ion isn’t bad for the environment. Seriously where on earth do you get this nonsense from! This is just the same nonsense as wind turbines being bird shredders, or solar panels being toxic, or nuclear being harmless and cheap. Cost of solar/wind + li-ion is already the same or cheaper than any other alternative (especially if you take the issues of the other forms into account), with a clear path to pushing the cost of all down even further. All of these can be mined, produced and recycled with minimal to zero harm to the environment. There’s no need to wait on some magical unicorn tech to solve the problem; it’s already solved. The ‘only’ true problem is scaling production. That’s it.
Wow, I didn't know how similar both in principal function and in design leafs and solar cell are, up until I saw this video! There's so many science channels that tell you the same things over and over again, not adding anything new. But Real Engineering is an exception. I've come to the conclusion that engineers make the best science educators. Other channels like Applied Science or Tech Ingredients are also much more in-depth than your average science channel on TH-cam that are run by scientists that have become journalists.
I enjoyed this and it was the first Brillant ad I have seen that made it sound useful. Usually, ads talk about teaching basic stuff to people with no science or math background.
So let my see if I understand this correctly. A significant portion of solar energy is not able to be utilized by photovoltaic panels due to the wavelength being incompatible(infrared)due to it basically heat energy? What about developing a dual purpose solar panel that both collects the available wavelengths in form of electricity directly and reflecting infrared to a focal point for production of secondary steam generation? Imho.
The reason solar cells lose power when hot is actually very simple to understand. Don't know why it was skipped. There are 2 ways to get electrons across a semiconductor. The first is to apply a voltage(in this case, absorb a photon). The second way is heat. Hotter electrons have a higher voltage and a bigger chance of jumping across the bandgap. Hotter panel means more of that voltage needed to make the jump comes from heat. What remains comes from light. So it's not actually a power loss. More specifically, the voltage output of the panel drops.
It's been a long time, so I might be wrong on this, but aren't resistance and heat a hand-in-hand thing as well? It's part of the physics that leads to the NEC for electricians.
@@SerunaXI No. Heat is kinetic energy. Resistance has to do with 'collisions' between electrons and the lattice. I think it's called the Drude model. Some materials see an increase in resistance as temp goes up, other materials see a decrease. Insulators being a notable example. Never assume an insulator beyond its rated temp is safe from arcing.
@@SerunaXI I find answers 2 and 4 of this site easy to understand: scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2668 And yes, it seems that the heat does act as resistance according to answer 4.
Nevermind that energy production is up compared to where it was when rolling blackouts were common. The problem is that no power grid is really designed for *everyone* to crank up their ACs at the same time. A problem that climate change is going to make a lot worse going forward. Regardless, energy generation by solar/wind continues to increase, and they are now two of the cheapest forms of energy generation out there. Coal is now one of the most expensive ones, only ahead of hydro and nuclear.
Hey, that’s swell, @@gamerk316! We’ll remember that here in Democrat-controlled California next time our Democrat leaders impose rolling blackouts during the next heat wave... probably after they’ve refused another power plant.
@@donde2k Except for the fact power generation growth in California is outpacing most of the other states, due in large part to increasing construction of Wind/Solar generation. Also consider that dirty power plants are what is partially responsible for said blackouts, since they are contributing to the heat waves that are causing everyone to crank up the AC in the first place. Simply put: You're seeing the front end impacts of ignoring climate change for the past 50 years. And it's going to start getting a lot worse fairly soon.
@@Redskool1 Oh, I've *long* advocated for solar cells to be required on all new construction. Maybe keep a few nuclear plants around to ensure a steady baseline supply on top of that as well (assuming modern designs who's worst case failure mode is "safe shutdown")
I thank you for explaining quite nicely and simply how solar cells work. I will be viewing your video several more times so as to catch some of the things that I know I missed on just this 1st viewing. Because of the future of and need for "green" (= carbon free) energy, I have been doing much research ( reading and viewing videos) on solar cells and hydrogen fuel cells(batteries). From what I can tell, the energy created using solar cells can be use to release hydrogen from either water or ammonia. Ultimately, the energy associated with this free hydrogen can be stored in fuel cells. Fuel cells batteries can store more energy than lithium based batteries. Lithium is considered "grey" energy and because of mining, it is environmentally destructive. The same cannot be said about water and ammonia which are considered green energy. As a result I have been investing/speculating in both types of ventures(solar cell and fuel cell manufacturing). Below is an excerpt of a news article that relates to the current efficiency of solar cells. Zacks Equity Research Fri, July 16, 2021, 8:44 AM In this article: JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd.’s advanced high-efficiency solar module recently set a new record by attaining the highest conversion efficiency at 23.53%. Its large-area N-type monocrystalline silicon solar cells have also set a test record of 25.25%. P.S. JinkoSolar is one of the companies in which I invested.
I sat through 6 months of a a solid-state electronics course during an Electrical Engineering undergraduate degree a few years ago (decades in fact!) and was totally baffled by holes and electrons but you managed to explain it in 5 minutes. I will definitely take a look at the Brilliant subscription, thanks for making a very complex subject much more understandable.
This is all well and good, but until we can store that energy on the grid to be able to use it when we aren't collecting, we're gonna have to have a back up of some sort... be it coal, ng, nuclear, whatever... Our AC power grids are all of the "use it or lose it" type - the energy released onto the grid gets used in that second, or is converted to heat and lost. Period. UNTIL we address that, all of these "alternatives" are just gap fillers, not suitable for primary energy use. And understand, I teach this stuff - I DIG this stuff, but I also fully understand the limitations we are stuck with at this time - I keep hoping to inspire one of my students to come up with a better energy storage/release system - THAT is when solar and wind and other "renewables" will start making sense for all of us.
Correct. Also, the advance of technology hasn't really forced fossil-fueled generators out of the market, as the author claims. It is really being done by government legislation to deliberately make coal more expensive (or just ban it outright) and by expensive subsidies to make solar panels cheaper. The policies and actions of Germany and Japan, not to mention China and much of the rest of the world, all still recognise that coal is the cheapest form of base load electricity generation. Governments of rich Western 'planet-savers' attempting to force many of the world's poorest peoples to adopt wilfully expensive electrical generation methods, enforced by the World Bank, strikes me as morally dubious to say the least.
@@michaelhart7569 Without Fossil Fuels, the materials acquisition, manufacture, transport, and installation of Solar Panels is impossible. Also, that 627,000 MW capacity represents 3% - that's right, 3% - of total world-wide ELECTRICAL energy production capacity. If you compare that to total energy production, it's dwarfed even further (by transportation, which is all Fossil Fuel these days). Clearly Solar is nowhere near "replacing" anything.
@@michaelhart7569 In germany the cost to produce Solar Power is even lower than the US. Coal is much more expensive but since noone gives money the research on storage, these ancient technologies are kept alivr even tho they are bad for our health, the environment and are more cost intensive.
@@Oeggonom This is, at best, misleading. Lazard's LCOE analysis may show lower costs of electricity for solar/wind but it doesn't account for battery backup or gas peaking. Those two are separated out into their own LCOE's and happen to be the two most expensive options for electricity. Combined, it makes Wind/Solar very unattractive, nor does the LCOE effectively account for the capacity factor differences. Yes, US renewable energy cost is higher, but OVERALL electrical prices are significantly lower. What matters to the majority of people is the cost they pay. The "cost" to the environment doesn't matter if you can't afford to keep the lights on. As for electrical pricing, Germany's cost to consumers, in TOTAL, is significantly higher than other nations in Europe. Germany currently pays THE MOST for electricity in Europe. France, which is 70% nuclear (rest is hydro with a small percentage of other renewables and natural gas peaking) pays just over half of what Germany pays for electricity. Germany is at 30.88 cents per KWHr and France is at 17.65 cents per KWHr in 2019. The US pays about 12 cents per KWhr... The other frustrating thing about this is Wind/Solar is not cheap enough to where the poorest of the poor can afford to power their home with it. If you assumed every middle class family could afford to go completely "off" grid (offsetting energy with solar/wind on their property), the cost of electricity to the poor would increase drastically since the customer base for traditional generation would shrink a lot. It may feel good to go "off the grid" but every time someone does it, the cost to those still paying rates to the power company goes UP. It may not be much, but it all adds up the more and more people do it. There is a definite societal cost NOT factored in there. Does it outweigh the cost of climate change? Doubtful, but not very well studied at the moment either.
@@Whiskey11Gaming YIkes you are cringe af. "The cost of the environment doesnt matter for most people". We just gonna die is a strong argument I gotta admit.
You explain why we need your sponsor better than most other Channels (even for the exact same sponsor!), probably because you are being honest about what you know and don't. Thanks.
Most solar cells consist of strings of cells in series to get sufficient voltage to operate the DC to AC convertor or the battery charger. One problem with this that I don't know if they have eliminated is that one of the solar cells in the string is in shadow it acts as a high resistance and stops the current floating. This was a major problem with solar panels on sailing boats where shadows of the rigging or mast would fall on the panel and stop it generating due to one of the string being high resistance. In the discussion about efficiency this is only for the case where the panel is perpendicular to the Sun - this only happens once or twice a year. The rest of the time the power is reduced by the multiple of the cosine of the angle between the sun position and the position perpendicular to the panels. It is possible to get round this with a sun tracking array but that is big & expensive. As a result of this and the efficiency figures of 18% above it would be interesting to see how much energy is actually generated each day from a square meter of panel. Of course you then need to factor in the weather as well.
John Murrell This was solved with the invention of Sliver Cells (that's Sliver not Silver) however the mass production of Sliver Cells hasn't come to pass, as it's too expensive to be worthwhile.
@@lappy65 So if the solution has not been implemented due to economics I presume the problem still exists of solar panels 'shutting down' if part of them is in shadow.
@@johnmurrell3175 I'm sure there are other solutions, though probably not quite as efficient as sliver cells. Panels can be made with a combination of parallel and series cells and panels are available with individual lower powered inverters and many higher powered inverters have multiple inputs, also not mounting panels where they will be shaded in the first place helps. In my case, my 5kW inverter has two inputs each with a 3.25 kW string of panels none shaded by overhanging trees or structures, one of my neighbours has 45 panels each with its own 200 W inverter.
You need to discuss the vast tracts of land that have to be given over to the renewable power sources. What is the lifespan of the panels and how will aged panels be disposed of?
I worked with three of the cited authors in this video on Gallium vs Boron doped Si to eliminate this degradation in my PhD thesis. Lovely to see it acknowledged and explained eloquently on TH-cam 8 years later :-) Awesome channel, keep up the great work!
Would this be avoidable if the production was done in a straight nitrogen environment? May be a stupid question, but I know it works in reducing oxidation of hydrocarbon lubricants.
What is the best solar panel to use currently?
@@Ak3rf3ldt Silicon based technologies are still king
Everything I've ever read about solor panels has talked about basically just one frequency , many modern military industrial complex weapons can see and target in multiple wave lengths of light at once so could there be some kind of hybrid silicone we could try that might be able collect electrons from non visible light???
@@MeatandTatersGaming54 You may be able to separate the infrared to a different panel but you'd need a lot of resources for it to be worth it for just 18% of the solar energy
Seeing a solar cell on top of a roof in the late 1800s and on a Baker Electric Car in the early 1900s looks straight out of science fiction
Hi
The only way to cool solar panels is actively don't fall for thisth-cam.com/video/HMFFkIj6uo0/w-d-xo.html fake news. Batteries are the only way to store energy. Don't fall for this highviewpower.com/ fake news. Also the solar panels are just for show because if they worked they would do this th-cam.com/video/WYtRuOz4Wvw/w-d-xo.html
When did you notice I was joking?
Alwyn Watson what do you mean joking it’s true look m.youtube.com/watch/dQw4w9WgXcQ
@@alwynwatson6119 Ok bot
@@lizardlegend42 Beep beep hoxs beep
As someone who designs and makes solar cells for a living I have to say I'm really impressed with how well you covered this topic! It's a complicated subject with a lot of subtleties and you did a great job explaining it to a general audience! Nice work!
Jonathon Harwell Would love to know your story and how you got into your field!
@ Substances like glass and semiconductors generally aren't recycled. Because it usually takes more energy to melt them down and separate their elements than to just make a new batch. Most electronics recycling is actually concerned only with recovering the gold, silver, copper, and rare earths - the precious stuff - while the rest of the toxic plastic metal silicon garbage is discarded.
@@peterfrying4933 I'm a physicist by trade and now I work in academia researching new materials and designs of solar cells. I did a degree in physics and basically looked for any research group I could find who worked on solar cells and did a PhD with them (it's surprisingly easy to get into a research group as a phd student as you are essentially free labour. Getting funding is the hard bit!). Now I have a PhD I am (slowly) trying to get my own research group started. It's a tough field to work in and there is a lot of competition, but it does at least have job satisfaction!
There is no comparison really, because the extraction, transportation, and storage of coal creates a great deal of waste, and then there is the consequent removal and disposal of ash. Consider also that solar power does not necessarily mean photovoltaic panels, solar thermal plants work on basically the same principle as any fossil fuel powered plant, except the boilers are replaced by solar troughs and heat exchangers. Since solar generation does not require the transport, delivery, and storage of fuel stock, and consequently no rail sidings, docks, etc. (and the carbon emissions associated with all those ancillary activities) all that doesn't even enter into the picture.
@ TLDR - About 90 % of silicon solar cells go to landfill right now, but this is a big field of research right now so it is likely to improve a lot in the future.
-By most metrics solar power wins by about a factor of 10 in terms of lifetime costs of energy production, but this can vary a lot depending on what factors you take into account.
Full disclosure - I work mostly on prototyping new materials and designs on the small scale rather than dealing with the large, industrial-scale issues. However I can give you what I have learned at conferences etc. The energy costs of production can vary massively depending on the type of solar panel you are describing, but I shall assume you want to know about monocrystalline silicon since that is the most common kind of solar cell. Thin-film technologies use about 1000 x less material to produce than a silicon cell so they have the potential to improve upon the below stats, but they come with their own problems which i won't go into.
Silicon cells are made of about 75 % glass, 10 % polymers, 8 % aluminium, 5 % silicon, and the rest is small amounts of copper, silver, and other metals. There is also a small amount of toxic lead and tin because solar panels are allowed to use leaded solder (unlike most other electronics) so this is obviously also a concern. Currently there are no regulations on disposing of solar cells outside of europe, so about 90 % go to landfill because it's currently not profitable to recycle them. There is a lot of research going into this though because it's a potential goldmine if you can make it profitable. The detailed recycling processes are often closely guarded secrets, but the basic process is you heat the cell up and then peel off the glass panels which make up the bulk of the cell, then you burn away the polymers using sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide, and finally you use various acids and chemicals to selectively dissolve all the remaining materials one by one. Hence you can recycle them, but the materials you get out of them are currently worth less than the costs of recycling. Regulation and further research is expected to help with this.
It is hard to find unbiased data on lifetime carbon footprints, and it is easy to skew the data by conveniently forgetting certain parts of the life cycle (e.g. the mining costs for coal or the production costs for solar.). Burning coal, you fundamentally get about 340 g of CO2 per kWh of electricity, purely based on how much energy is in coal per molecule and the efficiency of a power station. This does not take into account mining costs or whether you capture the carbon (most places dont capture carbon). A 1 kW solar panel takes between 400 and 500 kg of CO2 to manufacture, and should probably assume that it will only produce an average of about 10 % of its rated output over its lifetime (accounting for night, clouds etc.). Hence this panel will produce about 17,000 kWh over its 20 year lifetime, which works out to about 29 g per Kwh. This ignores the installation costs, space costs, and costs of recycling, but even if these triple the impact then solar still wins. Plus this also doesn't take into account the other pollutants and environmental damage assosciated with coal, so in my view it's hard to argue that solar is worse than coal environmentally. However I'm obviously biased so you should probably look at the arguments I make rather than my own opinion. Solar panels have their own version of Moore's law called swanson's law, where the costs of making them halve roughly every 5 years, so hopefully it won't be long before solar power is no longer a political issue and just one which makes good financial sense. They are already profitable without subsidy in certain places, and once they get cheap enough there will be basically no reason not to integrate them into a new building or whatever (why would you turn down free cash?). It looks like we are approaching that day pretty quickly too! :)
I'm an EE student and I'm literally studying a subject with semicondoctors, diodes and transistors now. I'm really glad to actually see all of the theory in play. Your explanation was spot on for understanding the basics. Another great video from one of my favorite youtubers
No Solarpanel-Flaw is bigger than BUREAUCRACY. Theres some real 'Accident-Scandals' where good People just wanted to give back Stuff and arent allowed for nonsense-reasons.
what’s a semicondoctor
I have to say, I think the presentation on this one is one of the best yet. And I've always rated you very high up that list already.
I couldn’t agree more. I was a little worried a few months back but this video is outstanding. Niche point but, I watched it on my new oled tv and the video quality is stunning. A LOT of work went into this and it shows. Bravo
@@1rstTry "A liitle worried", the Nikola video had me unsubscribe in desperation.
Agreed! Such a well-made video. And the segue to Brilliant was also one of the best I've ever seen, doing much to convince me Brilliant can be a truly useful tool, beyond supporting idle curiosity or entertainment.
The tragic coincidence of Nicola's troubles occurring so soon after the Real Engineering video encouraged me to re-watch the video: All it's major points still stand, despite using Nicola as the example. The biggest risk, also mentioned, concerns the source of Hydrogen, which prior Real Engineering videos have covered quite nicely. Covering both the uses of Hydrogen and its sources are important: We can only hope they meet well enough to make a functional infrastructure possible.
Agreed, well put.
I could not agree more. Incredible video. The amount of knowledge transferred was impressive, but also the quality of animation.
That has to be one of the cleanest brilliant adverts yet
quite annoying tho
Whenever youtubers talk about learning new things, I always know it'll be brilliant haha
@@voxelfusion9894 or skillshare
clean so much that made me see it and didn't skip
@@voxelfusion9894 or Audible
This is the best brilliant advert I have ever seen.
*most brilliant? 😁
Asa9 I think he’s talking about the website brilliant
a most perfect segway
@@_Amilio_ *segue
@@PunzL Thanks! 👍🏼
This video is one of the very best explanations of the workings of solar cells I have ever seen. I teach teachers how to teach science to tiny kids in an elementary teach education program and this video has helped me understand how solar cells work better than anything else I have come across. I'm excited about sharing this information with my students and helping them develop the confidence to share it with their students.
(Just a thought.) There is one thing that should be considered in my opinion. The word, "holes." The understanding that most people have about "holes" is a lack of something in a body of something. A hole in a sheet of paper. A hole in a field of grass. A hold in a wall. "Moving holes" is a concept that does not resonate with many people. No one has ever had a hole in a sheet of paper move to a different part of a sheet of paper. Etc. I know that "holes" are a term used as a short cut for a "position" in the semiconductor lattice that has an overall positive charge. But a student trying to understand this information for the first time can get completely turned around on just this one critical term. I think "holes" needs to be replaced with something else that doesn't have so much conflicting baggage.
Love your description of basic electronic theory. P-N junctions are what makes transistors and other devices work and almost no one in our population knows this basic information. Thanks again.
That was THE BEST transition into a sponsor I've ever seen.
Indeed, it was pretty impressive! It worked too, as I'm now inspired to check it out.
yes, it was "Brilliant"
This was the perfect rick roll that I watched all the way through. I clutched my chest and said, "omg he got me at 100% efficiency to watch the ad versus 18% with Linus Tech Tips."
Amen
Amen
8:23 My name is Bond... Covalent Bond.
I'll let myself out.
MeToo
🤔🧐🤨🙂😆😂🤣😂😅🤤😥🤯😵🥴☠️
I swear to God I just heard a rimshot!!!!
Good day Mister Bond👍😲👍😎💣🔪🔫💉💊
🤣
I think that the idea of floating solar panels, for use in pumped-hydro reservoirs, is a good one. The panels are cooled, and evaporation of the water decreases as more surface area is covered by the panels. Also, the infrastructure for distributing the power produced is nearby in the hydro plant.
Except the toxic substances that come off the solar panels over time, specifically heavy metals.
This is the best visualization and explanation of semi-conductors that I've ever seen! Thanks for always bringing interesting topics :)
actually I have this topic in high school never understood it like he did explain also when he's talking about fermi level I strangely understood it, the way he explaining things are "brilliant"
But it's not quite right, he misses a few points in the pn transition.
@@z3lop59 It's good enough for a short solar video. There are entire college courses devoted to semiconductors; not the easiest to fully explain in three minutes.
@@zaidahmed5464 Quick, Watson! The vomit pail!
This is high school chemistry level presentation though. The physics is not actually fully known here. (Go ask about Quantum Hall effect, and that's the more known part.) The electron-hole model is known to be an invalid approximation.
Dust is a highly underrated problem on solar panels that I never see mention of in panel efficiency. It necessitates very hard, very expensive labor to keep up with dust settling. Simply rinsing is not enough, the panels must be rinsed with distilled water or well dried to prevent lime deposits. Improperly drying panels with tap water will make them lose efficiency permanently, so workers must be well supervised.
must the worker's supervisors be supervised too?
Now consider solar panels on liveaboard boats, sea water ;)
@@robinspat Good thinking!
I recommend visiting any other power generation plant. The sheer volume of skilled workers is significant compared to the few people needed to "wash the car".
@@RevAnakin There's one just down the road from me, and yes it does have a lot of highly paid, happy, skilled workers with 401Ks.
Already watched it on nebula, but giving you those interaction points here too.
I really don't like Nebula that much and still watch all the videos on youtube.
@@hkr667 You can abuse the free trial on nebula tho
SOLAR HEAT FROM 1943: My house, in Florida, had a solar powered water heater installed in 1943. The solar unit was a steel box, about 3 inches deep, with a sheet glass on the face. (This box was about 12 feet long and 2 feet wide, but these dimensions can be as big you want.) This box had a 1 inch copper pipe that zigzagged though out the box, with about 3 inches between the rows. There was also a sheet of copper lining the back side of the box. Both the pipes and the coper sheet were painted black so as to absorb the heat of the sun.
The box was placed at a 45 degree angle, facing to the south. The pipe then went to a normal electric water heater, which heated the water on cloudy days. This was a simple, but efficient, system that was still in use when the house was sold in 2009.
We had a pool heater like this, basically an analog solar panel 😂
Not at all what's being explained in the video, but sure, cool.
That was a Brilliant transition into the sponsor.
@Renato A oh yeah, totally
@ 0.1% .....who hurt you ?
Kind of ironic huh?
@01 % ok ok m8 this was about solar cells and advertising you might be on wrong site i think you might be looking for UP IN SMOKE by Cheech and Chong or some other more " plant " based site
All is extremely well explained, thanks!
I thought the 19th century solar panel was a joke, it blows my mind! Way before the photoelectric effect was explained by einstein. I love old innovations of the late 1800s, they just tried everything about energy vs mobility (trolley, comprenssed air, kinetic, and so on.)
Becquerel and Hertz discovered it decades before Einstein, what Einstein did was the Planck constant
with you guessed it Max Planck.......... (the quasi scale for Quantum Mechanics)
Well the 1800's solar panels were real, you aren't wrong in thinking they were a joke; they actually kinda were, having an efficiency of only around 1%
@@RandomGuy0400 I think not appreciating their curiosity and innovativion is a tasteless joke .
Now that your armed with a lot more info it seems that way.
Think about it
If you were to meet yourself a 100 years later you can go on ranting you could have done this and that and what not but the fact is that was the start .
At that time the electron was not experimentally verified ...
It was a different era .
Electromagnetism was just picking up the pace .
Exactly(!), the great masquerade begun at the beginning of the 19th century, which transformed planet’s societies into what they are now. It transformed Monarchies into Republics, which replaced all monarchs, convincing peoples on earth, through misleading propaganda, that even the good monarchs were blood thirsty plutocratic tyrants. The great masquerade led initially to the First World War, which began 1914 and ended in 1918, and during this period of caos, the Soviet Communist Revolution (1917) was also achieved, by the Bolsheviks led by Lenin, Trotsky et caterva. The great masquerade did not replace the totality of European Monarchies with democracies. In reality it transformed monarchies into communist, nazi or fascist dictatorships, what lead to the Second World War. After the end of WWII, began the implementation, and consolidation of communist regimes throughout the world, (e.g. Iron Curtain, China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, just to mention the most important), which was achieved by a blood bath never seen in beforehand in the planets history.
@@RandomGuy0400 100 % better than the one they try just before the one that worked
Irish people say “t’reshold”. Hmm, interesting
M'lady
I see/hear nothing too unusual
they are also scared of heighth
Irish people swallow the h on most words. Thanks becomes t'anks, three, t'ree, think, t'ink and so on.
First, second, turd...
Thank you! I'd been a tech helping design semiconductors since 1983 and 16 months after you published this video I saw and for the first time learned of "shallow acceptors".
Yes guys! Photovoltaic cells are just diodes with the sun
I mean... They're also just diodes
I've been saying that for a pretty long time now.
They're LEDs in reverse
If you power the solar cell, it can work as a very crude LED, providing IR I believe...
@@ColinTimmins not if it's made of silicon. Silicon has an indirect band gap, which makes it unusable for LEDs
12:04
Nature:
you couldn't live with your own failure and where did that bring you? back to me.
"Failure" I'd like to see anyone or anything do better
@@BrutuxMusic watch this video th-cam.com/video/BickMFHAZR0/w-d-xo.html "How Trees Bend the Laws of Physics"
look at that worm eating the leaf....that's called natural selection
We take a lot of inspiration from nature, taking what it has created learning from it and perfecting it
@Renato A dude, nobody mentioned chineses, i think you can rest assured...lolol
Is it just me or is he talking slower?
I hosted a TV show in Ireland and I think they may have knocked the fast talking out of me.
@@RealEngineering It's a difficult balance of talking fast enough to not drag on, and not talking so fast that people can't understand you. I think you're struck a pretty good balance here. You might be able to go up be 20% or so, but I definitely wouldn't go any slower. Thanks for the quality content though. :D
@@RealEngineering Video was still great and informative, so it didn't really detract from the experience.
@@RealEngineering woahhh
play it at 1.25x speed
I like how no one mentions the damage done to the environment during the production of solar panels. Nuclear is way more reliable and clean. And thorium is safer compared to uranium. There is a relentless lobbying against research regarding plants using thorium for fuel..
Until something goes wrong with the nuclear power plant. How much pollution is created then? How much pollution is created with nuclear waste? Where do we put it?
Seems that no matter what we do, there is a problem with it.
@@markchidester6239 Meanwhile, well run plants don't "go wrong".
@@Slicerwizard
Well the one in Japan sure did. Mother nature didn't seem to like it.
@@markchidester6239 Oh, the one where TEPCO didn't bother to protect the backup generators from a tsunami - in a major fault zone? That's your idea of a well run plant? Meanwhile, a dam failure triggered by the earthquake killed more residents than the nuclear plant did. Guess you should start crying about dam construction as well.
@@Slicerwizard I never said it was well run.
My point was that it polluted the planet. YOU said that a well run nuclear power plant doesn't pollute if it is well run.
I don't understand how nuclear waste isn't pollution, but what ever. You know all.
I am a PhD student working on semiconductors, specifically on large area electronics (PV solar cells are in this group) and i totally recommend this video on this topic. Well done Real Engineering! Big thumbs up from me! 👍🏻 (Also subscriber of your Nebula channel)
Germany is held up as the world’s solar and wind capital by “renewables luvvies” but Germans are freezing through winter due to “millions of solar panels blanketed in snow” and turbines sitting idle,no wind this is happening now
N.B: selenium cells generate electricity by the photoelectric effect, which is not the same as a in a photodiode. An important factor not considered in this video is that silicon has an indirect bandgap; thus, the generation of an electron is necessarily accompanied by a phonon (lattice vibration) which represents another source of inefficiency. This is a fundamental property of the material which cannot be altered. Also note that oxygen is an intentional impurity in silicon made by the Czochralski method, which makes the wafers stronger. Without oxygen, large wafers would be too weak to handle during the manufacturing process.
If only I understood u.
@Renato A wtf ! We were taking about solar cells
Yup you're correct. That's why now we (Solar cell researchers) are moving on from Silicon based Solar Cell to 2nd Generation thin-film and 3rd Generation organic Perovskite Solar Cell. Both are direct bandgap and can be built thinner and more flexible.
@@msb3235 true. But the organics and perovskites are way too sensitive to atmospheric conditions. Exposure to the air and humidity instantly kills them. They need proper encapsulation which further reduces efficiency and increases cost and manufacturing complications. Inside labs these materials are only worked on in a glove box. Sadly we have yet to reach a breakthrough. Cuprous oxide was once thought of as a good candidate but seemed like that research direction is no longer present.
@@EXtREMeBuLLsHyTS & @MS_B Both true! It is a really tough problem. Silicon, as you well know, is cheap as chips, and it works, so if you have the space, then it is not a great hardship to add some extra solar panels to compensate for low efficiency.
20% efficiency is for panels installed on a dual axis solar tracker. In a fixed position installation a realistic efficiency conversion rate is around 14% , taking into account the incident angle modifiers, plus losses due to external temperature, cables and inverter.
All solar cells underperform their stated (nameplate) power generation rate. Typical actual production rates are about half of what the solar cell is rated to produce. This does not include the fact that they only work about half the time. They also slowly degrade over time. While they are appropriate in locations where more reliable power is expensive (islands without fossil fuel resources) they are still much more expensive than a gas turbine or coal-fired power plant.
Prem Bajaj sure, this could be possible using a premium brand and panels that are at the top of the range, which possess the best efficiency rate, low degradation over time and longer longevity. Certainly these premiums come to a higher capital costs compared to the average panel used in commercial applications.
Loren Wilson good points! We have come a long way but we certainly need to improve their quality, conversion efficiency and reliability! Let’s hope we can achieve that in the near future as we really need to move away from all forms of fossil fuels.
Prem Bajaj this is an interesting video about pv solar cells efficiency th-cam.com/video/2uIOeHCOr-0/w-d-xo.html
Prem Bajaj this one is quite informative too th-cam.com/video/wwHjyeyRofM/w-d-xo.html
Pretty cool to take a time machine back to see how old solar panels used to work. All the stuff I install now is boron free in the doping process and doesn’t have light induced degradation.
There's actually lots of deep research for this video, what a treat you presented us with! Thanks!
Amazing content. Super clear ! The PV panels are a complicated matter that mixes mathematics, Physics and some chemistry. This content is important to explain in less than 15 minutes what is the current state of the PV panels, the limitation, efficiency and even a little bit the possible future evolutions. Great content ! Keep on the good work !
I did a paper on photovoltaic cells for a class I had this summer, gotta say, kinda wish this video was released then, still, great work
Brilliant.org was around. ;-)
I really love absorbing as much information as I can on these solar panels. It’s a great industry to be a part of
Very nicely made video! Would like to give you a second thumb up for the fact that you clearly say that you have some missing knowledge to explain it 100%. This makes you likeable! And you explained it well enough to have now a much much better understanding whats going on in these cells! Thank you very much!
Yes, but without the complicated explanation of how the things work, the fact that they do work in large numbers even with some deficiencies means the future with them is still very bright.
I've worked and researched in solar in several years and I'm super impressed that you were able to create such and excellent and detailed introduction to photovotaics after a couple weeks of research. This is so clear without skipping on vital details.
There only thing that bothered me was that silicon does not balance spectral constraints the best. Thr ideal bandga0 for a solar cell is 1.3-1.5 eV
Still waiting on the rest of that Space Elevator analysis.
A space elevator would be great!!!
Just read the Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars trilogy to see just how "great" they could be...
Space elevators are dynamically unstable - try to pull a weight up and the end of the string changes speed. It doesn't take much time before your end point is half a orbit off, even with very large end masses. You can calculate the change in speed from the force you have to apply to raise your object. This is from conservation of angular momentum. And don't talk about capturing masses in space to send down while your payload goes up, the relative speeds and energy to synchronize motions of objects in orbit is insanely large.
Finally an excellent way to tie in the sponsor. I saw it coming before you mentioned brilliant, but that didn't matter. What mattered, is that for the first time I've encountered, you showed an actual problem that you solved with the help of brilliant. This might not be a problem I'm facing, but this type of tie in still deserves a ton of more respect than the usual bad puns that are so common with sponsors. Good job!
I'm taking a solid state devices class right now and you are 100% correct in the fact that they assume you already know advanced topics and skip over steps.
Answer: night bad, day good
Well something has to be bad for another to be identified as good.
You replied with a snarky comment without even watching the video. That makes you seem less smart, not more smart.
Actually, vampires and other nocturnal species think night good, day bad. It's a matter of perspective my friend
@@Marahute0 It was a joke. A simple silly joke, you walking humor deficiency. You seem to be having either a very bad day or are very insecure, but I do hope your day improves if it's the former. Hopefully if it does you'll stop policing comment sections for inaccuracies or lighthearted humor like an anemic, constipated killjoy.
@@satelliteprime the comment isn't the answer though...
Linus would like to know where you get your segways from.
he would haha
prolly not lttt store
The word is segue. "Segway" is just a type of brand of those auto-balancing "scooter" type things, lol.
@@DeathBringer769 Cheers
Excellent article. In Upstage NY I see solar farms covered in snow on bright, sunny days. I'm completely off grid and I can tell you that there is zero power produced when panels are snow covered. Must lose enormous amounts of energy after a snowstorm
I'm in Northeast, we mounted panels on our south facing walls! No snow! Plus snow reflection causes massive power. We are offgrd also 12+ years.
@@freetvable Where in NE? I'm in Southern Adirondack mountains upstate NY
you decided not to bother describing how the cells are basically Diodes and when heated the voltage across them drops, hence the power available drops. that is a basic and useful bit of info.,
Well... he didn't use the word diode but -- Diode: and electronic device that allows current to flow in only one direction. Which he did say. I suspect that anyone who knows that definition and understands the upshot didn't need the word used at them, they immediately went, "Oh, a diode."
Yeah. It'd have been simple enough to have said it. Also, adding "this is the basis of transistors and other solid-state devices" would have been a good stimulant for people to realize they'd just been taught a bit about a now ubiquitous technolgy... leading some to study futher.
That was a masterclass in how to transition into an ad. Hooked me so well I wasn't even upset I had just watched an ad, not gonna lie.
Commercial solar power is a CANCER on the planet. The technology when paired with the use of FAKE money causes a wealth transfer from the working class to the elite class. Be careful of what you wish for.
@@zucadasilva937 Solar panels cause Toxic waste during their manufacture. The resources that go into the manufacture and installation of solar panels, require mining companies to pollute and burn hydro carbons, like diesel and gasoline. The mining companies dig holes that don't need to be dug. The panels have a 25 year operating life span, then part of the solar panel ends up in the land fill forever. YUCK, I don't like toxic waste.
Perhaps you need to compare that toxic waste against the amount of toxic waste that is prevented by reducing the amount of electricity that needs to be generated by other means.
@@listerdave1240 Let's not forget that the main ingredient, silica, is made by Mining high purity quarts and mixing it with coking coal, and then firing the mixture in a electric blast Furness. I also submit that the thermo/electrical energy consumed is also greater that the pannel will ever produce in the pannels life cycle. You people need to come to your senses. You are destroying the planet when think that your helping it.
@@davidbruce2159 I think you may need to recheck and/or update your calculations with regards to how much energy PVs produce compared to the energy needed to produce them. What you state would have been true about forty to fifty years ago. Today it takes well under a year for a typical PV to offset its carbon footprint.
Also, if you were to consider the carbon footprint of building a standard thermal power plant (coal/oil/gas) you will find that even building the thermal plant has a higher carbon footprint per megawatt of capacity even before it starts consuming fuel to produce electricity. Thermal power plants need vast amount of steel, concrete and other materials produced in blast furnaces, kilns and such.
The only issue with solar panels is that they currently only offer a partial solution and therefore can only be used to substitute part of the fossil fuel production rather than all of it. That is likely to change very soon though with the introduction of liquid metal batteries and possibly other storage systems.
Are you going to revisit Nikola after what has happened recently?
What happen? Did the bubble burst? Or they are a scam?
Maybe. The video's information is still accurate. This is an engineering channel, so I don't really know what I could add to the conversation. I avoided talking about Trevor Milton in the video, despite my apprehension about the guy.
@@caorusso4926 Yeah the bubble bursted. Stocks are way down and Trevor Milton stepped down as ceo.
@@caorusso4926 a "scam" was discovered.
@@RealEngineering Most might be accurate. But there are many relevant issues brought up in the comments, that you have decided not to address. Limits on weight vs volume where storeing hydrogen fx.
I understand that the feedback was overwhelming, but still there are so many comments that goes directly to the engineering there.
Instead of anti-reflective surface treatment to _block_ reflected light, what I'd do is _enhance_ its reflectivity -- but do so selectively.
I'd use a dichroic reflector that would _pass_ that part of the spectrum for which silicon cells are most effective (blue), and _reflect_ the _rest_ of the spectrum (green, red, infrared) -- which would have two benefits: It would prevent the photocells from heating up so much, and, it would allow the heat to be _captured_ for a _secondary_ power generation system (i.e., the central _"molten salt tower"_ concept as used in the Sahara).
Lmao, using only blue light makes the problem worse. You'd be getting even lesser than 10% efficiency
@@vikraal6974 -- Yawn... then pick the best color. Case Closed.
PS: Decades ago, when I had a camera repair store/shop, silicon photocells were introduced as a replacement for the then-universal CdS (resistive) photocells. They were as I recall described as "silicon blue" cells that required filtration to counter the silicon photocell's blue sensitivity.
I guess the technology has changed in the past nearly half-century. Go figure.
@@This_is_my_real_name "prevent the photocells from heating up so much" Photocell heat is not a problem in real-world installations.
"Yawn...Case Closed" Your imagination isn't the final arbiter.
"photocell's blue sensitivity" So the blue light was filtered OUT, while you want to filter red and green light OUT. Nonsense.
TBH the sun is a bit overrated. At least the moon gives a bit of light off at night. The sun only shines in daytime, when it’s light outside anyway so it is.
Lol
Very droll. For your next one, try the student trip to the Sun. They have to go at night, when it's cooler.
"iT Is LiGhT oUtSiDe DuE tO tHe SuN oNlY aNd ThE mOoN rEfLeCtS tHe LiGhT oF tHe SuN. tHe SuN iS tHe SoUrCe Of AlL EnErGy DuMbAsS"
- Someone probably
Nicely done sir
@@ayushagarwal7631 there is much power in the light of the moon, for 'tis only under the pale silver light that we can unlock our true nature. The sun sits out more energy, yes. But it's energy is destructive to us. It interferes with he bio-chemical bounds which enables our transformation.
- some werewolf
Well i guess we shouldn't take this problem "lightly"
dislike for "took"
@@paddor They changed it.
😑
@@firstthingtocometomind658
Thx for the info. Liked it! 🤣
Haha
Great video, on an important topic applicable to the vast majority of currently available PV modules (mostly mono PERC). Just a small correction : typical LID of modern PV modules is 2%, meaning that after initial sunsoaking the PV module performance would be 98% of its initial one. So 98% of the initial ~20% efficiency. Which means a 0,4% decrease of efficiency, not 2% decrease. In terms of energy production the loss due to LID is then 2% and not 10%.
that's right, just after 30 years it reduces to 18%
@Randy Alvarado But that drop-off is almost certainly not linear, is it? That doesn't really mesh with what we see elsewhere.
@@deus_ex_machina_ The loss is .5% of the remaining efficiency, meaning multiply .5% times the current year's efficiency, and subtract that amount to get the next year's efficiency. So it is exponential decay, not linear.
@@randyalvarado6401 The solar expert meant to say "the panels would have 50% of their initial efficiency" or they would be only half as efficient as when they were new.
The smoothest and most seamless transition into a sales plug I have ever witnessed. Simply ... BRILLIANT
15:18 wow that is the smoothest transition to sponsor I've ever seen
@dustybroom16 Last time I checked, smoothest didn't mean unexpected...
A transition can be smooth and predictable.
Polymatter is much smoother, that dude always caught me by surprise
"The problem solving website that teaches you to think like an engineer" - oh man, great! I really want to get a buzz out of writing a risk analysis of breathing
A risk analysis of risk analyses will really shut them up though
Think like an engineer= develop anxiety and overthink everything. Not recommended.
Risk analysis on breathing. Have you ever worn a mask in a dusty environment?
I hope Engineers know a loss from 20% to 18% is not a 10% loss. 01:00
@@xiro6 Not an engineer (just a thinker), but I'm thinking that would be a 2% loss...
But I also completely understood what he was getting at, and isn't THAT what truly matters in our interactions with one another (not nitpicking innocuous malaprop or semantic paraphasia)?
As a video editor, I can say that the level of production for these videos,
rivals and even beats a lot of production studios. Very well done!
As a paper reader I have to say the level of information legibility is driven to NIL just to appease graphic designers like yourself who only care about stuff "Looking cool". Seriously blurring the letters, incidence angles, FOV that only obscures information. Hah.
@@nemou4985 tf you mean? He has all the sources referenced in the description. If your boomer brain can't grasp knowledge through video format, read that.
@@apacheattackhelicopter8778 Lol, you mad? probably a graphic design "student"? OK, I will answer your baseless trolling: The point of a VIDEO is to present information in the VIDEO format. If that information is distorted, blurry, and unreadable because of a "fashion statement", then the point is lost. Special effects are for action movies, not the presentation of scientific papers.
This explained how solar cells work in a way I don't think I've ever heard before. It's interesting that your intention was to explain a certain flaw, but better explained the fundamental functioning better than anyone else (that I know of).
What an amazing video. I'm an Electrical Engineer and I did a course during my graduation about photovoltaic energy generation and yet I didn't knew about all of this theorical limitations of the so photovoltaic cells. I use to thought that the low efficiency was due to technological limitations. So, can we all agree that fission nuclear power plants are the best way to produce clean energy by far?
I tried to tak a course on brilliant on solar energy but i just started 8th grade so i didn't understand most of the things there but you managed explain in a way that even i can understand some of it you are amazing
Really well done. I don’t comment much but since I have a masters in electrical engineering specializing in high efficiency solar cells, I really wanted to say nice work! Next step talk about tandem cells and see how they can push the efficiency limits to the 40% range (expensive - only for space or concentrator purposes). Also it would nice to mention that there is NO theoretical lifespan for photovoltaic cells. Unless physically damaged they’ll last forever! So also a big area of research is in better encapsulation so no moisture get in which is the typical failure mechanism.
Does this mean that the existing solar PV is not worth getting until the issues addressed in the video have been addressed?? They don't seem to be very efficient at all.
But in the end chaos reigns supreme. The enthropy of a closed system always increases in time. Nothing lasts forever.
Dorothy Madden no. Solar PV is quite good currently. It is exponentially reaching the LIMIT of efficiency. This means there won’t be massive gains anymore unless somebody can break physics (or discover new physics :) )
This means that you shouldn’t skimp on cheap products though. As better workmanship and manufacturing will likely outlast any 20 year warranty they provide.
@@seanajacobs sorry to be pedantic but you literally can't grow exponentially towards a limit. Exponential growth is towards infinity :P
You’re right. The term I was looking for was logistic growth. As it’s approaching an upper bound as an inverse exponential rate. Thanks for making me find the right term. I had forgotten it.
Your segway into the "Brilliant" ad was brilliant. Great video.
I truly like how you put your sponsor messages. It's even fun to watch so I won't skip.
Great video, and this has been a strange problem. Although I would add that the biggest issue with solar power isn’t panel efficiency (although improving it would certainly help) but actually storage technology since power production is intermittent throughout the day. If we can develop a better battery that doesn’t have the limitations of lithium ion tech, etc., that would allow us to to build economical utility-grade storage plants that could supply on-demand power needs at all hours. Until then, the limiting factor of a 100% renewable grid in the US is still the need for stable baseload power, which means either fossil fuel sources or nuclear.
Yep. I'm an Electrical Engineer. We care less about efficiency and more about storage when it comes to practical applications. After all, batteries are much more expensive than solar panels and solar panels are efficient enough these days.
what about using all that surface area to sandwich an insulating material between two conductors to create a parallel plate capacitor behind the solar panel?
Feels like we’re going to have a major reckoning when PV panels have to be recycled. Electrification is great but there are a lot of intermediate steps to take place
Don't have to worry for another 40 years or so.
glass and crystalline and the frame can be recycled and the back coating may also find a way to be reused.
reckoning already here. you wont hear the negative side of all the wasted materials, it heresy to speak against renewables.
@@FloryJohann you make it sound so simple. solar panels have been helping fill landfills for the past 15 years. cheaper to make new.
The same reckoning is coming for all the electric vehicle batteries
@BRAVOZULU DWEST boathouse Nice boat boomer, why don't you go and complain about your exwife on a fucking gold course
The final nail in the coffin for solar panels for me was the fact that their thermal efficiency drops when they get hot.
I mean, what is the freaking point???
You mow down the desert's natural habitat and vegetation (yes there is life in the desert) to stick acres of panels there, where sunlight is abundant... and they don't work.
Thermal exchange: *bonjour*
That's not exactly a "final nail". Even with the loss in efficiency, solar is still the cheapest way of generating electricity. Plus, as stated in the video, you can cool the cells. I mean, he actually states in the video what they do to recover some of the efficiency - not sure why you are ignoring that.
Thing is, in cooler countries such as England or Germany, Solar PV's can be extremely effective and crazy cheap. My father-in-law has solar on his roof, and it's bonkers cheap and very effective. I'd have it on my roof if I didn't live in a ground-floor flat with no access to the roof.
Plants are less than 2% efficient. Anywhere that plants can live, you can be sure that solar PV will work very well.
@@antontaylor4530 I get the feeling you're talking about something completely different. If not, what are you on? Solar Panels are NOT cheap. They have large amounts of high-purity silicon which is expensive to manufacture. They require installation from qualified workers (you can't set these up yourself, because otherwise you could screw up the inverters and electrical protection).
@@abloogywoogywoo I'm "on" reality. As I said, we just installed Solar panels on my father-in-law's roof. Just over €100 per panel, 200w per panel. It wasn't difficult and we didn't screw anything up. Probably another few hundred euros for the inverter, batteries, brackets, power cables and charge controller.
Your assumptions are wrong, and show very clearly that you don't have real world experience with PV. You're making assumptions and then presenting those assumptions as if they're facts.
They're cheap. At the rate that dad's panels are making power, the system will have paid for itself in a year or two, and then it's free electric for another 18 or more years.
If you think solar is expensive, then you have no real world experience with solar PV.
And just for clarity - solar power is now officially the cheapest way to make electricity.
www.carbonbrief.org/solar-is-now-cheapest-electricity-in-history-confirms-iea
Perhaps look in the mirror if you want to see the person who's "on something".
@@antontaylor4530 Cheapest with massive subsidies. It's not reliable enough for most Americans. They don't provide enough electricity for day and night use for an American family. I have a large family in a 5 bedroom house. It gets very hot in the Summer and very cold in the Winter. Summer is frequently upwards of 38 C while Winter can get to -18. We use 2700 watts just for air-conditioning. Solar cannot meet our household needs. It can't for most Americans. Typically a coal or natural gas plant has to stay throttling manage dips in grid capacity for solar here. That negates much of any real emissions savings or total grid cost. Solar energy analysis typically doesn't include that necessary expense when calculating the cost of solar energy.
This video is basically just a long intro to a Brilliant Course ad.
Yeah it tricked me too. I was like "good show, you sneaky sonofa"
@thecaneater....regardless of their agenda, i found it informative and interesting....works for me
Excellent lecture. THANK YOU!!!😇
Sponger
@@djcudworth2355....What?
Installed Solat is about 1.8% of the total national load. giving BIG numbers as in the start of this video does nothing unless you include percentages or a pie chart.
This is NOT putting fossil fuels out of business at all.. yet... Someday it might make a dent but not yet.
@@somedumbozzie1539 I once did the math comparing the total required acreage, build time, cost, ongoing maintenance, materials required, etc. of a 2 GW nuclear power plant versus 2 GW worth of solar panels (actually, more than 2 GW worth of solar panels, since they are useless all night, during harsh weather conditions, etc; whereas a reactor outputs 24/7 in all weather conditions).
Nuclear is far, far, ABSURDLY better than solar in every metric. The cost, acreage, manpower, materials, etc. needed to install and maintain 2 GW (constant) of solar panels far exceeds what is necessary to install and maintain a 2 GW nuclear plant. As far as acreage goes, nuclear's footprint is a postage stamp, whereas solar's is a subway wall poster. Of course, fossil fuels are also far more energy-dense than any form of green energy.
ANY DAY NOW green energy will take over, and we'll save the planet! Certain people have been saying that for at least twenty years, and it hasn't happened. Never mind that all of the R&D and manufacturing that goes into "green energy" technology wouldn't be possible without the incredible energy provided by a fossil fuel and/or nuclear economy, and couldn't even self-sustain.
The guy who runs this channel seems to be fully hoodwinked by the usual suspects of politicized environmental issues, despite supposedly being an engineer of some kind. I find it difficult to trust or respect an engineer who doesn't understand the basic realities of energy production, but then again, he's not the only one who's deluded.
@@0SuicideBoy0 To simply put it, if you care about the planet, solar seems to be the right choice, but if you're thinking about the lives & livelihoods of millions, of running industries & nations, traditional sources are still unbeatable. Not to forget, that most people around the world fight for the basic right to electricity, and simply don't have the 'luxury' to accept the solar as a reliable source yet. However, as grids become smarter, where one can source renewable energy from different sources, solar & wind etc will start powering our future cities, whereas nuclear (or hopefully, something less controversial) will power the industries away from the human settlements. Green may not take over, per se, but may just become rightfully useful at some point in the process.
@@anshumanabhisek PV Solar panels aren't even the best 'green' choice when you consider the full product life cycle of solar panels; rare metal mining, processing, the land being used for PV solar farms that can't be used for other things like forests, and of course disposal (since recycling is a joke).
@@anshumanabhisek something to keep in mind though is those green energy sources would bring other problems pretty much the opposite of fossil fuels, cover most of the planet with panels and planet will freeze. we really need fusion :P
@@anshumanabhisek I have grave doubts as to whether or not solar and wind energy (two focuses of green energy) can actually sustain themselves, without fossil fuels and nuclear to help them.
In order to construct photovoltaic solar panels, we must mine silicon, copper, iron, silica, and miscellaneous other materials. Mining requires heavy transport vehicles, heavy machinery, workers (who all use energy and electricity in their personal and professional lives), and so on. These materials then must be transported to refineries where they're refined, then the refined materials are shipped to factories where they're machined into parts, and then the parts are assembled. Factories require massive amounts of energy and workers to run.
Then, installing the solar panels requires more vehicles, more workers, planners, R&D, and so forth.
So by the time the materials have been mined, refined, turned into parts, turned into solar panels, and the solar panels transported and installed, how many decades until they pay back the huge energy debt that went into their creation? Keeping in mind they'll require maintenance the entire time. Right now, almost all of the energy used to run those heavy trucks, the heavy machinery, the factories, to sustain the workers, etc. comes from fossil fuels directly or from electricity generated by fossil fuels.
No one seems to be smart and/or brave enough to address these hard realities on their TH-cam channels.
10:45 slight correction here, actually electrons move from n-type to p-type and also from +ve terminal to -ve terminal. What you have shown is direction of flow of current, electron flow is in reverse direction of current flow.
actually the animation shows exactly what you just described.
Nicely done. I applaud you for providing insight and understanding. Question - as solar technologies age (panels) and are replaced, these old panels...how are they disposed of? Do they provide a real hazard to us and the environment. Much like the disposal of CRT tvs and computer screen, computer components themselves, nuclear fuel and even the cars and its components, we've learned its disposal provides hazards. For all its good intended values do the solar technology components have a 'dark side' in its after life.Is this too being managed?
No one really recycles old panels as they are past use by dates. So, disposing of panels is a massive future issue. Not to mention 2 things the Greenies will not mention. 1. The resources needed from the planet to build them. Simply put we need to rape and pillage the earth so it is probably more environmentally friendly to stick with coal fired plants or nuclear 2. And destroying acres of land to put solar farms is just dumb and defeats the purpose. Then to this add electric car manufacturing. What a environmental catastrophe that is. Refer to recent talks from Manhattan Institute。
10:15: I don't get how does an electron accelerate from P-type to N-type, the electric field due to the formed junction should oppose this motion instead of accelerating
I'm guessing the flux lines in the magnetic field are a one way street for the electrons?
I think it is determined by how much force the light uses to knock it loose
The illustration is inaccurate. The photon needs to be absorbed inside the depletion zone.
I'm an electrical engineer. The crystal lattice of n- and p-type silicon wafers start off with neutral charge, ie. there is an equal number of atomic nuclei and electrons in the material.
Then you bring the n- and p-type wafers together, allowing the electrons that don't fit neatly in the n-type wafer to recombine with the holes in the p-type wafer. There aren't any holes or electrons left over that can freely move.
HOWEVER, now your n-type silicon has more nuclei than electrons (they're all in the p-type wafer now), therefore it's positively charged and the opposite is true for the p-type silicon (more electrons than nuclei --> negative). We've now created a pn-junction, ie an electric field along the boundary going from the n-type silicon (+) to the p-type silicon (-). This is the electric field that works like a valve for electrons.
cause it seems, that he messes up.
From what i've seen he switched up p and n-type. qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-790f41823de9c577aadc1ccd828ec3e1
And it seems, that it is the electrons in the depletion layer, that are getting exited by the photons, which causes the flow.
I can feel the satisfaction from how you first said the energy (Si = 1.1eV) needed to push out an electron from it’s valence band to it’s conduction band then, later revealed that it was a surprise to you when you first read “band gap”. ❤️💯
For those asking, a simple explanation of band gap is the distance (in terms of energy) of the valence band to the conduction band. Think of the valence band as the ground state of an electron around an atom and conduction band is when that electron is energized out of the shell “ENOUGH” for us to be able to use it.
“Installed capacity” of 630,000 MW translates into 126,000 MW or less of actual capacity, if the sun is shining and the panels are new. It is an open question whether a solar panel makes enough energy to manufacture, install, decommission and dispose of itself in its lifetime. If it does not, then every single solar panel represents a backward step in energy efficiency.
This is true, however there is value in the research and fabrication techniques that is very difficult to quantify. We also can't know whether or not it's "worth it" until we push the technology to its limits. Unfortunately that's the reality for any technology.
It is worth noting that solar cell prices have been dropping like crazy, to the point that even without subsidies, the payback for installing a cost-effective roof mount system in a reasonably dry sunny climate is now as low as 7-10 years.
@@theredscourge I don't know what country you're in, but here in Australia we have some of the highest electricity prices on earth and the payback can be as little as 2-5 years
And your claim that solar can't generate enough power to cover it's lifetime is rubbish
@@samk4339 Meanwhile your coal is exported to China where electricity is inexpensive and they can afford to produce and profit off these eco frauds.
nice how you integrated the link to brilliant ....., so smooth ...
So how much efficiency is lost world wide just due to dirty panels? Its a larger variable then a few procent more efficiency, >30% drop in output is very common due to dust and dirt accumelation. Also the glass is the first barrier, and it reflects as well.
Some creative engineer should figure out an inexpensive automatic panel surface cleaning system.
Hey RE == Gods but is Really SATAN== loves Carbon ! PV & Wind == BIG FAULT== UNREILABLE! AND NO BATTERY CAN TAKE CARE OF THAT, except NATURAL??? gas==METHANE BERNieing EGEN is the Battery SATAN Loves EMISSIONS=Asthma, Cancer, and a Global Warmed earth turned to HELL!! Only NUCLEAR POWER can lift ALL Humans out Poverty, while protecting the natural environment !!! love Satan == pv
@@DrTed3 Hey RE == Gods but is Really SATAN== loves Carbon ! PV & Wind == BIG FAULT== UNREILABLE! AND NO BATTERY CAN TAKE CARE OF THAT, except NATURAL??? gas==METHANE BERNieing EGEN is the Battery SATAN Loves EMISSIONS=Asthma, Cancer, and a Global Warmed earth turned to HELL!! Only NUCLEAR POWER can lift ALL Humans out Poverty, while protecting the natural environment !!!
well you just went through photoelectric effect better than my teacher who took 2 hrs explaining the same thing
Isn't it true then that losers often become teachers?
“If an electron finds a hole it fills it”
Yeeee do I feel like an electron
Well, teach yourself? This was merely an overview & intro.
@@franklinblunt69 yep just picked up electrical engineering soooo yeah i will :)
Animation is really much better than just a board and a marker when exposing a subject.
Being a solar engineer myself i can vouch on the efficiency of this video. Beautifully done ! Btw there is also LeTID which is a growing concern in PERC cells due to hydrogen passivation. Maybe you could do an immersive video like this on it sometime.
Hardik Bhatt could you elaborate a little about letid in perc?
@@Broxine Where LID is a consequence of formation of Boron Oxygen complexes LeTID has been observed as a consequence of (to put it simply) too much hydrogen content in the form of rear side passivation. With increased temperature and illumination on field the hydrogen atoms are freed into the Si-Bulk this is just another way of saying that the free electrons available are reduced by the presence of extra hydrogen. This effect accelerates and is visible when perc modules are subjected to high irradiation and temperature. Ask a manufacturer about it..and they will either have no clue or will simply deny this. I don't know why. With more than 10% of the global industry immersed in PERC technology this is something that should have been studied extensively and the least they can do is educate the public about it.
@@Broxine the losses due to LeTID have been observed to go all the way upto 10%
Hardik Bhatt wow thanks for the explanation. So is it better in your opinion to avoid buying perc modules?
@@Broxine that is not an option since the industry is slowing moving towards this technology. The best thing to do would be to have a strong legal contract which ensures that you're covered on linear warranty in the event that the degradation is very high
2:04 that animation seems to show that photons reflect off of the electrons. The photons should be absorbed.
I think he's trying to show that some percentage of the energy is reflected. Earlier he has the portion of the arrow post-reflection as faded-out to illustrate it.
@@googiegress Some photons are reflected yes (these don’t liberate electrons). But the photons that liberate electrons are absorbed.
Green energy activists, among a lot others, need to watch this. There are just too many people without proper knowledge doing things only they themselves think are good.
@mPky1 I would say more investigation is needed. Honestly, if solar is greener than other options (not necessary absolutely 'green'), it should be all right.
@mPky1 We're way too late to try and mine enough rare earths and sand and purifying it to make solar panels a viable energy source globally. HVDC is missing and current high voltage lines are insufficient for transferring power from solar-efficient countries. Even USA which has the best mix for wind and solar cannot power itself nor deploy enough panels in 50 years, and we're already 40 years late and are now only mitigating the damage.
People need to not use emotions when it comes to any decision, if people where being objective we would get the bulk of are baseload power from nuclear, hydro electric and geothermal.
Solar and wind are good for small scale production like the ones that go on roofs. It fails and destroys huge swaths of land when used any other way. I would prefer land be left to be natural then turned into solar farms.
Turn cities into solar farms, leave land to be forests, marshes etc these are much better co2 reducers. If your not doing that at least turn that land into farms.
@mPky1 I guess that you agree that Trees are green. Trees function solely on mixing water with Carbondioxide, through a function known as Photosynthesis. This means that as trees are green, that CO2 is green, and our main source of CO2 is North Sea oil, which is plant based oil from a singular plant known as Mosquito Fern(Azolla Azolla), hence converting said oil into CO2 is green, hence environmentalists can go fuck themselves because they have no idea how the world functions. Kthnxbai.
@Miss Cute Nuclear Waste... Billions of Years... Well sorry to tell you this hun, but there is no such thing as Nuclear Waste, Unless you talk about Lead... Lead is Nuclear Waste. Well at least if we talk about fission, otherwise for Fusion, it's Iron. Oh and whatever you classify as Nuclear Waste is actually unspent nuclear fuel. Which could been used if people didn't scream less nuclear reactors as soon as a new one with a lot better design and more fuel options available than Uranium-238 is ever mentioned. The environmentalists have only themselves to blame for that. And you could have a multifuel reactor, that enriches Uranium into U-238 and the Uranium that turns into Thorium could be then used to create more Uranium-235 which will then resupply the U-238 chain again.
We could also make Molten Salt generators, for the "Nuclear Waste" not as efficient as regular reactors but have no failure conditions, meaning although they generate a lot less, they're infinitely safer, and everything you throw in it can be used as fuel as long as it's radioactive.
Do some fucking research before you even go spew forth lies will you.
630 Gigawatt figure is extremely misleading for solar power. For example, that figure would only be actually effective 15% of the time, this is called the capacity factor. This means that per annum only an average of 160 Gigawatts of actual power are generated, not the total 630 installed capacity.
966,000 Gigawatthours from coal. And, solar is impressive?
I'm fine with waiting until storage is scaled. :)
@@dakotastwits
Why wait?
There are other things that can be used as storage or battery. A water heater is one of them and is storing energy as hot water turning electricity into hot water with almost 100% efficiency.
Or you can use the solar power directly without storing it, like I do with my 80 watt attic fan system that has no battery. Just a 100 watt solar panel and a 80 watt 12 volt fan.
@@FloryJohann A whole 100 watts? Impressive, for the year 1880 that is.
@@jeffmellow
Yes, And I am proud of this. This was an example and if you wish you always can make and use more solar power directly for other things. I started this and other experiments years ago to use solar power directly as much as possible and I still use some of them and I added new ones. A combination of both direct and battery power is best, use as much solar power directly and as little power as possible from batteries.
I do not think that they had a attic fan in 1880 that saved them 25% on their cooling bill or anything that saved them $30 a month trying to dry cloth.
I done many other things for years to save power and the power company noticed it and checked my meter twice before they replaced the meter the third time. Why give money to the power company if not needed. I use 1/3 of the power now that I used to use and every bit helps to reduce power even more.
You joke about the 100 watts, but that panel generates 13,500 watts a month and like you said it is not much but will add up in time and don't forget that I still save a lot of my cooling cost with it which is a lot more savings than that panel ever will generate.
Electric batteries gotten better but the price went up with it too and avoiding a electric battery is a cheaper round. I even thought using capacitors instead which have a long life, but they are expensive like a electric battery now and have a small capacity per space occupied. I call it a electric battery because anything that can store energy is considered a battery including a water heater or tank that can hold that hot energy for example.
Just a small correction: As far as I understand it, the electric field that forms at the PN junction due to the potential difference is just electric not electromagnetic, because that field is static, so no magnetic component is present.
wouldn't the flow of electrons, ie.: current through the junction create a magnetic field?
@@elgracko You're right. There is a magnetic field, however, it is the electric field that accelerates the electrons.
Another challenge…how to dispose of these panels once they are expired…🤷♀️
Now that's some futuristic happening right there
Just how will it look 5 years from now...
Awesome as always
Five years from now commercialized installations of the SAFIRE Project will have begun to render large solar panel farms uncompetitive. Small solar devices will remain valuable for their portability, but solar panels to feed the grid will be a footnote. th-cam.com/video/7GFFfmBGb5U/w-d-xo.html
@@hshs5756 Although the SAFIRE Project looks promising and I hope it makes it to the market, you're assumption that this will render large scale solar farms "obsolete" is incorrect. There are an exponential number of factors that you haven't considered and are jumping to conclusions. SAFIRE is still going the the testing phase and while it has demonstrated a working proof of concept that the technology works, it still has many more tests and hurdles to see if it's commercially viable. Will it be actually be cost effective to build or will it be like the petroleum industry in which the FOP (Factors of Production) keep the costs high and the only way to turn a profit is to constantly produce energy which would put unnecessary strain on the reactor. Years of safety tests and demonstrations still need to be done to ensure potential investors, governments and the average person that this is a technology that is genuinely safe for us to use. Then there is the regulations that will have to be created to protect which ever countries implement this technology. Which also address the elephant in the room, those who would see this technology not come on to market and change the status quo via political entrepreneurship( If you can't innovate, legislate basically). Also, you think solar technology will just stand still or become more efficient at the current pace? As technology gets more advanced, so does the implementation of it and while SAFIRE will probably gain traction, keep in mind that solar technology already has that same tech advancement edge plus the benefit of being available to the masses. Is SAFIRE better as a central technology similar to coal plants as the focus on the grid? Or can their be regional smaller power plants located within city limits? Because many average people will interpret it as the current electric company monopolies as a way of keeping their power over them.
I'm not saying I hope SAFIRE fails, I've just seen a lot of "game chaining energy sources" not come to market because a whole host of factors people never considered.
@@hshs5756 Let me guess, they are asking funds to produce their reactors...
@@Buran01 Actually, SAFIRE is extremely well-funded already. There's no shortage of big-money backers who can see where this is going.
@@VinceroAlpha Watch the recent documentary _Planet of the Humans_ and pay particular attention to the solar segments of it, keeping in mind that the film was made by a life-long environmentalist and alternative energy backer. I seriously examined putting solar on my house a year ago until it became apparent that the numbers were not there. The systems are too expensive and have too short a lifespan to even begin to compete with coal-fired grid electricity. Every new technology has teething problems and I expect that for plasma energy. But solar (and wind, and biomass) have had years to work out their problems and so far can't even prove they have a positive EROEI.
I’m surprised by how advanced we were in the 1800’s, it seems so many of the technologies we consider cutting edge such as battery operated cars, solar cells, etc were invented at that time.
I wonder how many more interesting technologies were developed in the 1800’s & 1900’s we forgot about.
The Ancient Egyptians had batteries...
@@matthewronsson this is not true.
There were also early versions of electricity producing windmills and the first commercial grade hydropower systems that involved into megaprojects like the Hoover dam. Unfortunately, the technology versions available then were not enough to remove the need for the giant steam engines known as power plants.
G series I think he’s talking about the “Baghdad batteries”, scholars think they were used in some capacity in the ark of the covenant so that touching it would be shocked and believe they had a powerful religious experience.
This video deserves to be recommended more by the TH-cam algorithm
I still have a solar cell I used on a crystal radio I made in high school in 1967, it's output is hilariously puny compared to the solar cells recharging the batteries on the garden lights on my balcony. But I learned the basics of both solar technology plus how radios worked. I later made my own transistor radio, I had to make the printed circuit board, install the transistors, and fit it all into a small plastic storage box. The speaker and battery were the biggest parts, plus some space set aside for the ear bud. It worked and a couple of years ago I took it out, installed a new battery and let my grand-daughter play with it. My question is, why did schools do away with industrial arts, or as we called it; shop?
I wish the highschool I went to had a program like that. I would most likely be in a better position now.
They had to make room for Gender Studies and Critical Race Theory, that's why.
@@BaltimoreAndOhioRR No that is not the reason. Critical race theory is not taught in high school, it is an optional course in college only. Too many people thought that the future was in computer use. I told the local board of education in 1980 that in the future everyone would be able to use their own computer and professionals would not be needed. They didn't listen to me and continued to teach data processing which soon became useless. While math and science are very important, not all students are Einsteins. History, music and art are also important, and kids should learn basic skills in using tools and how things work. Thankfully more and more schools are coming around to this idea and bringing back industrial arts and vocational training. AND in addition learning how to be tolerant of people who aren't like them.
Education budgets keep getting cut. Your only gonna find shoo available in upper class neighborhoods and charter schools
@@stopvoting4oldppl952 Yup, ill informed desperate people are easier to mislead. Our Labor started being exported in the 1980s (the chilly war was quickly a forgotten fraud). When we are sufficiently poor and desperate, most of our land will have been taken by those with all the money and then suddenly; we will be the new labor force that saves money for those bosses.
I used to work at Sunpower, these brings back memories. I work In manufacturing so I understand everything you said. I still remember every step how we manufacture our solar cells. And how to break the 30% efficiency barrier? They already know what's the problem, unfortunately there is no solution yet.
No "yet" about it. The maximum theoretical efficiency is around 29%-27% depending on which limits you choose to measure by. We will never exceed this with single junction silicon solar cells.
Quantum Dot film. Look it up. It's on the way already, and could allow 35%. Question for you though, if a person works at Sunpower are they able to buy / purchase a Sunpower panel without giving a home address you plan to install them on? Because Sunpower panels aren't up for purchase directly by consumers unless you supply them a home address. I have pleaded with them to sell me some as I live in an apartment, but they simply tell me no because they only sell them to home owners. :|
Still, loosing 70 percent of free doesn't cost much other than space needed to store it.
I love how most things in life can (at some level) be explained very simply. Thanks for this video, it was fantastic.
Feynman is quoted to have criticsed scientific papers as "incomplete" because it was too difficult to explain.
Or so the story goes.
I’m not sure I agree. Limiting knowledge and education to things that can be explained “simply” is self-limiting. Explaining things like Relativity or Quantum Mechanics will remain difficult, especially without mathematics, because we cannot analogize these topics easily using our simian senses and brains. How much more science is out there that cannot be “simply” explained? Probably most of it, really. It may be that a lot of the universe will eventually be, not explained, but still manipulated using AI for things that simply won’t fit well into our brains. It may never be simply explained.
Absolutely agree! Looking forward to solar energy development in the coming!
Could we force the higher energy photons to interact with the electrons with the higher work functions?
tandem solar cells can kinda do that. They use one material to capture the lower energy photons and another material to capture the higher energy photons. This way, the high energy electrons have a material that can better absorb their energy. If that answers your question
I don't know if it's possible, but wouldn't they just be exited to the valence band and provide the same potential anyways?
Kexmonster Yes but then the photons coming in with lower energy would be less likely too hit electrons with too high a work function as they have been liberated by the high energy ones and so you'd get more free electrons total and therefore a greater PD
Alexander Perez de Leon Yes, thank you 👍
The reason why higher energy light does not produce more electricity is because of the particle nature of light. Only 1 photon can interact with 1 electron, and transfer all its energy to it.The energy of the photon has to be greater than the threshold energy/work function for the electron to get excited, but the exact energy of the photon does not really matter. Therefore we want as low work function as possible so that even lower energy photons (long wavelengths of light like infrared) can be absorbed by the electron and get it excited. High energy photons will interact with both high work function and low work function materials and have the same effect.
Love your channel !
Your videos have truly reignited my passion for science, reminding me of the importance of continuous learning. As a mechanical engineer in a 9 to 5 routine, it's easy to feel stagnant, but your content has shown me the value of investing my free time in further education. I'm excited to explore platforms like Brilliant and continue expanding my knowledge. Thank you for the inspiration!
smoothest transition brilliant ad ever .....
They got me too!
its as if the band gap between Videoband and Adband is decreasing, video is doped with Ad. its nice for new comers but someone whos an old subscriber not earning shit and unable to pay for such things and seeing it on every video its kinda annoying.
I'd love to see a video on energy storage techniques, as that seems to be the world's biggest gap in converting to renewables.
energy storage techniques: Flow batteries, water reservoirs, flywheel energy storage, graphene supercapacitor, liquid metal batteries and thermal energy storage (to mention a few) but you could also convert solar into hydrogen or some other fuel.
Or just, you know, Li-ion batteries. The problem is already solved.
@@MacGuyver85 To be fair. Li-ion is bad for the environment and poor countries because it has to be mined, which destroy the ecology and tamper the water supply. Graphene supercapacitors and liquid metal batteries on the other hand seem less bad. *After all:* graphene is just carbon and liquid metal batteries can be made from abundant materials. The video "Donald Sadoway: The missing link to renewable energy" gives a good explanation about this.
@@MacGuyver85 Except for the huge costs involved.
Good grief, so many incorrect assumptions. I don’t know where to begin.
Li-ion isn’t bad for the environment. Seriously where on earth do you get this nonsense from! This is just the same nonsense as wind turbines being bird shredders, or solar panels being toxic, or nuclear being harmless and cheap.
Cost of solar/wind + li-ion is already the same or cheaper than any other alternative (especially if you take the issues of the other forms into account), with a clear path to pushing the cost of all down even further. All of these can be mined, produced and recycled with minimal to zero harm to the environment.
There’s no need to wait on some magical unicorn tech to solve the problem; it’s already solved. The ‘only’ true problem is scaling production. That’s it.
Wow, I didn't know how similar both in principal function and in design leafs and solar cell are, up until I saw this video!
There's so many science channels that tell you the same things over and over again, not adding anything new. But Real Engineering is an exception. I've come to the conclusion that engineers make the best science educators. Other channels like Applied Science or Tech Ingredients are also much more in-depth than your average science channel on TH-cam that are run by scientists that have become journalists.
I enjoyed this and it was the first Brillant ad I have seen that made it sound useful. Usually, ads talk about teaching basic stuff to people with no science or math background.
So let my see if I understand this correctly. A significant portion of solar energy is not able to be utilized by photovoltaic panels due to the wavelength being incompatible(infrared)due to it basically heat energy?
What about developing a dual purpose solar panel that both collects the available wavelengths in form of electricity directly and reflecting infrared to a focal point for production of secondary steam generation?
Imho.
The reason solar cells lose power when hot is actually very simple to understand. Don't know why it was skipped.
There are 2 ways to get electrons across a semiconductor. The first is to apply a voltage(in this case, absorb a photon). The second way is heat. Hotter electrons have a higher voltage and a bigger chance of jumping across the bandgap. Hotter panel means more of that voltage needed to make the jump comes from heat. What remains comes from light. So it's not actually a power loss. More specifically, the voltage output of the panel drops.
It's been a long time, so I might be wrong on this, but aren't resistance and heat a hand-in-hand thing as well? It's part of the physics that leads to the NEC for electricians.
@@SerunaXI
No. Heat is kinetic energy. Resistance has to do with 'collisions' between electrons and the lattice. I think it's called the Drude model.
Some materials see an increase in resistance as temp goes up, other materials see a decrease. Insulators being a notable example. Never assume an insulator beyond its rated temp is safe from arcing.
@@SerunaXI I find answers 2 and 4 of this site easy to understand: scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2668
And yes, it seems that the heat does act as resistance according to answer 4.
Solar cells and windmills are working so great in California, we had rolling blackouts during our heatwave this summer. Yaaay Green Energy!!
Nevermind that energy production is up compared to where it was when rolling blackouts were common. The problem is that no power grid is really designed for *everyone* to crank up their ACs at the same time. A problem that climate change is going to make a lot worse going forward.
Regardless, energy generation by solar/wind continues to increase, and they are now two of the cheapest forms of energy generation out there. Coal is now one of the most expensive ones, only ahead of hydro and nuclear.
Hey, that’s swell, @@gamerk316! We’ll remember that here in Democrat-controlled California next time our Democrat leaders impose rolling blackouts during the next heat wave... probably after they’ve refused another power plant.
@@donde2k Except for the fact power generation growth in California is outpacing most of the other states, due in large part to increasing construction of Wind/Solar generation.
Also consider that dirty power plants are what is partially responsible for said blackouts, since they are contributing to the heat waves that are causing everyone to crank up the AC in the first place.
Simply put: You're seeing the front end impacts of ignoring climate change for the past 50 years. And it's going to start getting a lot worse fairly soon.
If a majority of California residents had their own solar cells, the distribution problem would go away, you need more not less solar.
@@Redskool1 Oh, I've *long* advocated for solar cells to be required on all new construction. Maybe keep a few nuclear plants around to ensure a steady baseline supply on top of that as well (assuming modern designs who's worst case failure mode is "safe shutdown")
I thank you for explaining quite nicely and simply how solar cells work. I will be viewing your video several more times so as to catch some of the things that I know I missed on just this 1st viewing. Because of the future of and need for "green" (= carbon free) energy, I have been doing much research ( reading and viewing videos) on solar cells and hydrogen fuel cells(batteries). From what I can tell, the energy created using solar cells can be use to release hydrogen from either water or ammonia. Ultimately, the energy associated with this free hydrogen can be stored in fuel cells. Fuel cells batteries can store more energy than lithium based batteries. Lithium is considered "grey" energy and because of mining, it is environmentally destructive. The same cannot be said about water and ammonia which are considered green energy. As a result I have been investing/speculating in both types of ventures(solar cell and fuel cell manufacturing). Below is an excerpt of a news article that relates to the current efficiency of solar cells.
Zacks Equity Research
Fri, July 16, 2021, 8:44 AM
In this article:
JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd.’s advanced high-efficiency solar module recently set a new record by attaining the highest conversion efficiency at 23.53%. Its large-area N-type monocrystalline silicon solar cells have also set a test record of 25.25%.
P.S. JinkoSolar is one of the companies in which I invested.
I sat through 6 months of a a solid-state electronics course during an Electrical Engineering undergraduate degree a few years ago (decades in fact!) and was totally baffled by holes and electrons but you managed to explain it in 5 minutes. I will definitely take a look at the Brilliant subscription, thanks for making a very complex subject much more understandable.
I just thought the same thing! I think I got a C in that class.. I think this video would have really helped at the time lol.
This is all well and good, but until we can store that energy on the grid to be able to use it when we aren't collecting, we're gonna have to have a back up of some sort... be it coal, ng, nuclear, whatever...
Our AC power grids are all of the "use it or lose it" type - the energy released onto the grid gets used in that second, or is converted to heat and lost. Period. UNTIL we address that, all of these "alternatives" are just gap fillers, not suitable for primary energy use.
And understand, I teach this stuff - I DIG this stuff, but I also fully understand the limitations we are stuck with at this time - I keep hoping to inspire one of my students to come up with a better energy storage/release system - THAT is when solar and wind and other "renewables" will start making sense for all of us.
Correct. Also, the advance of technology hasn't really forced fossil-fueled generators out of the market, as the author claims. It is really being done by government legislation to deliberately make coal more expensive (or just ban it outright) and by expensive subsidies to make solar panels cheaper. The policies and actions of Germany and Japan, not to mention China and much of the rest of the world, all still recognise that coal is the cheapest form of base load electricity generation.
Governments of rich Western 'planet-savers' attempting to force many of the world's poorest peoples to adopt wilfully expensive electrical generation methods, enforced by the World Bank, strikes me as morally dubious to say the least.
@@michaelhart7569 Without Fossil Fuels, the materials acquisition, manufacture, transport, and installation of Solar Panels is impossible. Also, that 627,000 MW capacity represents 3% - that's right, 3% - of total world-wide ELECTRICAL energy production capacity. If you compare that to total energy production, it's dwarfed even further (by transportation, which is all Fossil Fuel these days). Clearly Solar is nowhere near "replacing" anything.
@@michaelhart7569 In germany the cost to produce Solar Power is even lower than the US. Coal is much more expensive but since noone gives money the research on storage, these ancient technologies are kept alivr even tho they are bad for our health, the environment and are more cost intensive.
@@Oeggonom This is, at best, misleading. Lazard's LCOE analysis may show lower costs of electricity for solar/wind but it doesn't account for battery backup or gas peaking. Those two are separated out into their own LCOE's and happen to be the two most expensive options for electricity. Combined, it makes Wind/Solar very unattractive, nor does the LCOE effectively account for the capacity factor differences. Yes, US renewable energy cost is higher, but OVERALL electrical prices are significantly lower. What matters to the majority of people is the cost they pay. The "cost" to the environment doesn't matter if you can't afford to keep the lights on.
As for electrical pricing, Germany's cost to consumers, in TOTAL, is significantly higher than other nations in Europe. Germany currently pays THE MOST for electricity in Europe. France, which is 70% nuclear (rest is hydro with a small percentage of other renewables and natural gas peaking) pays just over half of what Germany pays for electricity. Germany is at 30.88 cents per KWHr and France is at 17.65 cents per KWHr in 2019. The US pays about 12 cents per KWhr...
The other frustrating thing about this is Wind/Solar is not cheap enough to where the poorest of the poor can afford to power their home with it. If you assumed every middle class family could afford to go completely "off" grid (offsetting energy with solar/wind on their property), the cost of electricity to the poor would increase drastically since the customer base for traditional generation would shrink a lot. It may feel good to go "off the grid" but every time someone does it, the cost to those still paying rates to the power company goes UP. It may not be much, but it all adds up the more and more people do it. There is a definite societal cost NOT factored in there. Does it outweigh the cost of climate change? Doubtful, but not very well studied at the moment either.
@@Whiskey11Gaming YIkes you are cringe af. "The cost of the environment doesnt matter for most people". We just gonna die is a strong argument I gotta admit.
I sit and watch things like this and I can not help but laugh at how dumb I really am compared to the people working on these problems.
You explain why we need your sponsor better than most other Channels (even for the exact same sponsor!), probably because you are being honest about what you know and don't. Thanks.
I learnt more about solar cell in this video than in my 3 years of electrical engineering
Most solar cells consist of strings of cells in series to get sufficient voltage to operate the DC to AC convertor or the battery charger. One problem with this that I don't know if they have eliminated is that one of the solar cells in the string is in shadow it acts as a high resistance and stops the current floating. This was a major problem with solar panels on sailing boats where shadows of the rigging or mast would fall on the panel and stop it generating due to one of the string being high resistance.
In the discussion about efficiency this is only for the case where the panel is perpendicular to the Sun - this only happens once or twice a year. The rest of the time the power is reduced by the multiple of the cosine of the angle between the sun position and the position perpendicular to the panels. It is possible to get round this with a sun tracking array but that is big & expensive.
As a result of this and the efficiency figures of 18% above it would be interesting to see how much energy is actually generated each day from a square meter of panel. Of course you then need to factor in the weather as well.
John Murrell This was solved with the invention of Sliver Cells (that's Sliver not Silver) however the mass production of Sliver Cells hasn't come to pass, as it's too expensive to be worthwhile.
@@lappy65 So if the solution has not been implemented due to economics I presume the problem still exists of solar panels 'shutting down' if part of them is in shadow.
@@johnmurrell3175 I'm sure there are other solutions, though probably not quite as efficient as sliver cells. Panels can be made with a combination of parallel and series cells and panels are available with individual lower powered inverters and many higher powered inverters have multiple inputs, also not mounting panels where they will be shaded in the first place helps. In my case, my 5kW inverter has two inputs each with a 3.25 kW string of panels none shaded by overhanging trees or structures, one of my neighbours has 45 panels each with its own 200 W inverter.
You need to discuss the vast tracts of land that have to be given over to the renewable power sources. What is the lifespan of the panels and how will aged panels be disposed of?
Welp. That's probably the best pitch for Brilliant I've yet heard.
(P.S. the rest of the video was also good of course.)