Basic Research Needs for Solar Energy Utilization

Global Energy Resources........................................................................................................ ...

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GLOBAL ENERGY RESOURCES Current global energy consumption is 4.1 × 1020 J annually, which is equivalent to an instantaneous year ...

energy can be exploited on the needed scale to meet global energy demand in a carbon-neutral fashion without significantly affec ...

Reports of the Panels on Basic Research Needs for Solar Energy Utilization Basic Research Challenges for Solar Electricity...... ...

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Basic Research Challenges for Solar Electricity CURRENT STATUS Edmund Becquerel discovered the photovoltaic (PV) effect in 1839, ...

i.e., when the path through the atmosphere is 1.5 times that when the sun is at high noon). Because of day/night and time-of-day ...

CONVERSION OF SUNLIGHT INTO ELECTRICITY Solar power can be converted directly into electrical power in photovoltaic (PV) cells, ...

TYPES OF PHOTOVOLTAIC CELLS All PV cells depend upon the absorption of light, the subsequent formation and spatial separation of ...

PHYSICS OF PHOTOVOLTAIC CELLS Inorganic PV and electrochemical PV (EPV) cells operate upon the establishment of an electric pote ...

Figure 3 Improvements in solar cell efficiency, by system, from 1976 to 2004 News (PV Energy Systems 2004). The final data point ...

Figure 4 Learning curve for PV production. The present learning curve rate is 80% (20% cost reduction for every doubling of cumu ...

annual production growth rate; see Figure 5). Therefore, basic research is needed to not only maintain the existing technology p ...

Needs of Direct-gap, Thin-film Photovoltaic Technologies. A second strategy for reducing costs is to use thin-film materials tha ...

achieve dramatic improvements in the economics of solar energy. This strategy is illustrated in Figure 5. BASIC SCIENCE CHALLENG ...

Figure 6 Current record efficiencies (as a function of the number of junctions) compared with the theoretical limits as predicte ...

INORGANIC PV CELLS Inorganic PV cells are based on solid-state semiconductors, for example Si or GaAs. Very small amounts of imp ...

devices. The molecules and materials from which these devices are made vary considerably, with polymers, organic molecules, inor ...

Properties of Organic and Hybrid Photovoltaic Structures. Many basic science questions need to be addressed to better understand ...