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Originally Posted by poppa smurf
dont know what the next "breakthrough" will be.......though I'd like shares in it now
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Laminate on solar panels from Nanosolar
Spray on solar cells; in California but not sure of the company name
Current most efficient solar panels available worldwide manufactured by Boeing, multi-layer solar cells, five or six solar cells stacked up like a sandwich, which all let through lesser amounts of light so that by the time the light reaches the lowest cell the efficiency is somewhere around 80-90%. They're the solar panels used on satellites, but the cost is somewhere around the $650 per watt USD
What I'm excited about is some Australian companies are about to begin manufacturing super efficient concentrator photovoltaic cells, where light is concentrated onto one small photovoltaic cell which operates at super high temperatures, and one 4cm x 4cm cell produced anywhere from 15 to 20W
For the concentrator cell its not to be confused with the current power tower solar systems, which use mirrors to focus heat onto water to turn into steam and drive a turbine (although that is more efficient than all available solar panels today but only really works on a large scale basis).