US Government - not on my watch....
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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How does concentrating the sunlight like this not start a fire? Or wouldn’t this at least cause panel electronics to overheat?
I would imagine they're not concentrating maximally. Just enough to increase efficiency.
I have not read the article yet, but I will be doing so after posting this. But from what I understand, concentrated cells via lenses already exist. The problem with them was keeping them cool.
Going to go read the actual article now.
Edit: Well, the article was very sparse on details. From what I understand of the comments, what's really been done here is making cells that can stand the kind of heat that would be focused onto them from the glass.
I want to say I saw a video about this a year ago or so, but it was more solar thermal, where you focus a bunch of mirrors onto a single point high up on a tower, and it's cooled by molten salt. But as I said, that's solar thermal, not solar power electricity.
Yeah the problem has always been that solar panels only really like to operate within a very narrow temperature band. It's why you can't just plate the Sahara desert in solar panels. In theory that would generate loads of power but the heat of the desert is way outside of their operating range.
There's been loads of ideas to heat/cool solar panels, the problem up until now has always been to do that without cutting into the panel's efficiency so much that it isn't worth doing.
But there's been videos on YouTube of people cooling solar panels with plasma cooling and phase change materials for a few years now.
the heat of the desert is way outside of their operating range.
I live in the Phoenix area, there are tons of solar installations here. In fact my house has solar, had it when we bought it 10 years ago, and it cuts the power bill in half.
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Just wanted to drop a comment.
I love solar. It's the best form of energy that's attainable by the average person.
The issue here in NL is with the power grid, not the price of the panels. The installing of them is already one of the most expensive parts of getting panels since you need to build scafolding for most houses.
Concentrating solar cells have been around for decades, but I suppose the efficiency Fraunhofer achieved here is nothing to sneeze at.
I wonder what kind of concentrating optics they use. Simple Fresnel lenses won't do, unless you closely follow the sunlight to stay in focus.