On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Jones Beene <jone...@pacbell.net> wrote: > The “40%” conversion ratio should make it clear to anyone > who follows solar cells that Mills is blowing smoke. Affordable cells for > use in mass production are below 20% efficiency.
On average, about 15% according to Forbes last year: http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterdetwiler/2013/07/16/as-solar-panel-efficiencies-keep-improving-its-time-to-adopt-some-new-metrics/ If you look at the cost to produce solar cells, they are hardly cost-effective *when the source energy is free (the sun).* That and the idea of using fiber optics to remove the cells from the source of the intense plasma shock is concertedly ludicrous in this learned engineer's opinion. In order to take pulsed energy and convert it into something you can feed into the grid, other expensive systems are involved. First off, you must level the energy. Such leveling devices for large sources of energy are, in themselves, not cost-effective in many cases. The preferred methods are batteries or supercapacitors. We all know the state of the art there. Once you level that energy, you must condition it for grid insertion. Inverter technology has come a long way but remains expensive. And, without considerable subsidies, PV systems for your home are not yet cost-effective when all these necessary subsystems are included.
