I wonder if there is an efficiency price to be paid in the solar cells when they are exposed to a huge pulse source of light? Do the solar cell network capture all the light blast at maximum luminosity? Can that light blast be distributed evenly among N numbers of solar cells? Can any optical distribution system survive of 20 megawatt blast where the instantaneous power pulse is in the gigawatts?
The sun provides a continuous source of light, no huge peak power is involved. In addition, do solar cells have a latency (startup and/or shutdown) energy cost to overcome? If so, what is the scope of that inefficiency? There is also an inefficiency and a cost in the leveling of the huge power pulse from the solar cell via capacitor buffering and associated circuitry. The devil is in the details. One unanswered unknown can destroy the concept of the system. On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 2:01 PM, Terry Blanton <hohlr...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > 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. >
