What are Infrared Solar Panels? Well they are a great technology still locked up in a lab @ Idaho National Lab, but they have the potential to work in any weather conditions or even at night. These cells are focused on breaking past the 40% efficiency threshold. The cells have been in development for a few quarters.
Recent develop have refined their techniques to form a type of Nanoa Skin.
Source! Turns out the achieves have cleaned this piece of information out. Good thing I saved it. The researchers have made progress and are now claim they reached 90% efficiency. I can't explain why this didn't make the front cover of TIME or NYTimes.
Currently, Solar technology is roughly working at 20%~ efficiency, which is marginal by best putting the cost of watt in the number of dollars. Otherwise know as second generation cells. The most promising is 3rd generation cells which are half the efficiency of current PV cells. 9% is even worse with 3rd generation but considering they have doubled in recent years is saying a lot. The costs of those puppies is even lower. We might see solar technology drop below a dollar a watt before the decade is out. Some of us might hold our breath.
The 4th generation would be the NanoAntenna Solar-Skin. Lets make a new word today (NASS) for short, synonymous with a famous rapper. According to the article they claim lab test have showed these cells reached 80% efficiency. In standard English, this mean the cells produce electricity cheaper than conventional technology.
Again, why isn't this getting coverage is beyond me. NAS collects energy from infrared light.
And because it doesn't simply collect energy from the visible light spectrum, it even can harness the Earth's solar energy it stores during the day and radiates at night.
They are produced in a fashion that creates tightly packed gold coils together. The beauty of the system is, you can stack these cells on top of each other. The layers will also increase efficiency. The cells are either grown or printed on a polyurethane sheet. They are miniature 'heat magnets' that are really good at capturing heat. The only thing that is preventing this technology from taking off is transferring the energy into AC. As soon as that happens, expect everything to be covered in Solar!
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