Our future energy requirements depend on reaching the ‘holy grail’ of electricity generation — finding a cheaper alternative to coal and other fossil fuels. The availability of an alternative energy source would also contribute significantly to energy self-sufficiency in North America.
Every hour, more energy from the sun hits the earth than the world’s entire population consumes in a single year. Given this abundance, solar energy is our world’s most obvious energy choice. Why, then, is less than 1% of our global electricity supply powered by solar energy? Because the industry has been unable to harness the three critical success factors for global solar deployment — high efficiency, low cost and high materials availability for deployment on a global scale.
Current solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies generate electrical power by converting solar radiation into an electric current using semiconductor material. The process involved is called the photovoltaic effect (PV). Today, solar PV cannot be realized on a worldwide scale because neither of the two main technologies presented today; crystalline silicon PV and thin-film PV, completely address the three critical success factors. Crystalline silicon PV possesses high efficiency using abundant materials but they are very expensive to manufacture. It wins on two of the 3 critical success factors. Thin-film PV on the other hand is cheap to manufacture but has low efficiency and relies on rare and toxic elements in its manufacture. It wins on one critical success factor. Furthermore most thin-film technologies use dangerous, toxic materials including cadmium telluride and indium among others.
Source: HuffingtonPost
By Daryl J. Ehrmantraut