Thursday, August 02, 2007

Solar Efficiency

Energy Focus, Inc. set a record for solar panel efficiency:

Energy Focus, Inc. (Nasdaq: EFOI - News), formerly Fiberstars, Inc. (Nasdaq: FBST - News), a global leader in energy efficient lighting, today announced the breakthrough milestone of a 42.8% efficiency solar cell achieved by the Very High Efficiency Solar Consortium (VHESC), part of the R&D work Energy Focus has been involved with through a DARPA contract.


This is pretty impressive; about 3 times current panel efficiency. It's still a ways from commercialization, but if they can get efficiency up this much, the payback period for a solar panel would be about 3 years versus the current 15 years. That would make solar very competitive with other, more traditional forms of power generation.

I beleive that technology will take care of our energy problems eventually. The pessimists who think we will run out of oil are not taking into account the innovation of man.

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