Re: Practical performance of solar->electricity conversat
The eficience of energie conversion can go up to 17% for the standard solar cells in amorfous silicon technology.
The are other new technologies coming based for example in cadmium-selenium processes that can reach about 7% only but can have 10 times longer life-time keeping the same efficience and may cost less than 10% of the price of the silicon ones.
One interesting remark about the silicon cells is that considering the money spent to buy, dispose and may be for operation and installation, and also the gradual reduction of efficience as the get old, if you make a carefull calculation you will see that the silicon cells hardly succeed to pay back all the investiment with the energy they produce!!!!!
This means, they are probably not yet an alternative source of energy.
Greetings.
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