New, more efficient solar panels coming? Hopefully.

billvon said:

They've been making bifacial panels in volume for at least five years now.

Combined thermo and photovoltaic panels don't work well. To get a thermovolatic cell to work you need high temperatures on one side and low temperatures on the other. So not only do you need active cooling of the back, you have to run the front hotter, and silicon PV cells don't work well at high temperatures.

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billvon said:

They've been making bifacial panels in volume for at least five years now.

Combined thermo and photovoltaic panels don't work well. To get a thermovolatic cell to work you need high temperatures on one side and low temperatures on the other. So not only do you need active cooling of the back, you have to run the front hotter, and silicon PV cells don't work well at high temperatures.

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• anything involving a plumber is uneconomic around here
• the PV cooling becomes less effective in midsummer, just when it's needed

jgh said:

Rather than thermovoltaic + PV, I fancy water-cooled PV. Just to give a bit of a preheat addition to the house heating in winter; keeping
the PV running cooler is a bonus. Sadly:

• anything involving a plumber is uneconomic around here
• the PV cooling becomes less effective in midsummer, just when it's needed

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MrFuzion said:

I agree there are some losses but the laws of thermodynamics and conservation of energy still apply so, if 20% of the photons are converted into electrons in the first layer, the other 80%(ish) are transmitted to the next layer down (because they cant just disappear).

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Extracting more of the energy as electrons will inherently reduce the operating temperature and there may be other technologies that haven't been considered as a means of doing this.

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