this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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Scientists make game-changing breakthrough that could slash costs of solar panels: 'Has the potential to contribute to the energy transition' (www.thecooldown.com)
submitted 2 days ago by floofloof@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/24690127

Solar energy experts in Germany are putting sun-catching cells under the magnifying glass with astounding results, according to multiple reports.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems team is perfecting the use of lenses to concentrate sunlight onto solar panels, reducing size and costs while increasing performance, Interesting Engineering and PV Magazine reported.

The "technology has the potential to contribute to the energy transition, facilitating the shift toward more sustainable and renewable energy sources by combining minimal carbon footprint and energy demand with low levelized cost of electricity," the researchers wrote in a study published by the IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics.

The sun-catcher is called a micro-concentrating photovoltaic, or CPV, cell. The lens makes it different from standard solar panels that convert sunlight to energy with average efficiency rates around 20%, per MarketWatch. Fraunhofer's improved CPV cell has an astounding 36% rate in ideal conditions and is made with lower-cost parts. It cuts semiconductor materials "by a factor of 1,300 and reduces module areas by 30% compared to current state-of-the-art CPV systems," per IE.

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[–] brendansimms@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I just skimmed the IEEE paper (peer-reviewed, solid journal); The usage of 'slash costs' in the title is entire sensational. The tech gave a SLIGHT increase in efficiency (which is good news - marginal improvements are still very good and can be game-changing if scaled up), but there is no cost/benefit analysis in the paper regarding the additional costs of lenses and whether the increased PV efficiency would offset those costs at scale.

[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Honestly, we don't need the technology to get any better than it is. It's nice, but not necessary. Labor costs of deployment are the biggest limiting factor.

[–] albbi@piefed.ca 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Wouldn't better efficiency lead to less physical requirements for the same output which leads to lower labour costs?

[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 days ago

My numbers were wrong:

https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-installed-system-cost

Hardware costs (module, inverters, etc.) are about half the price of the installed residential cost. The rest is "soft costs", and labor is included in it, but it's a pretty small fraction of it. The "other" soft costs are the big thing--stuff like permitting and planning and sales taxes. Better efficiency might somewhat lower it, but not a lot.

Notice that when things get to utility-scale, those soft costs shrink a lot. The best way to do solar is in large fields of racks, and it isn't even close. The solution to this is community solar, where you and your neighbors go in on a field. Some states ban this, and that should change.

[–] vollkorntomate@infosec.pub 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

If you get efficiency gains of around 50% (factor 1.5 from ~20% efficiency to ~30%) with the same deployment costs, this should nonetheless make it more cost-effective.