A friend forwarded a oil/energy investment/political article by "Dr." Kent Moors titled "A Trade War May Scuttle This Huge Solar Breakthrough". Typical blogger hype, but I was intrigued to checked it out, reading the referenced NREL paper, "Peak External Photocurrent Quantum Efficiency Exceeding 100 percent via MEG in a Quantum Dot Solar Cell" and looking up quantum dots and excitons on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_dot#Photovoltaic_devices
Conventional solar panels already acheive 100% MEG, so 114% represents a minor improvement in quantum efficiency. Only when it reaches 700% MEG (the theoretical maximum, according to wikipedia) will it make any real difference for solar panels. And even then it will only bring up the total efficiency of a panel from about 30% (where we are now) to about 35%, which would have a negligible impact on the total cost per kWhr of electricity. So this "doctor" that wrote the article is just hyping it because he's got nothing else to talk about in his newsletter today. Same for me, I guess...
A Trade War May Scuttle This Huge
Solar Breakthrough
by Dr. Kent Moors
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