muwenjie
muwenjie t1_iy1cavh wrote
Reply to comment by a11en in News Release: NREL Creates Highest Efficiency 1-Sun Solar Cell - 39.5% efficiency by TimeSpentWasting
mrw somebody invents a material with a complex bandgap that breaks the shockley queisser limit
muwenjie t1_iy1gi0k wrote
Reply to comment by willyolio in News Release: NREL Creates Highest Efficiency 1-Sun Solar Cell - 39.5% efficiency by TimeSpentWasting
Typically increasing the number of suns on solar cells increases their efficiency by a small amount, but the tradeoff is that the increased temperature decreases their efficiency - one terrestrial application of these sorts of cells is to sit at the centre of a field of heliostats in a kind of similar concentrating setup to solar thermal power plants, so you only need a small amount of high-efficiency solar cells operating at hundred/thousands of suns to harness a large amount of solar
These cells don't seem to be designed for that though