Journal article
Solar cells with one-day energy payback for the factories of the future
Scalability is a requirement before any new energy source can be expected to house a possible solution to the challenge that mankind’s increasing energy demand presents. No renewable energy source is as abundant as the Sun and yet efficient and low-cost conversion of solar energy still has not been developed.
We approach the challenge by firstly taking a technology that efficiently addresses the need for daily production of 1 GWp on a global level, which does not employ elements with critically low abundance and has a low thermal budget.Wethen applied life cycle assessment methodologies to direct research and developed such technology in the form of a polymer solar cell that presents a significant improvement in energy payback time (EPBT) and found that very short energy payback times on the order of one day are possible, thus potentially presenting a solution to the current energy gap of >14 TW by year 2050.
Language: | English |
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Publisher: | The Royal Society of Chemistry |
Year: | 2012 |
Pages: | 5117-5132 |
ISSN: | 17545706 and 17545692 |
Types: | Journal article |
DOI: | 10.1039/c1ee02728j |
ORCIDs: | Hösel, Markus and Krebs, Frederik C |