One of the things I Don't like about being an engineer is when you get asked what you do for a living its impossible to answer in any way that 99.999% of the people would understand or care

Well, Nova ( PBS ) has just Aired a new program called "saved by the sun". It a one hour documentary of sorts about where solar was/is/will be.

The program shows many installations, pictures of panels on just about every surface you could mount them, but get this, only one inverter is ever shown.

And to my surprise, its a pair of Xantrex Suntine's UPG's. Now most probably don't know what a UPG is, but its what got me into solar design and started what is now a 6 year and counting stint in PV

So, for the few that venture into this forum, I can point and say, I did that ( The white inverters in the background being pointed too and no that's not me! )

I saw the show this morning. Pretty good show.

Fred

i saw only a portion of the show so i'd like to see it again in its entirety. as i recall there were a few statements made by them that stretched things abit, but i can't recall the specifics at this point. i'll have to see it in its entirety and pay closer attention to the comments being made with myself making note of it.

By the way, on this show they talked about the Multi-ray cell.. looks pretty cool, it receives more then one rays of light, apparently the cells we are using now are only seeing one light or frequency of the spectrum.

The 40.7 percent cell was developed using a unique structure called a multi-junction solar cell. This type of cell achieves a higher efficiency by capturing more of the solar spectrum. In a multi-junction cell, individual cells are made of layers, where each layer captures part of the sunlight passing through the cell. This allows the cell to get more energy from the sun’s light.




Fred

Unfortunately, the triple junction is not anything really new, been around for at least 10+ years. 3X the processing with many issues yet to be worked out (its very difficult to have layers of different chemistry behave nicely next to each other) make things like the Mars Rovers work, but nothing in the sites remotely one would call a break thru

Having panels that are 100% efficient wouldn't make any difference to the usage in the US as roof space even with today’s efficiency is usually enough... it basic economics ... it cheaper to use the grid, until that changes or thru grants/rebates the costs get equalized

I like the German model, Solar kWh bought at 50 cent for 20 years allows the free market to do what it does best, make it an opportunity for people to WANT to sell/install/buy PV. Its a shame for the US as in Germany, it also becomes the leading provider of the technology, getting the jobs and then gets exported products else where, netting a true lower cost for the PV when job creation in considered

what solar guppy says of the triple junction is true as i have some of them. unisolar makes them and they have been making them for a number of years now. they aren't that great and their efficiency is probably somewhere under 10%. now these are thin film pvs and maybe the mars rovers have the triple junctions for the regular crystaline cells.