david carroll Archives – The Green Optimistic green tech news, since 2008 Tue, 09 Dec 2014 09:17:19 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 2667534 Wake Forest Researchers Develop Polymer-Based Solar PV & Thermal Device https://www.greenoptimistic.com/wake-forest-solar-thermal-pv-20110429/ https://www.greenoptimistic.com/wake-forest-solar-thermal-pv-20110429/#respond Fri, 29 Apr 2011 17:49:30 +0000 https://www.greenoptimistic.com/?p=18314 Infrared light makes up the most part of the light spectrum, but the glitch in today's solar panels is that they can't really harvest it for direct electricity generation, because of the long wavelengths involved. Thus, a standard solar panel misses about 75% of the incoming energy, and some of them, concentrated solar cells, need cooling to prevent damage to the silicon substrate that favors the energy conversion.

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]]> https://www.greenoptimistic.com/wake-forest-solar-thermal-pv-20110429/feed/ 0 18314 Wake Forest's Plastic Fiber Solar Cells Doubling Energy Output of Flat Ones https://www.greenoptimistic.com/wake-forest-fiber-solar-cell-20100410/ https://www.greenoptimistic.com/wake-forest-fiber-solar-cell-20100410/#comments Sun, 11 Apr 2010 01:41:52 +0000 https://www.greenoptimistic.com/?p=7323 Solar cells get efficient as time goes, but there are methods to improve the performance of current ones, made with older technologies. Wake Forest Center for Nanotechnology has just received a patent for a new solar cell technology that can double the energy production of current silicon flat cells at highly reduced costs.

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