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What about houses on either side? Behind?

Yours isn't the only house at risk.

Try using electric heat in winter in Minnesota

Yes. True. The amount of effort to even approach that and the insane amount of energy in purifying the precursors or chemically creating the precursors is insane. Cradle to grave- the use case is limited. And you’re right we’ll likely never even approach the SQ limit. But even if we did it would still be a losing energy proposition.

They’re typically a lot less efficient than panels so it probably wouldn’t get them any more power

I tip my hat to you my fellow Solar researcher. Lol

Hope for humanity

I thought the highest efficiency was 25%?

Not exactly true. Because in the summer our days are far far longer. In peak summer it's only is dark for about 5 hours here.

So you make up for it. As long as your allowed to supply back to the grid during that point it should balance out

Now Google "word play" or "joke".

Just lower the price. Easy.

Yes, absolutely correct. Both weight and size are considerations for payload.

This is a good point. I was meaning as payload. The amount of cash necessary to take a unit of weight up is otherworldly. ;)

Residential payoff takes a lot longer unless your roof, weather, and/or local electric regulations are really good, especially now that interest rates went up. Most are paying 4 cents per watt financed at at 3%+.

I got in at .99% and it still wouldn't be obviously worth it in terms of ROI if not for the tax refund. A big cash infusion when the market is low like this could tangibly impract retirement age. But without it, especially with interest rates as they are now I could see people taking longer than the 20-25 year life of their loan to net positive.

Yeah, the equipment to not kill linemen is kinda spendy all on its own though.

A good chunk of firefighting had more to do with protecting life not property and keeping things from spreading.

I live veeeeery far away from the equator.

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

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It really annoys me they couldn't get it to 40%.

Dawgggggg that is amazing.

Most problems are with durability / lifespan. So they never make it outside the lab until some breakthrough.

Concentrated solar is measured in suns. So if I use a mirror or a lens of 2 m^2 area and direct this light on on a 1m^2 solar panel, people talk of in this case two suns reaching the solar panel. The panel still has a similar efficiency, but double the power output due to more light shining on it. I simplified a bit but thats the idea.

Type "concentrated solar" into an image search engine, it's fascinating!

Location also matters, the further away from equator, the worse it gets.

Poor angles, shorter days, longer winters.

mrw somebody invents a material with a complex bandgap that breaks the shockley queisser limit