Talk:Solar cell

Citations needed

it must be noted that large tracts of this article are entirely uncited. This is particularly true in the highly mathematical and physics-based sections, as well as some of the more commercial and recent-ist claims. Surely, so much of this article was not written merely from memory or guesswork? This could by a symptom of serious problems in the article and needs addressing.

Apart from the lead, which may be considered an exception, particularly uncited sections are:

1. Solar cell#Applications and implementations
2. Solar cell#Simple explanation
3. Solar cell#Photogeneration of charge carriers
4. Solar cell#Charge carrier separation
5. Solar cell#The p-n junction
6. Solar cell#Connection to an external load
7. Solar cell#Characteristic equation
8. Solar cell#Open-circuit voltage and short-circuit current
9. Solar cell#Cell temperature
10. Solar cell#Series resistance
11. Solar cell#Shunt resistance
12. Solar cell#Reverse saturation current
13. Solar cell#Ideality factor
14. Solar cell#Quantum efficiency
15. Solar cell#Maximum-power point
16. Solar cell#Comparison of energy conversion efficiencies
17. Solar cell#Light-absorbing materials
18. Solar cell#Bulk
19. Solar cell#Crystalline silicon
20. Solar cell#Thin films
21. Solar cell#Light-absorbing dyes (DSSC)
22. Solar cell#Nanocrystalline solar cells
23. Solar cell#Silicon solar cell device manufacture
24. Solar cell#Lifespan
25. Solar cell#Low-cost solar cell
26. Solar cell#Current research on materials and devices
27. Solar cell#Metamorphic multijunction solar cell
28. Solar cell#Polymer processing
29. Solar cell#Transparent conductors
30. Solar cell#Infrared solar cells
31. Solar cell#Validation, certification and manufacturers
32. Solar cell#United States

That is a huge list of largely uncited sections for one article! --Nigelj (talk) 17:30, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Along the same lines, the Lifespan section previous cited http://www.toolbase.org/Technology-Inventory/Electrical-Electronics/pv-systems#warranty, which did not support any of the claims made in the Lifespan section. As a result, I removed the irrelevant citation, and added "Citation needed". --64.31.145.99 1 November 2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.31.145.99 (talk) 21:52, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Geography and sunlight

I think it would be useful if the article introduced the reader to the concept of the relationships between the amount of sunlight incident upon a solar cell and geographic location (latitude, amount of sunlight available, time of year, etc). This aspect seems relevant insofar as one might try to access this article in an attempt to evaluate the feasibility of a system utilizing solar cells (panels/modules/arrays etc). It is not necessary to cover this aspect entirely - the article might point the reader to other resources that might adequately answer these questions. 24.222.87.186 (talk) 19:41, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

The relation of sunlight and geography is covered in Solar radiation and Insolation. Jojalozzo 00:44, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Warranty example

To source information about panel warranties we have used an actual example but some of us have been concerned about accessing this as an external link to a commercial web site. Does anyone have any ideas about how to source warranty information without sending readers to a commercial site? Jojalozzo 18:55, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Answered my own question (http://www.toolbase.org/Technology-Inventory/Electrical-Electronics/pv-systems#warranty), but if anyone can improve on that, please do. Jojalozzo 19:01, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Link to place in article

I am not sure, that this link may be placed directly to main article.

http://drugoi.livejournal.com/3411895.html An article about producing solar cells for Russian space ships. Sergei Frolov (talk) 10:31, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Cost

The "Cost" section in the article about solar-cells contains an interesting discussion, but no real information about cost. The section should contain information about actual cost, in dollars, of solar cells currently available for purchase.

The article states that cost for solar cells is given per unit of peak electrical power, but it seems to me that cost per square meter would be a much more useful parameter. DougGeo (talk) 21:32, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Cost per unit of peak output is the standard way of talking about cost in the PV industry. The reason for this is that ultimately, buyers of solar cells are interested in how much energy they will get for their dollar, not the number of cells or the number of square meters, and in this context, peak power is a reasonably good and easy-to-understand proxy for energy (there is a debate about whether this can be improved, but that is for another discussion). As a result, low-efficiency solar cells tend to cost much less to manufacture and sell (per cell and per square meter) than high-efficiency ones, but they are roughly equal on a cost-per-peak-watt basis. Therefore, the cost per-cell or per-square-meter is strongly dependent upon cell efficiency, while the cost per peak watt is independent (or, more accurately, only weakly dependent) upon cell efficiency.--Squirmymcphee (talk) 16:35, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Three generations

Thin films, the second generation, had 40% market share in 1988 and it has steadily declined since then, there was a brief resurgence with CdTe which ended last year when the market share of thin film again dropped by thirty percent to less than 13%. More than eighty seven percent of commercial solar cells are made with crystalline silicon and thin film is very much yesterday's technology. (For the data see March issues of Photon International for each of the last ten years) The three generation discussion is misleading and is a technology judgement that is neither objective nor accurate.

Organic solar cells could be the third generation, well maybe. Plants have an efficiency of 1% this is an order of magintude lower than today's solar cells. There will be other solutions to better solar cells. Maybe someone might invent an inexpensive tandem cell. A photo converter that converts a blue photon into two red photons that are well matched with the PV bandgap might become the next best technology. Who knows, I don't and the three generation people don't know either it is premature to crown either a second or a third generation.

I deleted the text three generation text with the intend to make wikipedia better.

Cleanenergy (talk) 21:58, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree 100% with deleting it. "Three generations" is sometimes used for one person's opinion of the future of solar cells, and other times used as a vacuous marketing slogan. :-) --Steve (talk) 22:05, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Merge from Fill factor to Solar cell#Efficiency

The Fill factor article has a concise discussion of the term (and a citation) as used in photovoltaics and then mentions a couple of other uses of the term in other areas. My proposal is to merge the PV portion into Solar cell#Efficiency and leave the existing article as a disambiguation page for the general term. Jojalozzo 14:56, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree: Fill factor, in this context, is only about efficiency, which can be handled in a small paragraph here.Peter Chastain (talk) 17:39, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Done. We didn't need nearly as much math as it had, and defining terms in English instead of math subscripts is probably a good plan everywhere in an encyclopedia. --Wtshymanski (talk) 18:21, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Environmental aspects

Well, I must say that it occurs very rarely that "our" German Wikipedia articles are light years better than their English equivalents. However, this time it is the truth: de:Solarzelle#Umweltschutz. What, in contrary to that, has this English article been turning to over the years from its creation back in 2006? To me it's a PR pamphlet written by solar cell enthusiasts. Or why are the environmental aspects mentioned nowhere? The toxicity of cadmium; the highly problematic residues from SC production; the greenhouse effect provoked by the gases used in the lavation phase; and ... and ... Everything reads as if solar cells are the most eco-friendly thing ever. Well, once in use, YES; but while they're produced, residue accumulates that has to be treated in a special way. Some of them might (assuming!) even produce toxic waste, i. e. relics with long-lasting effects. -andy 77.190.46.74 (talk) 11:52, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree this article could use some discussion of the environmental aspects of PV production, since it is meant to be an eco-friendly technology. However, if my rudimentary German and Google Translate have come anywhere close to a correct translation of the section you link to, the German Wikipedia entry is hardly a paragon of quality. As far as I can tell, it is mainly a FUD piece that attempts to demonize solar cells on the basis of CdTe solar cell processing. These cells make up about 5% of global production and, while I'm no great defender of CdTe, they contain no cadmium metal (as the supposedly high quality German article states without reference). Before you object, let me put that another way: Saying that CdTe solar panels contain cadmium metal is exactly like saying water contains hydrogen gas. There are certainly occupational safety issues -- cadmium metal is involved in the production -- and there may also be toxicity issues in the field, but so far testing has not been able to prove the latter.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a place for discussion of the article, not so much the article's contents, so I will stop there. You're welcome to add something on the environmental aspects of course, but if you plan to translate the German version I strongly suggest you gather a few more references. (I'm not likely to do it myself, at least not anytime soon.)--Squirmymcphee (talk) 17:15, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Solar thermal resource in BusinessWeek

Solar Panels Start to Outshine Mirrors; As prices for photovoltaic cells tumble, developers are abandoning solar thermal plants October 13, 2011, 5:00 PM EDT by Ben Sills 97.87.29.188 (talk) 23:38, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Crap state of the article

Andy is right. current article This article is an internal memo for some firm on a planet far far away. Go nuts on the hack and slash, if anyone wants or needs a third, I'll be happy to help. You could machine-gun this article with templates there are so many sections that are rubbish in so many ways. Someone needs to learn how to plagiarize their own companies brochures for an encyclopedic audience. Penyulap _talk 16:16, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

If not crappy, then unintelligible in places

"Other technologies have tried to enter the market. First Solar was briefly the largest panel manufacturer in 2009, in terms of yearly power produced, using a thin-film cell sandwiched between two layers of glass. " Why is this a different technology..... even if the content in the article is ok (and it does need some work--took me a while to figure out where the history of development material was ) it reads as if it hasn't been proofread by the last person who edited it...commas and verb tenses count...the preview feature is there for a reason...please read your edit after you post it to make sure you are not obfuscating a clear point or concatenating stupidly. Eliminate run on sentences....etc etc , etc... Avram Primack (talk) 15:57, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

To consider for inclusion

• lay summary "Addition of quantum dots to solar cells gets dramatic results", R&D Magazine, Advantage Business Media, rdmag.com, 23 Jan 2012, retrieved 23 Jan 2012
• peer-reviewed publication Sablon, Kimberly A.; Little, John W.; Mitin, Vladimir; Sergeev, Andrei; Vagidov, Nizami; Reinhardt, Kitt (5 May 2011), "Strong Enhancement of Solar Cell Efficiency Due to Quantum Dots with Built-In Charge", Nano Letters, 11 (6): 2311–2317, doi:10.1021/nl200543v, retrieved 23 Jan 2012 {{citation}}: More than one of |at= and |pages= specified (help)