Solar Power Cells, Hot Water, Energy, Collectors

MIT thermophotovoltaic technology could break Shockley–Queisser limit

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He said this method may allow for efficiencies as high as 80 percent for concentrated sunlight.

It’s not likely to reach that level.

“Achieving temperatures closer to 1,500 kelvin and efficiencies of 37 percent, above the Shockley-Queisser limit of 31 percent for unconcentrated sunlight, seems achievable, according to my calculations,” he said.

That’s significantly higher than the 10 percent efficiency limit that TPV cells have yielded thus far.

The device would operate at high temperatures, similar to a concentrating solar power system (CSP), like a tower or trough system. As such it would need some time to warm up.

“The turn-on time at midday could be chosen on a case-by-case basis to be anywhere from a minute to a day for baseload continuous power generation. If the system started cold at sunrise, it could potentially take several hours to reach nearly full performance with a static design,” Bermel said. “We're also looking into ways to get better performance over the whole day with dynamic design elements.

Source: Clean Energy Authority