Subject: Breakthrough in solar to electric technology

From: [email-masked] (Mike Page)
Date: 24 Jan 1996 10:57:10 GMT

Yesterday (23.1.96), the BBC reported a breakthrough in technology to 
convert solar energy to electricity.  The details were suspiciously 
sketchy but the gist of it was that scientists had manufactured a molecule 
which behaved like chlorophyll, and which could be used as a photovoltaic.  
The report suggested that while the efficiency was no greater than that of 
silicon cells, the cost was an order of magnitude smaller.

Does anyone have any details regarding this "discovery", and its relevance 
to the prospects of practical renewable energy systems, particularly  those 
at a domestic scale?  It seems to me that if this were true (note the IF) then 
many of the arguments regarding the pay-back time and the energy balance for 
silicon-based systems would be turned on their head, as long as cost can be 
taken as an indicator of the energy involved in manufacture.

While I'm here, there has been much discussion regarding the energy balance 
associated with using silicon-based photovoltaics.  How do such calculations 
work out for concentrating solar collectors, which concentrate the incident 
sunlight beore projecting it onto a correspondingly much smaller area of 
silicon?  Can we be happier about using such systems?

Thanks.

Mike

[email-masked]