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Scialog: Solar Energy Conversion
2011 Keynote Presentations
Jim McCusker
More Cost-Effective Solar Panels
Jim McCusker, a physical inorganic chemist from Michigan State University, is part of a collaboration of chemists, mathematicians and engineers at MSU that is striving to improve solar panel technology. The collaborative is supported by a $1.9 million grant from the NSF.
He told Scialog attendees that "for renewable energy to succeed, it has to get to a point where it is economically competitive with current technology. This means we need totally transformational technologies."
Today's solar panels are based on science worked out when the Beatles' "Good Day Sunshine" was new to the airwaves, he said. Their primary light absorber is extremely pure - and costly -- silicon. Electricity produced by solar panels today costs two or three times as much as energy produced by coal.
"With estimates showing global power consumption tripling by 2050, we need to have scalable approaches that balance cost efficiency with environmental stewardship," McCusker said. "Only solar can be scalable to the amounts required."
Solar energy is plentiful, if underutilized: The amount that hits the Earth's surface in one hour equals the energy humans consume in a year.
McCusker’s group is developing a solar cell based on a design that combines a dye with an inexpensive semiconductor -- titanium dioxide - instead of silicon. Titanium dioxide is an opaque white pigment commonly used in paint and other consumer products. Applying advanced materials and nanoparticle technology can make electron conduction more efficient, he said.
The efficiency of these devices is around 11 percent, McCusker noted, but that requires using a liquid electrolyte. His project will use a more efficient and inexpensive solid-state material.
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