At best, you’re looking at 30% for the most expensive experimental cells, minus other efficiency losses like dust or transportation.
…In practice, deployed panels will be less efficient than that. And I think that number excludes radiation frequencies outside the panel’s absorption range, yet hitting the panels anyway.
What I’m getting at is the sheer ‘darkness’ of the panels blows out the effect of converting such a small fraction of that radiation to electricity. In aggregate, far more heat is absorbed by a field of panels than light sand.
That’s not catastrophic. It’s not a contributor to global warming on the scale of greenhouse gasses or anything (and don’t let Big Oil tell you otherwise), but it is a slight concern for the local environment, and possibly a cost factor.
This is true to an extent, but the raw conversion efficiency is not that high:
https://www.nrel.gov/pv/interactive-cell-efficiency
At best, you’re looking at 30% for the most expensive experimental cells, minus other efficiency losses like dust or transportation.
…In practice, deployed panels will be less efficient than that. And I think that number excludes radiation frequencies outside the panel’s absorption range, yet hitting the panels anyway.
What I’m getting at is the sheer ‘darkness’ of the panels blows out the effect of converting such a small fraction of that radiation to electricity. In aggregate, far more heat is absorbed by a field of panels than light sand.
That’s not catastrophic. It’s not a contributor to global warming on the scale of greenhouse gasses or anything (and don’t let Big Oil tell you otherwise), but it is a slight concern for the local environment, and possibly a cost factor.