'Solar leafs' outshine panels in UK breakthrough - Energy Live News

I kinda skimmed it. So from what I understand, they put a cooling layer behind regular solar panels. Panels get less efficient when they heat up so keeping them cool is where the extra efficiency comes from. The cooling layer is inspired by how plants cool themselves, it seems sort of similar to sweating in a way. Water moves through by capillary action, absorbs heat from the panel, and evaporates. Additionally they discuss:

• using salt water as input water, which will result in some clean water output. It seems you need to kinda flush the cooling layer at night to get rid of salt crystal build up, but this could be a nice bonus in less developed areas.
• use a condenser down the line to recover heat energy from the evaporated output water. Has the potential to raise total efficiency by a bunch of you can use the warm water for heating and the PV generated electricity for power.

They claim the cooling layer doesn't add much extra cost (6 months extra operation to recoup your investment). I wonder what the lifetime of the cooling layer is compared to the photovoltaics themselves. They use some natural fiber I think so maintenance could be an issue.

I think you're underselling the substance of a saltine. This felt like a bad AI generated piece.

ikr, the correct form is in the article as well...

Experiments reveal PV-leaves generate over 10% extra electricity compared to standard solar panels, which dissipate 70% of solar energy.

Edit. Maybe it's pedant bait

on one hand I agree that it's an embarrassing error.

On the other hand, what in the flying fuck is the reason to have leaves as the plural form of leaf over leafs.

Mices

Hockey fan from Toronto probably

It's not just a 10% increase in productivity, it produces fresh water as a byproduct:

Furthermore, the photovoltaic leaf is capable of synergistically utilising the recovered heat to co-generate additional thermal energy and freshwater simultaneously within the same component, significantly elevating the overall solar utilisation efficiency from 13.2% to over 74.5%, along with over 1.1 L/h/m2 of clean water.

It's easier to see the impressiveness of it when you realize that it collects 10% more energy than the current designs on the market. Yeah, that's a huge jump. Typically you only see less than 1-2% jumps in any given technology unless you develop a really novel approach (which is what this seems like).

It doesn’t make sense to think of it in terms of how much of the Sun’s energy it uses because solar energy is essentially free and unlimited, it comes from an outside system, we don’t need to mine it or carry it or anything and we can’t ‘waste’ it in the same way we can other fuels. All it tells us is the maximum theoretical limit.

10% more energy from solar means a rooftop array could generate an extra 300-500W which is a genuinely useful amount of energy.