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This Breakthrough Solves Perovskite Solar’s BIGGEST Problem

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This Breakthrough Solves Perovskite Solar's BIGGEST Problem

with solar panels go solar solar energy so is 
solar right for you these things are absolutely   solid solar panels are great but there is a more 
efficient technology than your average PV cell and   that is this these are pery solar cells promising 
to unlock PV cell efficiencies a 100 times higher   than current commercial cells but here's the 
thing the reason why we don't see them on our   houses today is that at worst they last a couple 
of days and at best about a year and that's under   lab conditions but that's about to change recent 
breakthroughs in perky synthesis increased our   lifetimes by an order of magnitude and at least 
one company seems to have cracked the durability   problem and will release the first commercially 
available Prof Sky solar panel within the year so   what does this mean for you and me let's figure 
this out together I'm Ricky and this is Two Bit da Vinci This video is sponsored by ECOFLOW a 
typical solar panel that you can go out and   buy today has has a power conversion efficiency 
of around 20% that means for every 100 watts of   solar energy that hits the panel only about 20 
watts of electricity is actually produced those   panels are made of silicon the same semiconductor 
that we use in computer chips but a new type of   panel with perov Sky solar cells is about to hit 
the market with a 25% efficiency now that might   not seem like that big of a difference but that 
increas in efficiency could slash a solar system   like the one I have in my house down from 30,000 
to just $20,000 that is a $10,000 difference for   how many of you guys would that amount of money 
change your decision to either go solar or not s   off in the comments below and by the way the 
difference in price is only the tip of the   iceberg of what pavy solar promises but we'll 
get back to that here in a minute first you're   probably wondering how can such a small change 
in efficiency make such a big difference in cost   so to figure this out I asked myself what would 
change if I went from 20% efficient panels like   the ones I have on my roof to panels that were 20 
5% I had to install 30 400 W panels for my 12 KW   system if I had used 25% efficient panels I would 
have only needed to install 24 of them for the   same size system but it's not just the reduction 
the number of panels one day prop Sky panels will   probably even be cheaper than our panels today 
but we'll get back to that also in a minute but by   reducing the number of panels you need saves you 
money in quite a few different ways for example   the labor cost to install 24 panels is going 
to be cheaper than 30 plus you need less rack   to install them all and you can potentially put 
more panels or get more energy out with a limited   roof space we ran into this very problem on our 
office which is a one-bedroom one bath little   house and we didn't have all that much room and we 
maximized as much solar as we could but the truth   is we put some panels in a place where there's 
some tree shading and other things that we could   have gotten away from if we had more efficient 
panels Prof Sky solar cells are a type of solar   technology that use a family of materials called 
Prof Skypes to convert sunlight into electricity   these Pro skites are materials that have a similar 
structure to a mineral made of calcium titanium   trioxide and called pery in honor of the Russian 
minerology who discovered it this mineral forms   little cubic crystals that look like this any 
material with this general formula abx3 and whose   crystal structure looks like this is a Prof guy AB 
andx can be almost anything so you can tweak those   materials by changing the ions in the formula and 
fine-tuning them for different applications one   of these apption is solar cells and most of the 
research in the last 10 years has focused on lead   Halli per skites with record-breaking efficiencies 
so amazing PR skite going to be great right but   they're not everywhere yet like many things we 
talk about so why is that well it's kind of simple   here there's a trade-off the oxygen and moisture 
in the air the Heat and the Sun's UV rays all   work together to destroy pery cells and it's kind 
of ironic isn't it sunlight the very thing this   thing is made to harness is the very thing that 
destroys it and to be fair UV light is destructive   to almost anything I can't go more than about 12 
minutes in the sun myself but anyways the sunlight   can break this down and sometimes early Prof Sky 
cells wouldn't even last more than a couple of   days before degrading compare that to my silicon 
panels that I have on my roof right now that   will last over 30 years and produce about 80% of 
their current output 30 years from now it's pretty   amazing in fact while recording this video one of 
the things I think we have to just take a moment   to appreciate is how good solar panels are today 
out in the sun all day and night no maintenance   no oil changes no nothing else just producing 
electricity pretty amazing I challenge you to name   one thing besides your house that can last over 30 
years under the sun with minimal to no maintenance   by the way not even the asphalt shingles on my 
roof will last as long as my panels will now   we're all after the next great breakthrough and 
solar panels or batteries but it's also important   to step back and realize how far our current Tech 
has come I paid about $150 per panel this year for   400 watt panels it's amazing and now we're in the 
Golden Age of batteries and our sponsor this week   ecoflow and their latest generation Delta Pro 
3 might be the perfect representation of just   how far batteries have come now this isn't some 
small battery but let me show you how capable   this thing [Music] is so power tools like that are 
actually really difficult because they have a huge   surge when they first turn on like we mentioned 
this can now put 8,000 Watts for a instantaneous   period of time and that had no problem dealing 
with that my favorite new features in the past   3 months of having this thing are number one it's 
whisper quiet fan design if you get in about that   close I can hear the quietest man they claim 3 DB 
amazing this is one of the quietest batteries I've   ever seen number two standby time I did a test I 
charged it to 100% and left it unused for 30 days   and I came back and it had 99% capacity and the 
battery can output both 120 volt like before but   it can even do 240 volt for larger appliances and 
now the Delta Pro 3 has two solar charging ports   a low voltage good for 1,000 watts and a high 
voltage good for 1,600 for a total of 2600 watts   of solar input now this isn't some small battery 
but it retains that beautiful design wheels and   handle so you can take it anywhere and you're 
going to want to because it can handle pretty much   anything what makes this battery so versatile is 
that it has four 20 amp 120 Outlets a 240 Outlet   a Nema l1430 30 amp outlet and even direct DC 
outputs like two 100 W USBC charging ports as   well and of course you can always hook this up 
to your house like we do we have a smart home   panel too in our office and this plugs right in 
to charge and back up your house in the event of   a power outage now I know going solar and getting 
batteries can be expensive and complicated but   this is your gateway this thing can both take 
in solar input and provide Power if the power   goes out roll this thing in if the power goes out 
to your fridge and power it for days at a time so   whether you're into camping or the outdoors you 
want some emergency backup power in the case of an   outage or anything else check out the Delta Pro 3 
from ecoflow and use our links in the description   to save today huge thanks to ecoflow and you 
now back to the show the point is we need to   fix perov Sky's durability problem and apparently 
that's a tough challenge although one company from   the UK says they solved it there are several ways 
Engineers have tried to solve the durability issue   the most straightforward has been to encapsulate 
the cell to protect it from the environment but   that only solves part of the problem another 
important part of the issue has to do with the   internal structure itself and nothing to do with 
air or sunlight and you can't fix that by just   encapsulating the cell two recent discoveries have 
helped increase cell Life by orders of magnitude   the first discovery was made by yanan zo and his 
team from the Hong Kong University of Science and   Technology and was published in nature energy they 
looked closely at all the tiny little crystals   with an electron microscope and discovered 
that they had a secret structure no one had   ever noticed before they were covered with little 
concavities these were like little indentations   that strained the crystal structure making it 
unstable the Breakthrough is that they figured   out a way to make the propy material from scratch 
without these concavities all they had to do was   add a type of surfacant something like a detergent 
whose name I'm not even going to try and pronounce   the concavities were gone the resulting cells 
lasted 1,500 hours under different stress tests   compared to only 500 before but before we get too 
excited let's remember that 1500 hours is only   about 2 months under sunlight or around 4 months 
of actual field application so not that great but   it is still a threefold increase and it's not the 
only breakthrough the next breakthrough came from   the same research team and was also published 
in nature in this case they looked at the Prof   Sky's internal structure instead of the surface 
they found that the little crystals were full of   tiny imperfections which also made them unstable 
by shining a violet blue 500 M laser for 5 minutes   on those parts of the crystal when making the 
film and during aging they were able to fix   those imperfections and force the ions to form 
the perky structure the result was that the cells   retained Almost 100% of the original performance 
in terms of efficiency after 2 hours or 3 months   under simulated daylight conditions at such low 
degradation rates these cells could potentially   last 5 to 10 years before degrading to less than 
80% of their original performance but hear me   out what if we could combine this breakthrough 
with the earlier one about removing the surface   concavities could we triple those 5 to 10 year 
claims and finally make Prof Sky cells that can   last as long as traditional panels I actually 
think it's possible and and so does the company   Oxford PV I get excited when I find breakthroughs 
like these that make technology advance in huge   leaps but these reports are only in the lab 
scaling from Lab to industrial production   is the bane of any engineer's existence and I 
know you feel me on this one how many times do   researchers yell that this will change everything 
only to not really change anything I mean we see   it all the time right the Sol State batteries 
or some new Next Generation Fusion reactor   that's kind of the hard part about engineering 
is taking it all the way to the Finish Line the   spin-off company from Oxford University partnered 
with fronhofer Institute of solar energy systems   to make the world's first commercially available 
pavy silicon tandem solar panel and I'll explain   what that means here in a minute but at 
25% efficiency it'll be the most efficient   commercially available solar panel in the world 
the panel will be 1.68 m in size and produce   421 Watts they're also working on a profs solar 
cell in an M6 format with a efficiency of 26.8%   but it's still low volumes and a little early 
for that they haven't released full figures on   exactly how long these panels would last but 
if they're going commercial I'm guessing it's   not going to be just a couple of months or years 
they have to be competitive with current panels   otherwise it would be a business nightmare for 
them other companies are also working on this   technology Q cells is developing a 26% efficient 
commercial side module that can last 30 years saw   Technologies from Poland Japan prints props 
skites on large sheets of flexible plastic   but none of them are at commercial scale just yet 
so if Oxford PV really has solved the durability   issue this could be pretty big this could be 
the biggest Le forwarded solar energy of the   decade because tandem cells have the potential to 
more than double our current panel efficiencies   in theory they could go all the way up to 43% 
with the current world record holder standing   currently at 33.9 now if you're thinking how can 
they manage to break the shockly quazar limit of   30% efficiency they did it by sandwiching two 
cells together a NE feature of peros skites is   that they are great at absorbing visible light 
but they're transparent to infrared light which   silicon cells are great at absorbing so you can 
sandwich the two together and got a parasite   silicon tandem cell that absorbs much more 
light some of the other really key benefits by   the way of perov skites is that they require very 
cheap and abundant raw materials they are easily   processed and you can make them almost at room 
temperature by mixing Solutions on a substrate   level silicon cells in contrast require High 
Purity silicon that is processed at over 1,000°   C and since Prof skites are great absorbing light 
you can make them super thin you can actually make   a high performance prop Sky cell just 0.15 microns 
thick that's a thousand times thinner than a human   hair which by the way is about how thick silicon 
cells are so you can make prop Sky cells using   less than 1 1,000th of the material Mass compared 
to Silicon so all of those benefits are the reason   why this technology gets so much attention and 
research and development but they're not perfect   remember from earlier that I mentioned that 
they're made with lead compounds and Lead is   toxic and a strong pollutant there are non-leed 
variants but they're nowhere near as good as the   lead Hy based cells so Recycling and Disposal will 
be a huge issue for the these panels especially if   they don't last as long as silicon panels besides 
the longevity and degradation problem this is new   technology so there's still many many more hurdles 
in terms of manufacturing and scaling production   another big issue is certification these cells 
perform differently from Silicon cells and haven't   been studied for nearly as long so we don't have 
that much information about how they'll perform   20 or 30 years from now and we definitely do with 
silicon and by the way my first solar panel system   on my old house is turning 15 years old pretty 
soon and they're still doing great at around   92% of their original output so we just have more 
data for traditional panels if someone walked up   to you and said listen here's a solar system for 
your house that costs half the price but it last   15 years instead of 25 would you do it so clearly 
parav skites just might be good enough to replace   solar panels but to really answer that question 
we got to answer the levelized cost of energy or   the LC e check this out so I made this little 
calculator and we'll put a link to how you can   access it and play with the parameters yourself 
but as you can see because the Prof Sky panels   are 25% efficient instead of 20% we only need 24 
panels and as a rough estimate 150 is what I paid   previously for my last set of solar panels and if 
they can get the cost down to 50 which is probably   not practical but if they did the install cost was 
the same and as you can see the prop Sky system   will cost 21,600 while the the traditional panel 
that I have cost about $330,000 now that's over   $8,000 in savings upfront and that's a big reason 
why Prof skite might have a shot but there's a lot   more to it if we keep going down the line You'll 
see that the panel lifetime is 25 years for my   panels really it's probably more than that but 
let's just call 25 and if they can get the perov   SC up to 12 years right inflation rate the annual 
maintenance is $500 honestly I don't pay anything   for maintenance but this is a number that people 
often use um maybe it's for larger scale plants   but let's just leave it at 500 for the sake of 
argument and finally the price of the energy   which is 35 cents here maybe your is cheaper you 
can adjust it again you can make it yourself and   if I hit calculate you'll see that this is what my 
system will be producing I specified a 12 kilowatt   system so this is kind of throughout the year how 
much energy will be produced it looks like we'll   make 18.5 megawatt hours a year and here is the 
LC Coe calculation so for the traditional system   I've got $47,000 total cost which is The Upfront 
plus the maintenance over the years this is how   much energy it'll produce and the lcoe is just 
11 cents per kilowatt hour the profs guy even   with that cheaper upfront price is still 14 cents 
and here's kind of the breakdown as time goes by   by year 12 the Prof sky goes away because it's 
been decommissioned while the main system keeps   going so Prof sky still doesn't quite get there 
but let's see if we could make Prof skite last   for [Music] 16 okay close so I think 17 would do 
it so at 17 years it would break even so basically   what I'm trying to say is that a pav skyp panel 
would have to last 17 years if a traditional panel   lasts 25 for this to actually make sense otherwise 
you're better off just getting traditional panels   yes there's a larger upfront but the lcoe doesn't 
lie and that's kind of how it falls now when we   talk about the tandem panels that would be even 
more expensive that would be in the realm of maybe   double the price of a traditional panel and that 
would have an even tougher time unless they last   significantly longer so are we getting closer yes 
we are Prof skes are kind of on the horizon and   maybe for special use cases where the materials 
degrading and having to be replaced isn't as big   of a deal as the added efficiency maybe we'll 
start seeing that like the next couple of years   and then hopefully they can figure out how to 
make them last 17 years or longer and then we're   in business like I mentioned tubid vin.

You can 
check out the calculator yourself for all future   videos we do a lot of calculations I've never 
found a way to make this all happen but now we're   going to share them all with you on our website 
so come join us be a member there's a free tier   that gives you access to all of our calculators 
going forward and there's a lot more cool stuff   that we're going to be sharing on our website 
so definitely head over to two bit da Vinci   all right thank you so much for watching and you 
thought that was cool check out this video next

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