Ever wonder why solar panels are only black or blue? The simple answer, of course, is that the materials used in solar panels, crystalline silicon and cadmium telluride, are blue or black. But new experiments by a team of scientists at the University of California suggest solar panels could be more efficient if they were green.
Get inspiration from plant colors
NathanGabor, an assistant professor at the university of California, got the idea by accident. "I was at an academic conference and I was thinking that physicists can always explain why the sky is blue, and I thought, why are plants green?"
Gabor found that although there were many theories about this problem, none of them proved to be correct.
Generally, if a plant wants to absorb as much solar energy as possible, it's best to absorb green light from the solar spectrum, which has the highest energy in sunlight. Most plants, however, do not absorb green light, but reflect it, because "green light is abundant and unstable in the solar spectrum. Plants don't like green light because it is difficult to transform energy steadily."
The thing about green light, plants reject it, they reflect it off, so they look green.
Solar panels made green
Green plants reflect the green rays of sunlight in the hope of converting energy in a steady manner, much like solar panels, which have trouble converting electricity in a steady manner, thus compromising their efficiency.
It's well known that solar cells tend to work like this: When the molecules in a solar cell absorb sunlight, the energy levels of certain electrons start to rise. The molecule has no control over these energies, so it transfers electrons to different molecules, creating an electric current. If the current is unstable, efficiency is out of the question.
According to Gabor, green light is abundant in the sun's rays, but not welcome for plants or solar cells. The more light a panel absorbs at a particular wavelength, the more the signal fluctuates, making energy absorption less efficient. In short, green light is strong, but unstable, and solar panels must avoid it if they want to improve efficiency.
In the meantime, Gabor and his team believe that the best way to improve the efficiency of solar cells is to absorb two different colors of sunlight, and neither color includes green.
The experimental results
Based on this theory, they designed a solar cell that avoids the green rays of the sun's rays.
In experiments, they found that when the amount of sunlight at different wavelengths varied, the solar cells absorbed more of one type of light and less of the other, resulting in a steady output of energy.
Finally, the battery can effectively adjust its own energy input and output, and improve the efficiency of solar panels. The results were surprisingly consistent with their previous predictions.
The interesting paper, "natural regulation of energy flow in green quantum photocells", has been published in the nanoscience section of the American chemical society journal (ACSJournal).
In my opinion, if these solar cells eventually make it out of the lab to the market, we may soon see solar panels that are not black or blue, but plant-like green.
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