Talk:Solar cell/Archive 6

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Thin film

The article seems overly detailed on this topic, given that there is a separate article focused on it. I propose we move the details to Thin film solar cell. Lfstevens (talk) 03:54, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Lstevens, the entire section Solar_cell#Materials needs a thorough revision. Are you interested in some team work? Pls let me know. - Rfassbind (talk) 07:35, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Research Cell Efficiency Chart

The latest NREL solar cell efficiency chart is now available again from WikiCommons: PVeff(rev140627).jpg. Could someone add this back to the Efficiency section of the Solar Cell article and the Solar Cell Efficiency article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dgwinner (talk • contribs) 18:57, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

done.Mion (talk) 19:32, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
Has somebody an idea how to tell Dgwinner (talk, that he doesn't need to upload a new file every time a revised efficiency chart is published. Instead, the "Upload a new version of this file" option should be used and the linked filename would remain the same...see here - Rfassbind (talk) 07:43, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
The file names contain a revision number on purpose, in the future you could do historic research on how efficiency changed over time. This adding was only problematic because someone deleted the chart for some reason, now its back you only need to change the version number on the image link, like before :) Mion (talk) 21:06, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
You don't seem to understand what "uploading a new version" means. The previous files won't be deleted. They are still available in the history (even better: they are listed altogether in a chronological order). Uploading a "new version" has the advantage that there is no need to amend a wikipedia article that links to the file. Currently different articles link to different files. Do a search on WikiCommons with the keyword PVeff( and see for yourself what pops up and which article links to which version.... - Rfassbind (talk) 21:26, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
I would be nice if commons had version control on images, but i think the uploader is the one that uploads the different named versions, here :[1] is no mention of version control. Mion (talk) 21:36, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
I don't know why you are being so stubborn about this. But never mind. I found the file I was talking about and amended the article accordingly. - Rfassbind (talk) 05:04, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Upcomming revision in 2014

I will start to revise large parts of this article in the next few weeks. Pls help me with your feedback and copy-edit skills whenever you can. Intermediate steps include:

  • Revision of the articles layout and image choice
  • Revision of the "Materials" section ("Cell types and materials")
  • Cutback on the excessively large "Research section" and merge them with "Cell types and materials"
  • Adding section about how a solar cells works
  • Replacing lead section

Plz add your ideas and make constructive suggestions. Older comments on this talk page are rather disencouraging. Thx -- Rfassbind (talk) 15:29, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Endeavour House is one of the most eco-friendly office buildings in Europe as it has 51,000 photovoltaic cells so there should be a section for this type of energy in buildings. Wrightie99 (talk) 13:24, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Dont Cutback on the excessively large "Research section" and merge them with "Cell types and materials", The article has to keep a split between proven commercial/market ready technologies and the technologies that are still in the maturing phase (research). For the rest, good plan, always nice to see an article getting updated in time. Mion (talk) 14:33, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Is there anyone else beside me, who disagrees with Mion about the trimming of the research section (e.g. this→Solar cell#Organic/polymer solar cells)? This section is totally out of proportion, while other important sections are completely missing (see list above). I won't go through all the hassle revising the article, if we can't even agree on the most simplest things. -- Rfassbind (talk) 17:26, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Ah, the all or nothing approach :) well, i think we have a misunderstanding, i thought you where going to destroy the research section, but trimming a text back to 5 lines is perfect. Mion (talk) 21:23, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Hi Wrightie99, the article you mentioned (Endeavour House), may be mentioned in Green building (also named Energy efficient buildings). Also, since the article is about a building with 50,000 photovoltaic cells incorporated into the glass curtain walls, it would be worth mentioning in the article Building-integrated photovoltaics, but not in this generic article about Solar PV cells. Do you agree? Why don't you take a look at the two articles I mentioned and see if you can do something there? Cheers, -- Rfassbind (talk) 17:26, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Grid parity

Grid parity is now in 19 countries [2] 2014 outlook DB. Mion (talk) 19:35, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Merging

Shouldn't this and 'solar panel' be merged? Or are they completely diffrent things? Can someone please tell me McTreevil (talk) 13:43, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

McTreevil, I'd say "no" on a merge in general as solar panel article is about modules containing one or more cells while this article is about the history and technology of the individual cells. There is some cell specific information in the solar panel article that should be here. There's also Photovoltaic system which includes all of the other stuff needed to make the panels usable. Unfortunately, the first two articles suffer from poor sourcing and insertion of POV language by manufactures, sellers, installers, and PV advocates. The photovoltaic system article is in slightly better shape. --Marc Kupper|talk 23:18, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
  • How about merging this article with photovoltaics? "Photovoltaics" is just a long word for solar cells, and the two articles seem to be about the same thing. Geoffrey.landis (talk) 22:25, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Exxon didn't exist

The article gives I think a bit too much prominence to Elliot Berman and Exxon Solar Power Corporation, who were by no means the only player in developing low cost photovoltaics. I would like to challenge this statement (under price reductions), however: "In late 1969, Elliot Berman was investigating organic solar cells, when he joined a team at Exxon SPC who were looking for projects 30 years in the future." (SPC = Solar Power Corporation). Exxon didn't exist in 1969. This timeline [3] dates Exxon Solar Power Corporation to 1975. Geoffrey.landis (talk) 23:24, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

got it-- found a reference, and SPC was funded by ESSO, not Exxon. Geoffrey.landis (talk) 23:38, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Cite (currently 41) URL expired

This url seems to have expired. There's no marks on it for when this was added or last accessed. "Cite book | doi = 10.1115/SED2002-1051| chapter = Net Energy Analysis for Sustainable Energy Production from Silicon Based Solar Cells| title = Solar Energy| pages = 181| year = 2002| last1 = Pearce | first1 = J. | last2 = Lau | first2 = A. | isbn = 0-7918-1689-3|url=http://www.cede.psu.edu/users/alau/ases02_net_energy_pv.pdf" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.170.156.225 (talk) 17:59, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Citations needed

it must be noted that large tracts of this article are entirely uncited. This is particularly true in the highly mathematical and physics-based sections, as well as some of the more commercial and recent-ist claims. Surely, so much of this article was not written merely from memory or guesswork? This could by a symptom of serious problems in the article and needs addressing.

Apart from the lead, which may be considered an exception, particularly uncited sections are:

  1. Solar cell#Applications and implementations
  2. Solar cell#Simple explanation
  3. Solar cell#Photogeneration of charge carriers
  4. Solar cell#Charge carrier separation
  5. Solar cell#The p-n junction
  6. Solar cell#Connection to an external load
  7. Solar cell#Characteristic equation
  8. Solar cell#Open-circuit voltage and short-circuit current
  9. Solar cell#Cell temperature
  10. Solar cell#Series resistance
  11. Solar cell#Shunt resistance
  12. Solar cell#Reverse saturation current
  13. Solar cell#Ideality factor
  14. Solar cell#Quantum efficiency
  15. Solar cell#Maximum-power point
  16. Solar cell#Comparison of energy conversion efficiencies
  17. Solar cell#Light-absorbing materials
  18. Solar cell#Bulk
  19. Solar cell#Crystalline silicon
  20. Solar cell#Thin films
  21. Solar cell#Light-absorbing dyes (DSSC)
  22. Solar cell#Nanocrystalline solar cells
  23. Solar cell#Silicon solar cell device manufacture
  24. Solar cell#Lifespan
  25. Solar cell#Low-cost solar cell
  26. Solar cell#Current research on materials and devices
  27. Solar cell#Metamorphic multijunction solar cell
  28. Solar cell#Polymer processing
  29. Solar cell#Transparent conductors
  30. Solar cell#Infrared solar cells
  31. Solar cell#Validation, certification and manufacturers
  32. Solar cell#United States

That is a huge list of largely uncited sections for one article! --Nigelj (talk) 17:30, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Here is a suggestion for a "Tandem Solar Cells" citation. This needs to be reviewed before inclusion IMO. http://plasticphotovoltaics.org/lc/lc-polymersolarcells/lc-tandem.html 98.125.209.52 (talk) 06:24, 7 March 2017 (UTC)


Along the same lines, the Lifespan section previous cited http://www.toolbase.org/Technology-Inventory/Electrical-Electronics/pv-systems#warranty, which did not support any of the claims made in the Lifespan section. As a result, I removed the irrelevant citation, and added "Citation needed". --64.31.145.99 1 November 2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.31.145.99 (talk) 21:52, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Environmental aspects

Well, I must say that it occurs very rarely that "our" German Wikipedia articles are light years better than their English equivalents. However, this time it is the truth: de:Solarzelle#Umweltschutz. What, in contrary to that, has this English article been turning to over the years from its creation back in 2006? To me it's a PR pamphlet written by solar cell enthusiasts. Or why are the environmental aspects mentioned nowhere? The toxicity of cadmium; the highly problematic residues from SC production; the greenhouse effect provoked by the gases used in the lavation phase; and ... and ... Everything reads as if solar cells are the most eco-friendly thing ever. Well, once in use, YES; but while they're produced, residue accumulates that has to be treated in a special way. Some of them might (assuming!) even produce toxic waste, i. e. relics with long-lasting effects. -andy 77.190.46.74 (talk) 11:52, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree this article could use some discussion of the environmental aspects of PV production, since it is meant to be an eco-friendly technology. However, if my rudimentary German and Google Translate have come anywhere close to a correct translation of the section you link to, the German Wikipedia entry is hardly a paragon of quality. As far as I can tell, it is mainly a FUD piece that attempts to demonize solar cells on the basis of CdTe solar cell processing. These cells make up about 5% of global production and, while I'm no great defender of CdTe, they contain no cadmium metal (as the supposedly high quality German article states without reference). Before you object, let me put that another way: Saying that CdTe solar panels contain cadmium metal is exactly like saying water contains hydrogen gas. There are certainly occupational safety issues -- cadmium metal is involved in the production -- and there may also be toxicity issues in the field, but so far testing has not been able to prove the latter.
Anyway, this is supposed to be a place for discussion of the article, not so much the article's contents, so I will stop there. You're welcome to add something on the environmental aspects of course, but if you plan to translate the German version I strongly suggest you gather a few more references. (I'm not likely to do it myself, at least not anytime soon.)--Squirmymcphee (talk) 17:15, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
I'm less concerned about cadmium than about NF3.
Especially in (resp. above) China alarming levels of NF3 have been measured already. And it will stay up there quite a while. For more info on this highly potential greenhouse gas see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_trifluoride#Greenhouse_gas - sonny22 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.33.68.172 (talk) 11:56, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

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Selenium Cell redirects here.

Although Selenium Cell redirects here, there's not a lot of information about it in the article. Even German Wikipedia has a dedicated article: de:Selenzelle--95.90.180.113 (talk) 20:51, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Selenium cells were usual for light meters in the 1950's and 1960's, until photoresistor CdS took over. I suspect that the physics isn't so well understood, which might be one reason they are not described. In some sense, all solar cells, that is photovoltaic, work pretty much the same way, as p-n junctions. That is easy to see in the case of doped crystalline silicon, but not so easy for amorphous selenium. Also, selenium cells have poor long-term reliability. (Look at old camera meters, and see how many still work.) As well as I know it, it is amorphous selenium on copper, which forms the p-n junction, and a thin gold electrode on top, that lets enough light through, but also conducts well enough. Then there needs to be some contact to the gold, which might be the cause of long-term failure. The efficiency is low, but they worked well enough for photographic light meters for many years. Gah4 (talk) 22:20, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
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