Organic solar cells could make solar power economically feasible

[LongTomH]

An article on the Guardian American website details physicist Neil Greenham's work with organic solar cells:

How solar power could become organic - and cheap

Physicist Neil Greenham of Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory likes turning a good idea on its head. His PhD involved researching polymer light emitting diodes, since used for displays in some televisions, MP3 players and mobile phones. But then he joined a research group trying to use similar polymers to generate electricity from light. Now, more than a decade of pioneering work has resulted in an organic solar cell that doesn't use expensive silicon.

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Greenham is now working on a £5m project funded by the Carbon Trust to deliver solar energy at radically lower cost. Led by the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory with The Technology Partnership, there's a huge target: deploy more than one gigawatt of organic PV by 2017 to make carbon dioxide savings of more than 1m tonnes per year.

Professor Greenham is on of the people mentioned in the article, whose work is aimed at making solar cells less expensive - both monetarily and in energy consumed in manufacture. Conventional solar cells are made from silicon, like the microchips used in computers and household products. Silicon is abundant; but, producing silicon of the necessary purity is energy-intensive. The one US silicon smelter is coal-fired.

One line of research has been trying to produce thin-film solar cells using less silicon. Organic plastic solar cells are another promising possibility.

[XemaSab]

1. It's been done.

For free, too. :)