Don’t go running to your local toy store just yet to buy that paint-by-numbers DIY solar cell kit, but it — or something like it — could be on the market some day in the sparkling green future. The US Department of Energy is pitching low cost perovskite solar cells that anyone can make, with the right materials and a cheap paint brush.
Photo via National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Perovskite Solar Cells Vs. Nuclear Energy
The Energy Department’s latest pitch for perovskite solar cells came out just yesterday, in the form of a long article on the website of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
The timing and placement is interesting in terms of publicity. That’s because earlier this week the Energy Department’s main page featured a shout-out of support for the notoriously expensive Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia.
DIY Perovskite Solar Cells: No, Really!
And now for the good news. For those of you new to the topic, perovskite refers to a class of synthetic material that mimics the properties of the naturally occurring mineral perovskite.
Researchers at NREL and elsewhere have become obsessed with exploiting the solar conversion properties of perovskites because they are incredibly cheap, and they can be formulated as an ink that can be literally painted onto a surface.
What’s Next For Nukes?
To be clear, the US Department of Energy is nowhere near losing interest in supporting new nuclear technology. The agency has deep roots in the World War II-era Atomic Energy Commission and it continues to manage the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
Politically speaking, though, the Vogtle project has become such a hot potato that it’s hard to conceive of any further private-sector interest in building another new nuclear facility on that scale, at least not in the US (elsewhere around the world it’s a different story).
Nevertheless, at least one company — Bill Gates’s TerraPower — is soldiering on, with an assist from the Energy Department. We’re guessing that they’re working with an eye on exporting the technology rather than building new nuclear facilities in the US, but that’s just a wild guess.
Though TerraPower’s technology has been associated with the trend toward small, modular nuclear reactors, apparently the company is more interested in Vogtle-scale projects.