- About the Lecture
-
About the Lecture
Researchers are well along in designing a highly efficient, inexpensive solar cell, but the big barrier to the dissemination of solar power in society remains the problem of installation, says Marc Baldo.
As an engineer, Baldo expresses confidence that “we’re going to mow down” the problem of producing a great solar cell and making it cheap. His own lab has developed a unique approach that’s found enthusiastic support from the federal government and others. Unlike conventional solar cells that use a single material such as silicon to perform both functions of absorbing light and converting it into electricity, Baldo’s cell “separates the functions and optimizes both.” His solar concentrator utilizes inexpensive material like glass or plastic onto which a thin film of dye has been painted. Sunlight strikes this surface, and the dye, which can be “tuned” or colored to trap specific wavelengths of light, emits light back to solar cells along the edge of the plate. There are enormous advantages derived from this design: The glass or plastic (considerably cheaper than silicon) catches diffuse light, so there’s no need to track the sun, and it concentrates the sunlight much more efficiently than conventional solar cells.
But solar concentrators alone don’t signal the start of a new solar age. Baldo addresses the considerable uncertainty around the broad deployment of solar power. Installation costs for single homes appear formidably high, perhaps 2/3rd the cost of the entire system. Colossal solar fields that might replace fossil fuel burning plants must ship their energy across vast distances, losing electricity along the way. And right now the national power grid isn’t set up to handle the fluctuations in energy that large-scale intermittent energy sources such as solar or wind present. Clouds are a “big pain” for grid operators, says Baldo.
He believes the best start for solar will be in commercial and industrial installations such as the rooftops of factories, supermarkets or warehouses, sites where there’s no loss moving power around, and where managers are already seeking ways to save on lighting and refrigeration, including smart electronics. His cost-effective concentrators could find their way to such installations in several years.
In addition to solar concentrators, Baldo is researching biological models for making solar cells more efficient: He just received a $19 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study exciton circuitry in plants -- how plants capture light in packets of energy and direct the energy to where it’s needed. Says Baldo, “This exciton is the last, great unexplored territory in solar cells.”Related Videos
-
Next Generation Solar Cells
Tonio Buonassisi
May 5, 2009
-
Nanoscale Engineering for High Performance Solar Cells
Vladimir Bulovic
May 12, 2009
-
The World is Flat
Thomas Friedman
May 16, 2005
-
- About the Speaker
-
About the Speaker
Marc Baldo
Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Marc A. Baldo is a principal investigator in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). His research interests include molecular electronics, electrical and exciton transport in organic materials, energy transfer, metal-organic contacts, heterogeneous integration of biological materials, and novel organic transistors.
Baldo received his B. Eng. (Electrical Engineering) from the University of Sydney in 1995 with first class honors and university medal, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton in 1998 and 2001, respectively. In 2002 he joined MIT as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. - About the Host
-
About the Host
MIT Museum
Cutting-edge technologies, amazing holograms, and the beauty of Harold Edgerton's strobe photography entertain, educate, and enlighten at the MIT Museum. Robotics, underwater exploration, kinetic sculptures, and the variety of interactive programs and historic collections attract visitors and researchers from around the world. This unique museum recently opened the Mark Epstein Innovation Gallery featuring some of the latest work of selected research groups at MIT.
Video Player
Luminescent Solar Concentrators Explained
- Marc Baldo
- May 19, 2009
- Running Time: 1:16:26
