Comment by aurizon

Comment by aurizon 21 hours ago

1 reply

Those sat to ground power sources use gallium arsenide switched FETs = synchronous rectification, avoiding the voltage drop of diodes has been tested on a small scale, the 10GW orbital 35% efficient solar arrays, maybe next week... Solar boilers, end to end, are more efficient than solar cells, but mechanical complexity(leaks, corrosion, worker avarice) made one US plan in the South West non viable. As we sit silicon-perovskite tandem solar cells will top out around 42-45% - unless Schockley is end runned? Ternary -??. A good lecture = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft0VJX0_Td0&t=2s&ab_channel=...

PaulHoule 19 hours ago

Solar thermal as well as solar-chemical systems have the problem of start-up.

PVs do not have any problem starting up, they produce less than full power with less than full illumination but they produce something and once the illumination is full they produce full power immediately.

Many solar thermal power plants are fired with natural gas in the morning to get them spun up to the point where they can take advantage of the solar energy. Without that they'd probably lose a few hours of production.