An interesting piece in MIT Technology Review today about improving solar efficiency from multicrystalline silicon. Although my eyes almost started to glaze over when I read;

". . . if the technology successfully scales up, Sachs says, it could significantly bring down the cost of solar electricity. Sachs says that today, solar cells cost about $2.10 per watt generated. When manufactured at a commercial scale, the first cells incorporating his new technology will cost $1.65 per watt. Planned improvements will bring down this cost to about $1.30 a watt, he says. To compete with coal, the cost will need to come down to about $1 a watt, something that Sachs predicts can be achieved by 2012 with further improvements in antireflection coatings and other anticipated advances."

Almost never, ever, take anyone at face value who says if I can get a big enough production run, my costs will fall dramatically. What do you think everyone else is doing in the solar industry, cutting production?

There have been no end of false dawns that didn't happen for all sorts of technologies based on this misleading premise that increased production always equals falling output costs. What tends to happen when costs actually do fall is that a major game-changing shift in technology coupled with excess supply tends to make reduced prices possible. Not a massive cash injection which ramps up production of the same technology in the same manufacturing production way as pretty much everyone else.

But I digress. What really caught my attention was the focus of this solar technology's ability to achieve more electron displacement through ridged panels that force photons to bounce several times on the electrode before escaping. This is not in itself startling new - there are several players out there trying to do it. I suggest reading this more concise one-pager on the effectiveness of v-shaped solar cells. The ultimate prize in solar efficiency is trapping photons to extend their extremely short lifetimes, significantly. Last year, French physicists actually did this - building a photon trap that extended the lifespan of a  photon to a seventh of a second.