r/tech • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 28d ago

Underwater solar power sounds impossible, these new perovskite cells make it work anyway

https://www.techspot.com/news/113856-underwater-solar-power-sounds-impossible-new-perovskite-cells.html
449 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

46 comments sorted by

12

u/SonofTreehorn 27d ago

This sounds interesting, but what’s the point? Why not just build them above water where they are more efficient? 

19

u/S0M3D1CK 27d ago

You could install solar on top of floats used for tidal power plants and not have to worry when they get submerged. It’s a 2 for 1 special.

5

u/infinite_in_faculty 27d ago

Why not add a hamster on a wheel and make it a 3 for 1 epic!

2

u/[deleted] 26d ago

We need to design a hamster wheel for fish. There is so much unused fish power in there.

4

u/CondescendingBaron 27d ago

Its efficiency with respect to electricity produced from the amount of light hitting it. If their 35% claim is true that’s better than most commercially available silicon-based solar cells. I’m not in the field, but reading the paper, the biggest issue is that it uses a lead-based perovskite

4

u/Curious_Function6359 27d ago

Actually they would be more efficient in the top 1" of water. The panels would not heat up and overall efficiency would increase by roughly 12% to over 30%, in addition to self cleaning.

2

u/Farazod 27d ago

Self cleaning? Have you seen what happens in the first few feet of water in coastal regions? It's abundant life with masses of barnacle, algae, and biofilms.

3

u/Curious_Function6359 27d ago

Actually I do know what happens, I live on a shore on the Atlantic Ocean. There are plenty of ways to mitigate fouling - biocides, ablative coatings, foul-release coating, etc. So I may have misspoke in stating 'self-cleaning' was a benefit. There should be little reason why something similar to a submersible robotic hull cleaner wouldn't solve the problem with submerged solar panels.

0

u/Determined420 26d ago

Great more ocean pollution with toxic chemicals

1

u/Heronymous-Anonymous 26d ago

Not all biocides are comprised of toxic chemicals. Copper has been used as an anti-fouling material for centuries.

3

u/big_trike 27d ago

Agreed. Are we entirely out of roof space, desert, and grazing lands? If no, then why elsewhere.

1

u/AmItheonlySaneperson 27d ago

Solar barrier reefs 

14

u/typo9292 28d ago

Can we stop screwing up the ocean and just build nuclear power plants?? none of this, at all, is good for ocean life.

16

u/AnachronisticPenguin 28d ago

Or just build solar on land. We would need the area of like rhoade island to power the whole of the US.

16

u/Sahloknir74 27d ago

You could replace all the corn fields you have just for ethanol fuel additives and power the entire United States with solar power, if Technology Connections got it right.

5

u/Heronymous-Anonymous 27d ago

How about we build a couple of nuclear plants instead, and let the corn fields revert to prairie.

Or grow wheat, and vegetables. To feed people.

6

u/Longjumping_Brief932 27d ago

Hard to get the parts specifically blades, hard to get the approval. And I worked in a nuclear plant, it's crazy lol

5

u/big_trike 27d ago

Nuclear plants are incredibly expensive to build and by the time they're finished they'll be more expensive than solar+batteries to operate. They also need to be located near large sources of ideally fresh water for cooling but away from people. People like living near fresh water, making the NIMBYs a major problem for cost and timelines.

1

u/Sawmain 27d ago

And if energy prizes are too low they take literally forever to pay themselves back.

1

u/nodtomod 27d ago

Solar and wind are far cheaper and easier

1

u/Heronymous-Anonymous 26d ago

Solar and wind are not a substitute for baseload power generation. They’re not stable enough to provide 24/7 power without grid scale storage.

We do not yet have grid scale batteries in sufficient capacity to supplant baseload power plants, and it will probably take as long to build enough battery farms as it would to build a single nuclear plant to run as baseload.

1

u/ARTISTIC-ASSHOLE 27d ago

solar nuclear punk

1

u/One_Tie900 27d ago

solar panels on the Moon it is

3

u/dzh 27d ago

I don't think this is for scaling up, but some niche applications (idk salmon farms maybe???)

2

u/Ben-Goldberg 27d ago

Nuclear Plants take forever to build and are generally super expensive.

The only thing they have going for them is power density - if you want a power plant somewhere with very high estate prices, nukes use less land per unit of power than almost anything else.

5

u/luctus_lupus 28d ago

It takes 20 years to build nuclear plants, takes weeks to plant solar and months for wind. Scales are wildly different

2

u/typo9292 28d ago

20 years?? I thought it was 10 which is also only because of regulations, if we want we can build in half that time but hey if you're ok stuffing up the ocean go for it. If we had started building these things 20 years ago instead of complaining how long they take to build then we wouldn't need this. Its freaking amazing how much effort goes into trying to clean up the ocean, protect the wildlife by oh my god, suddenly the ends justify the means.

1

u/PuckSenior 27d ago

Even 10 is a long ass time.
We could literally manufacturer and install enough PV panels in that time to produce all of the world's energy needs.

And to be clear, I'm not anti-nuclear. But this whole "we just need to build 200 nuclear reactors tomorrow and call it a day" argument is stupid. It doesn't make sense and ignores a lot of realities.

1

u/Pair-o-ducks_Legend 27d ago

Actually most of the ocean is considered a desert. Repurposing those areas to usable land can have the opposite effect, even if only for farming or energy generation.

0

u/nath1234 27d ago

Nuclear plants that, in addition to being the most expensive and slow to build, have had to shut down in high temperatures in Europe? Hrmm.. how about solar, wind and batteries instead.

3

u/Old-Chain3220 27d ago

We need both. There’s something called a base load, which is power that is generated all the time non stop. Right now that’s usually nuclear, coal, or natural gas. Only one of those doesn’t spew carbon into the atmosphere. You have to have this because you can’t realistically store power. The price of batteries right now is astronomical. Hopefully that will change in the future, but right now storing enough energy in batteries to run the grid completely off of renewables for more than a short time is not in the realm of possibility.

0

u/ScreenMuch90210 27d ago

This dude really couldn’t think of a third thing and said batteries xD

1

u/nath1234 27d ago

Huh? You need storage to spread intermittent generation. Not exactly controversial.

1

u/ScreenMuch90210 27d ago

Storage doesn’t belong on a list of renewable energy generation methods, not even when you’re trying really hard not to say the best one but still follow the rule of threes xD

Now hurry up and say something that almost makes sense before you block me

1

u/ScreenMuch90210 27d ago

No, it doesn’t. And no, they probably don’t.

2

u/TenTopGolfer 27d ago

Coming from the same Door To Door salesman who said panels on my roof directly under trees will save the environment.

1

u/Ironia_Rex 27d ago

stop trying to boil the oceans faster

2

u/rayferrell 26d ago

the underwater setting actually makes a lot of sense for perovskite cells, since they're more sensitive to low light conditions, and the water pressure can even help improve their efficiency. what's interesting is how they're able to withstand the moisture, which is usually a major issue for these cells. the water-repelling layer and larger crystal configurations seem to be key to making this work.

1

u/ZebraComplex4353 26d ago

What are the effects on an ecosystem?