"The polymer solar cell is able to retain 97% of its performance after 2,000 hours in air. By blending small-molecule acceptors into polymeric matrices, the research team improved molecular packing, enhancing both stability and charge transport for “ultra-stable” flexible devices.
It will be interesting to see if & how quickly this can be translated into commercially available solar tech. If this isn’t a final breakthrough for polymer solar, it’s certainly bringing it one step closer.
This is why solar energy will conquer the world, and all the other energy options are dead men walking. It’s already the cheapest energy source in most of the world in 2026, and it will be an order of magnitude cheaper when next-gen solar tech like this comes online.
Another consequence of polymer solar tech? It is vastly easier to manufacture. China will lose a structural advantage there. By the 2030s, poorer parts of the world could be churning this stuff out at a massive scale and for a small cost. A hopeful vision for the future.
There are nearly 9000 hours in a year. Performance after only 2000 isn’t a useful metric. I know there are people who can give better numbers
They mention 100 k hours effective lifetime in the article. 11 years is good, if true.
It’s an important proof of concept. If it can survive 2,000 hours in air, then it may be possible to tweak it so it survives 20,000 in air and 2,000 in rain. Then tweak it again and it survives 200,000 hours. Engineering is iterating on a design, not developing the final product out of the gate.
Solar cell price is now virtually irrelevant because the majority of cost is installation.
For example on a $10k install, if you bought the solar panels yourself you’d pay $2k for the panels.
So even if solar panels were free, it would only save 20%.
Cheaper inverters and batteries would be the real game changers at this point. At least for DIY home solar.
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Title is incorrect, solar has decreased more than an order of magnitude in cost. In fact it’s gone down by more than TWO orders of magnitude. - https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/solar-panel-prices-have-fallen-by-around-20-every-time-global-capacity-doubled
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Title suggests that coming down an order of magnitude is somehow a minimum bar that has to be crossed, but that’s nonsense, no one does that. In the same time span as in the graph linked above, how much do you think the cost of fossil fuels has gone down since 1975?
I think they mean that solar is poised for a reduction in cost.
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It needs to be cheaper/easier to install.
Let me guess, 5-10 years until this it totally viable?
hmmmm…name one plastic polymer that withstands UV from sunlight.
