Noah Garcia, Hongyu Chen, Pablo Bribiesca, Mohammed Ali
Our group the Dream Green Team has only one goal in mind. To Make solar energy more economical. To make solar energy more economical a few things can be done. The cost to build solar panels can be decreased, the efficiency can be increased, or the storage of the energy can be more efficient. In the past decade solar panels have been improved greatly, they function with average efficiency and new materials have also decreased the cost to manufacture solar panels greatly. The storage of the energy created by solar panels lacks efficiency and since it is not sunny at all times but energy is needed …show more content…
With the rapid population growth within the past decades, our need for energy not only as a nation but as a planet has grown exponentially. Many Engineers, Environmentalists and Scientists have begun to have an increasing focus on maintaining our energy resources and making sure that our planet remains habitable for the longest span of time possible. Since solar energy relies on a natural resource and doesn’t take away from any other form of energy, it has become one of the most reasonable form of green energy sources to this date. Although Solar Energy may be one of the most efficient form of non-harmful energy sources, it is not as efficient as its alternatives to take the place of the mainstream form of energy production. This paper will highlight how we can make Solar Energy a more viable option for making and storing energy than the current harmful processes like the burning of Coal and Natural Gas …show more content…
Currently, solar panels generally consist of silicon and various conductive materials to transfer the electricity into a home or building. In this concept we can use other materials in addition to silicon as the primary component that absorbs UV light from the Sun's rays. This will increase the efficiency while only increasing the cost by a small margin. The cost to yield ratio for solar panels working in Tandem with silicon is much higher than with only one material. Silicon is used as the base material for the composition of solar panels and only yields about a 26% efficiency at its peak power production while the absolute base for only using one material would yield around 34% efficiency in the entire system [13]. Using two different light absorbing materials like silicon along with another element can increase the energy yield to around 46% [13]. This number is around 176% more efficient than just using silicon based on raw percentage but around 20% more effective based on pure power production