bubbagump
01-17-2023, 05:12 AM
A number of people have proposed very thorough answers to this question, but here is a reason and an entertaining example of why it is not even desirable to have 100% efficient conversion of light to electric energy. The reason: For any process to be 100% efficient, it would have to be completely reversible.
The percentage of “loss” in a slightly inefficient system is also the barrier that prevents the back reaction. Some photosynthetic plankton might be a good example of a highly efficient solar energy gathering system. At night, their photosynthetic process runs backwards and some of the energy they harvested during the day escapes, and they glow a little bit.
If 100% efficient solar panels on your house worked this way, they would light up at night. You could stop them from doing that by turning off the circuit breakers, (which is what those simple critters do) but then every electric systems in your house would also go dormant.
When the “sleeping” photoplankton are disturbed at night, say by a passing motorboat’s propwash, they respond by coming out of dormancy, presumably to swim away from the perceived danger. To swim, they need “turn their circuit breaker on again”, and the amount of light they emit suddenly increases until they calm down and return to their resting state.
The percentage of “loss” in a slightly inefficient system is also the barrier that prevents the back reaction. Some photosynthetic plankton might be a good example of a highly efficient solar energy gathering system. At night, their photosynthetic process runs backwards and some of the energy they harvested during the day escapes, and they glow a little bit.
If 100% efficient solar panels on your house worked this way, they would light up at night. You could stop them from doing that by turning off the circuit breakers, (which is what those simple critters do) but then every electric systems in your house would also go dormant.
When the “sleeping” photoplankton are disturbed at night, say by a passing motorboat’s propwash, they respond by coming out of dormancy, presumably to swim away from the perceived danger. To swim, they need “turn their circuit breaker on again”, and the amount of light they emit suddenly increases until they calm down and return to their resting state.