Friday, 13 March 2009

How high is the energy yield of photovoltaics compared to photosynthesis?

According to wikipedia, plants typically convert around 5% of the energy of the sunlight that hit the leaves into energy usable by the plant. Sugarcane seems to be the best, it converts up to 8% of the energy into actual biomass.



The best solar panels on the market, according to the Independent, convert 21% of energy from sunlight into usable electricity. Experimental prototypes do much better, and there are some that get over 40%. Wikipedia has a nice graph of the most efficient solar cell prototypes.

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