What already exists

Automatically stored design

Solar energy is all well and good, but if the sun is hiding, then storage would be a good idea. Unfortunately, this has been an expensive affair so far.(Bild: Stadt Hohenems)

New solar cells based on perovskite were recently produced in Japan - with fantastic efficiency. Unfortunately, they are not weatherproof, but research is being carried out, they say. "Krone" science expert Christian Mähr believes that there are more important research goals anyway: a large and inexpensive electricity storage system.  

As I have been following this topic for a while now, I can easily cope with the disappointment that this news from Japan regarding weather resistance brings. I'm used to it, so to speak. There were already reports like this in the 1970s - but then it remained with the conventional silicon cell. What the heck, not so important. In my humble opinion, we don't need any new solar cells. The ones we have are good enough. High efficiencies are an argument when the cells are as expensive as they used to be: somewhere between expensive and unaffordable. They are now so cheap that the costs for inverters, installation, cabling etc. exceed the cost of the cells themselves. But what we need is a large, cheap battery.