New Solar Power Material Converts 90 Percent of Captured Light into Heat
Solar power is a bit of a misnomer here because most people reading that will assume it implies eventual conversion into electricity or motive power.<p>Electricity is like steak, heat energy is more like hamburger. It's useful but not nearly as useful as electricity, so you're going to need another conversion step (steam turbines are best at this right now) to get to a more usable form of power and that conversion step will have losses (radiation losses, mechanical losses, electrical losses).<p>So 'overall' efficiency is the key, not the efficiency of a single step in the process (they should at a minimum then list their current efficiency next to the previously achieved maximum for that step and how cost effective this new method is).