12-year-old develops new solar cell

[tblaxland]

They claimed to get 'more efficiency' by adding a Fresnel lens to concentrate the light onto the cell... but they made the comparison based on the number of cells, rather than the collector area. I kept thinking that a more valid comparison of efficiency would be one solar cell with the Fresnel lens, versus a bank of cells that occupied the same surface-area as the lens did.

The buildings I work on generally have plenty of roof area for PV panels, if only they were cheap enough. From this point of view, area efficiency is not as big a problem as cost efficiency. That is why products such as this look quite promising:
http://www.prismsolar.com/

Generally speaking, the lens structure is cheaper than a comparable area of PV panel.