Slashdot Mirror
Cheap Spray-on Plastic Solar Cells Coming
coyote1 writes "The
Sacramento Bee reports about
custom-tailored molecules and spray-on plastic could someday create the next generation of solar cells -- more flexible, more efficient and much less expensive than existing sources of solar power.
Nanotechnology is used to organize the molecules that are sprayed onto a surface."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=58 5&u=/nm/20020328/sc_nm/science_solar_dc_2
Whine:* 2002-03-28 22:53:09 Paint-on solar cells (articles,news) (rejected)
In the context of chemistry and materials, organic refers to a material based on carbon (an element abbreviated as C). Additional elements that are commonly found in organic materials are hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N), oxygen (O), phosphorus (P) and sulfur (S).
So... if the plastic is carbon (or hydrocarbon) based, it's organic. Note that this definition of organic has nothing to do with the one used to refer to naturally grown produce.
Here ya go Not much more info, but a pretty picture of a non-painted solar cell ;-P
However, these new solar cells are made from plastic, which doesn't help our dependency on oil
To power your house for 20 years, you might need 10 pounds of plastic. That is 10 pounds of oil, or roughly a little over a gallon. Compare that to the thousands of gallons you would otherwise use. Just think more critically. Even with all the plastic we use today, it barely makes a dent in oil usage.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
...Just in case anybody is wondering, the solar panels available today are neither "clean, renewable energy" nor cost
...oh, forever. Lead-acid is not the only storage
... efficient in terms of long-run payback. In almost all cases, the energy used to produce today's solar panels is
....greater than will ever be recovered by use within their approximate 10-12 year lifespan. When you add the energy
....and waste cost of inverters, lead-acid storage cells, etc. you end up with a power supply with far worse
.....environmental impact than typical utility-provided power--especially if your local utility is nuclear-
Inverters (and other control electronics) will have a useful live of
mechanism. Some power can be used straight off the cells and not stored at all so only some needs to be stored.
10-12 years is an assumed life which I'm not convinced is correct. Besides once you get to 10 years plus, the
dominant factor is usually going to be whether the return on investment is higher than prevailing interest rates.
....yes, nuclear is clean power, folks.
Well, nuclear power is both clean and cheap, if you ignore the costs further down the line of what to do with the waste and
the decommisioning costs. (Oh and if any maintainence is required on a nuclear plant, it is ***really** expensive, due to
the procedures required. And you have to do something with the old contaminated parts)
Once all of those costs are taken into account, it is questionable whether nuclear power makes any economic sense at all.
(even before factoring in the risks).
Personally I reckon you are Mr Burns from the Simpsons.
.....Many solar installations also will never pay for themselves
I'm not sure I can agree with you. Consider a 60W (small indeed) solar panel array available today for #149. (thats retail price
that anyone can get for a one off small scale panel, so the manufacturing costs must be less than that).
At 8hours per day, say 300 days per year that gives me 8*300*0.06 = 144 KWHrs.
(Yes,this is for a fairly sunny location). 144KWHrs is worth approx #0.05*144 = #7.2.
So thats, 7.2/149= 4.8% return on capital.
Not going to make you instantly rich, but not as uneconomic as many folks would make out.
Don't just listen to the promotional material (propaganda) put out by the nuclear, oil, or environmental
lobbyists. Do the sums for yourself.
(and I could also get 750W for #1399, which gives a 6.4% return [ (750/1399)*(149/60)*4.8 ] which is
pretty good compared to current interest rates. (Although at the end of the period you consider,
you have a solar plant with it's capital value, rather than the original cash capital in the bank)
Basically, nowadays it comes down to a question of whether the return on the initial upfront cost is better invested in the
bank at current interest levels and used to buy electricity produced by other means, or invest the cash in something which
will produce more worth of electricity than the interest on the capital cost.
...Right now, unless you live in a climate with very abundant sunlight and are off the grid due to location, the best
...alternative (electrical) energy sources are wind and possibly some of the new home fuel-cell units just arriving on
...the market. Plastic or other more exotic solar cells will definitely be interesting if they materialize,
...though--especially if they last longer and are easily/cheaply recycled.
Wind is good if you are somewhere windy.
Fuel-Cell units are not a means of *producing* energy. They just let you convert stored (usually) hydrogen into energy.
...But don't forget passive solar!! You don't have to convert it into electricity to make use of the sun's plentiful
...energy. With the right engineering and a suitable location, it is quite possible and inexpensive to use solar for most
...or all your home heating/cooling, cooking, water heating, etc. needs. Look around online; there's some interesting
...ideas out there. Plus-good for geeks who want to beat the system and whatnot. (-:
Indeed, solar water heating (not photovoltaic) , is economically feasible (and has been for a long time) , especially
if you keep the costs down by doing a D-I-Y installation (and don't use silly overpriced vacuum tubes).
Now in terms of economic value: given the fact that prices of PV systems have come down dramatically over the past decades, while electricity has only become more expensive, it is already economical in my country to install PV on homes and other buildings (and the Netherlands is not a particularly sunny country!). It will not make you rich and it takes years to pay for itself, but it will in the end.
And nuclear energy is clean and cheap? Give me a break! I thought we all knew better than that. It sounds like Dick Halliburton Cheney is speaking.
I do agree on the statement that solar heat systems (hot water) are much more economical and pay back for themselves much quicker. And yes, wind turbines work very well too and pay back for themselves (at least in this windy country).
To all those people who think solar cells are efficient and clean: What do you say about the fact that it takes more energy to produce a solar cell than the cell will ever gather in it's ENTIRE lifetime?