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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."
Now I can spray this stuff all over my body and never have to replace the batteries in my mp3 player ever again! Also, it could bring a whole new light (so to speak) to sunbathing... Imagine all the pasty white geeks hittin' the beaches once they commericalize this stuff...
I guess this means people who "tag" buildings with this stuff can send out electric bills to the people who's buildings they tag?
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
"It's not a big breakthrough.
...
It could take a decade or more for hybrid solar cells to make it from the laboratory to someone's rooftop system, and much could go wrong along the way, said Robert McConnell, who oversees federal funding of cutting-edge solar research for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
It's always nice to hear of advances in technology like this, but it seems we're still pretty far away from practical use. Just imagine if most of the electricity using world was running on solar power. I hope I live to see the day.
Maybe it could provide enough "umph" to overcome this effect (from the bostic.com list):
l ?x ml=%2Fnews%2F2002%2F02%2F10%2Fwnasa10.xml/ gravity.m ystery// 1/5
http://www.sundaytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtm
Researchers say Pioneer 10, which took the first close-up
pictures of Jupiter before leaving our solar system in 1983, is
being pulled back to the sun by an unknown force. The effect
shows no sign of getting weaker as the spacecraft travels deeper
into space, and scientists are considering the possibility that
the probe has revealed a new force of nature.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/05/21
"It's the same magnitude and the same direction, namely pointed
toward the sun. The force points to the sun in both cases," said
Anderson.
http://physicsweb.org/article/world/12
The motion of these spacecraft is governed by the gravitational
fields of the known bodies in the solar system, and can be
calculated very accurately from general relativity. Anderson's
analysis shows a small but systematic departure from the
expected motion. Indeed, the spacecraft move as if they were
subject to a new, unknown force pointing towards the Sun. This
force imparts the same constant acceleration, ap, of about 10-7
cm s-2 to all three spacecraft, about ten orders of magnitude
less than the free-fall acceleration on Earth. Such a finding,
if it were not explained away by some mundane effect, would be
a major break with accepted physics.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
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.
The cool thing that most people don't know is that this type of technology is going to be everywhere. For example, I'm sure most people have heard of OLEDs (orgainc light emitting diodes, Alan Heeger won the 2000 Nobel prize for this stuff among other things), the newest research is being done on small organic polymers that absorb photons at almost 100% quantum efficiency. What this means is, one day you'll paint your house and the whole thing will be a solar panel, you won't need specialized tiles. This will also be extended to cars, boats, etc. the implications are truly amazing.
Something like this could make us much less dependent on coal or nuclear-based energy sources. And using this w/electric-powered vehicles...hmm.
Sounds bad for the "energy companies".
So, uh, when does the FUD campaign begin? Lobbyists, start your engines...
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Just spray it on your bare computer components and you have an ass-ugly computer with no case AND no power cord!
HEHEHEH sorry but the link just had to be made.
graspee
Now could someone please explain what "free-range" plastic is?
That spray-on hair replacement "substance" of infomercial fame, to cure male-pattern baldness.
Here ya go Not much more info, but a pretty picture of a non-painted solar cell ;-P
I'm studying architecture, and sustainability and enviromental design is starting to be a big thing in buildings. Solar Power is one of the major technologies that will make it all work. The biggest obstacles to widespread use in architecture are price and appearance. Both of these will be overcome, and I imagine that photovoltaics will be integrated into most building materials. Right now they're seperate pieces applied to a building, but I think they'll some how be integrated or sprayed onto more traditional (or at least more traditional looking) building materials, so their existance could be a non-issue, at least from a visual standpoint.
On a larger level, I imagine urban areas becoming communities of buildings, all saturated with PV, generating all sorts of power. The buildings would on average generate more electricity than they need, and just release the extra into the local power grid. Instead of everyone getting their energy from a single provider, production would be distributed through all of the buildings, and energy would flow freely to where it was needed. A lot like the distributed internet systems we're starting to see now. There would most likely need to be some sort of external system for peak useages, and I'm sure heavier industrial buildings can require more energy than their buildings could provide, even with maximum PV use. But the advances in PV, along with the growing popularity of energy conserative design should make the power companies nervous
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
"...It's a solar panel for a sex machine."
D'oh!
You mean this?
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Maybe the guy who built the spray-foam PC in the earlier Slashdot article could coat the whole mess with this stuff too. Add some 802.11b and it'd be completely self contained. A little spray paint, and voila!
Cyber-turd.
Spray-on solar cells
Collect energy for free.
Good-bye fossil fuel.
appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars
Quantum encryption and quantum computing may be just around the corner!
Come on, give it up, that's
Are those things that should be out there, but isn't.
Thing is they could do it with current photoelectric power cells.
Solar power is supposed to help us rely less on oil. However, these new solar cells are made from plastic, which doesn't help our dependency on oil. Also they don't mention how long these solar cells will last. Plastic is degraded by UV radiation and these solar cells might not last nearly as long as the silicon solar cells.
...self-healing chip technology? Think of it. With nano-tech building and arranging molecules, you could boost or repair a memory array. Oh, that technology warms me from the inside.
This is exactly like the "Black Power" described in Larry Niven's "Flatlander" series. A black substance sprayed onto any surface to provide solar collection.
I love it when science fiction leads the way to science fact.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
Imagine the uses, spraying it on electric cars. Even though spray paint and solar energy don't go well together :
Well, the primary problem with solar cells is that it takes more energy to make them than they'll ever be able to harness from the sun. In other words, it takes more fuel to run the crystal furnaces which are used to make them, than they'll ever be able to pay back.
If spray-on solar cells don't have to be fired, that must reduce the energy required to make them. Further, if they're spray-on, they probably won't be so hard once they're set. Hard = brittle. Brittle = breaks during thermal cycling, ie. day/night transitions eventually crack them.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
We can use nuclear power until cheap solar, and hydrogen from solar power, becomes a reality. We can build lotsa nuclear plants to make hydrogen to power pollutant-free hydrogen fuel cell cars.
One of the big culprits of smog is obviosly cars. We need to switch to hydrogen fuel cell cars. However, many people seem to think of hydrogen as an energy source. It isn't. You need electricity to make hydrogen.
Until we have cheap solar, you need to get the electricity from one of our old sources: coal, oil, nuclear, natural gas, etc.
Coal pollutes too much. We'd be overrun with smog if we built many more coal plants for hydrogen cars, much more so than if we used gasoline engines. We don't have enough oil to be energy independant. Natural gas is too expensive and we will run out of it in about 30 years. That leaves us with nuclear. Nuclear power is not as dangerous as people think. Also, Chernobyl-scale meltdowns in U.S. PWR are impossible. The Chernobyl reactor was a crappy commie RBMK reactor with no containment building. Of course we had the TMI reactor problem. However, that killed or injured no one. And, according to the World Health Org, only 31 people were killed in Chernobyl.
Fears of nuclear power are overblown. Radiation is just like any other pollutant. And you need a shyteload of radiation to really harm you. Nuclear power has killed a grand total of 35 people in it's entire exsistence. Coal power has killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 million people in this century, of emphysema, lung cancer, etc, etc.
Little known fact, but according to the Lawrence Livermore Nat'l lab, coal power realeases more radiation than nuclear power. Coal naturally contains some thorium and uranium. When you burn coal, this is realesed into the air. We burn so much fscking coal that we realease around 150 thousand tons of uranium and 350 thousand tons of thorium!!! The study is here. Nuclear power is also cheap. With some new tech, they have gotten the cost of some nuclear power plants below the cost of coal.
There is not mountains of nuclear waste made by our plants. Each plant only uses several tons of uranium a year. That would fit in an area just a few feet square. The total amount of waste ever created for a whole family for their whole lives would fit in a shoebox. If we reprocessed our fuel, it would fit in a pill bottle. Compare that to mountains of highly toxic coal waste with arsenic, cyanide, and other good stuff that just sits on the ground and leaches poisons into the groundwater.
Nuclear waste storage is very good. It's not like they are hauling it around in thin metal barrels like the environmentalists want you to think. No. The waste is transported in thick metal containers that have been tested by being thrown off cliffs, rammed into locomotives, and all sorts of crap. In Yucca mountain, the waste is stored inside these metal casks, which are in turn inside an ultra-thick concrete subterrainean room. Also, the storage place is 2,000 feet above the water table, so you're OK there.
Anyway, this plastic solar thing looks like it could be amazingly cheap and very clean. It would probably be easier for everyone to have these solar cells at their own homes. If Joe Smith put up 3,000 dollars worth of these solar cells, he could power his house for much cheaper than coal or nuclear.
However, you still have the energy storage problem. What happens to the power after dark or when it's cloudy? With this, you have an electrolyzer that takes some of your solar cell power during the daytime and splits it into hydrogen and oxygen. Then at night you recombine these components in a fuel cell to get power.
Home based solar plants are better than centralized ones for a few reasons:
1. Power loss over the lines. You lose over 10% of your electicity in the lines. Plus loss in transformers, etc.
2. Fuel cells are small devices. They are more suited for home use.
3. Independance from power companies (i.e. Enron)
Anyway, I don't think these solar cells will be ready for another 30 years or more. That is just my gut feeling. In the meantime:
1.Replace your incandescent bulbs with compact flourescent!!! The better brands put off a better, more natural light than even incandescent. They use so little electicity and last for so goddamn long that they are cheaper in the longrun.
2. Turn off the lights when you are not in the room!!!! There is no reason to have all the lights on. If you live in a house with you and your spouse, only one or two rooms should have the lights on. If you have your whole house lighted at night, you are really wasting energy.
3. During the daytime, set your hot water heater to "vacation." You don't need it to keep your water continously warm when you are at work. Turn it on when you get home. By dinnertime you will have plenty of hot water.
4. Buy "Energy Star" appliances. These will save you money in the long run.
For more info, go here.
It's pushback.com, San Francisco talk show host Dr. Bill Wattenburg's website. Lots of info on energy conservation and lots of other stuff, coming from someone with a doctorate, a masters, and a B.S., whos worked for Lockheed Missile and Space company, IBM, Lawrence Livermore, and other places. He is a rocket scientist. Listen to what he has to say.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
As for cars, it would be back to Henry Ford's Model-T: Any colour you want as long as it's black.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Imagine the uses, spraying it on electric cars.
The amount of energy required for a car (even a hypothetical "supercar") is orders of magnitude beyond the amount of energy in the sunlight that hits its surface.
Pave your yard with cells and you're starting to approach it.
Or move to a billiard-ball flat planet with no atmosphere.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I can see it now:
Pretty much the same movie as before, but jazzed up a bit.
The big diff: When poor Jilly gets the all-over spray paint makeover, she no longer suffocates.
Not only is she electrocuted, but her body continues to power a flashing neon sign that says simply, "This, 007, is a clue."
This is great stuff, and sprayable solar panels will go a long way where the silicon haven't.
But there are some applications where it just won't be that useful. The energy density of full sunlight is just a bit over one kilowatt per square meter -- and that's the sunlight intensity, multiply it by the conversion efficiency to get the electrical power, then add in cloud filtering, nighttime, and sun angles at other than local noon in the tropics.
It might run your air conditioner in the summer if you have a roof covered with the stuff, but it isn't going to become the sole source of power for electric highway vehicles. (Look at the designs of the solar race cars.)
But it's still cool.
-- Alastair
I can just see it now. Environmentalist fanatics running around cities like 1980s gang members with spray paint cans, spraying grafitti on anything and everything... all in the name of polutionless electricity.
With reflective LCDs, decent demand throttling,
and magnetic RAM, you should be able to make a
competitive lap that runs on it's case paint.
Reaching even deeper, imagine it was running an
SOI/copper self-clocked reversible CPU. The thing
could probably run on hand warmth. (That's
hyperbole.)
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Just in case anybody is wondering, the solar panels available today are neither "clean, renewable energy" nor cost 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--yes, nuclear is clean power, folks. Many solar installations also will never pay for themselves. So basically, today's photovoltaics are in essense expensive batteries. Lots of energy is put into their production, then they're shipped off somewhere else and they give you some of that energy back.
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.
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. (-:
Who the f*ck cares ? You can already buy solar powered calculators. In 2 to 5 years they are going to do something you can already do ?
Every few years there is going to be a big breakthrough in solar. First it was amorphous, now it's polymer. As long as research programs like this are getting 100's of thousands of dollars while the wars the US fights to keep oil supplies stable cost 10's of billions of dollars - don't bet on solar.
Absolute statements are never true
Hey, I already have a solar-powered personal radio and a soloar-powered calculator -- I bought them both quite a few years ago.
I also have a solar-powered battery charger that I use to recharge the NiMh and NiCad batteries I use in some of my other portable electronic items such as my LCD pocket TV and my Walkman.
The future is already here -- you just have to look for it ;-)
My oldest memory of reading about amorphous semiconductor photocells of the future is from the early 70's. They were the brainchild of Stanford Ovshinski, who later invented metal hydride batteries. Good to know amorphous solar cells might finally be taking off.
The implications for quantum computing are staggering!
So not only can the Sacramento Bee not manage to deliver a paper to my apartment in a timely manner, but now thanks to the /. effect I can't even get to their website in a timely manner.
:P
I guess it's time to read the SF Examiner again.
First, I think the spray on cells are a great idea. They could use CFC propellant as a method to improve gain as they are deployed.
.
But I jest.
More seriously, has anyone looked at the potential for global cooling of converting significant amounts of solar energy to mechanical? Sure some of the input to machines is returned to heat, but any movement is solar heat the we'll never get back.
I'm serious.
And let's not forget that Earth Day was organized to fight global cooling . .
-Peter
Remember, Moore's Law doesn't help solar cells, because smaller isn't better.
1)Liberally pepper your post with oversimplified pseudoscientific pablum such as "...And, according to the World Health Org, only 31 people were killed in Chernobyl" thereby craftily distracting your audience's attention away from any actual facts about the true magnitude of the disaster. For instance that annoying little statistic of Thyroid cancer(yes I did specifically pick a site from the WHO as a jab at your laughably out of context quote) incidence increasing by oh, 10 times or so. Or maybe the statement by the Board on Effects of Ionizing Radiation and the International Commission on Radiation Protection that the collective dose of 600,000 person-Sieverts released from Chernobyl to the population of the USSR would correspond to 24,000 additional deaths(from the Federation of American Scientists) in that area?
2)Proclaim your unquestioned infinite knowledge on all things related to the topic at hand: "In Yucca mountain, the waste is stored inside these metal casks, which are in turn inside an ultra-thick concrete subterrainean room. Also, the storage place is 2,000 feet above the water table, so you're OK there." Phew good thing we have people like you to tell us such important things lest we waste millions paying doctors of geology to try to figure out such things.
3)Regurgitate amateurish propaganda supporting your cause which contains self-parodying scare tactics aimed at any opposing viewpoints: "Coal naturally contains some thorium and uranium. When you burn coal, this is realesed into the air. We burn so much fscking coal that we realease around 150 thousand tons of uranium and 350 thousand tons of thorium!!!". It's important to remember that while using this shoe-in of a tactic to attain your +5 that you should ignore all obvious holes in your strawman theory such as the fact that coal has BACKGROUND levels of radiation, and burning it has negligible effect on concentrating this radiation. By Spike hay's logic I could argue that the millions of human bodies incinerated every year in cremation ceremonies increases the radioactive pollution of the atmosphere and soil because of all that Carbon-14 and Potassium-40 released when your body burns. Why it must be thousands of tones total every year!!
4)Finally if all else fails, just make a link like he does to to the nearest nut job you can find whose home page should have the latest instructions on "How to Find Osama bin Laden with guaranteed anonymity" apparently using some whacked out pin number conspiracy theory or some such scheme.
That's all! Your're on your way to karma whore heaven! (p.s. i'm already at 50 so I don't really give a crap about what happens to this post)
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Which is necessary of course... how could solar energy heat a swimming pool in its current form?? :)
No, but over its lifetime, the plant will be able to convert far more energy from chemical to electrical than it took to build the plant.
The problem with classical solar cells is the amount of energy it takes to build (manufacture) them, which is more than it will ever be able to convert from solar to electric during its entire expected lifetime.
In the case of the "new" solar cells, this energy needed for building them will be more reasonabe. However, the electrical energy that is output by the cells would of course come from the sun (as it should...), thus the laws of thermodynamics would still be preserved. Energy cost of building a machine has nothing whatsoever to do with thermodynamics, only operating (using) a machine does.
Now, who's the idiot?
Say no to software patents.
This will be good for student solar car projects, which in a way are paving the way for new age solar cars in the future. They are plagued by the high costs of the solar cells though...
Something I, read somewhere...
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I agree with all your points apart from the bit about nuclear fuel being clean. I don't think anyone can predict what is going to be happening at any point in the world in 50 years' time, or 500, or 5000, or 1,000,000. But if you produce radioactive material, you have an obligation to make SURE that your waste material is not going to harm something down the line, be it human or whatever takes over when we get wiped off the face of the earth. The incredibly long half-life of waste material coming from nuclear reactors makes nuclear energy about the most irresponsible thing we can do to the planet.
Now if you send it (waste) into the sun, I may be interested... But I don't think that's economically feasible.
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).
Minor correction to myself. Grid losses are generally less than 15%, not 5%. IIRC, national average is 8%
No more karma guys, I got big atomic karma replying to an almost identical atomic message before.
I think the reason they used humans was that there were so many of them to begin with, billions and billions. Now, their might be millions of cows, but not the numbers that could provide so much energy (combined with a special form of fusion, of course). And of course, since their tech is all designed to use people, it only makes sense for them to keep going with 'em.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Now the question is why. Btw, the corosion in that tank harming anything at all, and while it did uncover some kind of flaw, there were other safegaurds to prevent anything from leaking out.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
..whatever, please provide a link? I can't spend the time looking into every claim I read on the web.
Regarding solar cell efficiency; you're right about them being inefficient.
takes more energy to produce a solar cell than the cell will ever gather in it's ENTIRE lifetime
Is this a fact? Could you give us a link?
This wouldn't be the Internet if there wasn't at least some dissenting opinion around. (-: This from a Professor Emeritus at Cornell.
Here's a soundless-bite from the abstract in case you think I'm kidding:
You'll be pleased to discover that an awful lot of other stuff you `know' is completely wrong. (-:
For another example: most modern aircraft, notably jetliners and military aircraft don't rely on the Bernoulli effect (you know, the faster-air-lower-pressure-over-wing thing you're taught in science classes at school) to fly. Think about it: if Bernoulli kept aeroplanes in the air, how could you fly one upside down? (-:
Are you interested in a few other foundation-shakers for you knowledge base? There are plenty of them around! (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
There's a pop-hole at the end of the factory, which the plastics product can nip out through for a breath of relatively fresh air, some sunshine, and a bit of a peck and a scratch. Free-range eggs work the same way, the little blighters are always getting out through the mesh fencing because of their streamlined shape.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Someone will find a way. If your driveway does basically nothing all day, would you pay, say, $3000 to have it and your roof sprayed and hooked up to your synchronous inverter, to save you $500 a year in electricity bills?
I think the vandals will start using it when it has storage and spray-on LEDs included. The spray-on LEDs are already done, storage could be an issue. Maybe super-capacitors backing each solar nodule...? It would cause a revolution in the bubble printer ink industry as well. Wouldn't you pay more for ink that went into a photonic frenzy when it got warm or was exposed to light? A bit for self-organisation and you could have blinking ink, or even ripples or marquees...
BTW, the biggest fly in the ointment for T(H)GSB is that everyone will clock on to see if it's working. People are like that. There will be record-breaking hit counts on that day. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
How does the solar energy get to my laptop in the house? All the shiny dust in the world won't power a light bulb unless there's a path from the + to the -.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
It's also possible to do sideways, like this. This 'plane is not being held up by Bernoulli. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing