Slashdot Mirror
Solar Window Panes
Val42K writes "Now, those windows that allow glare onto your computer screen can be useful. They will provide power to your computer, air conditioning and other useful necessities. Energy conversion rates are 'way more than 50 percent'."
I think winter would be a bigger problem, many places get weeks and even months without significant lighting at some point in the year. The power grids would still have to be able to handle full usage.
-Tim Louden
Do a Google search on solar cell window and you quickly realize that this is an old idea.
Korea's into it.
Oberlin too.
Apparently, Durham as well.
But what's important this time I guess is that it's a woman who "discovered" the idea.
And because women are equal to men, an equal number of discoveries must be credited to women.
Ummm... What? Employees currently are commonly subjected to no sunlight. Electric lights have lead to the creation of rooms within buildings without a need for direct sunlight. Furthermore what do you mean when you say water downstream of dams has no energy left? Dams create energy by harnessing the force of gravity as water moves downhill. There is no magical energy contained within water which dams extract.
British Petroleum (the BP gas stations) has apparenlty dedicated very much to solar energy: bpsolar
A testimonial on that site claims that their system had a 5-year payback; in other words, it cost the same as 60 months' worth of electric bills (anywhere from $6,000 to $18,000).
Just like space tourism, more people will use it once it becomes practical.
----
Step 1> Convert computer glare into useful electricity. Step 2> ??? Step 3> PROFIT!
Well, actually, solar cell technology has been improving steadily over the last several years. There are currently flying spacecraft with 26% efficient cells, 28% cells due to start rolling off the production lines sometime in the next year or two, and experimental designs for cells that are up to 35% efficient.
But you're right - nothing anywhere near 50% (at least AFAIK). And 100% efficient sounds like total BS.
and it does reduce the heat in my 'radio and computer shack' by about 4 degrees during the day. I have 150W of solar and they charge batteries and those power the UPS and 12VDC equipment like radios, netgear switch, and SMC router. When the sun comes up the load comes off of the battery charger and the temperature goes down= do not need at much cooling. It is about 100W/hr of cost savings at full sun.
The other interesting ideas are those of placing the light collecting system between the protective window panes which are required for new buildings anyway (cut deployment costs) and that the research seems to be funded by an end user rather than a utility or generator - which means they have a strong interest in having it commercialised rather than buried.
The claims may not all be met but they are not inherently impossible.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I seriously doubt her claims of possibly being able to reach 100% efficiency out of a solar cell. The current maxium possible efficiency that can be produced is about 30%. "Actual" efficiency is usually closer to 25%. New research into multilayer indium gallium nitride cells could approach a theoretical 70%. (50% for a 2 layer cell") My primary concern here is just how many watts these windows will pump out per dollar, cuz if its much over $6-7 a watt, I wouldn't expect many people to purchase them.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.