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New Photovoltaics Made with Titanium Foil
Memorize writes "A company called Daystartech has released a new type of photovoltaic cell which, unlike almost all the cells currently in use, does not silicon. This is based on a thin titanium film. Given the current shortage of solar-grade silicon, and all-time high oil prices, maybe titanium solar panels are here at the right time. The questions are, will they release it as a consumer solar product, and what will be the price per kilowatt hour?"
...cost effective for specialized military, homeland security and commercial applications.
In other words, ridiculously overpriced, and unavailable to the average consumer for the next decade.
Obviously, the marginal price per kilowatt hour is $0. The difference between obtaining 100 kilowatt hours and 101 kilowatt hours is nothing. You would simply have to wait for enough sunlight to hit the solar panel to generate that extra 1 kilowatt hour.
The true cost of investing in solar energy is in the intial cost of manufacturing and setting up the panel.
Thus, the actual cost per kilowatt hour depends on how long you use the solar panel. The longer you use the panel, the cheaper each kilowatt hour becomes.
At http://www.daystartech.com/govrelease.htm:
"DayStar Technologies Unveils LightFoil Photovoltaic Product for Military and Homeland Security Applications"
Ok, photo voltaics for "Homeland Security". What kind of priority is this? Easier to get "funding" this way?
Stephan
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
It's not meant to replace largescale silicon photovoltaic cells. Instead, it's meant for use on UAVs and balloons and stuff. Price doesn't matter here, right?
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
...but people keep missing the point. Photoelectric won't work, won't solve even a small fraction of our power needs, not remotely. The amount of solar energy in watts per square meter at our orbital distance is well known and easily looked up. Also well known and easily looked up are losses due to atmosphere from clear sky to overcast day. And on top of this, the cells are far less than 100% effective.
You can't magically make this change. You can take up the square meters with cells or with mirrors and send the light to fewer cells. It doesn't matter.
We could have been using nuclear fission reactors that even an AOL user could not make malfunction more than thirty years ago, but the public's fascination with hypothetical disasters and poor understanding of physics, biology, and every area of engineering not related to lifting a Coke to their lips is the opening every anti-nuke nutcase has exploited.
To keep linking nuclear power to nuclear weapons is like linking wood burning stoves to witches being burned at the stake. Their lack of basic knowledge on modern nuclear reactor design when the texts are availible at public university and college libraries across the USA combined with so many having (liberal arts) degrees is its own area of the concept of "irony".
Meanwhile, the animal environmentalists can only argue with the alternate energy environmentalists over endangered birds being chopped up in California windmills and we keep burning extremely valuable petrochemicals which would be much more useful in other endeavors while we wait for the unobtanium reactor that only puts out clean energy and bunny farts is developed.
If things keep going the way they have we will eventually reach the point where we don't have the resources to escape Earth and colonize the system where the resources for more energy than we'll ever need short of fantastic sci-fi megaengineering are waiting.
Nice technological advance, but in the end useful mostly for Casio calculators and whatnot.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Good news for putting solar cells on air and spacecraft but not terribly important for ground based solar power. For example, this could be a good time to redesign the solar powered flier, Helios
Well, electrolysis isn't cheap. Why do you think we recycle alumnium? There is probably some other mechanism that they use that is just a few dollars cheaper. Any chem majors who are further along want to back me up or squash me like the petty bug I am?
Sig
Brilliant comment! Practically every activity on this planet is solar powered, but not in the way that tunnel-vision technologists think.
You're neglecting the fact that, unlike nuclear, photovoltaic power generation doesn't have to be central. In fact, you largely eliminate transmission losses if you distribute the panels all over town. That eliminates the one point of failure. You probably don't want to do that with nuclear.