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Solar Cell Achieves 40% Efficiency
Fysiks Wurks found on the U.S. Department of Energy website news of a breakthrough in solar energy efficiency. From the article: "...with DOE funding, a concentrator solar cell produced by Boeing-Spectrolab has recently achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7 percent, establishing a new milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance." A page linked from Wikipedia's article on solar energy calculates the land area that would need to be covered by solar collectors at 8% efficiency to meet the world's energy needs (using 2003 figures). At 40% efficiency, it looks like a square 265 miles on a side in the American southwest would do it.
yes, a few hundred miles in the american southwest would do it (anyone objecting to using Texas?), but only if the entire world lived in the american southwest. As it is, energy losses due to transportation are quite significant and hinder an all-out world power source plan.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Very nice, but I'd rather see a reduction in cost per watt than an increase in efficiency. It's not like there isn't enough space for for solar cells. Most of the deserts are rather empty. Only if the price per watt drops significantly will we see these things filling up deserts.
A large solar collector would also shade the ground and absorb the heat (energy) that the surrounding ground and air would normally receive. I guess, taking extra heat (energy) from one place, and adding it to lots of others may not be bad...
What about the cost in sending that energy down the wire? Would it be best to build one big-ass solar array? Or would it be better to distribute smaller collectors over a large area, even if the sunlight is not optimal?
> At 40% efficiency, it looks like a square 265 miles on a side in the American southwest would do it.
A use for Israel! At last they can put something positive back into the world!
Not long before solar cars and roof top solar panels =)
At the population density of, say, Manhattan (or downtown Paris, Hong Kong, or Shanghai) you could fit most of the population of the Earth into a square 265 miles on a side. Such a figure doesn't really shed much light on the actual cost of switching to Solar Power. It doesn't even do a good job of helping us better understand how much land we would have to set aside for that sort of switch (in the same way as the 265 mi. x 265 mi. area containing the population of the Earth doesn't really shed much light on how much impact human habitation has on the Earth and how much land area is actually used). It's a ridiculous figure with very little utility.
This is Great news. I've seen Solar Cells evolve from yucky novelties (solar powered fan hats) to calculators that can operate on such little light energy. I thought that was efficient... now it's even better?
I want these on every roof in America.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
Gee, that's about the size of Utah.
Because transmitting electricity long distances is prohibative, why not setup 'energy creation' centers in the tropics, where a variety of transportable energy could be generated and then shipped/pipped to wherever it needs to go. You could go the hydrogen generation route with it's engineering difficulties that have yet to be overcome, or find another more easily transportable, but more energy soaking medium. Regardless, if 40% becomes reality... at the right cost naturally, then the next question is how do you get the energy from point A to point B? Seems to me you have to either bottle it up for transport or have a large breakthrough in supercondctivity. (even then the distances seem prohibative) If these things can be made cheaply and have a good life span on them, then even having them as supplemental power on the roof of your house could be a major win!
Is it just me, or is the DoE site slashdotted?
"it looks like a square 265 miles on a side in the American southwest would do it."
Like 2/3rds of Arizona. Just wait until the eco-freaks figure out what covering that much desert would do the blind desert pup fish. There is no way they would let you cover 70,000 square miles of desert with mirrors.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
So it's a bit unclear what the article means by 40% efficient as the article seems to confuse the concentrator part of the solar cell with the multi-junction part. The concentrator doesn't make the device more efficient at converting solar radiation into electrical power, it just concentrates the light so you don't have to use as large of a device. The idea being that the solar cell material is expensive but the optics are relatively cheap, so you might as well focus as much light on the device as it will absorb and still function.
The multi-junction part comes from the idea that you can, using a solar cell, only extract as much energy from a photon as the size of something called the band gap of the material that the cell is made from. At the same time, a solar cell can only absorb photons with energies higher than the band gap. If the bandgap is small, as it is in silicon, then you can absorb most of the suns rays, but you can only get about 1 electronVolt of energy out of each one no matter how much energy the photon has. Since the bulk of photons emitted by the sun have more than 1 electronVolt of energy Si solar cells waste alot of the energy in sunlight as heat. If you make the solar cell out of a semiconductor with a larger bandgap then you absorb fewer photons (more of the solar spectrum lies below the critical energy for absorption) but you extract more energy from each photon. So, for a solar cell made from one material there is a sweet spot in terms of the bandgap that maximizes the energy extracted. Multi-junction cells try to overcome this by combining multiple devices with different bandgaps so that you can maximize both the total number of photons converted to electricity and the energy extracted from each photon.
I'm all in favour of clean energy, I think it's a laudable goal, but we shouldn't be patting eachother on our backs just yet.
Firstly, these solar cells are no doubt incredibly expensive - any high efficiency ones are. Secondly, they're probably made using rare and/or exotic materiels, making manufacturing in bulk tricky, and thirdly there's likely to be a lot of pollution created in the manufacturing process for by-products et cetera (it's a problem with less efficient cells too, but the more efficient ones are generally more pollutions).
Lastly, there's another issue. What happens when the sun goes behind a cloud? You need to be able to cover the entire slack in an instant, because you NEED a constant power output. That means you NEED enough GAS powerplants to power the whole world too, as they're the only type of power plant you can literally turn the dial and turn up the output.
Me, I'm going to be sitting here hoping that the test fusion plant they're building in France works, because from what I've learnt lately, if it doesn't, we're screwed.
Solar power isn't a total solution, but if this is true with 40% efficiency and if these things can be done economicly then fuck it's a pretty damn good first step.
Screw transmission loss. I want my roof to be solar panels... Screw asphalt shingles.
Seriously. What is the transmission losses of a few meters?
Everybody could be their own power station then. Then it woudl only have to augmented by centralized power plants. Combination of Nuclear, existing hydroeletric, and petrolium plants.. all based on the geographical realities, with decentralized solar generation buildings would help a lot.
Maybe even make hydrogen power practical for automobiles and other devices. (thus reducing the dependance on toxic batteries)
This is pretty kick-ass if it all works out.
I've been recently wrestling with the idea of putting solar panels up myself, but the truth of the matter is that I cannot afford the current RoR's length of time (approx 13-18years), nor can I get enough panels onto the limited rooftop I plan to use to cause a very big dent. A huge increase in efficiency of space, as well as cost/watt, changes these numbers *dramatically.* This is awesome.
- DaftShadow
Hey MichaelSmith,
Here's the link you forgot.
The issue is not one of generation. There is actually plenty of energy production (and more is coming on line with new wind and geo-thermal). Our problem is one of energy production when it is needed. Since solar (and most alternatives) will NEVER be able to produce 24x7 or even 8x7, then you need a way to save the energy. As it is, USA feds has been trying to force more research down the path of hydrogen. But the earliest will be around 2025 ,and that depends on having some MAJOR advancements in cost economics that make this solar cell efficiency games look like child's play. IOW, this route will not be happening.
Do not get me wrong. These solar cells are most likely a good thing. Of course, it depends on how the true cost relative to other methods. But this country needs to quit subsidizing oil and coal as well as have a multi-prong research in energy storage to really make the alternatives happen.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
NIMBY!
How about we put them some place that is already covered. You know like above houses. Kind of like... say... a roof. I don't know how many square miles of the US is rooftops, but I bet if you added it up, you wouldn't need much in the way of non-building covering space for whatever extra power was needed to power the US.
1. Deserts are not empty. They have an ecosystem.
2. There is no reason at all to fill a desert with solar cells, and then transport the energy across to the other side of the planet. Solar cells are installed locally, like on your roof, or in your back yard, on every roof across the planet. Most of the electricity consumed would be as Direct Current right from your rooftop, with an inverter converting for those appliances you still insist on retaining that us AC.
3. For dense city sitatuions with high rises who's energy needs can not be met by rooftops, etc., electricity can be sent via conventional AC lines across the conventional power grid from say no more than 50 miles away. Not the other side of the world.
4. Those who produce an excess of electricity beyond their need, sell it into the grid.
"Lastly, there's another issue. What happens when the sun goes behind a cloud? You need to be able to cover the entire slack in an instant, because you NEED a constant power output. That means you NEED enough GAS powerplants to power the whole world too, as they're the only type of power plant you can literally turn the dial and turn up the output."
And that is what fuel cells are really for. Forget having hydrogen delivered to your home so that you can use a fuel cell as a generator. No, you use photovolic at the home to generate a tank of Hydrogen so that you can convert it back to electricity when you need it. The real promise of fuel cells is for use as a very clean battery.
Solar cells cost a lot of energy to make, so what's the life span on these things? What's left if you subtract the manufactoring costs from the life-time energy generation of these things?
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
That's for the whole world, not just the USA. Put panels on each roof globally and you won't even notice (while gaining much more energy than needed).
I'm not sure if this would work at 40% -- might realistically need to be a bit higher -- but anyway, here's a thought. Energy can be transmitted in the form of microwaves, right? How about we build a ring or spherical grid of energy-collecting satellites around the Earth? They'd be interconnected with each other as well as with the ground... no matter where the Sun was beaming, there'd be enough energy to power the grid. High-frequency radiation is love, /.
They are called Enron, Shell Oil, Xcell Energy, etc. They use centralized power plants and distribute power to other places. The real new approach will be moving back to a true distributed energy generation.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
good news for them... after oil is gone they'll still have couple aces in the sleeve.
There was an article linked to from The Register (but I'm too lazy to search for it right now= where they figured out that tens of tons of earth dust from some hole in Sahara are carried by wind currents all the way over to the Amazon. They said that without that, the rain forest would be a lot less impressive.
Kinda makes one wonder. Take some of the massive solar energy input out (and/or add enough wind turbines around too, while we're at it) and those currents may no longer carry any dust over, or carry it just a few miles into the Atlantic. Well, that one is obvious, but it makes me wonder what else. The Gulf Stream is also powered by the sun, for example, and that's what makes the climate of, say, the Netherlands be not quite the same as that of Siberia.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
For some reason I'd thought that these highly-efficient multi-junction cells made by Spectrolab generally quote peak efficiency statistics as based on the ideal spectrum of incident solar light found in space, i.e. the orbits of the (usually geostationary) communications satellites where these cells are often encountered (hence why Boeing has the interest in Spectrolab). I thought I remembered that when you aactually account for the spectrum of visible light that makes it through the atmosphere, the efficiency goes down quite a bit.
But TFA hints at terrestrial applications, so maybe I'm just pulling this out of thin air, so to speak...
Anybody?
Just imagine if every second house has solar power, even if it was just used to heat hot water, the energy savings would be enormous.
Oh yes of course, the desert is a precious and fragile ecosystem that needs to be protected. It's not just a land of oppressive heat, sand, rock, and thorny vegation - it's home to some very rare species of, umm, cactii and scorpions, that represent, uh, valuable biodiversity that must be protected.
Nature must be sheltered from the influence of evil parasitic humans. It is to be protected for its own sake, and no other justification is necessary.
This kind of attitude has put a halt to multibillion dollar projects that would have benefitted thousands of people, and sometimes entire nations. If it were up to people like you, we'd all be freezing in the dark.
During the day when I'm out my house only drains about 250 Watts (Homebrew PVR + sundries) so a 1M^2 array would provide enough power to run my house + charge a dirty great battery to run my TV+Lights in the evening. Up that to a 2M^2 array and I could probably store enough power to do a roast.
The key for most people will be the initial cost, at current prices it would take over 10year for a solar system to pay for itself, realisticly it need to be 5 years max.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
According to this site, estimated world demand was 13.9 trillion kilowatt-hours in 2001.
13.9 trillion kW/h / 8776 (hours/year) = 1.58TW
This figure is comparable to the statement in the wikipedia that 2001 average world consumption was 1.7TW in 2001. So our sources agree within a reasonable margin.
According to the wikipedia, the energy density from solar energy reaching the surface as a global average is 170 W/m2. At 40.7% efficient, that's 69.2W/m2.
Using the lower figure of 1.58TW calculated above, you'd need 22.8 x 10^9 square meters, or approximately 8800 square miles of solar cells to meet 2001 world demand. (Or "just" 1900 square miles to meet the peak US demand of ~3 trillion kWh in the late 90s). Of course, these areas halve if sited in an area of the US where the solar energy density is 375 W/m2 (4000 square miles for world demand, 860 square miles for US demand).
Neither correspond to the whopping (265x265) 70000 square miles the article summary claims. Sorry kdawson, looks like you're a magnitude out!
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
Lets face it, most people are not going to adopt alternative energy on their own without either incentives or regulations. Rather than support big oil with the massive subsidies they are receiving how bout providing tax incentives and subsidies to contractors and private builders that incorporate solar cells in their projects?
It's only paranoia if your wrong...
If the DOE Assistant Secretary thinks that electricity production has any meaningful impact on oil imports, the DOE is in trouble.
With the possible exception of AK and HI, not much oil is burned for electricity generation in the US.
This advance could be good on many levels, but oil imports isn't one of them.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
How about a solar farm in space? According to this 2001 article: http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology /solar_power_sats_011017-1.html NASA has a project looking at just that called Space Solar Power (SSP). It seems like it could be feasible, and solar cells in space would be able to capture light without concerns over weather then beam it back down to earth using microwaves. According to the article the biggest hurdle is launching the solar farm into space but with an increase in efficiency that means less solar cells and satellites would be needed.
In other news, Slashdot posts become 40% efficient at posting new material, a remarkable increase over former redundancy issues.
A student at The Univ. of California, Santa Barbara just presented research showing the use of multi-junction devices using Gallium Nitride. This is awesome because Nitride materials are very well suited for a HUGE amount of the sun's radiation, and since he managed to perfect a way of sticking several layers of differently absorbing Nitride Materials together in ONE device, we could theoretically see solar cells that absorb the Entire spectrum of the sun's rays in the near future!
u ll-spectrum-solar-cell.html
e /2005/11/28/review07.pdf
Here's some links:
Indium-Gallium-Nitride can be made to absorb the entire spectrum of solar rays:
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/MSD-f
Tunnel Junctions - this is how you stick together many different layers of material, each layer with their own optimal absorption range (in terms of wavelength, aka. color):
http://www.hitachi-cable.co.jp/ICSFiles/afieldfil
(sorry, this is the best I could do, there was no simple paper explaining a tunnel junction. "tunnel" is for electron tunneling...)
In essence, you have different layers that absorb only one range of wavelengths (colors of light), and whatever isn't absorbed goes straight through, and the next layer absorbs another range, etc. etc.
As an aside, did you ever wonder how blue LEDs & lasers finally managed to get working? Nitrides paved the way for emission (and absorption) in a range of visible wavelengths, including blue. This is also why they're great for this application.
Why not just start making it mandatory for every high-rise and large-roof building structure to be covered with a certain percentage of solar cells that power part of the building during the day and feed the rest back into the grid? After all, the concrete and steel aren't doing anything with the sun.
It seems to me that if we had started doing this years ago it may have a) reversed some of our energy problems and b) potentially made solar panels more affordable so I could cover my home's roof with them.
Why would anybody suggest a 256 mile x 256 mile catchment area when you still have to transport the electricity? Make them waterproof and use them as roof tiles! That'll save on electrical cables as well!
have courage
1 / Create a pipeline to transport Hydrogen from your solar powered hydrogen farm
/. !
2 / Make it hydrogen leaks proof, but extremly poorly isolated thermally speaking
3 / coat your pipeline with a low temperature Superconductor, isolate electrically on both sides, cover with thermal protection, plug to Solar Farm electric outlet
4 / Profits ?
Damn, an actual workable business plan on
I'm doomed.
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
I see a bright future for Middle East countries. If i were them i'd be investing now on solar cells before they run out of oil. Imagine the whole arabic peninsule covered by 40 or 50 percent eficient solar cells. I only wish i had a billian euros to invest
When my Karma level reaches 0 I feel in piece with the Universe
Oceans are deserts. Except they have their life underground, and a perfect disguise above.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Wow, I pay them 10 cents once and my energy supply gets increased at a rate of 1 kW/h .... 1 year later I've got 8760 kW at my disposal - that's really cheap energy!
....a SHITLOAD of the Armerican Southwest (assuming United states 48 continental,) Is nothign but desert, where damn-near NOBODY resides. Minus the potential plant population density coming from the gaps from between the solar panels at current efficiencies, wildlife, etc, it'd be a far more managble resource than depending upon logistics, timely deliveries, maintenance costs, etc. Gotta think of it in the long run, even if "long" is as potentially short as a few days. We can survive a few days without our "necessities," how many other species on this planet can say that?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
This is an incremental improvement. This image generated from a presentation by the National Renewable Energy Lab shows that efficiencies of 36% were achieved a couple of years ago. Cost and scale up are more important issues for solar technology.
A decentralized power generating system is good for national security. Imagine that every house had solar generating capacity. There could be a guaranteed minimum power capacity per house. Sure, the system would be degraded in the event of the base supply being knocked out but supply would be enough for critical services that people rely on, heating, cooking, water pumping etc. It may take a long while for the base supply to be re-integrated in the event of a coordinated strike/failure against public utilities.
In Australia a few years ago there was a major disaster in the gas supply system that took a whole season to fix. The entire southern region was without gas for heating and cooking for weeks. Luckily the electricity system was still operational but a simultaneous failure would have resulted in a calamity.
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
Okay,
:) ...and would I have to take them down for a hurricane (which I expect could be engineered to be workable, but $$$).
So I live in South Florida. During a typical sunny day, could i expect to run my A/C if I had a roof of Solar Panels? Expected amp/wattage ranges please. I want to run my meter backwards
~1000 sq ft.
Didn't he posit that the entire world population could fit in a Texas completely covered in housing?
265 miles on a side is about a quarter of NM - perfect!
Good luck with that.
Stick'em on your building. We have one all-electric building with current tech that has a zero bill most months.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Isn't there some sort of way we could just lay some cables across some deserts and bake some big ass solar collectors with lazers orbiting the planet or somthing ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
It takes quite a few hours to build up steam from a cold start and it wears everything out quickly by thermal fatigue if you have a lot of restarts. What does happen is something called spinning reserve where coal is being burned and the turbines are spinning but the generators are not connected. The generators can be attached by a very large clutch and more pulverised coal can be fed in to bring things up quickly - I'm too out of touch to know how quickly now and worked in new plants of an old design. With hydro you just turn on the tap and things happen quickly - thermal needs time (which includes oil and nuclear too for people who forget that nuclear is stream power).
Anyway - the troll way above was doing the "one true energy" thing which you only get from idiots or salesfolk. Just becuase photovoltaics are not a drop in replacement for every base load power source on earth does not make them useless. In remote areas they have proven themselves for decades.
Nearly 70% of the world's capacity for desalination is currently in the Middle East (with 27% in Saudi Arabia), where water is scarce and oil to power the desal plants is plentiful. But even there, it makes up less than 1% of the total water supply! [Nachmani, Amikam. Water Jitters in the Middle East. Studies In Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Jan-March 1997). Page 85.] Unfortunately, that region also has severe waste from corruption, bad equipment, and mutually homicidal neighbors, though the inefficiency is lowest in Israel by far. [Nachmani, at 71]
From studying water law and some related technology a little, it seems to me that massive expansion of desalination capacity is one of the best things any engineer could do for the world right now. There are lots of people suffering from lack of safe drinking water; agriculture is one of the biggest consumers of water, and is subsidized beyond an economically justified capacity for various reasons (in the US, nostalgia, food security, and disproportionate power of agricultural states); legal disputes over water and increasing demand for it are draining aquifers and literally causing rivers to not reach the sea.
About the article itself: how close is this technology to really becoming available? I've heard of a type of "solar tape" that's low efficiency (something like 1%), but cheap and able to be layered onto/into building materials and gadgets. I want a cape made of this stuff!
Revive the Constitution.
Hydrogen conversion has its own inefficiency, so that's out.
Err..... I don't think so!
Of course Electricity -> Hydrogen is not 100% efficient. if it was it would violate the laws of thermodynamics! According to Wikipedia, the efficiency of electrolysis is around 40-50%. Assuming 50%, that means the overall efficiency of this solar panel system, when used to turn the energy into hydrogen for storage purposes, is 20%. That's MUCH MORE than 8%, so it's still a huge leap forward.
And frankly, it doesn't even matter if it would be as low as 15% or 12%. Why? It's free clean energy, that energy would be 100% waste energy radiated off the surface of the earth if it was not harnessed by us. It is much better for the earth to use a 20% efficient energy chain that starts at the sun than an 80% efficient energy chain that starts with oil.
Of course this assumes these panels can be made large-scale without using toxic compounds.
Yeah.
And what about all the buggy whip makers!
Who is thinking of THEM!
I've read the article, and did i read it was achieved trough optics ??
In that case i wonder if it realy counts for 40%
I stil wonder if this is the way to go for large scale on earth.
I mean take a desert take a bunch of cheap mirrors to power a solar driven steam engine
mirrors are verry cheap you know..
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.
Screw the world. Let's worry about our own country first. I'm tired of our country, whether that be its government or its people, pouring money and resources into problems other countries have, when the same issues here in the United States get all but ignored. The saying still applies: "Charity starts at home."
I dont want any dark navy blue colored circles painted in my backyard. ;-)
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
remember that item on /. a few months back about turning turkey offal into oil (Total conversion proces, or other TLA crap).
Basically, if you heat organic matter under an immense pressure, you'll get producs that are very much like raw oil. I think, that when the oil prices rise enough, and the debilitating patents on this tech have been abolished, we'll get mobile oil crackers/refineries, that take in an organic waste source, and convert it on the site to usefull fuel a and fertiliser.
Right now there is a very rich concentration of carbon in our waste streams, maybe even bigger that oil coming out of the ground. If we could convert that into oil we'd have a lot of problems solved: no CO2 burden as it comes from plants not oil deposits, no need for totally new technology (combustion engines may not be the most efficient, but its what we've got now). And lastly, and country with its own carbon rich wastestreams would be a potential oil producer, so no opec jacking up the prices.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
It's easy. All we have to do is research Solar Energy Level 4 and then we can unlock a new technology tree and then...
I was hoping (Geeky) people started using SI units soon... Not something that has 5280 feet in a mile... Not easy to calculate with really. But in a really useful system it's 686 km^2.
>> At 40% efficiency, it looks like a square 265 miles on a side in the American southwest would do it.
Buy windex stock now, that's all I'm saying.
Link to Boeing implies that the cells are GaAs-based. On the figures given above (ie a square solar cell 265 miles on edge) and assuming the following:
GaAs thickness on cell = 100 microns
Density of GaAs=5.32 tons per m3
%Ga in GaAs=48%
a quick back of the envelope calculation indicates that you might need
46445387.5 tons of gallium to generate all the world's power
USGA figures give world 1996 production as 70 tons, and suggest world reserves of 1 million tons at grades of 50ppm in bauxite, although Ga in zinc deposits may also be potentially useful. However, this looks some way short of the 46 million tons required.
Gallium is actually pretty common - average crustal rock has 19ppm Ga, much more than so called "common elements" like lead or copper. Unfortunately we never get large rich deposits of it concentrated in one place, so extraction cost, in terms of money and energy is too big.
Back to the drawing board (at least for global energy supplies..)
Of course, there might be a mistake in my sums...
A.Geologist
All that is left is the invention of the Energon Cube.
I feel like these advancements towards decentralized energy production are the most significant step forward for human advancement since the steam boiler.
Before I part with'em: two pennies weigh ~4.996+/-0.014g, have a zinc core, and the face of Lincoln. You can keep 'em.
265sqm.. / 350 million people (Just the US population + generouse allowance) = .75 Square miles per million people or more exact (0.75714285714285714285714285714286 sq.m. per million)
1 sq. mile * 5280 foot per mile = 27878400 sq feet. 27878400 * 265 =
7,387,776,000 sq feet of solar pannel needed../350 million = 21.10793142857.. or lets say 22 feet. Sounds like my 2200sq foot house if I were to cover it with say a 10x10 100sq foot solar panel it would power my house and then a whole lot more for my family of 2. /that was a little scatterbrained... but get what I am saying. /yeah right 40% efficiancy would be that much power.
There's more to solar power than just the panels, of course, a good lead-acid battery can last a while as long as it isn't abused.
Actually, my Grandfather was a buggy whip salesmen.
After returning from The Great War, WWI, he was disabled (indeed he'd been declared dead & in the morgue at one point - mustard gas.) The job he could get was selling buggy whips, and his territory was the US Midwest & Canada. He was away from home for long stretches of time, and as you can imagine had some pretty amazing tales to tell of traveling to remote ccommunities back when travel was HARD.
However he saw the car taking over and once he'd saved up enough money he did the smart thing: Opened a service station.
Later it went bust in the Great Depression. He then started again, in putting in power lines, then power plants, and eventually became VP of a a large construction firm and responsible for many of the major structures still standing in Kansas City including the Liberty Memorial, Nelson Gallery, and the Starlight Theatre.
The point is, he really was in the buggy whip business and when the new technologies came in he adapted and took advantage of them. Then when the bust came he reinvented himself again and took his skills and when into an entirely new career. Not a new high-tech story, rather from a fella raised in a sod hut in the Oklahoma Territory where buffalo were a constant threat.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
686 km would be a square of ~26 by 26 km. You mean (686 km) = 470,596 km.
I read recently about the push for what they're calling plug-in hybrids. Just a standard hybrid with beefed up battery capacity, and a plug for charging off the grid when it's parked. For short trips, the gasoline/diesel engine never has to run at all.
Obviously you're not going to be able to drive on solar power, even at 40% conversion efficiency (or at 100%, I'd assume), but perhaps with panels on the car, sitting in the lot at work for 8 hours would give you enough to get home. You now have a zero-emission vehicle for your daily commute, one without the shortcomings current electric cars suffer from (limited range, slow refueling).
- Brain.
"Dance like it hurts. Love like you need money. Work when people are watching." - Dogbert.
Next we combine it with the microwave pain ray for a method of turning sunlight into crowd control.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
But am I the only one that thinks this will never be allowed to see the light of day? Commercially, at least.
No pun intended...
Good points in parent post. Here's another...
Of course you'd never want to put all of the collectors in one place...a few well placed munitions or a nuke from some rogue regime and there goes our power. Pretty effective way to incapacitate the nation, or throw the world into chaos if the power was being supplied throughout the world. Ever heard of offsite backup? Same principle. The collectors would have to be spread out in case of attack or natural disaster.
Facts are stubborn things.
We would be generating an amazing amount of electricity in a few years. Solar Panels even if 10% efficient are still valuable even in northern areas....
But the McMansion new home builders would rather give you vaulted three story ceilings and giant windows, rather than a few solar panels...
What are you doing with your septic tank that requires you to haul it to the dump? Aren't you supposed to just use a leaching field?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I don't know if you've ever been to the American Southwest, but it's not exactly sunny every day. At times there is considerable atmospheric dust, sandstorms, rain, etc. So who exactly has the job of dusting 70,000 sq-miles of solar panels, and what do we do when it rains? I know these aren't serious plans, but solar power at BEST is a supplemental source to *reduce* conventional power. Not only that, but consider the environmental impacts. You're looking at reducing net insolation by 40% on 1.2% of the world's land, not to mention destroying the local ecosystem. All that and power demand is expected to double every 20 years or so. Every solution is just another problem.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Ahmadinejad? Is that you?
1) A 100% solar earth IS unlikely, but if 50% of it can be solar without long distance transport issues or terrible efficiency, why aren't we striving for that?!
2) Storing that much juice over night may be somewhat impractical for now, but supercapacitors, flywheel energy storage, and improvements in battery technology or chemical energy storage are all working to make it practical. Even converting excess energy to hydrogen, as inefficient and space-consuming (IOW, COSTLY, boo hoo) as it may be, works, and automatically makes solar production worth-while, for it's other merits. A huge amount of man power is used coming up with new ways to consume the energy we have, I think it's ridiculous that we aren't working harder on keeping a sustainable source and climate to consume it in. The Free Market along with our political community is just too stupid to have any foresight.
3) A solar infrastructure is not mutually exclusive to our existing infrastructure. Redundancy is a no brainer.
Employee: Four pounds of grease ... that comes to ... sixty-three cents.
Homer: Woo-hoo!
Bart: Dad, all that bacon cost twenty-seven dollars.
Homer: Yeah, but your mom paid for that!
Bart: But doesn't she get her money from you?
Homer: And I get my money from grease! What's the problem?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I pretty much just picked a comment here at semi-random to talk about.
.25-.3 of my roof can be obscured. That == instant cut of service.. obviouslly, i'd have to clean my roof more often.. are solar cells safe to walk on and do they stand up to abrasive brooms without degrading the surface quality?
Keep in mind a few things when people are talking about 'solar paneling a roof'..
- Here where I live, we have a ton of pine trees.. they dump a ton of pine needles on my roof. I'd say at peak, almost
Obviously the same would apply to Snow until it melts off (which takes how many hours during the day, of which you're getting far from peak efficiency from your panels with?
When it hits the rainy season, you have similar issues since your typical week is overcast?
- Reflecting the suns heat is desirable in the warm months, but not in the cold months. Currently I count on the sun during the day to help heat my house in the winter. If I panel my house with the same goal of attempting to collect/reflect all that sunlight during the summar to save/run my AC, I also have to run my heater more often because my house doesn't warm up?
- what the TOC on solar panels anyhow? I fully realize that the cost of replacement will go down as demand and technology increase.
I can get 10+ years from my current roof.. how often do solar panels need replacing? keep in mind they will be getting hit by (branchs | snow | heavy rain | leaves/pine needles | occasional base balls | people walking on them to clean them | cleaning chemicals | other forms of harsh weather such as hail and/or debris in hurricanes, etc..). Someone throw me some real-world numbers here?
I'm not trying to be a neigh-sayer, just trying to keep people aware of the every-day issues associated with such things.. i'm far from an expert on solar paneling, but these are some things that 'average joe' will want to know. And lets face it.. if you want it to get wide-spread adaptation, you gotta get the 'average-joe' vote.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
The US is the largest single user of energy on the planet, approx. 40% of the oil and 23% of the coal and gas from the numbers I found, it makes sense to start here.
The savings in no longer propping up corrupt 3rd world and middle eastern governments and in huge oil and gas subsidies could make a program like this pay for itself. It would free up military resources for the war on terror while reducing our intervention into volatile regions in the world. A win-win.
Of course on the down side, it would hurt Venezuela. Something for the Venezuala haters to consider.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Get over it. It is coming....soon every sq foot of new space created will require a proportionate amount square footage of solar panels "somewhere". If not on the roof then it will be someone else's existing roof.
If someone is building a high rise or apartment, office building they will figure out how to fulfill as much of that as possible...if they can't then they pay into a fund that retrofits existing LOW INCOME inner city roof tops with panels and storage equipment. Basically it will become a requirement. And we will be generating electricity from countless millions of solar panels all across this country in 50 years.
Energy solutions in the future will require a broad range of technologies and Solar panels on every available roof top is one of them. Think of our rooftops....like a vast untapped oil field waiting to be drilled....there is huge money to be made for sure that will drive help drive the economy for decades, And help reduce our fossil fuel consumption and green house gas production.
Would not a field of panels cause condensation. Addding the possibility of greenhouse gas reduction from additional biota? As well as a cool place to hunt BEM's?
The actual summary quote was:
That's about 70200 square miles. So it's more like .0002 sq miles per person or 6000 sqft.
I'm impressed you got this precision -- down to 1x10^-24 square inch -- too bad about the accuracy. ;)
But anyway, 6000 sqft per person seems much more reasonable, doesn't it? If I could cover my whole yard with these, and maybe angle them toward the sun, I'd be in business. And that's about .06 hectares, for SI the conversion impaired.
I am not a crackpot.
As to hate directed toward the nation as opposed to its leadership... when the guy actually won an election outright, despite having demonstrated how dangerous he was, I think that may have, in the eyes of many, made the nation as a whole responsible for him. Anyone else remember Get Your War On for 11/8/04?
As for your second paragraph... First, disapproval of the current administration's policies doesn't imply a huge hard-on for the Taliban. One can think that starting a bloody civil war halfway around the world was a bad idea on its own merits (not to mention the blood and treasure we spent and are spending on it) without thinking the dictator in charge was a nice guy. And secondly, I'm not going to believe flim-flam about "but think of how they treat women and gays" for two reasons. (1) The people doing the invading aren't particularly hot on women and gays here; I'm not buying that they've suddenly had their collective consciousness raised. (2) If this had anything to do with actual human rights, we wouldn't be sucking up to Uzbekistan and Pakistan because they roll over when the US asks them to, because they're dictatorships. (Not to mention that if we were really friends of liberty, we wouldn't be trying to overthrow democratically-elected leaders in Latin America like it's 1973 all over again.)
It's a false dichotomy to imply that critics of US policy are insufficiently critical of Iran or North Korea. It's morally bankrupt, and it's a cheap attempt to wriggle out of accountability for the gross incompetence and compulsive lying that the administration has shown, by claiming that so long as we're not as bad as authoritarian dictatorship x, the citizens have nothing to complain about. (For extra points, try using "Clinton was worse!" as a defense as well.)
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
According to the DOE, 2001 energy use was 13,290 billion kWh. Average cost of residential electricity was roughly ten cents per kWh. So the world electric bill was $1.329 trillion, making a lot of assumptions.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Now I'm waiting for 41% efficiency. Then there'll be another Slashdot headline.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I have a different question: if this solar cell was developed with funding from the Department of Energy, does that mean that the technology will be open and available to all to implement? Or is this another one of those schemes where the public pays Company X through the nose to develop a technology, and then pays through the nose to license its own technology back from Company X (Boeing, in this case)?
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The solution is easy! We use cold fusion to buffer. Since there's no steam circuit to heat up, we can have it going very quickly.
And to those who complai about the weather, once we build the space elevator, we can put solar collector in orbit and beam power down to earth!
With all that power, we can finaly build robots to clean our homes, cook our food, even "companion" models!
Cold fusion, solar energy, space elevators, and robo wives! I think I just messed my mylar pants!
Please do not get me started on Tidal Power plants!
They derive energy from the Earth-Moon gravitational system.
This system varies it's energy like a vibrating guitar string.
If you put you finger on it, (extract energy) the vibrating stops.
The lowset state of energy in the Earth-Moon gravitational system is
where the centers of mass of both the Earth and the Moon coincide.
Think about it.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
How long before these Solar Cell's be made into roof tiles that snap together?
Really, roof tiles need to be replaced every 15 - 50 years depending on type or quality. Previous solar cells had a life of, what 25 years? Why not apply this solar material to roof tiles for the collection of energy? You could also run water through it to store hot water for the summer time. The USA has a lot of desert areas that could take advantage from such a product. And in the summer time where A/C energy reaches usage peaks, this would help tremendously.
Cows and grass do that, the cows grow from the grass, so its nearly free, however it isnt very efficient, and how do you get the methane? You do get milk and meat though.
Consider that re-roofing a house with asphalt shingles costs between five and ten thousand dollars. Re-roofing with solar cells would be orders of magnitude higher than that. Yes, you will eventually make your money back, over three years, or five years, or ten years, BUT, you must have available the initial capital costs to make the investment in the first place.
Do you have ten grand sitting in the bank right now? That's ten grand that you didn't have earmarked for other uses, like buying a car, emergency repairs, emergency medical care, vacation funds, etc. If you do, then you can re-roof your house. Do you have more than that? Maybe you can consider putting in solar cells. How many people in this world do you think have the money to make that investment, rather than just barely making enough to pay the bills?
The OP is correct. If the capital cost of installing the solar roof is beyond the reach of normal consumers, it does not matter that they will eventually make their money back. They don't have the cash to make the investment in the first place. If, however, the initial capital cost comes down to something nearer the cost of traditional roofing materials, then you will get people who start to consider it as a viable alternative when their shingles wear out.
Also, electricity costs about 25c/kWh here, once you count in all the distribution charges, etc. Hearsay from another poster says that an 80W panel runs an average of about 5% efficiency over any given year, when you count cloud, winter, haze, and night (in England). To make back that $3/W (or effectively, $3/0.05W), you'd need to generate 12kWh, which would take 240,000 hours, or 10,000 days, or just over 27 years. Not what I'd call a reasonable amount of time.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
I'm a great believer in solar and other renewable sources. I wonder how much of that desert we could already have covered (or roofs, etc.) with the amount of money we spent in Iraq? Even at the more modest off-the-shelf percentages of the current collectors? There's a math problem for one of you fellow geeks. While you're doing that, don't forget that WIND power IS ALREADY ECONOMICALLLY VIABLE (I saw a story this week where the producers of said technology were running at FULL PRODUCTION having trouble KEEPING UP WITH DEMAND. How accessible is this wind tech? As an example I will point out Hancock County near Britt IOWA (http://www.hoopercorp.com/uploads/media/hancock_w ind_farm.pdf)
We keep pissing money right and left into every 'futuristic' technology while overlooking the obvious. My dad's farm overlooks the windmills in those pictures. Until the REA came in, his dad ran the farm off the windmill using generators and a thirty volt DC system (they had a thirty volt vacuum cleaner). My dad is extremely energy conscious...freakishly so, but I can't convince him to install an upgraded wind turbine to his EXISTING TOWER because he's such a miser he figures he'll be dead before he can recoup the initial investment. On a strictly actuarial basis, he's probably correct.. As far as our larger society goes, I wish the government would quit blowing SMOKE up our asses and start actually doing what CAN ALREADY BE DONE.
Enjoy.
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway This is the road to hell
I hereby invite Boeing-Spectrolab to open source this technology and give it to the world.
This would easily have the single greatest positive impact on humanity within my lifetime (born in 1973).
That would remind me a little of the movie "The Saint" and how giving away free energy would change the world.
That should even earn the decision-maker Person of the Year award. And really tick off the investors. But, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
Check out the proposed SuperGrid - superconducting cables cooled by liquid hydrogen, which doubles as an energy storage medium.
The ecological system would be affected by this. If the sun's energy is being converted to electricity it can't do its usual job of heating the planet. Then again, the electricity being used up often involves generation of heat. I wonder if either of these transfers are significant enough to cause a problem for our pretty blue planet.
It's nice to get from 36% to 41%, but this sounds like an expensive technology to manufacture. It's a multilayer IC, with layers for different light wavelengths.
It's described as a "concentrator cell", which usually means "it's so expensive that you have to use mirrors to focus light onto the thing." The previous 36% efficient gallium arsenide cells were also described as "concentrator cells", but in fact, they're just expensive. When installed on satellites, they aren't front-ended by mirrors. The Stanford Solar Car used those cells, and they had something like $250K of cells on one car.
Gallium is just too expensive. It's about $300/Kg. World production is about 70 metric tons annually, or about one boxcar load for the whole world.
The big breakthrough recently in solar cells belongs to Ovshinsky. His company, Energy Conversion Devices, has been selling flexible solar panels for years. Now they've finished a large scale roll to roll machine that grinds those sheets out. Finally, the product is going out the door in quantity and the money is pouring in. Ovshinsky is building three more plants. They're selling photovoltaic roof shingles. 17 watts per shingle. This is a real product you can buy in quantity right now.
Simply put, it is called night.
As long as it is daylight, solar will produce energy. We will still need enough generating capacity to support the entire grid for cloudy days and for night.
The alternate is energy storage. Assuming a 480V battery pile you would need a 33KAmphour battery to provide one megawatt for 16 hours. Either that or one extremly large flywheel. Neither are practical. Other solutions are needed.
Solar energy provides a good solution for daytime peaker needs, but it isn't a complete solution because it doesn't have 100% availability.
Untill we starting thinking through all of the implications of any solution, we will not find a complete solution to the energy problem.
As a side note, 25 years ago, I sat in a technical seminar while in engineering school. It said the same thing this fine article did. Basically they are still talking about the same multijunction cells and solar concentrators they were talking about 25 years ag. Nothing new here...move on!!!
According to the provided Wikipedia link in the article, the world requires 13 terawatts of electricity. With an installation cost of $3 per watt, that would require a 13,000,000,000,000 * $3 or $39,000,000,000,000 ($39 trillion) upfront cost to install. Somehow, I don't see this happening overnight.
The OP apparently did not read the original article, or did not understand it.
The 40% efficiency is achieved through optically concentrating the sunlight onto the solar cell. This new tech is in effect the equivalent of holding a magnifying glass over the solar cell.
This is great for small solar arrays, but the efficiency will not scale up for anything too large, certainly not anything as massive as a square 265 miles to a side, as the optical concentrators will be stealing sunlight from neighboring cells, nullifying the effect.
I think any calculation of energy gain should also factor in the energy loss from lost farm/forest land. Photosynthetic organisms are also quite efficient at converting light to energy. There is already technology to convert plant matter to fuels (ethanol/biodiesel).
How much energy can be produced had the same amount of land be used to plant energy crops?
A solar cell that needs "concentrators" means you spend twice, once for the expensive cell, then again for the mirror to concentrate the light. Then again for motors to rotate the mirror so you don't have this expensive solar cell lying in the shadows.
Now estimate the cost of a mirror, per square meter, plus the cost of keeping it clean, plus the cost of the motors to move the mirror, plus the cost of making everything strong enough to survive for a decade or two.
You're going to end up with a figure of several hundred dollars per square meter. Now a square meter's work of power, once converted to electrical power, is only worth about $30 per year. Which doesnt even pay the interest on the principal.
Hearsay from another poster says that an 80W panel runs an average of about 5% efficiency over any given year, when you count cloud, winter, haze, and night (in England).
I think that hearsay is bullshit. Here in the UK we get approximately 150W of solar energy per square metre, averaged over an an entire year. Including cloud, winter, haze and night. 80W solar panels are typically around 0.7 square metres and 18% efficient, which means that averaged over the year they should produce nearly a quarter of their rated output.
In theory, the decomposing shit in the tank is gravity-fed out through your yard, where it makes the grass grow high and mighty. Of course, if you flush things like q-tips and tampon applicators, it'll plug up the tank, and someone will have to go in there and unplug it, discovering a fascinating smell along the way.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I was just thinking about how cool it would be to go solar. I've got a couple solar powered lights, and I'd love to get to a point where I don't have to be on the grid, or I'm feeding power back into it.
However, while solar power and batteries work for something that's only supposed to be on some of the day, the more we go with solar power, the more we will strain the grid in situations where solar power is low.
For instance, if we have enough solar panels to power the entire world, and enough batteries to power it during the night, obviously, we're not going to be looking as heavily into fission/fusion/etc. But if we do get a disaster, the load on the non-solar systems would be incredible. There would be required brownouts/blackouts. Otherwise, you're aiming for 100%+ utilization for the period until solar power becomes available again. Last time I ran my stuff at 100% utilization for weeks or months at a time, problems started cropping up... And if you normally are running the system at 1-2% utilization, but then switch over to 100% on the backup......
You laugh. But some people are serious about this type of thing. Not necessarily shutting the sun down, but controlling it for other reasons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting.
Think of all the shade that such an array would provide!
If you're in the desert and you had unlimited shade and energy you could do very well. First thing, though, you would maybe want to have a water connection to an ocean and a desalination capability. Now you're on your way.
Of course, shingles with 40% efficiency would be nice.
I'm just sick of hearing criticism and hatred of the current administration interpreted as hate for the nation as a whole. It's a technique I've seen used to deflect criticism of the bozos in charge by moving the focus off of their failings. It is, as it always was, irrelevant.
I made some assumptions based on your use of that argument; sorry if I bit your head off. I sometimes get on a bit of a roll.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
So, what? It is now 40.7% vs 30% (12 years ago). It is obvious from the article that it requires special and expensive solar cells and an optical concentrator and probably some sort of motorized assembly to keep it focused.
Nothing new. It's not one of those cheap 12% solar panels you put on your roof. Not a revolution at all.
I don't how much gets converted to heat overall. But with a well insulated flat roof, even a black one, you can expect less than 2% of the sun's incident energy to actually make it into the building where you have to cool it.
And how long these cells are useful? After how much time they need to be replaced? Depends on irradiation or any other factors?
Achille Talon
Hop!
Does anyone else find it ironic that the most environmentally destructive, oil-selling, war-profiteering president we've ever had is getting credit for a breakthrough in solar power?
once you count the infrastructure costs. I own an off-grid second home which is about 3000ft from the nearest power pole. The cost to extend the power to our house is estimated by PG&E at about $20/ft, so about $60,000 to get to our house, and that is *after* you have negotiated an easement over the neighboring properties. By contrasts, a complete off-grid systems run about $10000/KW, so you can have a nice 3KW system for about $30K, or 1/2 the price, and the 'generation' cost after that is the cost of replacing the lead/acid batteries, which, unfortunately, are still the best storage alternative. Yes, it only works in places where there is a lot of sunlight, and you still need a generator for night and winter months, and it helps a lot to have all florescent lights (which, fortunately has also improved dramatically). The fact of the matter is that once everything is factored in, solar already looks pretty good. If you factor in the cost of things like conquering oil producing states (as well as the cost of maintaining a military large enough to do so at any time), solar is an absolute bargain.
covering our planet with solar cells should reduce global warming, as low frequency infra-red radiation wouldn't be reflected back to the surface.. OTOH, I dont know how much infra-red radiation a solar cell reflects..
I've seen a large number of ideas for something like this and a list of advantages/disadvantages for each, but here's my two cents....
First, use rooftops, where possible. This should include new construction as well as old. There could be three options - owner stores extra power in batteries, owner sells back to the grid, or have a power-company-subsidized grid program. For the third option, the power company can make it up by not having to buy as much power over the grid, by selling excess solar electric power, by not having to construct as many new power plants, by not having to upgrade the grid as often, by having less in the way of power losses, and by not having to buy as much fuel to generate power in the first place. (Power-company-subsidized solar power could also get government incentives, I'm sure)....
Second, someone pointed out that rooftop solar would shadow the roof and reduce AC costs. Yes it would, but I'd add something. The waste heat from the sun could be used for passive solar, as well.... You could run a hot water heater or augment your heat/heat pump in the winter time. Otherwise, in the summer, there would be big savings and in the winter, there might be an actual loss, once you strip away roof heat. By cooling solar panels, the efficiency is actually raised, anyway, IIRC.
Last, there is no silver bullet. We need to commit to getting off of imported fuels and fossil fuels, in general. We should combine wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, hydroelectric, biomass, etc. We should never put our eggs in one basket. Plug-in hybrids that use flex fuels give us at least three ways to power a vehicle for daily commutes and reduce our dependence on one resource. Depending on one resource, including solar energy, can be disasterous. Augmenting the current system with the proposed reduces our dependence, in fact.
If we use a single chunk of land, we don't reduce our dependence on one source for power.... Having large arrays is nice, so long as they're spread out all over the country/world. Rooftop solar should be part of energy independence, as well. It has the added advantage of making power local.
I also wonder why wind farms don't do solar on the ground, in between windmills....
Hmm, on second thought, I'll wait to pop the cork until we see the price tag...
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Is it really more cost effective to divert 70,225 square miles to energy generation when a square mile of land costs $6,402,048,660? The total cost of land to achieve this "in the southwest" would be $449 trillion, many times the entire planet's wealth. Of course you'll just make up for it by paying your landlord more and saying you're better off because Steve Jobless or whoever built a solar panel for you. Then you'll complain about 2% owning 500% of the planet's assets.
The LBL article is dated November 18, 2002 and said "if" [various challenges] it would work.
Any news on that?
If you cover enough land with these solar panels, then they will start absorbing enough energy to off-put the effects of CO2 emissions. We will be on a collision course with global cooling. Then everyone who DOESN'T drive a SUV will be taking a lot of shit and nations will have to sign an agreement to meet a minimum CO2 output or else pay hefty fines.
The blurb suggests that 265 miles square is required. 265^2 is 70,225.
I do dislike those who try to minimise the issue by using (distance) square. The fact is that it is Seventy Thousand square miles, and even one square mile of solar collectors is an immense, probably unachievable, certainly impractical, project at this time.
And that figure is assuming that 40% is achievable IRL.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu/arch/ARCH371-F99/groups /k/solar.html
probably too late in the day for this to get modded up, but it always astonishes me when people pine for the high-tech stuff while all along the ancient art would go a long way to solving the problem. architects and developers who neglect passive solar design principles infuriate me! it just seems so simple...
The consensus among a lot of the architectural and green-building community, as well as a long-term goal of the US Department of Energy, is residential solar. It doesn't take that much roof space to generate enough power for a home, and it is totally viable. The DOE, and their National Renewable Energy Labs have been sponsoring a competition for universities around the country to design, build and compete against each other with 100% solar powered houses. It's called the Solar Decathlon, and it's an incredible event. The last one, in October 2005, drew over, 100,000 people (picture) to the National Mall in Washington, DC.
I'd recommend taking a look. (Full disclosure: I'm on Cornell University's team).
-----
Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
nt
i live in the part of the midwest that just suffered a 6 day power outage due to ice and snow. this after a 6 day outage in july due to high winds. i was talking to my 11 year old child about the fact that if we had solar on our roof, we'd have heat and light, instead of living in a relative's basement until the juice comes back on. i thought the practical window for that was 7 to 12 years down the road. yet here you are doing it in california. info? links? source of cheap / efficient cells?
From reading US Patent 6704607,
"...allows series or parallel interconnection between multiple cells and provides for high thermal conductance to improve cooling the solar cells."
While the PVC has some improvements, cooling the panels seems to help in the collection process along with proper orientation to the sun.