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Solar Power-Cell Breakthrough
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from the Nanomaterials Research Centre at Massey University in New Zealand have developed synthetic dyes that can be used to generate electricity at one tenth of the cost of current silicon-based solar panels. These photosynthesis-like compounds work in low-light conditions and can be cheaply incorporated into window-panes and building materials, thereby turning them into generators of electricity."
The power companies are gonna be pissed.
Technoli
FTFA: "Within two to three years we will have developed a prototype for real applications. "The technology could be sold off already, but it would be a shame to get rid of it now." God DAMN it. I want a product now.
Whinging aside, I found this interesting: "They are also more environmentally friendly because they are made from titanium dioxide - an abundant and non-toxic, white mineral available from New Zealand's black sand." Very funny sentence. But anyway, titanium is one of the most common metallic elements on Earth. The problems with it are that most of it is oxidized, and until recently there has not been a worthwhile electrolytic process for its refinement (I don't know if this is catching on or not.)
I still think it's just stupid not to work on a first-generation product now, and at the same time, work on making the stuff more efficient. We need this tech and we need it TODAY.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is a very interesting collision of physical and organic chemistry. Discoveries like this are why I (and I'm sure many others) find myself (themselves) becoming a() bigger and bigger advocate(s) of solar power every day. There is so much power streaming out of the sun. really, every single power source on the planet (save perhaps nuclear) derives from a solar process. Our beloved/lamented fossil fuels wouldn't exist without the creatures that created those fossils -- creatures who ate plants, ate something that ate plants or were actually plants themselves: plants use the sun.
;)
:)
Even hydroelectric power owes its existence to the sun. Perhaps in very ancient times evaporation didn't require a star close by due to the young, heated surface of the planet. But today's surface temperatures just won't cut it without our friendly star.
Wind power...well, I'm not really saying anything new here. Everyone feel free to cringe at the thought of the inefficiency of grain ethanol!
Basically, if you are an advocate of nuclear power as clean power, well then you should probably turn your fandom towards the biggest nuclear power plant in the solar system...of course, I've personally got no problem with some breeder and a couple dozen pebble-bed reactors - just saying
So what if we are just consuming its leftovers, with a giant picnic like that we ants can be assured of a bountiful feast of crumbs
Which brings me to my point which I had forgotten.
These researchers have taken a hint from nature's own, good-old photosynthesis. So to me, it seems as though we have cut the hydrocarbon out of the solar-food-chain. Rather than waiting a couple million years for plants to convert sunlight into food for themselves and other creatures, die off and then turn into black, sweet, sweet crude; we simply cut out the middle-men/middle-dinosaurs and make direct use of the sun's bounty.
Solar-power is the most elegant power source yet discovered. Now to harness it cleanly.
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
Photosynthesis isn't a compound; it's a process.
We're not worthy of cheap renewable solar power!
So, do you want that Vinyl Siding in Alien Green or Crimson Red?
the article was a bit 'light' on the details. It would be more enlightening if they had revealed even a ray of technical information. One tenth of the cost? For equal power output?
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Gratzel Cells have been around for quite some time. The trick is to get any kind of efficiency out of them. Wake me when I can buy one, I'm getting sick of seeing solar cell venture capitalist hype every two weeks.
-Ryan C.
Okay, I RTFAs, but they're both a little light (sorry!) on detail. What's the efficiency? Are the test cells some kind of thin capsule holding a solution of this stuff or are the dye molecules embedded in something solid? They talk about "1/10 cost of silicon cells" -- is that per generated watt or per unit area or what? (Hopefull the former).
-- Alastair
here are the coral links. site is slashdotted right now so I dont know when it'l get cached.
t ml / Press_Releases/04-04-07.html
http://www.stuff.co.nz.nyud.net:8080/4017784a13.h
http://masseynews.massey.ac.nz.nyud.net:8080/2007
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
XXX#######
Is this the official annual "Solar Power Breakthrough" that is never heard from again?
And just how many articles have there been about new, improved, better than ever before, solar cells? I lose track.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The article doesn't say anything about how long the cell would last. (unless I missed it). Is that one/tenth the cost for the initial investment? What we would want to know is the total cost per watt, over the life span of the product.
Ol' Rick Dawson had a farm EIEIO
More details would have been nice in the article, but this is a huge breakthrough.
The current price of solar cells for households is far too high, even for new houses being built.
When the prices finally come down, we can cut our reliance on dirty combustion generation for power, and basically remove 25% of our greenhouse emissions annually.
If every house in America had these new dyes incorporated into its roof, we would be well off for the future, and might just outlast the running dry of the oil wells.
Just try getting the oil companies to look the other way, though.
It's always confirmation bias!
What's a good analog for this, historically?
Given all the recent developments, it seems like within 10 years we're done with that whole bigass powerplant thing. I can already meet almost all of my energy needs with solar-powered shingles on my roof. This just makes the bar even lower and more no-brainer.
There was an article on some PV cell or other at 1/100 the cost. It was supposed to be cheap enough you could cover building walls with it. What ever happened to that one? Searching for a couple year old post with common keywords is pretty futile.
Ahh.. I see.
I thought that currently porphyrin dye cells had an efficiency of under 6.5%... commercial silicon cells are 14-16%, while multi-junction research lab cells are getting over 40%... (but use some rare/expensive compounds).
What I like is the ability to generate electricity in less-than-ideal light conditions, but the efficiency is a concern.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I want it in Soylent Green, please.
The mistakes that we have made WRT to energy is that we went to just several forms of energy. We have oil for transportation and coal for electricity (save a few countries, the majority is coal). Other than France, NO country is truly dependent on Nukes (America is 2'nd largest user at only 19%). In addition, NONE are dependent on alternative (though Greenland is heading towards geo-thermal in a big way).
So, now, you suggest that we should move PURELY to 1 form of energy? Hopefully, we will learn our lessons and just say No Thanx. I want to see alternative such as solar brought in in a BIG way, but it make good sense to continue using nukes. In addition, we should continue trying to obtain a fusion power. Somewhere down the road, either fission or fusion could be used for transportation to the planets or better other stars.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
(Yeah, it's been mentioned already. The article is light on details.)
What's the longevity of this stuff? Does it fade? What other degradation issues does it face? Silicon-based cells also DO degrage over time,too...at least their output diminishes somewhat. Is the rejuvenation process as easy as slopping on a new coat of paint?
Cool stuff, just curious as to what are the caveats when comparing implementation costs to traditional solar photovoltaics.
I hope that this technology works well outside the laboratory. I mean, the real test is to see if a mass produced product that holds up in real climates for long periods of time.
The typical solar electric system price around the Northeast region of the US costs over $10000.00 If a system producing the same power can be bought for 10% of that and lasts over 5 years, It will definately be worth the investment.
"Within two to three years we will have developed a prototype for real applications. "The technology could be sold off already, but it would be a shame to get rid of it now."
It would be a shame to let a budding company or two develop the technology into something useful in 2 years.
First, Ti in any form is not particulary common, and good ores with an economically valuable Ti percentage are hard to come by (though NZ and AU are were most of it is found). Our current known reserves of good Ti ore are projected to run out by mid-century, but I always buy these projections with a bit of skepticism.
That being said, the amount of Ti used in such a panel is trivial, because the layer's thicknesses are measured in nanometers and microns. Your golf clubs have as much Ti as a football field of such panels. Refining of TiO2 to Ti metal is expensive and energy intensive, and I presume it is necessary in order to make these panels, even though the panels actually use TiO2. The process is probably Ti02 ore -> Ti -> TiCl4 -> TiO2 nanostructures. This is because the TiO2 in the panels needs to be extremely pure, and TiCl4, being a gas, can be distilled. It is then mixed with water under controlled conditions to release HCl and produce the nano-particles/structures necessary for the panels.
This article seems mostly hype to me. TiO2 nanostructures along with various dies are heavily researched around the world, with thousands of published articles. Since the article has no data, I presume all that happened was that these guys beat the previous efficiency record by a whee bit. The problem with these types of cells is that the efficiency still sucks...around 5% vs 20% for a standard silicon-based cell, and 40% for top of the line multi-junction cells (which are enormously expensive and are currently used for things like satellites or the Mars rovers). In a typical silicon cell, the silicon is about half the cost of the final package (not including the inverters, installation and all that jazz, however). Therefore, even if these TiO2 and dies cost ten times less, that won't even reduce the cost by 50%...and then you need several times the acreage to collect the energy you need.
For now, and for at least another decade in the future, silicon is king. Unfortunately, it is very expensive and there is a serious demand crunch right now, driving prices even higher (though many silicon manufacturers are heavily ramping production to solve this).
There's a great typo in the article: "Dr Campbell said that unlike silicone-based solar cells, the dye- based cells are still able to operate in low-light conditions, making them ideal for cloudy climates."
For some reason, the summary didn't contain the typo. I'm disappointed.
Another poster claims a maximum efficiency of 6.5%.
What would be cool is if the waste energy wasn't in heat but just in unabsorbed wavelengths. Then we could cheaply make windows which would be a bit tinted (which we like anyways) and then daisy chain them to produce electricity. Say, in sky scrapers where it's all glass anyways.
It would be very neat if they were cheap enough that it wouldn't really matter where you put it for it to pay for itself.
Last I heard, dye based TiO2 cells were on the order of about 5% efficient. Still, at 1/10th the price it's still cheap.
Deleted
And wonder if living inside our cracker box apartments and looking out through our solar-film-enabled windows will be like being stuck in one of those advertising-film-wrapped bus lines?
I mean, it looks cool, but what will it be like?
Sure, put solar cells on the non-transparent portions of my car, or my roof or walls, but the actual windows?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Weird article. Lessee.
>Dr Campbell said that unlike silicone-based solar cells, the dye- based cells are still able to operate in low-light conditions
I'm unfamiliar with these silicone-based solar cells: are those the ones you tape on Pam Anderson's breasts?
Titanium/titanium dioxide? All the dyes they talk about are organic: porphyrins are heterocyclic aromatics that complex a metal ion in their centers. Not titanium dioxide, the compound: a metallic ion all by itself. Probably iron or magnesium. Ditto hemoglobin.
With those complaints aside, one of the neat things about using naturally produced chromophores is that, well, they're naturally produced, so we could get them in enormous quantities. Similarly, they can be tuned, so you could have ones that absorb different wavelengths of light, with high efficiency, stacked, to extract more energy out of the sunlight than a single-bandgap cell like most photovoltaics.
But essentially they're trying to replicate the behavior of plants, and rather than messing about with dyes in solution, it seems way more productive (although, clearly, harder) to try and get plant cells to do this for us: harness the ion gradients in their chloroplasts, parasitize their electric potential. Most of the machinery is already there. We just need to get the voltage potential outside the cell.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Yeah, it is frankly ridiculous to say something like you will produce power at one tenth the cost of conventional solar regarding a product that has not even been produced at the pilot scale. Of course, looking a wee bit more closely reveals that this figure comes from a press release by reps of the university, who are, the first article reveals, actively engaged in seeking funding for the next phase. So basically that number could be described as an optimistic projection by biased analysts. If one were feeling extremely charitable, that is.
That being said, I don't think optimism, given the information that is there, is completely out of order. The most important factors they claim - photosynthetic-like conversion of sunlight leading to higher efficiency and ability to function in low light, and chemical basis in titanium dioxide, both make sense, are in line with solar research that has been going on for decades, and would unquestionably trend to lower prices and better versatility. But until a commercial product is being produced and some sensible grasp of the scale economies involved can be determined, any cost projections are pie in the sky.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
I most certainly do not have the square footage available on my roof. I would imagine that most people do not either. I helped install solar panels in third world tropical countries. We used cells with an efficiency of 10% or so, covering a flat cement roof that was 200 X 50 feet generated an average of 8 kilowatt hours. It is enough for lights, and a computer or two, but not enough for the typical western lifestyle ( refrigerator, air conditioning, water heater, Tv).
We need to start look at how we are using our power in addition to how its generated.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Chevron or Duke Energy will just buy the patent and shelve it.
Sig cannot be found.
But until a commercial product is being produced and some sensible grasp of the scale economies involved can be determined, any cost projections are pie in the sky.
Also: You need to know how long the technology's panels will last.
At the current interest rates it does you no good to pay only a tenth the cost if it stops working in a thirtieth of the time. Not to mention that having to replace your shingles and siding every couple years because it quit generating adds still more costs - not all of them directly economic.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's amazing how they can produce this dye so cheaply when HP and other still charge me $35 for a 7ml tank.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
Hmmm...according to his published papers this news brief is all wrong. these things get 0.14% conversion efficiency in nearly full sun. Bah.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I thought the moon is ours forever, until the sun goes crazy. According to this at that point the moon and earth will be locked facing each other. The moon will be much further away from the earth, and earth's day will be 47 current days long.
Was there some development I missed? I tried goobling for it.
Man, you really need that seminar!
An earlier poster made an passing reference to Gratzel cells. From the Wikipedia article this does indeed appear to be what TFAs are talking about: dye-sensitized solar cells. The Ti is not part of the porphyrin dye, but is actually as the oxide, TiO2. A photon stimulates an electron to transfer from the dye molecule to the conduction band of the TiO2. (Iodine is also involved as part of the cycle, at least as described above.)
The wiki mentions a Swiss 7% efficient experimental cell (using some exotic dye) that's highly resistant to temperature degradation. Theoretical efficiency can go to 33%. TFA doesn't mention their efficiency, although their "most efficient" claim would indicate higher than 7%, anyway. Question is -- as earlier poster mentions -- how robust they are.
-- Alastair
it seems way more productive (although, clearly, harder) to try and get plant cells to do this for us: harness the ion gradients in their chloroplasts, parasitize their electric potential. Most of the machinery is already there. We just need to get the voltage potential outside the cell.
Time to recycle that old joke: "Why did the $MINORITY bury batteries in his garden? He was trying to grow a power plant!"
Moderating my parent comment Overrated before it has even been up-moderated is an abuse of the moderation system. It is abundantly clear that the moderation was used in this case because someone did not agree with me, and knew that any other negative moderation would be denied in metamoderation.
The individual who did this is an enemy of slashdot, and is actively working to make the system not work - not that it needs much help, since the issues with the "Funny" and "Overrated" modes are a design problem.
The Overrated moderation provides an end-run around the system, and should be abolished.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
These dyes could capture some power from artificial lighting in architecture, interior and on city streets. Only a fraction, but that fraction could make artificial lighting more efficient. Combined with solar collectors by day, with less artificial light needed in darkness, perhaps the entire lighting budget could be slashed.
--
make install -not war
What is the actual %efficiency of these dyes, or a curve (especially in their claimed low light operation)? And how much energy is consumed manufacturing them (and their carrier infrastructure), other than "less than silicon"?
Photosynthesis is maximum 12% efficient - putting the current max ~25% of silicon in perspective. But silicon panels, though relatively expensive (in $ and energy) to manufacture, last so long at full efficiency that there's little energy required to maintain them, for decades, until they're expensive again in recycling/disposal. If these dyes are less stable in punishing sunlight (up to 1KW:m^2), and need costly maintenance, at lower efficiency, silicon might still be the lowest cost solution.
--
make install -not war
Great stuff, hardly news though, it just seems like the same thing as some Swiss lab has been working on for years.i cleID=0002C2E1-17B2-1508-97B283414B7F0000
Publications: http://isic2.epfl.ch/page58678.html
Some press coverage: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa025&art
Products?: http://www.solarisnano.com/solarenergy.php
I've been using the same dual bank of 660 Ahr flooded lead-acid cells in my 24 Volt off-grid system for almost twenty years, and they are still almost as good as new, mostly because I took the time to learn how to properly maintain them.
Most people only think of their battery bank(s) at the time they have to buy and install them. After that it's a case of Out of Sight, Out of Mind. Then, when the batteries inevitably fail prematurely due to improper usage and lack of maintenance, they bitch about how "useless" their batteries are.
Yes, decent batteries cost, as do the ancillaries, such as cabling, but the electronics, including high capacity pure sine wave inverters, are ridiculously inexpensive now. So let's do some very basic math based upon my own system:
2 x 12 x 2V cells = 1,320 Ahr @ C20 rate (two strings of 660 Ahr cells in parallel)
1 x 2 kVA inverter
1 x 750 Watt microwave
If I max out my inverter with a 2 kVA load* that means I'm drawing approximately 84 Amperes from my battery bank. At that rate my batteires will be completely discharged (and effectively destroyed) after 15 hours. Since the most you should ever really discharge your cells is around 50% (or less, ideally), then we halve that time to 7.5 hours at maximum load.
But in this case we're only using the 750 Watt microwave oven. Thus, 750/24 = 31.25. We'll use 32.
1320/32 = 41.25 hours to 100% discharge, or a little over 20 hours at 50%.
The above does not take into account such things as inverter inefficiencies, typically a loss of around 5-10% at most. I also haven't taken into account other loads running concurrently on the inverter, but the microwave is drawing 25% of the inverter's rated capacity, and other devices (lights, televisions, computers) are unlikely to use all the rest.
In such an expensive system as your friends, I'd conclude that the inverter is far larger than my own, say in the 4 kVA range, leaving a great deal more capacity for other uses.
There are a number of reasons why a battery bank cannot support a load: inadequately sized, charged, or damaged cells; undersized cabling; undersized inverter; dodgy connections (loose, corroded, etc)
For a $100,000 system not to be able to support the relatively small load of a microwave oven, I have to conclude that your friend's battery bank is either:
a) Grossly undersized for the loads it's expected to support,
b) Damaged or inadequately conditioned and charged,
c) Incorrectly installed and/or maintained,
d) Imaginary - you made the story up, because you're a silly little troll.
To avoid being assumed to be a "d", try supplying some actual facts next time you post on a subject such as this.
*The inverter will cope with up to 3 kVA for around 20 minutes
They commented: The amount of energy used in a year by humans equals 1 hour of sunlight hitting the earth.
A couple of days of no sun hitting the earth will put us into an Ice Age and thus solve the global warming issue for good!
I swear I saw couple of these posts by slashdot this year. By this time, solar power should cost similar to toilet paper. However, given that we live in the states, anything that is big and heavy and fragile will cost a lot even the material is free. So it really mean a little to nothing to end users.
Titanium Dioxide Dye solar cells have been around for a while now. What is limiting them is the 'speed' at which and electrons are donated from the dye to the conduction band of the titanium dioxide semi-conductor and the re-filling of the electron hole after it's traveled through your circuit or the grid (if that's the case). There are two ways to improve the 'speed'; the first being to use nanotubes of TiO2 which constrains the electrons to specific quantum levels (band states) in the semi-conductor. Then there is less of a chance that the electron will in-advertently run into hole as it migrates out of the solar cell. By the way, it doesn't have to be TiO2 either, but any broad-band semi-conductor. The second way is to improve the dye so it can donate more electrons when a photon hit it. It sounds like this is what these people have done.
Here is site the tells how to make your own TiO2 solar cell using raspberry juice as the dye.
http://mrsec.wisc.edu/Edetc/nanolab/TiO2/
Completely off topic, but I love your sig. I wonder how many here on Slashdot do get it. :)
Am I the only one annoyed by how the links show up within the slashdot blurbs? The words that are contained in the link aren't what the link goes to half the time. What do you think a link for "one tenth of the cost" will go to? WTF. There could just be one or two links at the bottom of the blurb that actually contain text relevant to the target of the link so you know what you might see if you click that link.
simple, fast homepage with your links: http://www.ngumbi.com/
People have objected to electric cars in the past because the fossil fuels used to generate the electricity to charge them cancels out any supposed benefits. But if the car can get all of its power from the sun -- and recharge when it is parked -- then they suddenly *are* cheaper and more environmentally friendly.
These guys already have that technology and are about to start production. http://www.nanosolar.com/
To invent an engine that could be fueled by cheap soda. At 89 cents a liter, its cheaper than water.
Are you certain it doesn't run on wool?
yes... maybe.
:)
but what's the energy efficiency ratio of these new cells?
they failed to mention that in either article...
are they hiding something? surely something like this wouldn't be forgotten, as it's pretty important...
of course... 1/10 th the cost is nothing if you need 10x more panels to get the same amount of energy.
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
Very good question. These are not just dyes--they're fluorescent dyes. They absorb a photon in a certain energy range, which puts and electron in an excited state. After a certain amount of time in that excited state (i.e., the "fluorescence lifetime") the electron drops back down to the ground state and emits a photon of lower energy (the difference in energy between absorbed and emitted photons is called the Stokes shift). Every time an electron jumps to that excited state, it can potentially react with an oxidant and destroy the fluorescence (this is known as "photobleaching." If you mix antioxidants with the dye solution you can decrease the rate of photobleaching--such an antioxidant solution is called an "antifade." There are other ways to reduce photobleaching, such as sticking certain chemical moieties onto the dye.
In short, the stability of the dye system really depends on the dye structure and the presence (or absence) of oxidizing molecules. There are plenty of fluorescent dyes used in lasers, but I don't know how long they last before bleaching. If the dye is in the right solvent (such as DMSO, perhaps) it might take a damn long time to bleach. But the point is that dye is cheap compared to refined silicon, and replacing bleached dye might be as simple as flushing out the old stuff and pouring in a new solution.
In my opinion there are only two reasonable long-term solutions to solar energy production: 1) Imitate photosynthesis using fluorescent dyes. 2) Let the plants do all the hard work of turning photons + water + carbon dioxide into sugar, then figure out how to imitate cellular respiration and turn sugar into energy (specifically, a separation of charge).
This site has tons of information about various fluorescent dyes, though it's geared towards use in molecular biology, not photovoltaics (unless you count the voltage-sensing dyes).
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Moe: This baby can flash-fry a whole buffalo in 45 seconds.
Homer: 45 seconds1?? Aww! But I want it now!
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
This technology was developed years ago. If it's in undergraduate research, it's not cutting-edge. http://mrsec.wisc.edu/Edetc/nanolab/TiO2/index.htm l/
It's a funny thing, people everywhere always have the idea that technology will come along and save us. Some future tech will make it all better....
.....
Bah Humbug. We have everything we need right now.
solar power can be put on new homes. It just isn't.
small and quiet wind generators exist. They could be put in everyones back yard. They just aren't.
We have efficient vehicles. They're just not popular.
Most people live within 10 miles of their work. They could bike. They just don't.
We've had the tech to clean water using plants for 40 years. It's just not used.
We have the tech to build efficient homes. Instead we slap up quick and crappy ones.
Etc.
We have the tech. Tech is not the problem. The only thing holding us back now is the culture and will to do what we can already do.
Don't go looking for a miracle solution. They exist, lazy people just don't use them.
-T
P.S. I hate you all.
I don't think overrated necessarily means that you've been modded too highly, but simply that your current score is too high. So not overrated in the "other's opinion of you is too high i.e. you've already been modded up" but overrated in the sense that your current score is just too high, irrespective of whether it got there through modding, or started that way.
I'm not going to bother to read the comment you're referring to, because obviously it's irrelevant to my argument, but some comments don't deserve to be even 1s or 2s, and a somewhat broad but I think reasonable definition of "overrated" seems to qualify it to remedy those situations, even when the comment isn't trollish or flamebait. Being inane (unless it's a joke etc) or just plain wrong is a sin too.
Cheers though.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
The name of this new legislation will be the PMCA.
I believe it's Chlorophyll-like not photosynthesis-like.
I suspect that power companies would be happy to give money to customers (as opposed to giving it to the energy companies). I suspect that they really don't care who they are buying energy from so long as they make enough to pay for the grid and their profit.
Power companies love to play games like buying up old refrigerators as it is great press. In general, businesses love to do things that support their customers.
The real question in my mind is if the politicians will so stupid as to demand that power companies buy back solar power at the cost that they sell power. The price for buying back energy needs to provide a sufficient differential to pay for the grid and the metering.
This article is yet another "we have a new chemistry and it's gonna be really cheap real soon now" article. Here's the real deal in solar power.
Yesterday, Mark Pinto from Applied Materials gave a talk in EE380 at Stanford on where they're going. Applied Materials is the biggest maker of semiconductor fab equipment, and they've branched out into making fab equipment for display panels and then solar cells.
To get costs down for big flat panel displays is a manufacturing technology problem. Applied Materials went at it in typical semiconductor-fab fashion - scaling up the fab size. They're now making panels of about 5 square meters in area. These are then cut up into 50-inch TV sets.
Once they got that working, they adapted the huge machinery involved to making solar panels. This turned out to work quite well. Since they're adapting a process that produces higher-quality product than a solar cell, they don't have significant quality problems. The solar-cell only makers tend to have spotty quality; he pointed out that with some solar panels, not all the cells are exactly the same color, which indicates trouble in the coating process.
With size and quality working, the next step is volume. They're about to build the first "40 megawatt fab", one that produces in a year enough solar panels to generate 40 megawatts. These are big panels, 2.2m x 2.6m. The price of the electricity produced should be just about even with peak-hour energy costs in Spain, where this is going. Energy payback (when you get more energy out than was required to make the panel) is about two years. That plant comes on line in 2008.
The next step is the "gigawatt fab", a scale-up of that plant. This is part of Applied Materials' "Solar Strategy". Their position is that the technology is here; it's just necessary to get it into volume production, real volume production. Which is what Applied Materials is good at.
Now we're talking about serious production volume. Three or four such plants could build enough solar cells to cover Southern California's air conditioning energy load in five years.
Meanwhile, they have investments in some other technologies, including a "roll to roll" flexible solar cell technology, and some exotic ideas like tinted glass windows that also generate power. But they don't need a breakthrough. The current technology is good enough to be profitable, so they can start making product and shipping it in volume, while research proceeds on lowering the cost further. Pinto pointed out that about half the cost of solar power is now installation, and that needs to move beyond "a guy with a pickup truck".
So that's what's really happening. Big machines in big factories built by big companies cranking out big solar panels in big volume. Which is how you solve big problems.
I also wonder where the titanium fits in. I figure it could be used in the matrix to get the electrons from the porphyrin ring to the electrode, not only as the ion in the ring. If they can use titanium oxide to transmit the electrons, then it would really work as a paint.
Similarly, the problem with using chloroplasts (or mitochondria) for power generation is converting voltage from a proton gradient to actual flowing electrons.
My understanding is that the amount of power that actually reaches the earth's surface from the sun amounts to approximately 150 watts per square meter.
This doesn't even consider the issue of solar cell inefficiency. Even a 100% efficient solar cell would not be capable of producing more power than this.
The question is, is that enough? With one square meter of 100% efficient solar cell providing only enough power to run little more than two household lightbulbs?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Mentioning the numbers I posted above to my kids, I realized that the 22 MJ/year figure must be wrong, even granted that I don't use a lot of electricity. There's 45 MJ in a litre of gas, and I don't think I'm only using the equivalent of half a litre of gas per year.
Checking the numbers, I dropped a factor of 1000--those pesky kW. So in fact I use 21,600 MJ per year, or not quite three times the total insolation available from my roof. Ergo, my intuition was correct, and the GPs claim that "Most houses use less energy than even 6% of the sunlight that falls on their roofs (except perhaps at extreme latitudes)." is not correct.
Oh well. It was a nice fantasy for the few minutes it lasted.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
But the system is already overstressed
No one has ever demonstrated the global environment is "overstressed". We've predicted changes that might make a life a little less comfortable for one of the few species that remains entirely comfortable. But mother nature never put "comfort" on the menu in the first place. Every motile organism that ever lived began life by swimming away from its excrement, until levels of the excrement changed the local environment and then the organism begins to adapt to the nature consequence of its own success. Humans have followed the same game plan up until now that every other species has followed.
Did the cyanobacteria producing oxygen in the Siderian age give a damn about their toxic waste stream? And let's be clear here: oxygen is far more toxic to the environment that carbon-dioxide. The difference, like a bad marriage you can't function without, is that we're plenty acclimated by now to oxygen's toxic effects, except for that little detail that cancer hasn't been beaten (not yet, anyway).
The world's genetic bank proliferates designs during periods of relative stability, then prunes the non-performing accounts during periods of more rapid change. This can be defined as "overstressed", if you wish, by the same logic that every minor downturn in the national economy results in public wailing and gnashing; but equally well, could simply be viewed as the natural order of things. For every GM that puts 30,000 employees on the used car lot, a Google springs up to replace it.
I believe that mother nature is very far from having exhausted her last trick. The downside is that some of those tricks might come at humanity's expense, so we project our own stress about our own comfort onto the planet to make ourselves feel better. While we might seriously compromise our standard of living by destroying organisms that contribute to our quality of life, the planet itself would be quite comfortable spending a hundred million years or two mending its fences, following a well established three-billion-year tradition.
I've got just enough room on my roof to cover my electric use with 15% efficient silicon PV. I'm excluding about 25% of the south side which is shaded. Many of my customers use twice as much electricity as I do, but also have bigger houses. Some of them will be running up against 10 kW limits imposed by some utilities on net metering systems but others may not have enough roof and will need to put a portion of of their systems in the yard if they want full coverage of their electric use. Our systems or OK to split up because they go to AC at the panels.
s -selling-solar.html
If this new material is only 7% efficient, then people may only cover half of their electric use with roof mounted system. The lower cost will only help with a portion of their electric bill.
Because of this possible lack of fit for the new material, I suspect that silicon will hold its own for a while in the residential market. The place to look for an alternative may be in 40% efficient materials combined with moderate concentration of sunlight.
On the other hand, material that is less efficient but also less expensive could get a lot of use on commercial buildings where the interest is to get some extra use out of a roof or parking lot. In this case the purpose of the property is to make money rather than to provide comfort so the aesthetic issues are different and the financial issues may work out well.
You can sign up for silicon now at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
This is what Bucky Fuller wanted to do, but over the whole world. Problems with power loses over long transmision distances seemed a little daunting but it you think about it, the resistance is inversely proportional to the cross-sectional area of the conductor and you need a thick conductor to carry continent-scale power. I've blogged on this recently at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/03/coast-to-coast .html
To summarize the article: this has absolutely NOTHING to do with silicon. The Titanium dioxide doesn't require refining, any more than the titanium dioxide in your fucking toothpaste requires refining. The technology is based on using porphyrin rings -- an easily synthesized class of organic molecules. You might have heard of two of them -- chlorophyll and hemoglobin. It's a "dye", not a "die". No semiconductors involved. TiO_2 and porphyrin dyes. 10% of the price, 50% of the efficiency: 5 times better, at least according to the article.
There is an entire world full of rooftops going to waste. All that is required to turn them into power is for solar panels to become more affordable. Hopefully, this technology provides a candidate for bringing those prices way down.
To review: you are a retard. Please READ THE DAMN ARTICLES in the future. Not that you will, of course, since that would be inconsistent with being a retard. But at least consider it, for the sake of your precariously low intelligence.
There has been some work on this but they are having stability problems: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6434.s -selling-solar.html
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Durable solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
My assumption is that titanium oxide, in almost any form, is going to be a simply superb insulator. I was figuring they used the TiO2 as some sort of substrate or support structure, but the article is very nearly actual-information-free, so it's hard to tell.
It would be a *lot* more convenient if they generated an electron gradient, but much harder to design in the first place. Lazy engineers...
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Well, if you really wanted to push it you could say that Nuclear *is* a result of a star's fusion processes, just not the Sun's. Those heavy metals didn't just make themselves out of hydrogen, you know...
And heck, geothermal comes from both nuclear and compressive gravitational... and that gravitational energy is just itself coming from ancient supernovae, when stars converted their thermal and photonic energy into a whole lot of gravitational potential!
So I guess one could say that it's all stellar, if not actually solar.
Man, I gotta cut down on the Nyquil-Coffee coctails.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
...Depressing :(.
STA, "sustainable technologies australia" have been working on the Gretzel cell photovoltaic cells for 15+ years.
its nothing new, but its not a developed or reliable technology, it still has a LONG way to go.
and the energy equation verses lifespan for manufacture does not work at present, also the reliability is not great.
to get good performance from these calls, also required using some chemicals that are know carcenogen and have been banned in many (most) research organizations.
so far, silicon, is way ahead of this technology, but also silicon cell have had a HUGE amount more R&D funds ploughed into it
these cell try to emulate what a leaf on a tree does, its acutally better simply to grow a plant and turn it into fuel.
nature is better in this respect that our attempts at creating the same technology by using the "gretzel cell" active die photovoltic system.
Finally keep in mind,,
"SOLAR IS NUCLEAR"..
Let us also not forget the number of subdivisions with Home Owners Associations that practically outlaw anything and everything. Most of these rules are considered the same as local and even state laws in some areas!
Plus your bound to get lots of "keep it beautiful" groups who get areas rezoned to prevent panels as it disturbs the "natural beauty" of the area. Don't laugh, you'll never get them in any area designated "historical".
If anything this gives power companies a new avenue to generate power for places that could never put together enough space to generate it themselves.
It may take Federal regulation similar to what was done with Satellite TV service to override HOAs and local zoning rules to allow home owners to put these up should they become affordable and available.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
To be honest it isn't the cost of silicon cells that is the main problem. If that was the case we would have solar heating on every rooftop ( you just need a bit of black paint and a sheet of glass for that ). The main issue with solar power is its unpredictable nature. Even a solar cell that works in dim conditions will not extract more energy than is coming in, and this varies with the number of clouds, fog, time of the year etc... Also, solar cell's obviously don't work during the night. Then there is the missmatch between availability and demand. Most energy is needed during the winter, when there is the least sun... The breakthrough solar power really needs is the ability to store energy with low losses at a low price. Currently the only reasonably efficient way to do this is by pumping water backwards in hydroelectric dams, but then you have to deal with the losses in transporting the electricity through the grid. The suitable sites for hydroelectricity are also limited, and if they were not you would probably end up using just the hydroelectrics and not solar power. No, solar is not, at least not until cheap energy storage solutions are available, suitable for baseline power generation. It is however absolutely ideal for remote and mobile applications where refueling would be difficult and weight is a concern. You can't really put a hydroelectric dam in a comunications sattelite as an example.
....until small University in small city in small country comes up with a better solution.
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
If all humans are gone then we will be put back into the ecosystem as decomposition and everything we contribute (pollution as well as tree planting) will cease to be contributed and the planet will adjust to consider this. To disect these balances and understand them is Science. You seem to fail are reading comprehension. Try reading my post. I'll give you the summary version: cosmic forces are going to kill every thing on the planet at some point. After that, at some point the universe is going to tear itself apart. If you were to jump ahead trillions of years in the future, Earth (if it has not been swallowed by some other celestial body) will be a cold lifeless lump of rock in a universe that would be (from Earth's perspective) completely empty. If you were to look up at the sky, you would see nothing. There would be no heat anywhere except the minuscule amounts of background solar radiation still present.
Nature and universe are not about 'balance'. Only crystal wielding hippies are about balance. Nature and the universe on the other hand are destine to fizzle out. The only thing that can possibly prevent this would be an intelligent species with enough technological prowess to change the very laws of the universe.
Reverse cycle air conditioners are moderately popular heaters over here (Australia)... but the thing that always astonishes me is that the other side of the heat pump is outside!
Almost every house will have a hot water heater of some description, and a refrigerator. That's one device that can probably make use of the 'free' heat when your aircon is being used in cooling mode, and another that can make use of the 'free' cold when it is being used in heating mode.
Then there is the refrigerator itself... in winter it helps keep the house warm, but in summer there is all this heat just being dumped into the house!
I wonder how complicated a system of pipes and valves and a controller to manage it all would be?
That sounds like a good movie. Does he get the girl at the end?
I know you're being sarcastic, but we already have technology that turns matter into energy. It's called nuclear fission. The first generation products have been around for about 50 years.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
You state theory like fact. Are you from Kansas? You also use such a long term that the OP short term outlook is still a perfectly valid theory and not in conflict with your theory at all.
op:five years from now I am going to buy a new car!
you: yeah but in 10,000 years the car will be rusted away"
op: wtf?
you: you heard me, in 10,000 years your new car will be all gone. Unless someone invents a super rust proofer!
I'll take the happy earth without humans theory as an intermediate step. I even propose that the time earth survives without humans will be significantly longer than the time it had to suffer with humans.
JON
You don't have to hook up to the power utility at all.
Nor does your neighbor, or other neighbor, or whole block....
Eventually you will form a co-op or your own small power generating business, or someone else will. It's the way things work.
If you don't want them, you don't have to have them. You also don't have to ask the government for permission to not use power from any particular provider, at least not here in USA/Texas.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
INDUSTRY, not a city block of dwelling humans (though we use way more than we should!) For instance: Consider the now extinct "Arcade". This mythical place had 2 bills. 1. Rent, 2. POWER everything else was nominal compared to those two bills. Power being almost as much as rent. If you took all the neighbors on my block, and totalled their power bill in the sumer it would be about the same as 1 Arcade. An arcade is a MINIMAL power user compared to industries such as STEEL and Aluminum.
Granted the use of grid power would go down. Hopefully though, the E- Co. can adapt by having less generators, and selling back home power to industries that need it
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
As far as 'national' utilities go, we do have unwarranted subsidies of all sorts. If you want to get serious, most, yes MOST of the federal budget is spent on subsidies that quite frankly should not exist, but! and a very big BUT it is here in Texas, the power situation is apparently quite a bit different from that in the rest of the nation.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Why are you worrying about a trillion years in the future? You're entire argument is asinine.
I actually meant good for the humans who survive. or at least good for their ancestors. Yes in 10,000 years the Earth might not be so habitable for modern mammals, and in a million years might not be habitible for anything. I was talking about 200 years after a global warming triggered flood/ecosystem change. If 90% of humanity died off, and our knowledge and technology survived, that might be a good thing down the line: more space per person + smaller nations + better resource usage + a bit more enlightenment than we have now = a better world than what we have now.
We are all just people.
Hippies ... lol.
;)
You're great, I have a question for you. What makes you think that we are not this ball of 'nothingness' right now? What you speak of is something called relative look it up
Maybe compared to trillions of years ago this is nothingness? You know why neither of us can answer this question 100% is because no one really knows.
So as an Easter present pull your head out of your ass...
Ty
Easter Bunny
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
I think it is probably not worth all of the plumbing. You couldn't just use the hot water heater as a heat sink, because hot water usage is uneven. Also, the higher the temperature of the heat sink, the lower the efficiency of the air conditioner. You could make the hot water heater work as a heat pump, which might actually work if the a/c unit is close enough - but you'd have to work out the weird dependency of the water heater on the air conditioner... you'd only be able to efficiently heat water when the a/c was running. You could certainly run the cold water inlet through a heat exchanger, but I doubt that it would be worth the extra cost of the heat exchanger and maintenance.
As for the refrigerator, it won't produce enough heat to significantly warm anything. Remember that the heat that you are removing from the fridge came from the surrounding air - the only additional heat generated is that of the electric motor driving the compressor and fans. A good one will eat up 450kWh/year. If you could somehow recapture all of that energy, it would only be enough to power a hot water heater (under load) for about 10 hours. But of course, this energy is spread out over a whole year, and you can't possibly recapture more than a fraction of it.
Perhaps locating a refrigerator near an exterior wall and piping in cold air during the winter would be more cost-effective.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The 40MW a year breaks down to 4.56 KW an hour and that would be about what a home needs, right? The linked article doesn't give the square footage of this installation. I'd like to know what that is, too.
I see your point, but I need to make a minor correction: the throw-away society is mostly a problem when we suck oil out of the ground, turn it into plastic, and then throw the plastic away so that we have to suck more oil out of the ground. Solar panels are made out of glass and wire, right? So we should be able to recycle them, but even if you throw them away it's not as bad as throwing away plastic.