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Quantum Dot Recipe May Lead To Cheaper Solar Panels
Science Daily is reporting that scientists have developed a new method for cost-effectively producing four-armed quantum dots that have previously been shown to be particularly effective at converting sunlight into electrical energy. The discovery could clear the way for better, cheaper solar energy panels.
Regardless if they seem to be just vapor, the more advances in getting solar panels made cheaper, with less material and less energy, and when deployed, the more electrons it can push per photon hitting it, is a definite improvement in my book.
I'm glad people are putting money into solar, because if done right, it can turn regions of the globe which are otherwise unused (West Texas for example) into very productive areas for energy use.
Research into solar, coupled with innovations in batteries to allow for storage of energy will go a long way into making oil into "just" a raw material for plastics as opposed to a vital fuel source.
I would hate to think that they are only securing the technology to abuse the patents. It may end up being a similar scenario to the Vonage/Verizon VOIP patent lawsuit. If a company can make groundbreaking breakthrough in competing markets, they can effectifly shut down growth from that competittion, or at least stiffle it through the threat and presence of lawsuits.
As the summary points out, this is just a new recipe for making quantum dot tetrapods, for use in, for example, thin film solar cells where the cadmium selenide dots are encased in a polymer layer.
As with all stories about incremental progress in solar cell there are still a few hurdles yet to overcome:
Power conversion efficiencies from these cells are typically below 4% (eg. 1.8% original report, Sun et. al Nano Lett 3, 961). A good crystalline silicon cell will give you 12-15%.
Stability. Nanocrystals tend to go off pretty quickly and you don't want to be replacing your solar cell every week or so.
Cadmium is hella-toxic and _may be_ more so in nanocrystal form. A little vial of the stuff is enough to kill you, apparently. Makes you wonder about all those Ni-Cd batteries.
However, I welcome the (eventual) coming of our new tetrapod overlords.
are they securing their future and/or slowing solar tech down?
Maybe they know their business model is about to die a very bad death due to market changes we don't know about.
Remember, the oil companies came up with the Peak Oil theory, not the environmentalists.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_tags
Renewable Energy Certificates (the consumer version). I take my power consumption on a monthly basis, and then by RECs equal to it. True, it's not like that power is getting to my house. But my effort, along with others like me, help make renewable more financially viable. And you better believe that's the only reason it hasn't taken off like wildfire yet. Make something so that it can actually turn a buck, and people will build it.
I'm confused. Are you trying to say corporations are evil, but it's ok since it helps them make money?
The OP is saying that their evil has a motive, as opposed to "pure evil" so to speak. The topic of this thread is not the motivation of the oil companies (that is not in dispute), but rather whether their motives will cause them to seek non-petroleum energy sources in the future. The short answer is "Yes, it will." The motive is profit, the behavior is (subjectively) evil, and petroleum has nothing to do with it.Yawn, yet another peak oil nut. Wake me when we hit it.
Oh, and while you're at it, explain why bitumen, coal liquifaction, thermal depolymerization, oil shale extraction, methane reformation (including methane hydrates and clathrates), sugarcane ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, and outright Fischer-Tropsh/Sabatier synthesis from CO/CO2 (using, say, nuclear power), won't work. Not just a handful of them: ALL of them, because each one alone has the potential to majorly cut (if not completly eliminate) the load on natural petroleum. Yes, they're more expensive (although some, such as bitumen, coal liquifaction, and sugarcane ethanol, are economical at current prices). Yes, expanding our capacity using them would take 5-10 years (but you'd have to believe that there's a huge international conspiracy to believe that we're going to "run out" in that timeframe -- also, investments in syncrude production have been way, way up for a couple years already). Yes, some of them would do a number on the environment (widespread use of sugarcane ethanol? Goodbye, rainforests!). But they all exist, they all work, and they all have their price. If you really believe we're due for peak oil, explain why *none* of them will work at any non-civilization-collapsing price.
No, she's fine. My associate is vomiting for a totally unrelated reason.
Even if we come up with some super-efficient way to transfer solar energy into useful electricity, there is one barrier that will remain:
How do we store it?
It seems to me that we will need both a new source of energy and a way to harvest/store it. Current oil/gasoline, as a liquid or vapor, is both. That means that it works fairly independent of outside factors with the exemption of operating-temperature limitations.
With solar energy, we need it to be available not just on the nice sunny days, but the nights, and the cloudy not-so-sunny days too. In countries like Canada or other places that see a fair bit of snow, we'll need ways to properly keep the collectors unobscured (such as heated solar panels) in order to keep the snow off, and ways to clean them when they get dirty.
We're making lots of interesting progress, but there's a whole, huge industry out there if the big push away from fossil-fuels ends up with solar as a primary replacement. Some people have mentioned the oil companies being involved, but my thoughts are that they can find plenty of ways to make money in the new industry. In fact, many of the oil-producing nations would also be prime areas for solar-collection, so they might do just fine in such a new market.
They speed it up. Peak oil works like this: Let us say petrol-company "A" can make X.XX dollars per gallon of refined gas. This is because crude oil is cheap, it only costs =~.75 USD per barrel of crude oil. Now lets say Iraq/Kuwait runs out of liquid hydrocarbon (pump-able crude oil) (not projected for another 20 years). And lets say petrol-company "A" makes a deal with Canada for Tar sands Hydrocarbons, to make crude oil, it will cost 1.18 USD per barrel of crude oil, because tar sands require additional refining to make it basic liquid crude.
Who pays the cost?
The consumer?
LoL, Not if there is a cheaper way to get energy.
Companies will help, only as long as they can make a profit, or project a future profit from there activities. It pays to invest now, and patent now, for profit when hydrocarbons are to expensive too mine.
I don't want miracles. Miracles won't keep my lights on at night, or run my microwave. What I want is practical, manufacturable technology. Don't misunderstand me ... I think the mass-production of highly-efficient, cheap PV cells would revolutionize a lot of things. For that matter, the topic of solar power has interested me for the better part of forty years: I built a solar furnace as a kid out of several Fresnel lenses and some firebrick. Vaporized coins with the thing. On the other hand, I am getting tired of this flood of articles loudly proclaiming that this prototype cell technology, for sure, is the next big "scientific miracle" of the century. Let me know when I can pick up a 4x8 of the stuff at Home Depot for the price of sheet of plywood. Now that would be a miracle.
... but I doubt it. I also didn't ridicule anyone. You'll pardon me while I go read comments by people a little more tolerant of other's views than you are. Huh. I guess I did ridicule someone after all.
And maybe this one will be the one
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
(posting as AC so I don't get in trouble with the company legal team)
> Given the subsidies solar research has had since the 70s, I can't figure out why progress has been so slow for the past 30 years.
There are several limits on cheap solar. Start with an absolute upper limit on efficiency. 100% is not likely in our lifetime, I'd doubt exceeding 50% is likely in the next hundred years. There are already panels in the marketplace in the 15-20% range and we are always reading about better stuff in the labs. So there probably isn't even another whole doubling of output power to research. It isn't like semiconductor transistor counts and operating speeds that apparently can keep on increasing for another couple of decades according to Moore's Law.
So that leaves existing power/area systems becoming more affordable sweetened with a little more efficiency now and then. But any panel based photovoltaic system can't escape needing a lot of surface area of fairly hi tech material along with the basic expenses involved in manufacturing, transporting and installing large bulky things. Heck, basic roofing material ain't exactly cheap when you have to buy enough to cover your roof and pay people to go up there and install it. It also implies a pretty hard limit to the maximum power load a home can have and still be a candidate for solar. Environmental control is the big drain now and can be greatly reduced with better home design. But other power drains are growing and if they exceed what can be collected that will scuttle the notion of independence from the grid.
And last there is the final part of a solar system, the control and storage system. Hi current electronics built and installed to code isn't cheap and isn't likely to experience more than a halving in price anytime soon. Storage for now means batteries and we all know they are THE limit on so much modern tech. So until somebody cracks that nut alternative power is going to be held back along with electric cars and portable electronics.
Democrat delenda est
It's like some kind of demented Turing test. You have two terminals. One is connected to an evil guy twirling his moustache. The other is connected to a profit-seeking corporate board. But you don't know which terminal is connected to whom! Can you tell, just by examining their actions, which is the evil moustache, and which is the corporate board?
Kthxbai,
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
They can't. That's the point -- they're too big to do anything but stumble around the room, breaking the valuables, regardless of good intent.