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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.
I notice oil companies are heavily involved in solar energy, are they securing their future and/or slowing solar tech down?
I would hate to reincarnate into a world where BP is still selling me (solar) energy as costly as what it is today.
Can individuals adequately produce energy themselves in the future, or will big-corps still be the real suppliers?
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
Yet Another Solar Panel "Breakthrough". Wake me when it's over.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
From:. asp
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060603/bob8
"Both the Los Alamos and NREL teams calculate a maximum of 42 percent conversion of solar power to usable electricity. Conventional cells, by contrast, operate at 15 to 20 percent efficiency."
Wil McCarthy has an interesting book called Hacking Matter, which talks about Quantum Dots and explains a bunch of applications.
Quite an interesting read, and well written. And I think you can download the book online at his website, as well.
Highly recommended - entertaining, informative read.
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.
Even though there are several breakthroughs and no real results yet, I'm hopeful. Even if none of these individual methods are exceptional, if each one provides a 5% improvement over what we already have, we should be able to make solar realistic at some point.
I've run the numbers for my house more than once. I have a favorable rebate program (Austin Energy) and a prime location (south facing roof with no obstructions and a greenbelt behind me so no future buildings being erected). Even with those factors, my payback isn't realistic enough. I've even run them for wind.....but then there's the whole HOA thing to fight.
Any of these improvements that can reduce my payback are welcome.
Layne
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.
Pipe-dream or possibility?
A big possibility. Remember the time when we used this black solid thing called COAL? It's just the way science and technology goes. We're hitting a new industrial revolution where the key technology is nanotech.
Just as the discovery of the transistor made a revolution in electronics, the discovery of methods to create and handle nanomaterials is preparing us to make better tools, leading to more methods, materials, and so on.
The problem right now, is not that we can find cheap energy - but that we WASTE TOO MUCH of it. For example, the internal combustion engine wastes a lot of energy as heat; Many countries in the world still use incandescent bulbs because the energy-saving ones are too expensive; TV's still use Cathode Ray Tubes (unless you can afford a plasma one); and what to say about computers? Too much electricity is wasted as heat because of the way transistors work.
Nanotechnology aims to change all that. Against CRT TV's there are Field Emission displays (with nanotubes as electron emitters); against incandescent bulbs we have extra-bright LED's (with quantum dots as their key ingredient for light generation); against silicon in solar cells, we find tetrapod quantum dots; against internal combustion engines we are seeing fuel cells; Against silicon transistors we see quantum dots, nanotubes, graphene transistors, nanofibers, and what not.
These technologies are currently very expensive and aren't even in diapers yet; We need still a lot of discoveries that will make these technologies economically viable. What excites me about revolutionary discoveries is that they DON'T depend on time. They're discovered almost by accident, like peniciline. It could happen in any time, but in the meanwhile we have to depend on the slow and steady advance of science and technology research.
So if you want to help this become a greener earth, please support science and technology funding in your country.
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. I'm not a big conspiracy buff, but, given the explosive rate of technology on other fronts over the same period, something just doesn't seem right.
Method of processing duck feet
#!/usr/bin/perl
my @firstwords = ("Quantum", "Solar", "Mysterious", "Ancient", "Lovecraftian");
my @secondwords = ("Dot", "Nanotube", "Lubricant", "Artifact", "Octogenarian");
my @thirdwords = ("Recipe", "Formula", "Scripture", "Rumour", "Box", "Thingy");
my $firstword = @firstwords[int(rand($#firstwords + 1))];
my $secondword = @secondwords[int(rand($#secondwords + 1))];
my $thirdword = @thirdwords[int(rand($#thirdwords + 1))];
print "$firstword $secondword $thirdword May Lead To Cheaper Solar Panels\n";
Move out. Homeowner's Associations are evil -- far, far worse than a school board for IQ(Mob)=least(IQ(Mob)) /cardinality(Mob). Best of modern economics coupled with the worst of small-town power-mad parochialism. Yes, I have examples, no I won't bore you with them. But you'd better fit in, sunshine!
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Actually, the way I heard it in college:
1. Alexander the Great was forewarned.
2. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
3. Four arms is an odd number of arms to have.
4. The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
5. Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite numbers of arms!
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.
(posting as AC so I don't get in trouble with the company legal team)
Centralized planning like this always sounds so easy, but it belies the complexities involved in these areas. Perhaps you should have said, "Manhatten projects" because each one would require that level of committment to bring to fruition. Even then, you might find that the market and science had moved in a different direction and that you had squandered much or most of your investment. And that is why centralized planning fails so miserably in these complex problems. The market is vastly superior and more efficient. The best approach is to tie the true cost of energy to the fuel (ie add a tax to fossil fuels proportional to the amount of CO2 they release when burned). Then sit back and watch, as if by magic, the free market adjust and substitutes and alternatives are selected by consumers. Over time, the problems work themselves out.