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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.
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."
The problem is not that solar panels aren't improving fast enough.
The problem is that petroleum is still so cheap.
So for the time being, we have not crossed any economic thresholds for application types, nor are we looking at any such developments in the next serval years. So while basic engineering developments are promising, we aren't going see much investment aimed at making solar part of our daily lives.
We haven't reach world peak petroleum production yet. As we approach it, and the rate of production increase slows relative to world economic growth, things will change.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
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.
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";
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.
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)
Alternatively, you could build a world-wide grid. The sun is always shining somewhere.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
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?
How about in the grid? Tear down the coal burning plants and replace them with gigantic flywheel plants. During the day, excess solar energy spins up the flywheels. During night, the flywheels dole out the stored energy to meet the nighttime demand. This system might be carefully calibrated so that very little excess energy is wasted (generated by the photovoltaics, but nowhere to store it). And any small amount that WAS left over could just be used to electrolyze water and you'd get a little hydrogen out of the deal.
This doesn't do anything to directly address petroleum oil consumption of vehicles. But it would reduce the significant portion of total CO2 output from fossil fuel electric power generation.
Vehicles inherently NEED a dense, easily mobile power source. This is because they, well, MOVE. We haven't figured out a way to store renewable energy in a vehicle with the same density and mobility. But instead of chucking the whole idea just because we can't see how to apply it to vehicles, at least we might make an impact on other levels.
"How do we store it?"
By pumping water uphill.
Problem with flywheel plants: they need very high quality metallurgy, ceramics or composite materials--none of which are cheap--to make them work, especially when you have to factor in the physics of a big, fast-spinning flywheel.
A better solution is to develop MIT's nanotube supercapacitor power storage units, which eliminates the complications of fast-moving parts and still offer quite a lot of power storage in a unit not much bigger than an air conditioning compressor for a whole house.