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Cheap Paint-able Solar Cells Developed
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "Researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology have developed an inexpensive solar cell that can be painted or printed on flexible plastic sheets. According to the lead researcher, "Someday homeowners will even be able to print sheets of these solar cells with inexpensive home-based inkjet printers. Consumers can then slap the finished product on a wall, roof or billboard to create their own power stations." The team combined carbon nanotubes with tiny carbon buckyballs (fullerenes) to form snake-like structures. Add sunlight to excite the polymers, and the buckyballs will grab the electrons. The article abstract is available through the Journal of Materials Chemistry, with an illustration of the technology."
It will take a drop in price before solar panels finally hit the big time. But boy, when they do drop expect an explosion of uses.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I suppose. It's so strange these days. You see people doing research, then posing for a photo and making a press release. Then.. nothing. The promises and predictions don't amount to actual products that people can buy. But I suppose they do get you more grant money.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Does it seem to anyone else like carbon nanotubes are modern snake oil? Seriously, is there anything they CAN'T do?
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
What is conspicuously missing from that article is any kind of a figure for the conversion efficiency of the devices they're making. Lots of researchers have been working on fullerines. What efficiency are they achieving? 5 percent? 1 percent? A tenth of a percent? Lacking any kind of number for efficiency-- preferably an efficiency measurement verified by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory-- tends to make me think that this is theory with no actual devices manufactured at all.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
You mean 1/10000 is used for human power, right? Nearly all the power is used to keep the earth at its current temperature, else it would drift towards zero (okay, 2.7, but who's counting). Also, much of the useful energy is used to convert CO2 to O2, and in the process store C in H in various forms for powering the metabolisms of the earth's inhabitants. Luckily, those are overlapping purposes, as is solar collection for discretionary energy use by humans.
We already subsist off of solar energy, for the most part - it's just our source happens to be stored a long time ago. Nuclear is about the only source (okay, geothermal, too) that isn't a form of solar energy. It's not so much the energy, it's the ability to store it in usable forms.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
What are the specs for this material? How many W per m^2 can the paint generate under the 1KW:m^2 of "solar noon"? How many joules does it take to manufacture the coatings, how many joules to apply them from, say, a big "inkjet" printer? How long do they last?
Therefore, what is the total energy budget of this material?
If they have to be replaced frequently, produce low wattage, and cost a lot of energy to produce and deploy, then silicon PV cells that last 35+ years at 15-25% efficiency might still be better, even though the silicon cells cost a lot of energy to produce, deploy, maintain and recycle. Or maybe this tech is better.
I wish every journalist covering the accelerating solar power industry would always answer those basic questions. Otherwise, it's just science fiction dressed up as propaganda.
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make install -not war
The dismal science came up with Jeavon's paradox in the 19th century as much the same observation: improve the efficiency and the demand increases more.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
no swimming pool when the A/C is on.
;)
How about skipping the photovoltaic slick and just jump in the pool?
-Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
Yeah I've always felt that solar panels are similar enough to ICs that the same thing should happen to costs - once the initial investment is there to set up a large fab, the marginal costs should be minuscule. OK, it's not exactly the same since solar panels are physically large and ICs are tiny, but it's not like the materials are particularly expensive, AFAIK.
CCDs are probably closer since they both use the pv effect, and how much did a 10Mp image sensor cost only 10 years ago? Sh1tloads, if they were even making them at all. Now they only cost a few dollars.
The basic idea is that once you have done the research so the design and the process are set up, you just churn out the same thing again and again. Contrast this to, say, a car, where there are thousands of parts, of all sizes, made out of all sorts of materials then assembled either by hand or by robot.
I call for government subsidies! Discuss.
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
...you have { efficient, small, affordable } pick 2. It is easy to make a breakthrough in one of them if you ignore the other two. It is somewhat harder to make a breakthrough in 2 while ignoring one, and any article that doesn't mention all 3 when talking about a breakthrough is almost certainly hype.