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The Best Of What's New 2007
BlaineZilla pointed us to one of the earliest annual 'best of' roundups: Popular Science's Best of What's New awards. The winner this year is a nanosolar powersheet that may someday change the way we think about renewable energy. Other winners include the corot satellite, a project aimed at searching out habitable planets in other solar systems, and the world's most advanced bionic hand.
But is that solar sheet in the stores yet ?
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Although I was pretty skeptical about the buzzword-laden NanoSolar, after reading TFA, I've gotta say that their technology is absolutely incredible, and unlike most of PopSci's outlandish predictions looks like it very well break into the mainstream. Although it's not going to singlehandedly solve the energy crisis, if they can ramp up production quickly enough (and maybe cut costs even further), we'll soon begin to see a more widespread adoption of solar power.
As long as the cells are cheap enough, the applications for it are impressively extensive. The cells themselves are incredibly light and thin, and looks like it can be applied to just about any flat surface. It won't power your car, but it might make your hybrid/electric go a few extra miles before the next charge. Flat-roofed buildings can cover themselves in the stuff, and greatly reduce their energy usage. (Alternatively, a facility such as a warehouse could possibly even break even on its energy usage by keeping itself lit during the day with skylights, and selling the energy from the roof back to the grid. During the night, power for artificial light is taken from the grid)
You might even be able to apply the film directly to the body of a car or to roofing materials, given that the underlying backing doesn't need to be anything terribly special.
The fact that they're doing the majority of their research and production in the US and Germany also suggest that the manufacturing process will be relatively clean, and that their workers will be paid decent wages.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Here's a link to a longer and better video ( that works in Linux ) that shows off more of the capabilities of this thing :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMFrL7xt7kI
jdb2
The month December. That was absolutely the best of 2007.
St00pid lists that round up years before they are over. Almost like an OS that calls his OS for the NEXT year. Mandriva anybody?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
There's several reasons for this...
First and foremost... you want to be first with your list of what was best of the year. If a rival publishes theirs first, everybody will be talking about it already. By the time you publish yours, less people are going to be interested in it - and those who are, will be comparing your list to their list; which has a subtle but very important difference from people comparing their list to your list. Granted - if your list is, in content, much better than the others' then next year people may wait for your list rather than going to the other's list. But given the extremely broad scope and subjectiveness of the list involved here (Best of What's New in 2007 - in anything? woo.), you're not likely to be able to get that.. so being first is very important. Expect next year's to be released around the same date, with a likelihood of being released -sooner-.
Then there's psychology - yes, of course, "The Best of 2007" can, quite technically, only be decided On January 1st, 2008. But if you release a list of "The Best of 2007" in 2008, psychology says that people will go "why would I want what was best last year? I want to know what's best -now-, and now is 2008".. despite the ludicrousness of such thoughts, there you go. So instead, you release your list early.. say at the beginning of December. The only thing to keep in mind is that your list should, then, be the list of "The Best of December 2006-November 2007" - but "The Best of 2007" is a much more attractive title. Typically, lists -do- include the time that was skipped from the last, though.
Now, of course, there are ways you can just take that all way too far. The automotive industry is infamous for this. For example, it's not uncommon to see a "Car of the Year 2007" ad in March of 2007. In Europe it's so insane that the Car of the Year 2008 is, and has been, decided for quite some time now. This year's Car of the Year (2007) was decided back in December of 2006. This, again, harks back to psychology.. people don't want to drive the "Car of Yesteryear".. they want to drive the "Car of the Year" where "the Year" is the one they're currently in. That said, as I mentioned, they're infamous for it and it wouldn't be the first time I've heard it be the butt-end of some impromptu jokes as such a commercial drops by inbetween a movie.
If publications don't stop themselves soon, they'll end up the same fate.
As of the end of 2006, the total worldwide installed PV capacity was 5.7 gigawatt at peak. Norway, a country with a population bellow 5 million, consumes more electricity than that. Single nuclear power stations can produce more electricity. Seriously, solar will NOT solve the energy crisis in any near future. Even with an exponential growth of solar power, doubling installed capacity every 5 years, it would still be more than 50 years until you get to the same order of magnitude as PRESSENT energy consumption, and this is at peak power.
Proponents of solar power usually talk about how its efficiency is about to jump several times in the near future, but even if you improved the efficicency tenfold ( which would put you above 100% efficiency) you would still not even be within 1% of pressent energy consumption. Seriously, maybe in a century, but photovoltaics just isn't going to replace Oil before it runs out.
To get a slight idea about what will be required to phase out fossil fuels, have a look at this diagram: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:World_energy_usage_width_chart.svg
Solar and Wind just ins't going to solve that issue alone. Neither is nuclear, biofuels, or clean coal. It should be damn obvious from that diagram alone that we are going to need every piece of clean energy we can get our hands on. Expanding the use of nuclear and biomass 5 times, would take care of the first 50%. Carbon capture and storage with coal sticks you up at 75%, and expanding wind power 100 times can provide the remainder. All of this assumes strict energy conservation measures to keep the overall energy use at pressent levels. Of course, with the developing world industrialising this appears unlikely, so you will need some more energy, but ff we go for the optimistic goal of preventing overall energy consumption from increasing by more than 50%, then it is doable, PROVIDED we use all energy sources we can get. To reject carbon capture and storage, nuclear or other energy sources, based on some delusional pipe-dream of solar power coming to the rescue is however just wishful thinking.
For all the naysayers talking about how energy demand keeps skyrocketing, that's why we're fucked. There is no way in hell we can keep up with demand. It just isn't going to happen. We could have, but we would have had to start building new massive nuclear plants back in the early '90's with the first ones coming on-line TODAY. It ain't happening. We WILL (and have already seen) see brown and blackouts. The guys who've already invested $10,000+ making their houses mostly grid independent with solar roofs, wind generators, and huge Deep-cycle AGM Marine battery installations will be OK (probably, assuming no riots and a minimum of civil unrest) But unless you're a $50+Millionaire, you're probably at significant risk in the coming decades. There is no way to keep up with demand.
Water Shortages (like Atlanta is currently experiences) will probably only get much worse as well. This too could have been avoided, but we would have needed to have the first nuclear powered Reverse Osmosis Desalination plants to supply major metropolitan and agricultural areas at the most risk, coming on-line TODAY. If we started building tomorrow (not happening) it'd still be a good ten years before capacity got up enough to keep us in the clear.
Oh, and by the way, the recent "discovery" that reverse Osmosis water won't work for agriculture, because its mineral content is too low - Great find. Completely ignores that when you run the plants the two outputs are - Water, and a great big pile of SALT. If need be, you can just add measured quantities back in at the end.
There are two more technologies that are here and now and if implemented on very large scales would do more than a lot of the other alternatives, and those are geothermal and superinsulation techniques. Ground loop geothermal *works*, and works well, as does superinsulation. I've worked on several superinsulation projects and the results are quite simply fantastic. It's not sexy or gee whizz new tech, just using old tech smarter, it doesn't produce any more energy, but dollar for dollar it has everything else out there beat, hands down. You can spend the big bucks producing more power just to waste it, or small to medium bucks and save a bundle..forever, the life of the building. If building codes and mortgage approvals were altered to reflect that, for new construction and for title transfers, we could drop demand every year for a long time.
Besides that I agree with you, the solution is "all of the above as fast as possible" right now. I think the US could do good by making with the 100% tax credits for alternative energy and insulation projects for at least the next decade, and not wait for 150 to 200 buck a barrel oil to think about that. Not partial credits or deductions, 100%, with multi year carry-overs. The increase in practical and useful non burger flipping jobs and industries on one side will offset the tax in one place and replace it in another, so the net would be a wash dollar wise, but we'd all wind up with a ton of "free stuff", good energy and conservation measures, great for the nation, great for your personal wallet, so what's not to like? Energy independence is a good goal. Drop demand the same time you increase and diversify production, eventually you hit that magic sweet spot of independence, from there on out it's gravy. But ya, we can't keep farting around studying it and waiting for the mysterious mr. fusion to arrive, that's just silly, we can go with what we have now just fine, it is plenty good enough. There are millions of roofs out there facing south doing nothing more than rotting shingles. Plenty of backyards could get the ditchwitch action and have the groundloops installed. and etc. Solar thermal air heating and water heating are old tech now, work just fine and are cheap really.
The computers ten years from now will be much better, but they are still good enough now to use them and not wait ten years to get one. Same deal really. The future got here, it is the 21st century, time to start acting like it.
For some examples of the complete self powered homes plus car, look to the latest solar decathlon winners for some ideas.