Slashdot Mirror
Silicon As the New Lithium
hduff writes "While lithium-ion batteries offer better performance than lead-acid or ni-cad batteries, the supply of lithium is limited and the batteries can pose problems. Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute are building a better battery with easily obtainable sand and air."
Is if the best sand is in Saudi Arabia and the factory in Australia, then we would ship send both ways from desert to desert and be sure the aliens NEVER contact us!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Phew!
I thought I was going to have to inject silicon under the skin on my shoulder. Funny, didn't think all those implant leakages produced well adjusted, although a little quiet and drooley, bar wenches.
.
If you are talking about wiring, aluminum is reasonably plentiful and conductiveand was used in the past.
Wouldn't you know it. You turn the desert into an environment that supports agriculture and the very thing you got rid of in mass quantities turns out to be the main ingredient in the technology of the future. Doesn't that just rub you the wrong way.
Just use gold instead!
But really, we have a lot of otherwise useful metals being punted around in the form of money at the moment. We should use digital money and put the metal stuff to better use.
which is totally what she said
While new battery technology is very important in our current time, the sheer number of duplicate stories and borderline advertisement/marketing stories on Slashdot about these new batteries, WITH a combines lithium FUD scare at the same time no less, sours these stories.
Chemically very similar to Lithium. Plenty of Natrium around.
Deleted
And there is the fact that salt water has lithium. In fact, some startups are trying to extract it now. If the price goes high enough, it will be practical to extract lithium from the ocean.
Still in prototype (seems he might have only made one, and he tested it for 600 hours ). Not rechargable. More powerful than current hearing aid batteries. May be made rechargable in 10 years (how on earth do people estimate this stuff? How can you estimate how long it will take to do something no one has ever done? It might not even be possible). Rumors abound. If it works out it will be great, but don't hold your breath.
Still, it's kind of cool that you can make a battery out of sand.
Qxe4
in a daze 'cause i found juice
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
they'll be treating manic depression with silicone?
Then again, I guess they've been doing that for years with breast implants...
Paper at http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1388248109003889
The capacity of the prototypes was very small, but they are hoping to acchieve 10 Ah/g.
The article does not help understand how it actually works, so I read around and went to the Technion-friends website.
Basically normal sand is Silicon-Dioxide. If you take pure silicon and build a battery from it, and expose the battery to air, the silicon will interact with the oxygen in the air. So the pure silicon will become silicon dioxide - sand. In the process, it releases energy.
The neat trick in the battery - is that they set it up so that the energy is released NOT as heat (which is the usual thing), but some of it as electricity. They do this with some kind of membrane that allows oxygen ions to flow through, but electrons must come the other way - hence an electric flow.
Like any innovation, will take some years to be fully researched and commercialized. Small batteries will probably come first, bigger ones (for cars) later. And how to recharge does not seem obvious - at least not from the description so far.
A lot of people above are skeptical - but really this kind of innovation is what science and engineering are all about. Innovation goes hand in hand with raising ever more questions; we should be used to that by now.
Really really cool. And smart. My hat off to the Israeli guys and their collaborators in USA & Japan.
I have read the original publication (doi:10.1016/j.elecom.2009.08.015) and cannot understand much of the (electro-)chemistry of it.
The electrode potential is strongly dependent on the doping of the silicon, which makes sense, but the I/V curve looks less than impressive. It's mostly a bad fuel cell, at the moment.
Also, the chemistry of the electrolyte is not clear to me. In principle the battery should work according to dissolution of Si from the anode, transport through the electrolyte (an ionic liquid with fluorine) and reaction with oxygen at the air cathode. The researchers claim that they observe a white deposit at the cathode, and that this deposit is SiO2.
Silicon-fluorine chemistry is quite complicated, IIRC, and I cannot for the life of me imagine transport of Si4+ ions in the electrolyte. Also, HF as such does not dissolve Si, but it need some strong acid to start the etching. How this phenomenon can happen in the ionic liquid is beyond me.
Also, in the introduction, the researchers claim that the battery has an "infinite shelf life", but then talk about corrosion currents in the paper. If there is corrosion (i.e. self discharge), then the shelf life is quite limited.
Cherry on top, they claim that SiO2 is easily reducible to reobtain Si. I am not familiar with silicon metallurgy, but I am not sure it is easy to do it electrochemically, let alone replate Si at the anode upon recharge.
On the plus side, they used metallurgical grade Si, which is dirt cheap when compared to semiconductor grade Si.
I would love for this to work, but at the moment the authors have omitted quite a bit of information. If I were the referee, I would have asked at least the questions above. Think of it, there is a corresponding author for a reason.
Disclaimer: I work in battery research, and I am hence jealous that they made it to the front page of Slashdot.
Just use iron. It's not like the wiring is all that long.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
There's so little gold in the entire world that even if we spun all of it unto wires the contribution would be negligible.
(sorry may be some confusion - a double post since the previous one inadvertently was anonymous)
To better understand how this works, I went to the Tehnion website.
Sand is actually Silicon-dioxide (combined silicon and oxygen). Pure silicon interacts with oxygen form the air to create sand. That's first-year normal chemistry. Usually such an interaction produces heat not electricity.
They built the battery from pure silicon, and the trick is that Oxygen from the air has to pass through a membrane to get to the silicon and oxidize it. The membrane will allow only oxygen ions through, so electrons have to flow the other way to match up with the ions and maintain overall neutrality. Hence you get a current instead of only heat.
Of course it will take some years to commercialize. Small applications will come first (small batteries), only later will we get big batteries (for cars?) and even later rechargeable stuff (if at all). I noticed many people are skeptical - but this is normal in science and engineering. Any real innovation raises new questions that must be answered. Kudos to the Israeli team, and their collaborators from USA & Japan.
At 20 mg lithium per kg of Earth's crust, lithium is the 25th most abundant element. Nickel and lead have the about the same abundance
Not apparently a crisis, although it might be more expensive to mine due to the use of electrolysis.
A picture is worth exactly 1024 words.
A wire shortage.. People can work up a fear about just about anything I think.
http://xkcd.com/605/
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
You are aware that iron rusts like a bitch, right?
There's also a lot more to worry about than electrical conductivity. You're passing a DC current through this which means you will have oxidation where this metal meets other metals if you aren't very careful.
This is why aluminum wiring in houses is a problem. The aluminum wiring is fine by itself, but if you try to use copper in the same house then you'll end up starting a fire in short order. In houses that DO have both Al and Cu in the walls, electricians have to install special junctions that allow the two to meet without literally corroding each other.
As for using iron in a car: this is going to be used in a wet condition, probably also with road salts (which increases conductivity), with electrical current. Your wires won't last more than a month if you're lucky.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Natrium is called SODIUM in English.
The chemical name is Natrium. Clearly English is wrong.
Deleted
Then use steel...
Aluminum is OK as a transmission medium, but it's not too good in end use applications. Turns out aluminum has a property called "cold flow", when you put it under pressure (like a screw or clamp terminal) the metal literally moves away and creates a loose connection which causes heat and often fire.
Next, greatly varying expansion/contraction properties make aluminum still more likely to work loose when terminated to a dissimilar metal like a lug or screw of brass, steel, etc..
Lastly, all aluminum has a coat of oxide that has high electrical resistance, and it reforms very quickly when it is cleaned off. Proper cleaning and antioxidant paste are critical to avoid failures in such home applications as the line dropping from the service weather head to the meter socket of a dwelling (a common application).
Once the circuits are in the walls of a dwelling you do not want aluminum because of the fire danger. While it has been used for mobile home wiring in the past during times of high copper prices, it is currently hard to insure one of those homes. If you DO have aluminum wire inside your walls you should be checking the torque (but don't over tighten) of every connection at six month intervals... forever...
To sum up, you only want aluminum where you can easily inspect and adjust any connections on a regular basis.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Aluminum is the third most abundent element on the planet and makes up 8% of the earth's crust, which is enough to ensure that we will never run out of the metal for electrical or structural uses.
We just need an ample supply of energy in order to refine it.
Once the circuits are in the walls of a dwelling you do not want aluminum because of the fire danger. While it has been used for mobile home wiring in the past during times of high copper prices, it is currently hard to insure one of those homes. If you DO have aluminum wire inside your walls you should be checking the torque (but don't over tighten) of every connection at six month intervals... forever...
No, you retrofit it with copper ENDS (which attach with conductive epoxy) which don't have this problem. Guess what? We no longer use wires poked into holes in automotive applications anyway; all connectors are terminated somehow.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Wonderful, but there are an awful lot of warning signs that this thing is not a world-beater:
* It's not rechargeable. And I don't know of any simple electrochemical process that reverses the oxidation of silicon.
* It requires a Flourine-carrying electrolyte! Lithium is bad enuf, but Fluorine is really bad stuff.
* Usually "air-powered" batteries are limited to very low current, slow discharge applications, such as hearing-aids.
So it's very unlikely these could ever work like in a laptop or car, where you need amps, not microamps.
* Any practical and competitive battery would have to have a good power-density and be stable and manufacturable at a reasonable price.
There was a (temporary) setup along those lines at one point.
For Uranium isotope separation, they needed some large electromagnets. Unfortunately, WW2 was weighing rather heavily on the copper supply. Instead, they borrowed 13,000 tons of silver from the treasury.
And steel rusts like a bitch in training.
We could use stainless steel, but that would be more expensive than pure copper, I think.
No?
I grew up a few hundred miles from a mine that shut down because other mines were more economical. As the price goes up, that sort of mine can start operating again (if they can convince people in the area to put up with the environmental impact).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Lithium in mineable concentration is pretty rare as it is and highly priced because of Lithium-Ion batteries - that's why everyone is searching for another battery type in the first place.
This is why aluminum wiring in houses is a problem. The aluminum wiring is fine by itself, but if you try to use copper in the same house then you'll end up starting a fire in short order. In houses that DO have both Al and Cu in the walls, electricians have to install special junctions that allow the two to meet without literally corroding each other.
Yeah, but the "special junction" is a copper wire with a butt connector filled with conductive epoxy and surrounded by heat shrink tubing. My mom has them installed in her 1970s double-wide, which of course has Aluminum wiring. You stick it on and heat it up and you're done. It would make more sense to go to 48VDC so that what metal the wire is made of matters less from every standpoint BUT corrosion, and then use stainless steel. Unlike Aluminum, you can reasonably solder it, provided you solder more stainless to it, and use the right kind of solder & flux.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And steel rusts like a bitch in training.
We could use stainless steel, but that would be more expensive than pure copper, I think.
But we are not likely to run out of it in the near future - which in case you missed it was the point about copper in the first place.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Is'nt the world reserve of copper basically mined out?
According to Wikipedia, "total amount of copper on Earth is vast (around 1014 tons just in the top kilometer of Earth's crust, or about 5 million years worth at the current rate of extraction)". Of course only small fraction of this is available using _today's_ technology.
Hey, look at it this way, when we've eventually all switched to renewable energy, we can finally clear those pesky stockpiles of coal and oil.
p>Is'nt the world reserve of copper basically mined out?
No. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper#Reserves
And copper can be recycled indefinitely.
These alloys were cheaper if they are so easily obtainable, but I think there's a reason behind the price of stainless steel, which could be simple scarcity or high production costs.
A cursory glance at Wiki Grandma tells me that stainless steel requires a chromium content of 10 percent or more. And of course we have a singular dominant reserve: chromium is mined primarily in South Africa, harboring half the world's mineable reserves.
Not only that, but stainless steel is an even worse conductor than plain vanilla steel, having a resistance that is more than 30 times higher.
If this is your specialty, then please contribute more good articles about new batteries. It's hard to sort through the "coming soon in 10 years to never" from "coming soon, works pretty dang good now, perhaps on sale as early as next year" from "on sale now, here is a link" stuff.
Battery tech to me today is sort of like solar PV tech. I've read hundreds of articles of new amazing break throughs, yet when I go check prices, the PV panels I got ten years ago are still a deal compared to what I see offered for sale today. They are marginally more efficient today, but at twice the price. Same with ancient tech lead acid batteries for bulk stationary storage, or short range urban electric vehicles, still the best deal out there. As soon as you go to anything else, zooba, whip out the platinum card and prepare to pay as much for a battery bank as a new mid range conventional car.
That's what people are looking for, the currency unit to watts or amphours deal.
Except for the smallest portable gadgets using lithium ion, I am just not seeing any affordable and practical major breakthroughs hitting the market with either solar PV or batteries, compared to say the advances in the last ten years with computers/cellphones, what you can get for the same or less dollars.
Other poster is right. Aluminum connections can be terminated, which solves a whole hell of a lot of problems.
It's still not perfect, but it's a perfectly viable stand-in for copper. Copper terminals aren't going to need as much metal as copper wires, obviously.
So you argue that National Semiconductor is a CIA front (having "National" in its name and being American)? American Express was founded in 1850 but the olderst three-letter agency I can think of, the FBI, is half a century younger. Who does AmEx work for?
Also, this battery is interesting but hardly going to revolutionize the automotive world. From the specs they have released it sounds more like a replacement for zinc-air batteries used in hearing aids. Unless they invent a car that runs on ~1V these batteries are unlikely to power one.
So we have "hey, let's use a company with a name that will immediately put all the conspiracy theorists on high alert to release research data about a somewhat nice but not very exciting new battery technology so they will let us get away with whatever we want". Sorry, but either the Israelis are complete idiots or this is not a scheme to somehow keep us from scrutinizing them.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
i wish calling Lithium batteries "Li-on" (Li + ion) had taken root. Maybe we'll get it this time with Si-on.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
As much as I despise how Israel behaves as a nation, do not mistake the actions of it's government for that of it's scientists.
I once heard that Emerson (motor maker) uses 10-20 percent of the worlds electrical copper. Motors are a huge user of copper. I work in electric vehicles, and when we pump 100kW through a motor we're losing some 1.6 percent to heat in the windings. Change that to aluminum and the losses will only increase - and then the cooling solution becomes more complex, the weight goes up, the range goes down. Then there are the previously mentioned issues with aluminum. And to the GGP, all the easy copper has been mined, but I believe there is still plenty available to meet the inceasing demand. If handled properly it can be easily recycled too.
Ahh, I thought 1014 tons didn't sound like much. The copy/paste was bad.
It's 10^14 tons. That's more like it!
Tom...
It isn't as big a deal as you make it sound. There are often light fixtures that use copper or aluminum wiring. If you don't get all the fixtures at one place there is a good chance you'll be mixing them up. And it isn't a real concern.
I don't mean to disappoint you but... gold is so valuable exactly because its so rare. If gold was so easy to find as cooper, most wires in the world would be made of gold and it would be cheap as cooper...
So when you're trying to get your toast out of the toaster, use a stainless steel knife rather than a silver one.
Not only is there lots of research being done about copper replacing aluminum, but this particular scientist has done some himself.
His faculty page
Stuff his group has done regarding copper
Although it looks like he has done stuff to do with corrosion, most of this is over my head... go go Physics Nerds!
Will it spontaneously combust the way some lithium batteries do? If not, then it's hardly a replacement!
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
So next time, before you write crap, make sure to clean your ass beforehand, ya stupid jerk!
Now buzz off before I scrape your ass from the sky.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Touched one of those nerves they hard-wired into you as a kid, did I? Maybe you should build a wall around me and tear up all my olive trees?
Denial when reality is right there saying the opposite. Cognitive dissonance will in fact tear your brain in half. Either that, or your soul. If you still have one.
-FL
So we have "hey, let's use a company with a name that will immediately put all the conspiracy theorists on high alert to release research data about a somewhat nice but not very exciting new battery technology so they will let us get away with whatever we want". Sorry, but either the Israelis are complete idiots or this is not a scheme to somehow keep us from scrutinizing them.
You give the population of the Earth, (and certainly the internet), far too much credit, IMHO.
And I notice you had a hard time coming up with company names with the word, "America" (or similar) in them. I did too, otherwise I wouldn't have pointed out the Israeli name thing.
Now. . , the question is, was I modded into Troll Dust because of an unprovable speculation, or because I pointed out the truth of Israel's crimes against humanity in a world where people would prefer to pretend that psychopathic barbarity is A-okay?
-FL
As much as I despise how Israel behaves as a nation, do not mistake the actions of it's government for that of it's scientists.
I'm sure the guy working on batteries is just a guy working on batteries, and more power to him. But it's the Israeli self-promotion machine using him which I am pointing out here.
Scientists have a long history of tunnel vision. I'm sure the guys making the atom bomb were fine people as well, but that doesn't mean politics aren't always present.
For one, I hope this battery works out well. I want my laptop to last longer on the road. But there is still evil afoot and it's silly not to look at it and recognize its forms. The fact that my post has been modded into the ground as a 'Troll' is evidence that there is some serious dementia at work here.
Truth hurts.
-FL
Not only that, but stainless steel is hard to work with. Doesn't bend easily. Doesn't machine easily. It's an OK wire (in some formulations) although not particularly strong and, as you note, has the irritating property of having high resistance. So no shiny love there.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Man also deliberately changes the face of the earth in an adverse manner, for purposes of warfare. In the ancient world, invading your neighbor's territory and destroying crops was a routine practice. See also: Salting the earth, Entomological warfare, Weather warfare.
-kgj
Just use gold instead!
But really, we have a lot of otherwise useful metals being punted around in the form of money at the moment. We should use digital money and put the metal stuff to better use.
Gee, I guess the US & Zimbabwe are way ahead of the curve.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
No lithium?! Here they are talking about taking him off his meds again... it's gonna make him anxious, and you don't wanna make Bunny anxious!
Galvanised steel (steel with a very thin zinc coating) is routinely used for fencing. In my part of the world they also use it for telephone wire in rural areas (since copper gets stolen). Steel wire could replace copper in many situations.
Having recently read an article in the "New Scientist" as to how Carbon could be the new Silicon, thanks to Nanotechnology, this got me wondering whether Carbon could do the same thing for batteries, so I decided to see what the research status is. From what I can see Zinc-Carbon is the current cheap solution in non-rechargeable batteries (according to Wikipedia), though a few hits turn up Lead-Carbon batteries, with this following article suggesting it could be a "game changer":
http://seekingalpha.com/article/115257-lead-carbon-a-game-changer-for-alternative-energy-storage
As to whether that pans out we will have to see. The advantage of Carbon over Silicon and Lithium is its availability.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
There is no reason not to use aluminum wire or galvanised stainless steel wire.
South Africa may have many chrome reserves but there are many countries with large reserves and there is no shortage (even when South Africa starts to implode).
One reason that South Africa have so many reserves is because of good prospecting (both for chrome and other minerals). Other countries may also have substantial reserves that we don't know about.
It would however not be sensible to use stainless steel.
It's still a valid point. Gold is irrelevant. A couple thousand tonnes are produced each year, and the estimated total production for all of history is estimated at 158000 tonnes. By contrast, copper production is tens of millions of tonnes per year . Even given its better conduction properties, gold will always be a drop in the bucket for electrical applications, albeit an important one for specialized uses (e.g., electronics, obviously).
Wrong. Silver is the best conductor of electricity. Copper is a close second. Gold is third and Aluminum is fourth.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
I could pose the counter-question of whether you think there is an Israeli consipracy and want others to know or whether the Israelis hired you to post unprovable speculation under the banner of an Israel critic to discredit all such critics? Can you undeniably prove you're not involved with them?
That's the problem with this kind of question: They're completely without substance because no matter what the answer is, you can always discount it by applying the question to the answer.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
In Friday, Heinlein made the point that the problem is not an energy shortage, but a shortage of really good, efficient, cheap ways to store and transport energy. He invented a technology called "Shipstones" to overcome this--which were essentially a sort of supercharged storage battery. This in turn enabled a world where fossil fuel use was all but unknown. (This was one of the few Heinlein books to address anything resembling environmental issues--and while I think some elements of his "solution" are far-fetched, such as a return to horses and animal power except for "Authorized Power Vehicles"--it's interesting to see how he dealt with it.)
There is a point to be made here. A really good battery technology is potentially a world changer. With such technology, we could get back to using oil for plastics and medicinal uses, just like the Romans did. :)
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Yes...and no.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Always funny to see how knee-jerk people are about Israel, yet how silent/uncaring they are when it comes to similar, and mostly much bloodier, situations - the Algerian government's actions in Darfur, the Chinese in Tibet, Rwanda back in the '90s, etc.
I wonder why this is?
If Copper was running out, it would be more expensive then gold.
That said, we will just develop wires from carbon nano tubes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And for just terminals, you don't even need coper. Steel, esp. stainless, will work quite well. It may not be as conductive, but you're only talking about a very short path.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
But gold is more corrosion resistant. That's why "gold plated" contacts are sort of reasonable. (Of course, that doesn't take MUCH gold.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
well, they already did that.
since people started selling "pennies" for scap metal (worth a lot more than a penny), the USA has replaced the copper pennies with copper-plated Zink pennies in 1982.
http://coins.about.com/od/uscoins/f/copper_to_zinc.htm
You suggest cutting the population AND preserving old people? I was hoping for a Logan's Run scenerio after that first sentence :(
Because they won't let us use the sand we already have instead we will have to import it from those crazies....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Lithium can be extracted from sea water, and even using current known methods, it would only raise the cost of lithium batteries by about 8%.
http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-for-electric-cars/
The killer problem for battery powered cars isn't weight, or energy density, it's cost.
The battery pack in the Tesla model S is an estimated $30,000 of it $55,000 price.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
If you're not barefoot on wet floor tiles and in the 110V region, you might survive for a second try. Oh and don't hold the knife in your left hand, and keep your feet together :)
All countries with a developed civil infrastructure OR a stable leadership would have done some prospecting by now. We might have some luck in North Korea and Somalia, but I wouldn't count on it. In all other countries, the mining multinationals should be done with at least a cursory prospecting by now, I guess.
A few decades and asteroid mining will look like a real alternative.
Just use gold instead!
But really, we have a lot of otherwise useful metals being punted around in the form of money at the moment. We should use digital money and put the metal stuff to better use.
You make a good point, but why stop there?
We need these electrical conductors to get electrons from one place to another, right? If we could just tell the people at the other end to use the electrons they've already got at the other end, we'd save all sorts of trouble...
The only possible downside to this plan is we'd have to go out to the local pharmacy from time to time, buy a box of electrons to sprinkle over everything to de-ionize it again...
Bow-ties are cool.
Galvanised steel (steel with a very thin zinc coating) is routinely used for fencing.
Well, yes, but how important is the choice of metal when you're not actually dueling to the death?
Bow-ties are cool.
Ahh, I thought 1014 tons didn't sound like much.
Oh, but you could build a submarine with that much copper!
Bow-ties are cool.
Bolivia, on the other hand, has a socialist government and has been playing hardball with their lithium reserves.
And believe me, nothing hurts like having a ball of Bolivian Lithium thrown at you... It's not worth it, just for a walk...
Bow-ties are cool.
Well, please explain then, if possible, why panels-watts per dollar, are just not getting any cheaper. People really don't care that much about watts per square meter of modules, they want watts per buck deals. Watts per square meter are more a metric for spacecraft arrays, because of launch costs, folks in suburbia couldn't care less if they have to cover half their garage roof or all of it, as long as it gets much cheaper watts per dollar.
Near as I can see, we hit a plateau of affordability around 2002 (last year I bought any myself, started in 99) and they are getting more expensive, if anything. I know all about the fabs and how they were forced to use silicon rejects for so long, the demand for microchips has been so high, etc, but seems PV demand would have increased enough by now to overcome that limitation, along with all these thin film "printable" cells we keep hearing about. Nanosolar allegedly ships some cheaper stuff, but it is pure unobtanium retail inside the nation they are manufactured in, they go to Germany last I knew because of the guaranteed grid tie pay back figures, which are really good for the owners there. That leaves everyone else with still expensive stuff as the only option.
Like I said, hundreds of articles about new amazing breakthroughs over the past *decade* but it ain't hitting retail yet, same with any amazing batteries except for real small cheap gadgets, and even those are spendy, many dollars for a replacement cheap tiny bare bones cell phone or laptop batt still.
Luckily my old golf cart lead acid batts are still doing OK, I installed a desulphator to keep them clean, etc, but if I was to go shopping today for replacements..it would still be 18th century tech level lead acid as by far and away the best deal out there for bulk storage on the cheap. All these amazing breakthroughs with PV and batteries are not translating to anything joe six pack can get retail, so that's the question "why not"?
Ten years ago I really believed that by by now we would be able to slide on down to home depot and be able to grab 100 watt panels for 100 bucks, from a variety of makers. I thought it would be a lot more common and less expensive by now. I thought we might be able to grab NiMH or whatever for around 1/4th price they are still today, yet we can't, either product. And LiIon...just outtasite, ridiculous to even think about it for a home solar battery bank unless you are rolling in cash and don't know what to do with it. All the other exotic chemistry batteries..same deal, LiFe and so on, zinc/air, all that stuff, stuck in R&D land, while we potential consumers are still waiting for next week's amazing breakthrough article. In this same ten years, computers got three times as powerful for one third the cost..or is that not a fair comparison? PV is still around five bucks a watt retail, more or less the same as it was ten years ago. You can get marginally cheaper deals than that occasionally, scratch and dents, that's it. Where's the buck a watt stuff?
The history of NiMH batteries in electric cars more or less revolves around these guys
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobasys
from further down that same page, more on topic on why no large cheap NiMH yet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries
We (known technology) can't yet create let alone string N.T.s together in a volume large enough to be usable as wires, barring the most specialised of (short) cases. When we do, electrical wires will have to compete with uses as structural wires. I'm presuming that unaligned tubes could be used in composite materials for larger areas generally.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
All countries with a developed civil infrastructure OR a stable leadership would have done some prospecting by now.
Some, but not enough. Especially in other African countries (examples such as the DRC that lacked stability) there may be many more deposits. The more mining that is performed in a country the more deposits are found.
It is the same as the copper problem. There are significant amounts of copper in the DRC and Zambia. But because of corruption and the lack of stability it is not exploited.
Always funny to see how knee-jerk people are about Israel, yet how silent/uncaring they are when it comes to similar, and mostly much bloodier, situations - the Algerian government's actions in Darfur, the Chinese in Tibet, Rwanda back in the '90s, etc.
Seems pretty obvious to me. It's all about cultural identity. --I went to high school with guys who now serve in the IDF. I know more Chinese people now, and consequently, the situation in Tibet is closer to my awareness as well.
Anyway, defending one's psychopathic behavior by pointing out other people who are doing the same thing is rather a bullshit defense. And calling people's reaction to butchery, "Knee Jerk" is a little strange, don't you think? After all, it's hardly an automatic response. It takes rather a lot of courage to criticize Israel openly in the current media environment. "Knee-jerk" would more aptly describe those people cringing with Pavlovian response to the threat of being called an Anti-Semite.
Labels are bullshit. What I see are people trying to justify genocide with a bunch of semantic nonsense. And you bloody-well know it.
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There's quite a few with "America" or "American" in them.
No there's not. I saw a number of acronyms in that handy wiki-list, but none with the word "America" front & center. "AOL" doesn't pack the same punch as "Technion-Israel", now does it? In the game of media perceptions, this sort of thing makes rather a large difference.
It's interesting to me how almost all conspiracy theorists have the shared characterizations of being both elitist and ignorant at the same time.
Well, elitism is a natural by-product of seeking while others choose to hide. I certainly feel superior to those who repeatedly say and believe false things despite all evidence to the contrary. However the question of ignorance is the thing which is more interesting. Nobody knows everything, and the job is to seek and analyze the information and ideas which flow. This is all I am doing. I have simply come to realize that it is more efficient to assume guilt when it comes to the mainstream media and resolve innocence based on crucibles such as this very one we're in right now. --Anybody who assumes innocence from a main-stream media voice today is, frankly, a fool. --I say that based on what is readily knowable about the long series of endlessly repeating patterns we see in human nature, corporate nature, psychopathic nature, national policy and war.
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I could pose the counter-question of whether you think there is an Israeli consipracy and want others to know or whether the Israelis hired you to post unprovable speculation under the banner of an Israel critic to discredit all such critics? Can you undeniably prove you're not involved with them?
Point taken. But it's curious that Israel is the villain in both your scenarios.
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Nice back-peddle.
There's hope for you yet if you recognize that such things are sometimes required. It's the same as saying, "Ouch. I was wrong."
Doesn't mean you have a soul, though. A genuine feeling of "Ooops" versus a simple tactical maneuver are two very different things.
-FL