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Next-Gen Glitter-Sized Photovoltaic Cells Unveiled
MikeChino writes "Sandia National Laboratories recently announced a new breed of glitter-sized solar cells made from crystalline silicon that use 100 times less material to generate the same amount of electricity as standard solar cells made from 6-inch square solar wafers. Perfect for soaking up the sun’s rays on unusual shapes and surfaces, the tiny solar cells are expected to be less expensive, more efficient, and have promising new applications in textiles, clothing, and building facade installations."
OK, we have a new standard of measurement... "glitter"
I can handle that. After all I understood volkswagon-sized meteors, a station wagon full of backup tapes, a library of congress -sized disk farm, and of course the old favorite, a football field sized nuclear storage facility.
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
Up until now we have all known that trench-coat ninjas > glitter vampires > eye-liner pirates.
Does this invention change this? Will glitter vampires now be able to overpower both eye-liner pirates and trench-coat ninjas?
Or does the "solar" aspect of these tiny solar cells make them useless, even deadly, to glitter vampires?
Also, can someone please explain where heroin-chic werewolves fit into the hierarchy? I'm having trouble placing them.
These are the questions that wake me in the middle of the night, sweating and with racing heart.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
While you're in there, can you say "hi" to Tom Cruise for us?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
This technology will be mass produced in only 20 years.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Over the past 5-10 years so many new efficient solar panels have been designed but you can't buy any of them.
The best solar panel I can reasonably get my hands on is a a 15% efficient overpriced 100W monocrystalline panel off ebay for about $300 so it will take about 10 years even in Florida to break even.
The strange thing is I distinctly remember reading a magazine article that mentioned the breakthrough that got solar panels from 10% efficiency to 15% and that was in 1999. So that means we should have the ones mentioned in this article by about 2017 if we are lucky. By that time of course we will be reading about 125% efficient solar panels that not only convert 100% of the energy from the sun but also suck up a substantial amount of ambient heat and convert that to electricity as well
Does anyone else notice every few months an amazing breakthrough in solar cells that will increase solar efficiency by 10^x power or lower the cost to nearly free? Meanwhile, the solar panels for useful applications are still expensive and space consuming?
I'm kind of getting tired of it.
There is a reason for this. Up until about the past 5 years there has been minimal manufacturing capacity globally. Everything was limited to laboratory experiments at universities or venture capital companies that like press releases. Now that we actually have companies making cells in volume the $/Watt has been driven down immensely. Take a look at first solar currently running somewhere near $0.90/Watt (solar cell production not end cost to consumer)
One hundred times less material? More efficient? Glitter?
Sounds suspiciously like sound bites designed by a PR office for pickup by the press. I thought that Slashdot editors saw through that sort of malarky.
I'm going to go out on a limb: does anyone know if the limiting factor in determining the costs of a solar cell is the amount of material used? I had thought it was the intensive processing required to create a solar cell, rather than the cost of the silicon, which, thanks to the gargantuan and heroic efforts of integrated circuit manufacturers, is vanishingly small for incredibly high quality (what other industry delivers seven 9s purity?). If the amount of material isn't relevant, then reducing it by a factor of 100 isn't that interesting, is it?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
A "Glitter" (si Unit, "gL") is a measure of conversion from Lumens/cm^2/s to kW/Hr. Get your facts straight!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Efficiency alone is useless. You also must consider durability and cost. If something is 99.99% efficient, costs $ 1,000,000,000.00 per kW/Hr to produce and has a lifespan of 10 years, then, it's useless. If, on the other hand, it is 25% efficient, costs $ 5.00 per kW/Hr to produce, and has a life-span of 1 year, then "IT IS WICKED USEFUL!"
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Spectrolab's cells are nowhere close to cost-effective for consumer (or even business) use on earth. They are a niche product to be used for satellites, other spacecraft, etc. The goal of Spectrolab's cells is to maximize power as a function of mass and volume.
The goal of consumer-grade systems is to maximize power as a function of cost (including maintenance, etc).
Johnson's system (the super-soaker guy) is simply a cell that harnesses a temperature gradient to generate electricity. He claims up to 60% efficiency, but the system requires an operating temp on the high-temp electrode stack of the cell of about 600 degrees C to hit this efficiency, which would require the use of a parabolic mirror setup -- hardly fit for consumer use. In truth, his cell isn't solar at all -- it's more like a special kind of fuel cell.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I'm awfully tired of these articles predicting something will be better, cheaper to make and therefore much cheaper to buy.
Nothing in the history of the world that is better than an existing product has been sold for less.
Things end up being sold at a price very near what they're worth to the end user, which often has no relation to their cost of manufacture. Think of perfume, diamonds, or celebrity-diet plans.
Also for something exposed to the elements that has to last many years, there are so many ways to fail. Temperature cycles, moisture, UV, hail, corrosion-- all of these have to protected against,
and the cost of these goes up as you make the cells smaller and more fragile.
It's swell to have better (in some sense) cells, but that's just a small part of the overall picture.
Here is the real sandia labs press release with more detail
http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/glitter-sized-solar-photovoltaics-produce-competitive-results/
They suggest using an industrial "pick and place" machine to assemble the tiny cells onto a substrate for making the panel, at a cost of 1/10th a penny a "glitter", and you can also add a concentrator above each cell
So I don't know with government work like this, do they license patents, is it automatically open (it should be) or what? Seems like a nice breakthrough, but it still just adds to the list of other incredible breakthroughs that have lead to not much at all for reducing watts per dollar at the retail level with solar PV in general. If some one company gets it and it is locked up in a for profit patent for years and years, they will just reduce their own costs then charge the normal global prices we have seen for the past long time, around ~ five bucks per watt. None of these dozens of breakthroughs we have seen are going to be all that useful until that situation changes.
Energy independence is a national security and economic recovery issue, (along with all this climate change jazz they keep going on about) so maybe this tech will be freely licensed to drop prices and actually get this stuff to the end consumer in mass quantities.