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Purple Pokeberries Yield Cheap Solar Power
separsons writes "Researchers at Wake Forest's Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials created a low-cost solar power system geared towards developing nations. By coating fiber-based solar cells with dye from purple pokeberries, a common weed, scientists created a cheap yet highly efficient solar system. Wake Forest researchers and their accompanying company, FiberCell Inc., have filed for a patent for fiber-based solar. Plastic sheets are stamped with plastic fibers, creating millions of tiny 'cans' that trap light until it is absorbed. The fibers create a huge surface area, meaning sunlight can be collected at any angle from the time the sun rises until it sets. Coating the system with pokeberry dye creates even greater absorption: researchers say the system can produce twice as much power as traditional flat-cell technology."
I can't decide if I should make a pokemon joke, or a your mom joke.
Your mom poked my berries? I guess? I got nothin'.
Living With a Nerd
Weeds are only weeds because we don't want them. If this solar technology takes off, the Pokeberry will cease to be a weed. Horrors!
And abandoned fields across the American south became the new gold fields of the Yukon.
That stuff pops up everywhere, and grows like you wouldn't believe. I can't imagine how well it would do if you fertilized.
And of course, you can use the leaves for poke salad. With a lot of boiling...
stored on computers from birth to the grave
Gotta catch 'em all!
Wind!! Considering all the gassy North Americans I've met ( me included ) we could export power to Mars. If we could figure out a way to harness farts, it would be a multiple source - wind power, methane, hydrogen.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
"Wake Forest's Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials"
Seriously? That's a little bit too long. MacGyver Photonics has a much nicer ring to it.
Ezekiel 23:20
Most of the "Developing nations" out there are still having trouble with clean water, roads, and reliable power. So we're going to stick them with solar ? First, who is going to pay for it ? Second, if they aren't getting reliable power through more traditional means (like coal), how is this REALLY going to help them at all ?
This page indicates that indium tin oxide is still used in the solar panel. Indium has got to be removed because it is an extremely expensive, worth over $500/kg, and it is rare and unsustainable. It's used to make transparent conductors. If we could make some kind of plastic as a transparent conductor, that would be helpful.
Or we could skip the solar panels and build a steam engine.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
Total world energy consumption ~ 1.5 terawatts.
At 1.5x10^13 / 1.1x10^3 = 1.4e10 m^2
= 1.4e4 km^2... or roughly a patch of land just 116km x 116km.
So assuming the unachievable 100% capture, we could generate all the power we need in the world by covering the state of Connecticut with magic solar panels.
I totally support the idea of clean nuclear power, but let's get our figures straight.
my tech is extremely advanced
what i do is a store the construction information for a prefab nanoscale solar cell set up in a small protected sphere. with a little coaxing, the information stored in the sphere will begin assembling the solar array in a progressive manner that scales well in a fractal pattern that also maximizes solar exposure, including proprietary feedback mechanisms that is highly sensitive intellectual proerty. the solar assemblies are also plant based like the pokeberry mentioned one and are easily configured to various 3rd world climates
the solar technology i employ even cleans up greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and converts it into oxygen, water, and an energy storage compound which also happens to taste delicious. this solar product can be utilized as an energy source by 3rd world peoples in a variety of ways, including direct reconstitution to carbon via a high energy oxygen based deconstruction process that also produces a form of heating, or- get this, this is the part i'm most proud of- the 3rd world residents can consume the solar arrays DIRECTLY and their own bodies can utilize the energy storage medium for biological sustenance
how come nobody thought of this tech before?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I expected reading this article to call this hype... there are many new discoveries reported here on Slashdot, especially with regard to optical technologies like solar cells and LCD displays, that are interesting and potentially useful... if they were at all practical or near market ready.
This looked like another one, except upon reading what there is of the article and web page it just looks like the company building these has no PR or web staff, and seems completely focused on technology. Their web page looks like it was made by an intern, and they don't seem to have supplied much in the way of exciting facts or sound bites to the reporter, leaving them to provide some basic facts and fill in some boilerplate hyperbole: "Could Provide Low-Cost Solar for Developing Nations".
From the looks of the technology, the basic principles were discovered prior to 2007 and a patent filed about then. Likely the patent was just granted. The company that is researching this stuff formed then, got a round of funding, and started delivering prototypes and test types.
As of now they seem to be creating and testing whole assemblies, IE solar panels you can put outside and use for electricity.
This is interesting because it means this isn't a lab curiosity.. they haven't demonstrated an effect in the lab, they've actually managed to develop it into a form that is nearing mass production capability.
So why is this interesting for those of us not in the third world? Well, that bit about "developing nations" is an attempt to get people to relate to what the tech is good for.... possibly because wide implementation of solar power needs more than just good cells to work, it requires a massive change in infrastructure to distribute power or a major change on a per home basis to store and use the power in your own house. That's not as much of a problem in third world countries which have no reliable power anyway, and where people would be happy to have solar during the day.
Third world comments aside, if the efficiency curve they're measuring is correct, these cells are a disruptive technology for the solar cell business. They're cheap to produce, relatively environmentally friendly, flexible, light... basically an excellent solar cell technology that everyone can use everywhere it's sunny.
If these work out and get into mass production (the technology company making them is partnered with a couple manufacturing firms already) then you'll see a lot of them around everywhere, because they'll remove a couple major barriers to wider solar cell use... cost and the fragility of existing cells.
Of course, odds are this is another cool announcement that won't go anywhere, but at least there are indications of some substance here and there...
Erik
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100429141430.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+(ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News)
The summary link is to a blog, which gives a short not too useful summary and then links to this Science Daily article.
I like how Science Daily includes APA and MLA citation information at the bottom of their articles. Also, it seems like the fiber-based solar cells this article is about are the development, and the purple pokeberries are one of many possible natural or artificial dyes which could be used.
It's a shame that the article tells us nothing about how the fiber-based solar cells work. Here is some information on that:
http://www.fibercellinc.com/Technology.html
The patent is with the EPO (european parliament patent office), so if anyone could find that, it'd be rad.
Current photovoltaics are expected to last for 30 years; what is the functional lifetime of this device? It seems to me that plastic and pokeberry dye won't last anywhere near as long as silicone.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Zero technical information. The obvious question is HOW does device create electricity from sunlight. Is the dye just a booster, or does it actuallly create the electricity? They need a better writer, one who has some curiosity and perhaps a science degree.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
You made a huge error on your math there.
If we include all energy use (even cars) the US uses about 29 PW/a (29000000000000000 Watts per year) or about 79397672826830 Watts / day.
Current solar thermal power plants can operate around 30% efficiency without much difficulty at least 8 hours per day. So each meter^2 of solar plant can generate 2640 Watts / day.
That means we can supply 100% of our energy needs with about 30074876070 meter^2 of solar plant.
That is a square in the Arizona desert 173421 meters wide (just over a hundred miles).
Of course, I really want to see us invest in nuclear power as well, but you are completely underestimating the potential of solar.
This sounds very much like a Dye-sensitized solar cell, also known as Graetzel cell.
Unfortunately that means that the new invention does probably share the same (unsolved) long term stability problems.
1100W/m^2... so with enough area, we'd have limitless energy... how does that not meet our needs? Who says we need to stay on EARTH with our solar panels? Our available area is practically limitless, so it would take some time, but we COULD, theoretically speaking, run entirely off solar power.
SIG FAULT: Post index out of bounds.
I declined to invest in a pokeberry startup... sometimes life just mocks those who don't take risks
Facts are useless, they can be used to prove anything.
You are Freeman Dyson and I claim my five pounds.
You might have a really good point, but is nullified by the fact that terawatts is a unit of power not energy.
With a name like that they are just begging people to condecingly dissmissing their reserch. Also, obligitory xkcd reference met...
"Cheap" as in "our competitors will make it cheap in 20 years after the patent expires" is more likely. If they're going for a patent, they don't want it to be as cheap as possible. If they are going for a patent and targeting developing nations then one of three things is happening:
Any of those explain why they are talking about only or primarily developing nations.
Take any one of those with or without the idea that it's most important to target developing nations first so that they don't build a non-solar infrastructure first that needs to be replaced later. Like cell phones or satellite TV skipping over wired phones and cable TV when countries develop after those innovations with lower infrastructure costs came about, going from little energy infrastructure straight to a solar one rather than going through oil and coal will be cheaper and more popular. Also, providing the energy needs of a region with rapidly growing energy demands with clean energy from the start is good for the environment (even if you don't believe in anthropic global warming smog, particulates, and acid rain suck). Focusing on explosive energy usage growth rather than replacing existing infrastructure at first is a smart way to go if yields won't be high enough to target everyone at once.
That's actually pretty interesting. I don't know about economic feasibility, but interesting none the less.
SIG FAULT: Post index out of bounds.
Energy consumption refers to energy used over a period of time, hence it has units of power and the watt is quite a sensible unit to measure it.