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Optical Furnace Bakes Better Solar Cells
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory just announced that they have found a way to create more efficient photovoltaic cells using 50% less energy. The technique hinges upon a new optical furnace that uses intense light instead of a conventional furnace to heat silicon to make solar cells. The new furnace utilizes 'highly reflective and heat-resistant ceramics to ensure that the light is absorbed only by a silicon wafer, not by the walls inside the furnace.'"
IGBT's are cheap. Capacitors are cheap. PWBs are cheap. Microcontrollers are cheap. You don't need big and expensive magnetics (transformers/inductors) if you are not doing voltage level up shifting. Inverters can be made very inexpensively if development costs are spread over enough units, but the material and production costs are relatively low compared to what companies charge for them, so the prices for these could fall significantly given enough competition in the market.
I worked on an optical/ceramic-walled metallization furnace that started shipping a year ago. Apparently our US marketing people didn't come up with sufficiently catchy buzz to generate sales. I was laid off in September after documenting all the assembly procedures for our new plant in ... Shanghai :-(
lolll...no, the Roman Empire - its power structure, and so its government - took about three decades to decay to the point that Alaric could sack Rome on August 24, A.D. 410.
About as long as "flood-up/trickle-down" economics has been dictating policy in the U.S., in fact.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
The problem has been a predictable result of Corporations railing against restriction and regulation. We put powerful rods in the reactor of capitalism when at the turn of the twentieth century a succession of economic disasters was precipitated by wholesale greed and financial practices that made a tiny few rich, but impoverished the masses.
We find ourselves learning the hard way, that we haven't changed in any significant way in 100 years, that greed is ultimately destructive and that our economic engines need exactly the same kind of checks and balances that our political engines require, because in the end, its all about the best and worst in being human. If you don't ensure stability, diversity and fair competition, you get boom-bust, profound disparity and a system which us ultimately unsustainable.
Corporations must be separated from government, for the benefit of both. Both must have a strong set of checks and balances (for example, corporations must not have the rights of human beings.) Both must have strong external guidance based on the greater good of society including environmental necessity, social responsibility and human dignity. A system of rewards and punishment must be implemented that moves these great forces in a direction that serves the needs of humanity and not the other way around.