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Cheap Solar Panels Made With An Ion Cannon
MrSeb writes "Twin Creeks, a solar power startup that emerged from hiding today, has developed a way of creating photovoltaic cells that are half the price of today's cheapest cells, and thus within reach of challenging the fossil fuel hegemony. As it stands, almost every solar panel is made by slicing a 200-micrometer-thick (0.2mm) wafer from a block of crystalline silicon. You then add some electrodes, cover it in protective glass, and leave it in a sunny area to generate electricity through the photovoltaic effect. There are two problems with this approach: Much in the same way that sawdust is produced when you slice wood, almost half of the silicon block is wasted when it's cut into 200-micrometer slices; and second, the panels would still function just as well if they were thinner than 200 micrometers, but silicon is brittle and prone to cracking if it's too thin. Using a hydrogen ion particle accelerator, Twin Creeks has managed to create very thin (20-micrometer), flexible photovoltaic cells that can be produced for just 40 cents per watt; around half the cost of conventional solar cells, and a price point that encroaches on standard, mostly-hydrocarbon-derived grid power."
And here I thought ion cannons were only useful for disabling Star Destroyers. Now we can use them to disable the evil Oil Empire!
Will a Canon Ion also work?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Take that, NOD!
What about the cost of the ion accelerator itself? Is it cheap enough to make this manufacturing method scaleable?
Man how many times have we seen these stories already - "cheap solar power discovery, will make solar pv affordable" but then years later nothing has changed.
It would be great if some of these things actually got productizd, I would set up solar pv all over my property if it was just a bit more cost effective...
whatever, I'm sure this was all true a year or 2 ago before module ASPS plummeted. however, these guys are now working against a commodity and china has demonstrated they are cool with 7% GM on modules. Polysilicon prices fell off a cliff and economies of scale have worked. wafer costs are 57c for the Chinese leaders now and their targets are under 50c by 2013, which means the competitive advantage of this process is zilch. This idea had legs in 2007-2008. No longer. Heck, even CdTe thin film lost its production cost advantage compared to China. Regular multi / quasi-mono cells will deliver terawatts of power. This other shit is a side show.
I assume the listed price of 40 pennies per watt is a watt per hour at peak performance? So to compare against a currently offered grid tie in system at 300 watt hours this seems to be about 1/10th the price. Granted, that's comparing a full system with alternators and a tie in system to feed unused power back into the grid, but given how PG&E prices per KW/hr in a tiered system (more power you use, more it costs per watt) this seems like a good deal.
So a new excuse to put off installing solar panels for a while longer! Yay!
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
So this is the year of the solar panels? Hope it goes as well as the year of Linux desktop.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
WE HAVE ION CANNONS?!?!?!
Even with the losses, I always though hydrogen would be the way to go for excess energy stored up through the day. Of course, on a large scale, I wouldn't be using photovoltaics but perhaps some type of concentrator and steam electrolysis. Molten salt may also be a way to go at that level.
On a small level, how problematic would hydrogen be to store if used for things like heating a house? I realize it wouldn't power cars at its density level (natural gas already takes up too much space).
Another solution may be storing the energy as compressed air.
This company isn't a solar panel manufacturer, per se, but rather a company that wants to manufacture semiconductor wafers that are thinner than you can get right now, with less waste. So, they are like those enterprising fellows that sold the shovels and pickaxes to gold prospectors back in the day. They didn't care who struck it rich so long as they could sell the equipment and supplies to all comers. They aren't Xerox or a publishing company; these guys want to sell reams of paper.
This is great stuff – an innovation that can benefit the whole industry. There are other companies that are working along similar lines, though with different technology. 1366 Technologies is one that comes to mind.
Agreed. Electrolysis of water to release hydrogen is easy to perform and well understood. Getting electricity back out with a fuel cell is a bit harder.
Flywheels, the most efficient means of energy storage we have. Large ones, in sealed units, buried underground like a septic tank, that remain there 50 years or so, and can power your house for week or two in case of outages.
Several companies are working on exactly this.
You can burn the hydrogen in a combined cycle plant and get 70% efficiency. Fuel cells are overrated.
Do they use magnets to get the energy back out of flywheels these days somehow or mechanical linkages?
Hydrocarbons created by energy from renewables or thorium LFTR power, using atmospheric CO2 (or coal) and water.
You're welcome.
Here are a few points that the article do not mention;
1. What is the cost of the hydrogen ion particle accelerator?
2. Is the low cost only taking into account the cost of materials and power and not the amortized cost of the machine?
3. What is the efficiency of the panels? The hint that it is less due to the reflective surface but how much less is an issue. Lower cost is great but if it uses 4 times the area it might not be viable. I love this quote "Sivaram says the company has implemented an alternative anti-reflection technology that allows its solar cells to perform as well as ones made with the conventional process." If the process is not yet implemented it is only a theory and may not work.
4. How resistant are these wafers to the elements?
Yet another "release" that appears to be a technology article but really is a thinly veiled attempt at gathering investment capitol.
As far as I know, the reason silicon-based solar cells need to be thick is essentially because of the poor light absorption. Si is an indirect band semiconductor, which means that in order to have a splitting of electron and holes due to light, you need a thick layer of active material. Therefore, a thin solar cell would not provide enough photon to electron conversion. This is normally why direct band semiconductor solar cells (GaAs, CIGS) are usually thinner (about 1 micron) than Si. Bottom line: it's OK to make Si thinner, but what is the performance hit due to reduced sun collection?
is all I can think when I read these stories.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I was thinking flywheels too. They can't easily be adapted to automotive use, but if you can dedicate a whole room to a flywheel system size and weight are no longer a concern. However, they'd have to be more underground than the average basement, so if a flywheel breaks apart the resulting destruction doesn't bring the whole building down. Tons of potential kinetic energy stored in such a small area makes for a spectacular show if released all at once.
Twin Creeks doesn't make solar cells. They make machines used for making the major component of the cells. They have production ready machines for sales right now. According to the Wall Street Journal article they are quite happy to sell the machines to Red China and the WSJ thinks that's who's going to buy most of them given they have the capital and they don't have irrational politicians that think "green" is a bad word. We could be making the cells here in the US. But that's not going to happen because it's more politically expedient to sell out the countries future for short term gains. The end result is this technology will create a few hundred jobs in the US to make the specialized machines. Most of the end products will be purchased by European and Asian customers who have a long term energy policy.
Hey you could go kinetic->thermal->electric using friction and thermoelectric materials XD
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'm asking because I disassembled my magnetic resistance excercise bike recently and seen that they use a flywheel along with magnets that come move closer or farther to vary the resistance, and just wondered if that is how they generate the electricity from an industrial level flywheel these days or if a generator is mechanically attached.
If only we had such devices: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_generator
You don't have to solve every problem on day 1. Simply reducing the load on Coal power plants and letting more people charge their (electric) cars off of solar would already make a huge dent in the fossil fuel consumption across the globe. Maybe in 5-10 years such a setup will be practical, depending on advances in battery and solar technologies. It's hard to predict. Airplanes will still use fossil fuels (or maybe biofuels if that pans out), but that's alright because the pressure on them will be lessened from several other sectors of the economy.
I read the internet for the articles.
Position them vertically, and you won't have to worry about destroying your basement when it fails.
I must be missing something here, that solution is just too simple... ;)
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I might be misunderstanding your question, but:
Normally a flywheel is spun by a motor, which can also be used as a generator. So you (super basically!) just wire the flywheel motor into your circuit and when you have excess power it accelerates and when you have excess draw it decelerates.
They also last half as long as today's cheapest cells.
the ONLY cells that have any longevity are the grown crystal types. The garbage that you see at the low price end lose 20% of their power generating capacity each year.
the 45 watt harbor freight kit will be generating 2 watts in 4 years, even in a northern climate.
Call me when these new "cheap" solar cell techniques will last 40 years under airizona sun. I still have 4 old panels from the 80's that have turned dark brown and they generate 70% of their new rated capacity, and they were retired from a solar farm in 1993.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Pumping water uphill is a surprisingly effective energy storage technique. This isn't practical for most people's houses, but on a large scale it works very well.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
I would point out that Solyndra was one of many green programs under the loan program. The vast majority of them did just fine. Surprisingly the best performing are the solar farms because the loans were backing projects that had 20-year energy purchase agreements.
I just looked at the company's website. There, they do call them protons: "In PIE, high-energy protons (or hydrogen ions) are embedded into 'donor' wafers", where PIE means "Proton Induced Exfoliation".
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
The energy stored in a flywheel is I * omega ^ 2. With the materials we have available now and the size you want to allocate to such a thing, manufacturers have found it works best to have a flywheel with a modest moment of inertia and crank the rotational rate way up high (100,000 rpm for starters). To keep the flywheel from spontaneously shattering, high speed flywheels are mostly made from carbon fiber. And with the flywheel spinning so fast, the only way to keep them from losing energy to friction is to have them spin in a vacuum on magnetic bearings. Then you add in a high efficiency motor/generator, with some serious power electronics to commute the phases at ~kW power levels. These are all proven technologies (see Beacon Power), but compared to a bank of lead acid batteries, it isn't an affordable solution for a home.
Costs are still a bit high for flywheels. Here is a quote from this article; "Costs of a fully installed flywheel UPS are about $330 per 15 seconds at one kilowatt." So to supply 1kW for a week it would cost 330*4*60*24*7= $13.3m.
Flywheels are great for instant power to level output but not yet viable for long term storage. A flywheel to give power overnight would even be $800k.
This sounds more like eddy current braking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_current_brake
You should visit a heat treatment shop (as in hardening metal) to see the fun safety issues that come with molten salt.
Granting they often use molten cyanide salts, it will still be all kinds of fun when your kid attaches the garden hose to the breather.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Obviously this won't power a car on its own anytime soon, but I thought you might find it interesting anyway: http://www.williamshybridpower.com/
Williams Hybrid Power is a spin-off of the Williams F1 race team that competes in Formula One. They developed this flywheel storage for use in their F1 race car, but IIRC under the particular restrictions of Formula 1 battery systems proved more competitive. It's been used to provide power for a "boost button" in Porsche high-performance cars though, and they are teaming up with other manufacturers, like Audi.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Yeesh! That one reads more like a cautionary tale in not having a backup plan, and not having a backup plan for your backup plan.
A question to ask yourself when dealing with something like this: "Could a software problem ever cause a catastrophic overflow?" If the answer is "yes," then you'd better make sure you've got a double contingency for dealing with it--an overflow spillway leading to the original reservoir (which this one lacked), and mechanical failsafes so the pumps will stop working if the water gets above a certain level. What happened doesn't sound like any kind of failure in this method of energy storage, but an utterly reckless approach to safety.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Meh, the world isn't lacking in area that could be covered with solar panels.
Lol, the young and ignorant.
Here's a slight fact that you seem to forget... all this land you are referring to,
hosts some type of flora or fauna that the environmental groups will not allow
you to kill or modify the territory of.
And while I'm not at the height of tree hugging... stopping the use of fossil fuels
to remedy one issue by creating another one, isn't exactly the greatest of ideas.
Rooftops are the key, that is what this article is about. This company has devised
a cheaper method of production and at the same time, made a solar cell that is
flexible. That means more rooftop installs. More on the side of water storage tank
installs. Farmer Brown gets to make some money cause his corn silos have some
solar cells wrapped around them, and there's solar on his barn roof, etc.
The solution to fossil fuel independence, isn't killing indigenous plants and animals
to install large solar heaters. It is making each person grid independent. And to
get them off of fossil fuels by providing an at-home electrical solution.
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
No they wouldn't. In direct sunlight, the amount of power hitting the Earth is about 1kW/m^2. The top of my laptop is 0.09m^2, so the total solar energy hitting the back (assuming I'm sitting in direct sunlight with the back of the screen perpendicular to the Sun - and have you ever tried that?) is 90W. The most efficient solar cells ever made are 45% efficient. Most are about 10-20%. At 20% efficient, that's 18W. Still not bad, but once you're out of direct sunlight and into somewhere where you can actually see the screen, that drops to under 5W. Not worth bothering with. You can, however, get parasols with solar panels on top. These will quite happily power a laptop...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Thanks for that illuminating insight. Please go along with the nurse now to your ward.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
The problem with batteries is sourcing the materials to make them.
The best batteries currently are all variants on lithium-ion. Where does the lithium come from? Much of it is in Bolivia, China, and Afghanistan. I'm not sure if changing control of a critical infrastructure mineral from the current oil producing cast of clowns to cocaine cartels, masters of corruption and religious fanatic heroin-pusher fucktards is a win. Who is worse; the House of Saud or the Taliban? Also, how much lithium is there? How much lithium would we need to replace automotive motors with battery systems? I'll leave as an exercise to the reader whether we'd run out of oil or minable lithium first if we converted fossil fuel surface-based* vehicles and homes/businesses to electric. Add up the energy capacity of the fuel tanks when filled with gas/diesel. You might not like the answer.
*Battery-powered air vehicles are a no-go. No battery technology comes close to the energy density per gram of hydrocarbon. You can move an airplane, its cargo and its fuel halfway around the globe with JP-A. Can't do that with batteries. Just not enough joules per gram of battery, plus batteries don't become (appreciably) lighter as you discharge them; spent chemical fuel doesn't have to be carried once it's burned.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
As far as I know the energy input and retrieval is still entirely mechanical, but the major advancements in flywheels have been magnetic bearings, and very high vacuums, which dramatically reduce friction losses.
I was talking to a manufacturer recently, and they indicated about a 20-25% premium relative to SLAB's in terms of first cost. For deep-discharge applications, you would break even in 3 years when you need to replace the batteries.
The right energy source for the right place. I've heard at times New Orleans has plenty of wind.
Too soon?