IBM Solar Concentrator Can Produce12kW/day, Clean Water, and AC

Lucas123 writes IBM Research and Switzerland-based Airlight Energy today announced a parabolic dish that increases the sun's radiation by 2,000 times while also producing fresh water and air conditioning. The new Concentrator PhotoVoltaics (CPV) system uses a dense array of water-cooled solar chips that can convert 80% of the sun's radiation into useful energy. The CPV, which looks like a 33-foot-high sunflower, can generate 12 kilowatts of electrical power and 20 kilowatts of heat on a sunny day — enough to power several average homes, according to Bruno Michel, the project's lead scientists at IBM Research in Switzerland.

Comments

OK

[SpankiMonki]

Bring this to Texas please. Do it now. Thanks in advance.

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

Hope you like getting arrested for shooting things that aren't yours on other people's property.

Re: OK

[Anonymous Coward]

And power poles are ok?

Re: OK

[BenSchuarmer]

No, which is why most power poles in the United States are filled with bullet holes.

Re:OK

[Ralph Wiggam]

.22? Can you not afford a real gun?

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

> I can't understand what the heck people are thinking sometimes.

That's because the some of us have evolved past "oh no big scary thing me get gun shoot it feel good"

Re:OK

[DexterIsADog]

.22? Can you not afford a real gun?

It's important that the round not exit the skull, but instead ricochets around to turn the brain into mush.

It's just being considerate to the neighbors.

Re:OK

[haruchai]

+5 Funny for that comment.

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I want these fucking things all over my neighborhood. I swear to god if these start sprouting up like toadstools I'm going to start using them for sighting in the .22. I can't understand what the heck people are thinking sometimes.

Make a habit of this and you will get free a place to stay which features

"Three hots and a cot".

In other words you will go to prison, which frankly is where you belong
if you really believe that shooting the property of others is acceptable
behavior.

It's understandable that you can't understand what people are thinking because it
is plainly obvious that YOU don't think at all.

-

Re:OK

[sillybilly]

Chill out dude.. the solar irradiation, called isolation (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...) is nowhere near the amount they claim, if 12 kW power average over the day is what they claim, for the amount of surface area their thing covers. I guess they mean 12kWh, not kW, kilowatt-hour, not kilowatt, which are two different beasts. Even that, at 5 cents a kWh, 12 kWh comes to 60 cents of electric power a day. Their contraption looks like a couple ten thousand dollar thing, and the economics are simply not there. Let alone the maintenance cost of a moving thing, that has to track the Sun accurately across the sky, it could be miscalibrated, or motor breaks down. The cheapest thing with solar is massive massive land area at like 8-15% efficiency, with a flat nonmoving panel, that might cost a couple ten bucks a square meter, long term. 80% collection efficiency might be great on a space station or satellite that needs to get lifted off this planet with expensive rocket fuel, but it does not make sense down here if it costs $10,000 for a few square meters, the price needs to drop to like $10-$40 per square meter, and these guys, like Mc Hammer says, just can't touch that. The maximum amount of solar irradiation hitting the planet is 1kW/square meter, and 12kW would be 3x4 meters, at 100% efficiency, a human being being around 6ft=6*12 inches=72 inches=72*2.54cm/in=182.88 cm, or 1.83 meters tall, in comparison. Looking at the guy next to some of their devices, it's not 3x4 meters area, though others look big enough, but who cares if it breaks the bank simply on pouring the cement foundation for it, let alone the tracking system, compared to some slanted panel you toss out there, without a concrete foundation, and you don't care if it breaks down because it can be thrown away and replaced cheaply. Solar power is all about economics, and that means not much fancy stuff. Nuclear has the energy density plus it does require the fanciest of fancy things you can throw at it, but solar is simply too thin energy wise to invest a lot of money into a small collection surface area, because even if you get every last bit of it, it's still not that much. Massive land area, like cheap real estate available in deserts, is what's needed by solar. Wind can allow farming side by side, and real estate land area requirements are not that big. If anything, semitransparent thin film covered glass solar is the future in nondesert places, that allows a greenhouse to still make it in its semi-shade, plus all the glass covered buildings and nonglass rooftops, though cleaning them can be an issue on roofs.

Re:OK

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Including the neighbors with the skulls?

Re:OK

[ColdWetDog]

Good thing we have Slashdot to save us from getting excited about hi tech stuff. I mean, just off the top of his head, the OP has taken apart thousands of man hours of work and cut to the chase. Fine work.

Less space than a Nomad, no wireless. Lame.

Re: OK

[Darinbob]

What about neighbor's houses? Shoot them up, they're ugly and block your view of all the flat stuff that's on the other side.

Re:OK

[Bengie]

According to the article, it's 40 square meters, and the Sun gives up a max of 1.3KW per square meter, which means it has a maximum of 52KW output at 100% and a clear sky. 80% would be about 41KWh per hour. If you assume 3 good hours, that's over 100KWH per day or $5 of $0.05/KWH energy. Almost $2k per year.

Re:OK

[davydagger]

Only if you stick the gun point blank to someone's head.

otherwise a .22 won't penetrate the human skull.

the .22LR is meant for hunting small game like squirells, rats, and rabbits(non-jack variants)

Re:OK

[davydagger]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_panel#Efficiencies

>Currently the best achieved sunlight conversion rate (solar module efficiency) is around 21.5% in new commercial products

%7-15 is so 10 years ago. In the lab they have new technologies that does as good as third to half sun.

Also the article says kW, not kWH, which is far more reasonable, because its computerworld, and its really not unreasonable.

>80% collection efficiency might be great on a space station or satellite that needs to get lifted off this planet with expensive rocket fuel, but it does not make sense down here if it costs $10,000 for a few square meters, the price needs to drop to like $10-$40 per square meter, and these guys, like Mc Hammer says, just can't touch that

80% effeciency is exciting, because there is no collection/price trade off. Previously 80% effeciency is unheard of. Its expensive because its new. Its good because it uses only a small amount of physical space, and its extremely powerful, making it suited for rooftops in urban areas, where buildings are tall, real estate is expensive, and population density is extreme.

Also, when the technology matures it will come down in price.

Re:OK

[Crazy Taco]

According to the article, it's 40 square meters, and the Sun gives up a max of 1.3KW per square meter, which means it has a maximum of 52KW output at 100% and a clear sky. 80% would be about 41KWh per hour. If you assume 3 good hours, that's over 100KWH per day or $5 of $0.05/KWH energy. Almost $2k per year.

The economics still aren't there. A clear sky isn't enough. You won't get the sun's max in North America due to angle of the sun, especially in fall or winter. Even in summer, the angle in most parts of the country is such that you wouldn't get the max. And, in most parts of the country you also have a lot of clouds and rain (desert southwest being the exception), and you also have a fair amount of severe weather that could damage the thing. I'd be surprised if you get half of your $2k per year figure.

So figure this thing can be built for 20k. And you manage to save $1k a year. It will take 20 years to pay off, and it probably won't last that long. So it's certainly interesting and might even be applicable in select places in New Mexico or Arizona, but in places like Minnesota, it has minimal practicality from a financial perspective.

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

um... the AR-15 fires .22

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

This comment is FUD. Is it "sponsored" by the oil industry?

"massive massive land area" - 0.1 percent of the US is "massive massive"?

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energ...

Standard conditions for efficiency measurements use 1.5 Air mass, which is about what North America has, so the crap about angles is all wrong.

Re:OK

[Bengie]

It can turn 350 cubic feet of salt water into drinking water per day on top of 12KWH per hour of peak output. I'm sure someone near an ocean with lots of Sun and little drinking water could appreciate this. Maybe it would be enough power to run the pumps to keep the water flowing.

Re:OK

[Jawnn]

We're running out of fossil fuel. Things are going to change, some more. Get used to it.

Re:OK

[tsa]

The world is bigger than the US you know.

Re:OK

[swillden]

um... the AR-15 fires .22

No, it doesn't. Oh, the diameter of the bullet is very similar, but it's longer, heavier and moving much, much faster and therefore carrying an order of magnitude more kinetic energy. Of course I'm comparing to the ubiquitous .22 LR, but the comparison doesn't change much if you step up to the .22 magnum, and the difference is even larger if you look at the .22 short.

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

I see we have a real live firearms wizard here.

Point Blank Range (PBR): the range at which one does not have to adjust the elevation of a firearm to hit a given target's vital spot.

The maximum PBR for a .22LR such that the bullet will neither hit higher or lower than +1/-1" of the actual point of aim is about 80-90 yards, depending on the height of a rifle's sights. It will certianly penetrate a human skull within that range, and much, much further.

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

They are doing some funny math to claim 80% efficiency, as that is almost double the current best efficiency achieved in a lab: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Best_Research-Cell_Efficiencies.png

And I'm pretty sure 80% efficiency is above the theoretical maximum too . . . .

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

Their contraption looks like a couple ten thousand dollar thing, and the economics are simply not there.

Because the price of electricity from conventional sources does not include all of the costs of producing that electricity. How much per kWh do you pay for the medical bills of people with respiratory ailments that live near the power plant producing your power? How much per kWh do you pay for the property damaged by higher ocean levels and stronger tropical storms? None? Yeah. Instead we all get to subsidize your artificially cheap electricity by footing the bill for those things through our insurance premiums and taxes, where we have no opportunity to avoid those costs by conserving or choosing alternate sources of power.

Re: OK

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the AR-15 fires a .223. Other then starting with the same numbers the round has basically nothing to do with a .22lr.

Re: OK

[Anonymous Coward]

We bury power cables today.

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

> "oh no big scary thing me get gun shoot it feel good"

You just summed up America's foreign policy.

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm working on my plan to genetically modify trees with DNA from electric eels, and generate electricity that way. Let's see what the non-GMO crowd says about THAT!

Re:OK

[Brad1138]

Typical red neck "Murican" response. You embarrass me as an American.

Re:OK

[davester666]

more like being considerate to the people who come by later to clean up.

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

I swear to god if these start sprouting up like toadstools I'm going to start using them for sighting in the .22.

As a solar energy enthusiast, I'd take that as a challenge and start engineering them to fight back.In fact I encourage you to blaze away, to generate larger selection pressures on aggressively responsive solar collectors.

Thrintin sunflowers anyone?

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

The article states that the thing ...can convert 80% of the sun's radiation into useful energy..., that does not mean 80% of the solar energy is converted to electricity, it just means that you get 80% of the suns energy on that surface as electricity *and* warm water. The average power of the sun per square meter on the earth surface is just ~165W (because there is the night, seasons, bad weather and so on) by the way. So no, that thing is not cost effective for consumers, nowhere on earth which is exactly the reason electricity from solar energy has to be subsidized everwhere

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you stick the gun point blank to someone's head. otherwise a .22 won't penetrate the human skull.

Don't bet your life on that.

First things first, let’s see what percentage of observed gunfights ended in a fatality for the person on the receiving end.

The graph is pretty clear on this: .22 caliber firearms are just as deadly in a gunfight as any other handgun caliber. In fact, it beat the average (far right). Surprisingly, every caliber that begins with a 4 (.40 S&W, .45, .44 Mag) performed worse than the .22 caliber firearms in terms of putting the opponent in the dirt for good.

http://www.thetruthaboutguns.c...

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

We will probably never run out of fossil fuels. The same way we never run out of flint stone or wood, long before we use up the last barrel of oil and the last piece of coal the alternatives will be far cheaper than the remaining fossil fuels.

Re:OK

[itzly]

I bet it also bends in your pocket.

Re:OK

[compro01]

1.3KW per square metre is at the top of the atmosphere.

It's significantly less at ground level. You get about 1050W peak at high noon on a cloudless day at the equator and less as you go north or south from there.

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

Bring this to Texas please. Do it now. Thanks in advance.

And of course you have all noticed that they only work to a worthwhile standard if FULL SUNLIGHT so when it goes cold and dull IE WINTER TIME when you need all the heat and power they fail totally , Mind you Texas nuff said yehaaaaaa! but no use for the more important bulk of the world where you dont get yer ass roasted all day ..
Still a total failure and a technology that needs to be forgotten just like batteries a waste of space .. with an energy density that borders on pathetic ..

Re:OK

[compro01]

They are doing some funny math to claim 80% efficiency, as that is almost double the current best efficiency achieved in a lab: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And I'm pretty sure 80% efficiency is above the theoretical maximum too . . . .

Nothing funny about it. This thing is combined heat and power system. You get electricity directly from the cells, and in keeping the cells cool, you get hot water suitable for running an absorption chiller and desalinating.

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

you Sir are a Heretic and should be burned at the nearest stake. The USA is the only decent country on God's Earth. didn't you learn anything at School. :) :)

Re:OK

[Chrisq]

Yeah, I want these fucking things all over my neighborhood. I swear to god if these start sprouting up like toadstools I'm going to start using them for sighting in the .22. I can't understand what the heck people are thinking sometimes.

Quite agree, but that's enough about Muslims.

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

"41KWh per hour."

Or, as we call it round here, 41kW.

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

" though cleaning them can be an issue on roofs."

The rule of thumb seems to be that after a year the average roof is sufficiently dirty to knock 10% off the output of the panels, but that it doesn't really get any worse after that unless you live somewhere that is dusty and it never rains, or if you actively encourage moss to grow on there. So if a panel claims 20% efficiency by the time it's got grimy then it's effectively 18% efficient. (20% efficiency is optimistic - it's used just for the easy math).

Re:OK

[Sique]

It's not so much the alternatives becoming cheaper than the extraction of fossil fuels becoming more and more expensive. We extract gold with much more cost per kilogram than coal -- but only because selling the gold will give about $1200 per ounce.

Whether some geological formation is called a deposit for some mineral is depending not only on the characteristics of the local geology, it is at first a question of economics: Does it make sense to extract the mineral here, or will it be cheaper to buy somewhere else and get it shipped? When we are talking about the exhaustion of deposits, we always have to keep the qualifier in mind "under current technological and economical conditions".

Re: OK

[wisdom_brewing]

Well said

Re:OK

[necro81]

The cheapest thing with solar is massive massive land area at like 8-15% efficiency, with a flat nonmoving panel, that might cost a couple ten bucks a square meter, long term

I am always astounded that parking lots in hot climates - a WalMart in Phoenix, say - doesn't have a roof of PV panels. Provide shade for customers' cars and generate power at the same time. In those sunny climates, the payback period is well less than a decade.

Re: OK

[DuckDodgers]

Earth? I'm going to blow it up. It obstructs my view of Venus.

Re:OK

[dave420]

There you go again. You really need some help. You do realise that it's not normal behaviour to group ~1.6bn people together, and even less normal to think it's a good idea to shoot them simply because they're near you, right?

You sound dangerously close to a small-minded xenophobe. So close the difference is, at best, imperceptible.

Re: OK

[Anonymous Coward]

And what, pray tell, does PBR have to do with penetration? Answer - zip.

Or are you talking Taylor Knock Out Index?

Re:OK

[Chrisq]

There you go again. You really need some help. You do realise that it's not normal behaviour to group ~1.6bn people together, and even less normal to think it's a good idea to shoot them simply because they're near you, right?

You sound dangerously close to a small-minded xenophobe. So close the difference is, at best, imperceptible.

I wasn't seriously sugesting shooting them at random - it was a joke. You don't deal with them by becoming like them, or else they have won.

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

It is all force, me with a gun or you getting the government to use the gun for you so you can feel superior by not touching a gun.

Of course, "me with a gun" is hard to distinguish from "crazy bastard with a gun," whereas "you getting the government" implies that there's at least some opportunity for reality check. I mean, "guy with gun" pretty regularly goes into his former place of employment and imposes capital punishment for perceived violations of fair labor practices. Juries very rarely impose capital punishment for wrongful termination, from which I infer that most people do not consider it worth the boss's life to fire someone without cause.

I know you can get a mob to do some pretty stupid stuff, but government is supposed to be negotiated by calm people in the light of day. There's at least a chance that someone will breathe sanity into the proceeding.

I know all you rugged individualists think you know what's best for everyone on the planet, and should be allowed to impose your special inspiration on the rest of us with your big gun, but from outside your head, it's often difficult to distinguish a right-thinking, honest man with a gun from a sociopathic murderer with a gun. If you ask them, they're both doing the right thing.

Re:OK

[Bob the Super Hamste]

the .22LR is meant for hunting small game like squirells, rats, and rabbits(non-jack variants)

Don't forget cans and paper in the list of things .22lr is good for shooting.

Re:OK

[scsirob]

I have 19 solar panels (Yingli 255Wp) on my rooftop. Just ordinary ones, nothing fancy. They produce 34 kWh on a sunny day. So why is 12kWh from this contraption special? Even with the 20kW(h) of heat added, my panels still top theirs.

Re:OK

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Think of it as being similar to a combined cycle gas turbine power generation with using the waste heat in the left over steam for local heating. Those setups can achieve around a 70% total efficiency electric+heat which is what the mentioned setup does as well.

Re:OK

[pigiron]

Incorrect! A .22LR round can easily penetrate the human skull when fired from a .22 rifle.

Re:OK

[LWATCDR]

Which is why we need to move more to nuclear.

Re: OK

[GameboyRMH]

Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!

Re:OK

[sribe]

Even that, at 5 cents a kWh, 12 kWh comes to 60 cents of electric power a day. Their contraption looks like a couple ten thousand dollar thing, and the economics are simply not there.

You weaken your point when you exaggerate like that. $0.05/kWh electricity is pretty rare, $0.10 - $0.25 is the common range, and if you want to use a single number for a quick sanity check, $0.15 would be a pretty good one.

Re:OK

[GameboyRMH]

In other places where electricity is many times more expensive than in the US however, it will pay itself off many times faster!

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

otherwise a .22 won't penetrate the human skull.

Would you offer your skull for a demonstration?

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

A few rounds from a .22 took down a power substation.

However, with how scarce that type of ammo is (it is not center fire, so exempt from California laws), it seems like .22LR ammo is a mythical beast these days.

Re:OK

[rgbatduke]

In fact, my high end .22 pellet rifle can almost certainly penetrate a skull. It goes through 5/8" plywood with ease. Certainly at the thin spots -- through the eyes, the temple -- but I certainly wouldn't bet my life that it wouldn't make it through even the thicker parts. And it's more like a .22 short or long, not even a LR in terms of muzzle velocity.

Re:OK

[geekoid]

It doesn't work becasue your costs are way off. 5 cents a KWh?
I pay about 12 cents a KWh and I live someplace that power is cheap.
And you fail to take into account the water and hydrogen.

a US home uses an average of 903 kilowatthours (kWh) per month. Louisiana had the highest annual consumption at 15,046 kWh and Maine the lowest at 6,367 kWh.

I like how someone points out you are wrong, so you change your variables. Why are you so desperate to show this can't work? What pert of your brain puts energy into showing it doesn't work instead of actually looking up figures and to a real calculation?

Re:OK

[Will.Woodhull]

In common usage ".22" nearly always means ".22LR". This is a rimfire cartridge. As is the .22 short and the .22 magnum.

The AR-15 fires a round whose bullet is basically the same diameter as the .22 rimfire cartridges. But the standard AR-15 uses a centerfire cartridge that has a shoulder. The cartridge is usually called a ".223" in the USA. There is a similar NATO cartridge, the "5.56", which is loaded more powerfully than the .223. As mentioned in PP, the .223 (and 5.56) bullet is longer, therefore heavier. The larger brass and use of a separate primer allows more powerful loads than can be done in a rimfire design.

To add to the confusion, there are conversion kits that allow an AR-15 to fire .22LR ammo, which allows for cheaper practice. One can generally buy a hundred rounds of .22LR for the cost of two or three rounds of .223 ammo.

Re:OK

[Khyber]

Your 'high end' pellet rifle isn't so high-end.

One-pump Benjamin .22 breach loaded, steel pellet. Blows a hole straight through a 4x4.

Requires you to literally break the gun over your knee because of the massive compression chamber.

Made in the 80s, when pellet rifles were sometimes more powerful than actual rifles.

Re:OK

[Khyber]

"otherwise a .22 won't penetrate the human skull."

Tell that to my 1300 FPS .22 Benjamin breach loader. A PELLET RIFLE.

I used to take deer down with it. Their skulls are a ton thicker than a human skull.

I smell wannabe gun nut. Go back to /k/ where you belong.

Re:OK

[bluefoxlucid]

It's 12kW, not 12kWh. For a 12 hour day (i.e. summer, where the sun is out between 5am and 9pm), that's 144kWh. For a short winter day, it's still around 96kWh.

Re:OK

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

the Sun gives up a max of 1.3KW per square meter

Wow. Couldn't even bother to RTFS, could you? It clearly states that this device "increases the sun's radiation by 2,000 times", so feel free to rerun your calculations with 2.6MW.

Unfortunately, the summary doesn't state whether the increase occurs just around the device or for the entire sun. Just to be safe you might want to buy 3-foot lead sunscreen.

Re:OK

[Khyber]

"The cheapest thing with solar is massive massive land area at like 8-15% efficiency"

Where have you been, in a cave? We've got regular consumer PV pushing ~35% and have had it for several years. Commercial PV is hitting near 40%.

"The maximum amount of solar irradiation hitting the planet is 1kW/square meter"

I love how you go ranting about kilowatt-hour and then fail to utilize it in a statement where it matters most.

"Nuclear has the energy density plus it does require the fanciest of fancy things you can throw at it"

You can build a thorium reactor in your basement without the fanciest of fancy things. That's one of its allures.

I do this for a living. I can't even begin to tell you how out of date and wrong your information is.

Re:OK

[swillden]

One can generally buy a hundred rounds of .22LR for the cost of two or three rounds of .223 ammo.

Assuming one can *find* said .22LR.

Re:OK

[operagost]

There are AR-15 variants that fire .22 LR, but they're normally in NATO 5.56 or .223.

Re:OK

[Khyber]

"You won't get the sun's max in North America due to angle of the sun, especially in fall or winter."

Uhh, even in dead of winter, Southern California routinely hits photon flux levels of ~2000 umol/m^2/s-1. I should know, I live here, I design solar systems and farms out here, and I'm constantly using a pyranometer every day.

The 2,000 umol/m^2/s-1 standard was measured in KANSAS. Guess where that is on a map.

In January, ANTARCTICA GETS MORE SOLAR RADIATION THAN ANY OTHER PLACE ON THE PLANET EVER DOES ANY OTHER TIME OF YEAR - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

Where are you getting your information from? Walk away from that source forever, because you're being given a lot of wrong information.

Re:OK

[Khyber]

"The average power of the sun per square meter on the earth surface is just ~165W (because there is the night, seasons, bad weather and so on) by the way. "

Yea, source? I'm calling bullshit.

Re:OK

[kilfarsnar]

Yeah, I want these fucking things all over my neighborhood. I swear to god if these start sprouting up like toadstools I'm going to start using them for sighting in the .22. I can't understand what the heck people are thinking sometimes.

Maybe they're thinking this is a great way to distribute renewable energy in a decentralized manner. But after reading you post I too am wondering what people are thinking sometimes.

Re:OK

[Khyber]

" You get about 1050W peak at high noon on a cloudless day at the equator and less as you go north or south from there."

  Full sunlight on a cloudless, clear day at high noon in the midwestern US is about 2000 umol/m2/s PAR. Specifically, that number was measured in Kansas. That translates out to ~1048W high noon if you ONLY consider the visible range. Add a few more watts for UV and a couple hundred more for IR.

Considering the 2,000 umol standard was ESTABLISHED IN KANSAS, your statement of 'at the equator' is nonsense.

Antarctica gets more sunlight in JANUARY than any other place in the world gets in the SUMMER.

Where the fuck are you getting your bullshit information?

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

...which is why it is intended for tropical environments, as mentioned in TFA. The primary market is tropical islands, specifically, where it is difficult to get power and fresh water, but have high value for tourism.

Re:OK

[Khyber]

The math only looks funny to those that cannot comprehend basic English as they read.

HEAT ENERGY AND SOLAR ENERGY.

Back to 5th grade reading comprehension.

Re:OK

[Khyber]

Yup, angles almost have nothing to do with it.

As we can tell by this where Antarctica gets more solar radiation in January than any other place on the planet any other time of the year.

Re:OK

[Minwee]

One can generally buy a hundred rounds of .22LR for the cost of two or three rounds of .223 ammo.

Assuming one can *find* said .22LR.

Chet in Goodsprings usually has some, or you can try the gift ship inside the giant dinosaur statue in Novac.

Re:OK

[mlts]

I wonder about these things as well.. In Austin, there are the solar "flowers" that point south (they are fixed and don't track the sun) on I-35 near the former airport that could be easily replaced by one of these. Each of the "flowers" generates 1Kwh per day, which is 1/12 of the IBM setup, as per the parent's estimates.

Solar works best when one uses it on large surfaces, be it the roof of buildings, solar film on windows, or other places. It may get a fraction of the light that a two axis concentrator does... but it is far cheaper to install and maintain.

This isn't to say the solar concentrator technology is a bad thing, but it is limited to areas where real estate is precious.

Solar is getting pretty cheap. I've grabbed a cast-off 24 volt panel for free, a $8 no-name PWM charge controller [1] from eBay, a couple fuses (I always, a switch, a disused car battery, some wires, several $1 12 volt to USB adapters, a couple 340 lumens USB bulbs, and the result was a working setup for outbuilding lights on a friend's farm, well under a C-note, and it works well for the purpose needed -- give light to an outbuilding on the far end of the property, where running an extension cord for a half mile would not be possible.

[1]: In reality, the PWM controller just lopped off about half the energy coming from the panel, but for the task at hand, beggars can't be choosers.

Re:OK

[OrugTor]

4x4? Pfft. The Hauptmann 201-XT Weldmeister fires a specialty 5.21 round that can stop an SUV by melting the engine block. The weapon is banned in 122 countries.

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

I learned that 1+1=3, for significantly large values of 1.

Re: OK

[Anonymous Coward]

While you are at it. Calif. too pls

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

12kWh/day plus heat at $1k would be ok.

but you are taking the right approach to look at ROI rather than efficiency.

Where you put the thing also matters. Desert installations have disadvantages compared to rooftop ones: you have to drive out there to maintain it, you have to build grid out there, and you have to get financing to build at scale. Rooftop installations can get incremental financing, mostly use the existing grid, and use cheap-o cable installer guy style contractors for maintenance.

This thing isn't really rooftop, though, because it's not flat. I am not sure what this thing is for. your summer cottage in Alaska?

Re:OK

[nephilimsd]

First, lets assume that they mean 12 kWh/day (unlikely since an average house uses 30 kWh/day, and the article states output is enough for several households). The article states the entire structure lasts 60 years (lets use 50 for simple math), and that components will need to be replaced every 10-15 years, and every 25 years, for different components. We can use the 10 year figures, again for easy math. I live in Nevada, which has one of the cheapest electricity rates in the country. A flat-bill system runs me $.16/kWh, and a tiered structure can get as cheap as $0.125/kWh. Lets assume that I currently purchase all electricity at the cheapest possible rate (impossible since this is only available for 7 months out of the year, but whatever). Using the national average (I use a bit less due to no A/C and rely on better insulation in my home instead), that works out to $3.75/day, which is $112/month for just electricity. There are 600 months in 50 years. With no inflation, I could expect to spend $67200 on electricity over those 50 years. 12 kWh assumed to be produced per day provides 40% of my average usage. This gives me a total lifetime value for this project of $26880. Depending on the cost of the entire structure and maintenance, that leaves a lot of room to work with and still come out on the positive side, even with best estimates at making this device appear worthless. If the initial cost is anywhere near the $20,000 neighborhood and is legal to install in residential areas, I would strongly consider this for personal use. Electricity is probably going to get more expensive as oil and natural gas resources go down, and the actual value is likely to be significantly higher.

Re:OK

[dfsmith]

So figure this thing can be built for 20k. And you manage to save $1k a year. It will take 20 years to pay off...

That's at $0.05/kWh. In California the CPUC demands $0.34/kWh if you run more than 4 light bulbs.

Re: OK

[Anonymous Coward]

Walk away from Slashdot? If beta couldn't get him out of here nothing will...

Re:OK

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to have a bunch of empty tankers off the coast of California right about now with a bunch of these on them. Fill sell repeat.

Re:OK

[rgbatduke]

I had a friend who had a Benjamin, actually, but this was back in the 60's, and yes, I was jealous as I had only a .177 break-action pellet rifle. Speciality pellet that had, as you note, a muzzle velocity "comparable" to a 22 short. Yes (Google being Our Friend), 22 LR is 1200 fps (for a reason!), a 22 short is around 1000 fps, and a Benjamin is (usually, dependent on model and mechanism) 900, which is quite respectable but depends on pellet weight.

When I decided as an Old Guy to get a really good hunting class pellet rifle I looked hard at the Benjamin-Sheridans but ended up picking the Walther Falcon Hunter edition, which is also 900 fps and fires a variety of standard or "hunting class" .22 pellets. I actually haven't tried to fire it through a 4x4 -- but who knows? I got it for my sons (really, my youngest son who is the most avid hunter) and it drops a rabbit as readily as a 22. I'm guessing that a hollow point pellet would quite possibly kill a deer shot at reasonably close range (10 yards or so and a heart or perfect head shot) -- as a 22 might -- or for that matter a human. I doubt it would "drop" either one, though and this is something I would never try with either rifle, of course, unless it is after the apocalypse and it is kill a deer with the pellet rifle or go hungry:-). In the old days I saw for myself that a daisy BB gun would leave a very painful divot in human skin without quite penetrating (no, I did not pull that particular trigger). You would not try that with the Walther as it would go clean through your leg if it didn't hit the bone, and would have a pretty good chance of chipping or breaking the bone.

The Walther, in other words, like the Benjamin Marauder etc, is definitely not a toy gun. I also have an older .177 caliber pellet gun that fires a pellet slowly enough that you can "see" it (barely) en route and one doesn't fire it at a plywood sheet as it might bounce back (or more likely, embed itself 3 mm into the wood). No comparison.

Bear in mind that it isn't just muzzle velocity, it is mass. A .22 LR is typically a 40 grain bullet, a .22 short is around 30 grain, compared to a "standard" .22 pellet at 14.3 grains and speciality hunting pellets at 20 to as much as 40 grains). The .22 LR has around 5x the kinetic energy of almost any pellet rifle out of the bore and that's a simple fact. Finally, it is ballistic drag. Pellets generally aren't fired fast enough to get sufficient stability from rifling and spin to be particularly accurate, which accounts for their "diabolo" waist. This also produces substantial drag -- it is being stabilized by drag. This means that pellet rifles have a rapid dropoff of their muzzle velocity and are really only suitable for short range hunting for any sort of larger game. Real .22 rifles get enough spin that they can avoid the skirted diabolo design, avoid much of the drag, and still have equal or better precision and ballistics. The third issue is the sound barrier. That's the thing that limits .22 muzzle velocity even in the case of the rifle -- there is substantial turbulence as a bullet passes through the sound barrier slowing down, and one needs streamlined bullet shapes like those found in centerfire rifles (which do indeed fire even .22-ish caliber highly streamlined and much more massive bullets with muzzle velocities well over the speed of sound) to have decent ballistics. Rimfire .22 LR bullets are not streamlined and are designed to shoot just under the speed of sound (or in the case of 1200 fps almost instantly drop down under it as the bullet "settles" out of the barrel) so that they usually have decent but not impressive precision (bench grouping). Competition grade guns (rimfire or pellet) usually shoot bullets at muzzle velocities deliberately well under the speed of sound -- .22 shorts, not

Re:OK

[davydagger]

should have specified .22LR, which is what most people mean when they say a .22

the .223 is a whole diffrent beast

Re:OK

[davydagger]

lethality != stopping power, I get your point.

A weapon is not a good self defense weapon if the person eventually bleeds out and dies, but can still be a threat in the interim.

If you hit someone with a .45 and they live, but the bullet knocks them square on their ass, and they don't get up until the paramedics come, its done its job even if the person doesn't die.

Besides

[Anonymous Coward]

Can it cook hot dogs ?

Re:Besides

[viperidaenz]

Sure, it can also cook dogs unit they're hot.

Re:Besides

[haruchai]

That's sounds like an extremely expensive way to heat your dog's unit.
Just get an electric doggy blanket for him.

Re:Besides

[ncc74656]

Sure, it can also cook dogs unit they're hot.

The community-organizer-in-chief is intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Please fix the kW/day in the title

[Anonymous Coward]

That is so annoying every time I see it. It produces 12 kW. It may produce many kilowatt hours per day, but it doesn't produce kilowatts per day. Watts are inherently Joules per second.

Re:Please fix the kW/day in the title

[ShanghaiBill]

That is so annoying every time I see it. It produces 12 kW.

The author is clearly an idiot since the article is riddled with errors in both units and facts, but most likely it produces a PEAK of 12 kW. For solar energy, it is much more useful to state both the peak and averaged power. But by far the most important information (which the article omits) is the cost per kwHr. Anyone can stick a mirror on a pole. Doing it cost effectively is harder. Without knowing the cost, there is no way to tell if this is actually useful, or just a silly stunt.

Re:Please fix the kW/day in the title

[Mr D from 63]

That's the first thing I saw. "generates 12KW" and the big red BS flag pops up. They do, deeper in the PR, say something about 2KWh per day electrical. But one look at this thing and I can't see how it can come close to cost of production of normal solar panels rolling off a production line, nor make up for the difference with its supposed synergistic design.

I doubt many of these ever "see the light of day". At best, some third world niche.

Re:Please fix the kW/day in the title

[Anonymous Coward]

While we are at it, it's kWh, not kwHr.

Re:Please fix the kW/day in the title

[Issarlk]

Stop nitpicking, we aren't on a technology website or something.

Cubic litres

[Darktan]

The system is capable of producing up to 1,600 cubic liters of water per day

Either the author is an idiot, or his universe has more dimensions than mine.

Re:Cubic litres

[crioca]

I'm pretty sure he's an idiot, or at least doesn't understand the difference between increasing something and concentrating something:

a new parabolic dish that increases the sun's radiation by 2,000 times

Nope.

Re:Cubic litres

[slinches]

It must be the higher dimensionality thing since he successfully converts that to 350 cubic gallons (imperial, no less) a bit further along.

Alternatively, the water produced by this process is cubic in shape which would make it difficult to use with traditional plumbing systems.

Re:Cubic litres

[BenSchuarmer]

Maybe it doesn't work unless the liters are cube-shaped.

Re:Cubic litres

[khallow]

Hopefully, they'll use this power for good. Else increasing the sun's radiation by 2000 times is going to mess up the finish on my car.

Re:Cubic litres

[BringsApples]

I was going to comment basically the same thing. Imagine Mercury's surprise.

Re:Cubic litres

[BringsApples]

Once this thing turns up the sun's radiation by 2,000 times, nothing traditional will work, and we'll lose another planet.

Re:Cubic litres

[Travis Mansbridge]

I'm pretty sure it cleans that amount of water (which the title refers to as "producing clean water") and I'm still not sure where they got AC, unless that's what they're calling the cooling done by the water as it draws heat from the solar units.

Re:Cubic litres

[Circlotron]

I can only drink spherical litres, you insensitive clod.

Re:Cubic litres

[pubwvj]

"Either the author is an idiot, or his universe has more dimensions than mine."

The latter seems more likely.

I love this idea. Until the cooling system fails.

Re:Cubic litres

[Altrag]

Imagine the joke potential when we all get to move to Uranus!

Re:Cubic litres

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine the joke potential when we all get to move to Uranus!

All of that potential will be flushed away when we rename the planet to Urectum.

Re:Cubic litres

[pablo_max]

True, but at least it could be transported on a flatbed trailer, rather than an expensive tank truck.
Not to mention, getting water to you cows just got a whole lot easier. Just kick one off the back of your pick-up!
I don't know...It sounds pretty good to me.

Re:Cubic litres

[Artifakt]

I'm going to claim there's prior art on that cubic water thing. I have several copies of a device that produces cubic water in dozen lots, in the bottom of my refrigerator.

Re:Cubic litres

[necro81]

A much better article on this device can be found at IEEE Spectrum. They, at least, are a news organization that can be trusted to get their units correct, and not conflate energy with power.

Re:Cubic litres

[geekoid]

"I love this idea. Until the cooling system fails."
I love this idea. Until the X system fails.

So you only want systems that can never fail?

Re:Cubic litres

[samwichse]

Suitable for plumbing your castle in Minecraft though.

Re:Cubic litres

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, the TimeCube.com guy needs water too!

12kW/day?

[viperidaenz]

Is that 12kWh or 12kW/24h which is 288kWh

W is a unit of power, not energy.

Re:12kW/day?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Hmm, TFA also says the collector can produce "1600 cubic liters per day" of H2O.

So I suspect very strongly that the author hasn't a clue what he's talking about as regards this device....

Re:12kW/day?

[freefal67]

Agreed. The summary is fine, but the title is nonsense. Who is editing these stories?

Re:12kW/day?

[MattskEE]

It could also be 12kW peak, which with typical sunlight variation over a day would work out to around 60kWh per day.

Most of the time I see a non-technical article about solar with a kilowatt figure it's the peak power available from the cells, and as a first estimate you can multiply the peak solar power by 5 hours to get the daily output.

Re:12kW/day?

[bunratty]

3 editors, but they spend only 12 editor-seconds per story.

Re:12kW/day?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is /. . /. is not people.

Re:12kW/day?

[viperidaenz]

It takes a sodium chloride solution and produces water and salt

Re:12kW/day?

[viperidaenz]

It is 12kW peak according the TFA.

Re:12kW/day?

[queazocotal]

Rather depends where you are.
That's about double (on average) the total solar panel output here (UK). (5h/day = 1800kWh/kWp, UK average is around 1K)
An important caveat is that this is entirely useless for places that get a lot of diffuse light.
Concentrated panels work only when you can see the bright disk of the sun - a cloudy bright day produces no power.

Re:12kW/day?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the article:

"can generate 12 kilowatts of electrical power and 20 kilowatts of heat on a sunny day "

(implying peak performance)
and later in the article:

"still generating electricity with a more than 25% yield or two kilowatt hours per day"

25% is 2kwh, so full yield is about 8kwh per day. This would suggest that 12kw probably happens rarely and very briefly.

Re:12kW/day?

[MattskEE]

Yes, it's a very crude estimate, and more of a summertime number too here in the US.

In the US I would refer them to PV Watts which will take examine a database of historical solar data and tell you how much daily energy to expect through the year for different types of setups, even including solar panel fixed angle or angle tracking systems. But it will not take into account your point on the effect of diffuse light on concentrated systems.

Re:12kW/day?

[CrimsonAvenger]

*sighs* yes, it produces 1600 CUBIC LITERS of it.

To explain (for the slow), liters are cubic decimeters. A cubic liter would be decimeters raised to the 27th power.

Note that we don't actually have twenty-seven spatial dimensions available to produce cubic liters in....

Re:12kW/day?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for nit picking but a cubic liter is a decimeter to the 9th power. L^3 = (dm^3)^3 = dm^9, not dm^27.

Not that this helps those of us constrained to 3 (or 4) dimensional space.

Re:12kW/day?

[viperidaenz]

Didn't notice that.

Re:12kW/day?

[the eric conspiracy]

Per cubic story.

FTFYFTFYFTFY

Re:12kW/day?

[Altrag]

Well if its 12kW and you run it for an hour, then it would be 12kWh no? And if you ran it for 24h (assuming constant output which of course isn't valid but regardless..) then you'd have 12kW/24h.

W is the right unit here if he's dissociating from the amount of time in use. Saying its 12kWh means nothing if you don't know whether that's for a single hour or summed over the sunny part of the day or what.

Re:12kW/day?

[Anonymous Coward]

i think the author is referring to peak instantaneous output

Re:12kW/day?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't use a division mark '/' when you intend multiplication '*'. Inaccuracies like this lead to abominations as kW/h.
It is very straightforward: 12 kW * 24 h = 288 kWh.

Yeah, this means you and GP!

Re:12kW/day?

[Ginger Unicorn]

I've always thought it'd be much easier to avoid this confusion if the nomenclature was Joules and Joules per second. Whenever I see KWh I have to stop for a split second and think "this isn't the rate, even though it mentions a unit of time"

Re:12kW/day?

[bunratty]

I shall have you know, sir, that there is no such unit as a cubic story. The proper term is cubic story squared! Good day, sir!

Re:12kW/day?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be 12kW*24h

Re:12kW/day?

[bluefoxlucid]

4 dimensional space-time you fucking ludd. 3 dimensional space, 1 temporal dimension. God damn, Albert would be shitting in his grave.

Re:12kW/day?

[geekoid]

"a cloudy bright day produces no power."
false.

Re:12kW/day?

[idji]

I think they meant "up to a maximum of 12 kW of electricity power and 20 kW of heat"

Re:12kW/day?

[queazocotal]

For solar concentrated collectors.
These are panels that reflect the magnified image of the sun onto a tiny few centimeter square panel.
These produce absolutely no (well, ~.1% or so) power when there is no direct light, just bright, diffuse light.
Simply because the reflector is reflecting a comparatively dull slice of cloud onto the panel - rather than the bright sun.

Ordinary non-concentrated panels work just fine on diffuse light. (though of course with rather less output due to the lower light level)

47 square yards?

[HaeMaker]

Really? 47 square yards. Who uses "square yards" as an area measurement? Took me all of two seconds to find out this is 423 sq ft, but still...

Re:47 square yards?

[geekoid]

" Took me all of two seconds to find out this is 423 sq ft,"
so..not a problem then? Other then the use of imperial, that is.

Re:47 square yards?

[nickovs]

It's used by the same sort of people who measure their irrigation water in ache feet.

Re:47 square yards?

[nickovs]

That is of course "acre feet", not "ache feet". Bloody auto-correct!

Re:47 square yards?

[arielCo]

I thought you were going to say "this is 39 square meters". Even Google converts automatically into m.sq. when you input "47 square yards".

Re:47 square yards?

[bunratty]

I think he converted 40 square meters to 47 square yards, which is fairly reasonable. But then he really goofed and called it 47 yards square, which is something completely different altogether -- something that is a square with 47 yards per side!

Re:47 square yards?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many football fields is that?

Re:47 square yards?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're all wrong: the article says 47 yards square.
That's 19,881 sq ft. :-)

I don't know how they get 47 yards square, or even 47 square yards, from a structure which is only 33 feet high.

Re:47 square yards?

[Radical Moderate]

Hey, be grateful those weren't cubic square yards

Re:47 square yards?

[Rinikusu]

You typically buy fabrics by the square yard/meter. I know cubic yard is common for landscaping, as well. I wonder if construction trades also do similar for certain construction?

Re:47 square yards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Concrete is supplied by the cubic yard in some cases.

Re:47 square yards?

[MightyYar]

This is one of those rare times where SI and imperial almost align... yards and meters are close enough unless you are building something.

Re:47 square yards?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 3 countries in the world that do not use metric system. Burma, Ivory Coast, and the great advanced US of A. And the first two are finalizing their conversion to metric system.

Seriously? Yards? Feet? What about leagues and furlongs and miles?

How many square meters? 39.3? 40? This American idiocracy is stupendous. Can't you people deal with things like zeros? Just moving decimal places around to convert square meters to square mm or cm or km is too much to ask? This is grade 3 stuff!

Re:47 square yards?

[Anonymous Coward]

and here I was about to +1 Funny you

Re:47 square yards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not forget the Barn-Megaparsec.

Re:47 square yards?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Typically yes. A typical readymix concrete truck will carry up to 5 or 10 cubic yards of concrete and dumpsters are measured in cubic yards. Then add in that most earth moving equipment with a bucket attached has that capacity measured in cubic yards. So most things that are construction related it will be yards.

Re:47 square yards?

[geekoid]

Like a solar concentrator? :)

Re:47 square yards?

[turp182]

I figured that "ache feet" was a logarithmic progression, the farther you walk the more it hurts (once it starts hurting), and it isn't linear.

Of course I didn't see how that would be related to irrigation. Maybe it's a term used by those who inspect long irrigation systems.

And of course I saw your response regarding auto-correct...

it took this long?

[Anonymous Coward]

and, while you are at it, where is my moon base while you are at?

Re:it took this long?

[Anonymous Coward]

oops

Titel mixes up power and energy

[Anonymous Coward]

The system has a peak power of 12kW.
It makes no sense to divide this by a day.

OMG - We're all gonna fry!

[Anonymous Coward]

From the first two sentences in TFA (I quit reading at that point):
"1,600 cubic liters" (sic)
"increases the sun's radiation by 2,000 times" (sic)

If the Sun is going nova, though, I guess I really shouldn't care about such inanity.

Re:OMG - We're all gonna fry!

[bobbied]

You should read the referenced article.... It is awash in stuff like this... "Cubic Gallons", "Cubic liters",

This wasn't written by somebody who knows what they are talking about. Somebody's trying to pull a fast one..

Re:OMG - We're all gonna fry!

[geekoid]

It was written by a journalist who want to put his own 'touches' on it.

Better article:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energ...

Plain solar panels cost less

[gtoomey]

Sure you can have these fancy concentrators, but nothing will cost less per kW than plain solar panels arrays or wind power. Why concentrate the suns rays instead of using solar panels, whose costs decrease all the time?

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[Blaskowicz]

But these give you heat as well. It's kind of a heat collector with solar panel piggy backed on. I suppose it saves space and is serviced by the same company, which may not be true of using heat collectors + solar panels, though I'm not sure of the economics. Also where a power grid is available, I would favor using heat collectors alone for heating/cooling/warm water and power grid for power (duh).

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[Charliemopps]

Sure you can have these fancy concentrators, but nothing will cost less per kW than plain solar panels arrays or wind power. Why concentrate the suns rays instead of using solar panels, whose costs decrease all the time?

Because making solar panels is horrific for the environment.
http://www.scientificamerican....

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[trip11]

Actually it can be cheaper in some cases. Say 1 square yard (hey just using the units in the article) of solar cells costs $100. Then if you can focus 20 times the light on it you're generating slightly less than 20X the power for that $100 bucks plus the cost of the concentrator. If said concentrator costs less than $100 bucks * 19 you win. If it costs more, you don't win. But no cost announced so I'm guessing its stupid expensive or they'd be shouting it from the rooftops.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[Gliscameria]

Mirrors are a whole lot cheaper than PVs. If you have PV that can handle 10x the flux normally provided by the sun then it makes a lot of sense to make a mirror array 10x the size the of the PV.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[Waffle Iron]

Mirrors are a whole lot cheaper than PVs.

Flat mirrors, maybe. Parabolic mirrors on gimbals with sun tracking mechanisms, maybe not so much.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Fortunately, all those metals can be recycled, can't they? Also, the description doesn't make much sense to me. "Solar needs much more tin and silver than other energy sources do, albeit relatively little by weight"...? What does that mean? So does it need a lot of it, or only little? Does it need much by volume, if only "little by weight"? And given that the sizes are "relative to the current energy mix", some of the huge circles could simply mean that, e.g., silver almost isn't used at all currently relative to the generation capacity. In addition, there's most likely going to be pressure from the market to limit the use of silver, if only because of cost. In the future, most of it will be recovered anyway.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The cells you can buy for $100 per square yard are not the same ones that survive high temperatures while generating electricity with multiple junctions made of different and often expensive materials using a complicated manufacturing process.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[timeOday]

Then if you can focus 20 times the light on it you're generating slightly less than 20X the power

No, actually more like 80X! Because it converts the light to electricity at 80% efficiency instead of 15%-20% for un-concentrated. This is due to the extremely steep temperature gradient between the super-heated front-face diode receiving the sunlight and the water-cooled electrode behind it. (I'm sure somebody else can explain the physics better).

The point being, say you have a rooftop in a city and want to make power - in that case, density matters.

And if this were stupid-expensive, it would be a research project and not a product.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[Blaskowicz]

Wrong : the 80% efficiency is not electricity but heat + electricity. Or that is what I understand. 80% eletric efficiency would be big news. And even then, maybe the figure is optimistic i.e. apply perfect black paint to a piece of cardboard and you have a 100% efficient device, even though it's of no pratical use.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[timeOday]

Wikipedia says: "Semiconductor properties allow solar cells to operate more efficiently in concentrated light, as long as the cell Junction temperature is kept cool by suitable heat sinks. Efficiency of multijunction photovoltaic cells developed in research is upward of 44% today, with the potential to approach 50% in the coming years.[4]"

So not 4x efficiency like I said, but still 2x.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[Solandri]

Sure you can have these fancy concentrators, but nothing will cost less per kW than plain solar panels arrays or wind power. Why concentrate the suns rays instead of using solar panels, whose costs decrease all the time?

Concentrated solar power is a popular concept because mirrors cost a helluva lot less than solar panels.

Actually, my money is on plants, because they cost a helluva lot less than solar panels or mirrors. Yeah they're probably around 1% efficient compared to 16%-18% for most commercial panels. But who cares when plants are biological solar collectors which build themselves. No human intervention or energy cost needed (though it can help speed up the process). We just need to figure out a cost-effective method of converting cellulose into a more utilitarian fuel and we're set.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[itzly]

Plants need plenty of water, and the places where good water is available are already covered in plants.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[compro01]

Mirrors are a whole lot cheaper than PVs.

Flat mirrors, maybe

Which is what this thing uses.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[Waffle Iron]

It says it's parabolic right in the summary.

TFA shows a parabolic dish made of smaller mirrors. Those mirrors may look flat, but there's no way that they get "2000X" solar concentration unless each individual mirror is also precisely curved.

The whole setup looks far more expensive than conventional solar panels of the same area, or even a larger set of solar collectors capable of gathering the same amount of energy.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[bluefoxlucid]

Actually, this new fangled system produces more heat than electricity, even with the solar panels cooling it--12kW of heat is routed to electrical potential instead. If you had just a flat black collector, you'd get 32kW of heat instead of 20kW.

A solar hot water system large enough to heat your house, with all the rigging and controls involved, would cost about $3000. In the winter, that would save me $1000-$1500; and the heat can run an absorption chiller or desalinating boiler, which would stop my bathroom from coating itself in thick yellow grime thanks to the terrible water I have here. The heat could also run a sterling engine.

A parabolic collector in this fashion, with appropriate materials, could get higher temperatures to run the sterling engine hotter and generate electricity, or drive the adsorption chiller faster.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[bluefoxlucid]

It means solar requires massive, heavy equipment to produce the same amount of energy; but the small unit of equipment uses little heavy metal. If you need 1 50 pound unit including 1mg of mercury to produce 1 kW of energy, or 1 50 pound unit including 2mg of mercury to produce 50kW of energy, then you would use 2,500 pounds of stuff including 50mg of mercury to produce the same 50kW as an apparatus using 2mg mercury.

It's a ridiculous statement that comes about by peoples's fascination with the per-unit cost of anything. If you need to buy one of X every week or one of Y every month, but X costs half as much as Y, people will "save money" by buying X for half as much... four times, while claiming it's cheaper.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[geekoid]

You need to compare it to other energy sources.
It's not nearly as bad an petroleum extraction. And it has very little byproduct waste wont the panels are made.
Also, the CO2 payback is not 6-7 years. it's 6 months to 1.8 years depending on several factors.

No, they are NOT horrific for the environment.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[bluefoxlucid]

80% efficiency would be huge news. It's well beyond the theoretical maximum of a perfect photovoltaic cell.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[geekoid]

" on gimbals with sun tracking mechanisms, maybe not so much."
which would also be used on PV.

And yes, these mirrors would be cheaper to make then actual PV

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[Waffle Iron]

which would also be used on PV

No, most PV panels are flat and fixed in place.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[Gliscameria]

I'm having a really hard time understanding how people are thinking that good PVs are cheaper per unit area than a mirror array...

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[Blaskowicz]

One cost-effective method is called "wood", but while it's underutilized in some first world countries it is grossly overexploited in some other countries (and even causes respiratory diseases)

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[Waffle Iron]

Look at the frigging picture in the article. This thing is to be built like a radio telescope, probably with a price tag to match.

Re:Plain solar panels cost less

[12WTF$]

Flat mirrors, maybe

Which is what this thing uses.

Nope

Follow the links
http://www.research.ibm.com/la...

The inside of the parabolic dish is covered with 36 elliptic mirrors made of 0.2-millimeter-thin recyclable plastic foil with a silver coating,
which are then curved using a slight vacuum.

http://www.airlightenergy.com/...

A new ultra-high concentration 12 KWel – 20 KWth unit, currently under development, jointly with IBM research Zurich.
The system implements a multi-mirror parabolic dish topology (40 m2 active surface area) and will achieve concentrations beyond 2,000 suns.

Some say 12KWh/day electric cause of the cascading failure of non-engineering descriptions.
I say 100KWh/day electric and 160KWh/day thermal, (it's a beast).
Quoted 12KW electric and 20KW thermal output.
Some math: 40 m2 * 80% * 1KW/m2 = 32KW (consistency check: yep that's 12KW+20KW)
Assume 8hr/day near maximum input because it's tracking the sun.

ALSO: 40m2 area is about 7m diameter.
If you had one in your backyard to run your home:
4m diameter: 30KWh/day el and 50KWh/day th. That's a big big house with many kids (you're Xtian right?)
3m diameter: 17KWh/day el and 28KWh/day th. That's a good fit for most families
2m diameter: 7.5KWh/day el and 12KWh/day th. That's a good fit for singles.

and it only costs

[Anonymous Coward]

....?

link to a genuine source, not this shitty article

[supernova87a]

My head is about to explode with the level of pure units stupidity by this article's author. He should be banned from the profession of writing...

2kW-h per day

[Anonymous Coward]

Enough power for about two modest homes, assuming a storage system somewhere. The "12kW/day" in the story title is usual green-hype exaggeration intended to fool those wishing to be fooled.

The 25% efficiency claim is interesting. Better than real-world PVs by 6-7%. Actually utilizing all of the claimed capabilities (heat, desalination, power) is not going to be a passive, low-maintenance operation; this is a utility scale product.

Still, probably a lot better than igniting birds.

Found the IBM link.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a link to the IBM release: http://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/corporateservicecorps/solar.html
This confirms a power output max of 12 kwel and 20 kw of heat from the device, so they are talking power rates here.
Here is another link to more info: http://www.research.ibm.com/labs/zurich/dsolar/product.html

Note that the dimension given are in the metric system, and the author of the article botched the conversion, going to square yards instead of square feet.
It is 10 meters high with a 40 m diameter dish.
Of course I would like to see what wind loading a 40 m dish would take, in terms of thunderstorms and the like.

Re:Found the IBM link.

[kesuki]

"Of course I would like to see what wind loading a 40 m dish would take, in terms of thunderstorms and the like."

since the device is made from concrete i would imagine it is nice and stable if properly installed. that is instead of glass in the mirrors which are just aluminum with a silvered surface... and yes that was from the fine article.

Re:Found the IBM link.

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome, because the 'picture' on the TLA definitely looks fake.

With a 40m diameter, you get an insolation of around 1.2MW.

So I would say the claim of 80% efficiency is BS.

Re:Found the IBM link.

[aaarrrgggh]

Wind loading... why not just put it on an axle and let it spin to make even more kW per day and possibly even more cubic liters of water!!

Re:Found the IBM link.

[rgbatduke]

...Or, \pi R^2 = 3 x 400 \approx 1200 square meters of collector area (concentrated down by the mirrors). If so, the collector surface receives around 1.2 MW peak, or at 80% efficiency 960 KW converted. The 12 KW is therefore not conceivably peak, it has to be a 24 hour average -- 12*24 = 288 KW-hr, which assumes peak can be (nearly) maintained for close to 8 hours a day. This completely changes the numbers. 288 KW-hr/day is $43/day at $0.15 KW-hour, and allowing for (say) 200 days a year effective production at this rate a ROI of anywhere from $8000/year to as much as $12000. That would amortize a $100,000 installation cost in a decade allowing for the cost of the money, and yield profits thereafter. That is actually pretty competitive with passive solar, which also has an amortization time of around a decade or bit more for consumers, although power companies probably beat that pretty substantially with their improved economies of scale. If the other "benefits" from using the water cooled system (nice trick, turning a waste heat liability almost anywhere into an "asset" add value, amortization is correspondingly lowered. Forests of these things in North Africa bordering the Mediterranean, for example, could conceivable power rapid economic development of the region while simultaneously watering the Sahara and conceivably actually altering its climate with progressive anti-desertification, while paying for themselves and even yielding a healthy long term ROI.

If they really mean 12 KW peak, then this is of course ridiculous, but that can't be right as ordinary passive PV could easily generate 120 KW peak, if not 240 KW peak with current technology, from the same 1200 m^2, and with tracking could accomplish an almost identical efficiency profile at 10 year amortization.

The top article was sufficiently messed up unitwise that I'm guessing that the author was simply clueless about this stuff. The missing number, of course, is the cost per installation. If it is less than $100K and produces an average of 288 KW-hours/day, they could range from break even with existing technology to very attractive even without "water" or "cooling" or "heating" advantages (that could easily be liabilities in locations where water for cooling is itself expensive or ecologically restricted). If it is more, well, it's an instant non-starter until they get the price down. But I'm guessing one could build these things for $100K and make money -- the concrete itself is order of $10K to $20K (including the mirrors), say $10K for the PV collector and cooling, $10K for the electronics and tracking, $30K for labor and installation -- $30K to $40K for profit at a 40% or so margin? And improvable with mass production? But I wouldn't be surprised if it were $250 K. Or $80K.

The latter is a complete waste of time. The former makes them a game changer, at least for a few years before passive PV overtakes them and renders the entire energy "crisis" moot by dropping amortization and ROI for consumer rooftop installations from around a decade plus a decade of "profit" to less than seven years and thirteen or more years of "profit". We're already on the edge of where installing rooftop solar on all new construction houses and rolling the cost into the primary mortgage is a no-brainer: "Buy a house and never pay for electricity... (for the next 20 years)" for an extra 10 or 20 thousand in price on a $250K house. Inside a decade, I fully expect to see this happen without any prodding in all parts of the US with adequate annual insolation just because it makes economic sense -- we need just one more factor of two reduction in the cost per watt of 20 year installed solar. For power companies, the amortization/ROI is largely already there in many parts of the US, and they are happily building solar farms wherever they can get cheap land near expensive electricity.

rgb

Re:Found the IBM link.

[samwichse]

It's not a 40m diameter dish, it's a 40m^2 dish.

Building codes

[JimSadler]

Watch the establishment try to stop this product through such excuses as building codes etc.. It is wonderful. It is new. And therefore every powerful element in society will fight to stop this product. Just as they have tried to stop Tesla.

Re:Building codes

[Areyoukiddingme]

Watch the establishment try to stop this product through such excuses as building codes etc..

They won't have to lift a finger. Nobody is mass-producing the photovoltaic cells that can accept the whopping concentration of sunlight the thing uses, and even if they were, almost nobody has access to sufficient water flow to keep it cooled. Cool water goes in, really stinking hot water comes out. It's illegal to dump high volumes of water that warm into rivers and lakes in the US (which is why nuclear power plants have huge cooling towers, despite being located next to rivers and lakes). So even if you could get your hands on the cells it uses, odds are you can't keep them from melting into slag if you build the dish.

It's mostly useful in tropical islands, which have easy access to lots of water and currently have expensive electricity.

And still, it's IBM. They're a services company. They don't like to make hardware anymore. But they adore patents. So none of these will be built, anywhere.

Re:Building codes

[rebelwarlock]

Lucky for you, this stuff is nice and shiny, so it makes a good substitute for tin foil.

Re:Building codes

[geekoid]

It's great for data centers.
IT's great for any hotel.
It's great on military bases.

And in this case, you could just dump the water into a cities ware reclamation system via an open and wide reservoir.
You could build a system that cools the water as it enters the public supply.

Really your complaint is pretty ignorant.

How?

[mark-t]

I'm pretty sure I recall reading somewhere that that the average power from the sun hitting earth is just over 1kw per square meter. How can they get 20kw without using about 20 square meters, exactly?

Re:How?

[Scottingham]

They measured in days, not hours....a trick to hype up the amount.

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are concentrating 39 square meters of light to the solar cells...

Re:How?

[mark-t]

Ah.... okay, that'd do the trick.

Not exactly something that would be viable for a person's home then.... especially if they lived in an apartment.

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article says its ~43 square meters (47 yards) in size in. If that figure is the mirror area, or even close to it, their numbers at least seem plausible.

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

D=40m
A=3.14*r^2
1256m^2=3.15*(20m)^2
1256m^2*1kW/m^2=1256kw
(20kw+12kwel)/1256kw=2.5%eff

Not sure I see the problem.

Re:How?

[geekoid]

If the apartment has a common heating system, then yes, these would be great. Otherwise..no.

Re:How?

[mark-t]

12kw would not typically be enough for an apartment unless it were just a quadplex. If you lived in a hi-rise or generally even a low-rise apartment complex, forget it.

Pretty innovative...easy to mass produce.

[Scottingham]

TFA is pretty poorly written, but the pictures are pretty awesome. IMHO the biggest innovation here is the use of those circular mirrors veruses some custom curved mirror that pretty much all existing parabolic-type solar arrays had used. These can be mass produced super cheaply so replacement is more about fixing individual components versus chucking the whole array. They are also likely able to fine tune each mirror to guide the sun towards the center the best. I wonder if they could actively change via computer control. The actual PV section is also pretty smart, as it is a relatively smaller footprint than unamplified PV arrays. Hopefully that'd translate to few materials and lower costs. These always bring up more questions though...like: What about stray reflections? Could they blind people or melt cars if placed in a parking lot (like the example given in TFA) What is the lifespan of those solar arrays if they're getting blasted with such high amounts of light. How fast would they fail if the coolant system ran out? Would it fail catastrophically?

Re:Pretty innovative...easy to mass produce.

[m.alessandrini]

I wonder if they could actively change via computer control.

Not sure if you mean tuning each mirror, but as a minimum I expect the whole structure to rotate during the day to follow the sun, or you'd waste a lot of its potential.

*SIGH* Units FAIL

[Irate Engineer]

God, just be done with it and convert it to horsepower per barn. That was good enough back in the day. Damned kids.

Re:*SIGH* Units FAIL

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to be the guy pointing this out, but this is what reading American articles is like for the rest of us. Every goddamn time.

Desalinisation

[steveha]

The article is pretty terrible on the details. It seems that this CPV device is intended to be built near the ocean, and use salt water for cooling; the water can then be run through a desalinization system.

The hot water can then be used in an attached desalination system that creates drinkable water by passing itwater[sic] through a Gortex-like membrane.

According to Wikipedia there are several desalinization processes available that use heated water and a membrane. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Desalination_powered_by_waste_heat

The article is vague on how the CPV system provides cooling, but the CPV system produces heat as a byproduct, and it is possible to use extra heat for cooling. There are refrigerators that run on propane, with no motors. (There is a sort of pumping of coolant that relies on gravity.

There are a lot of places in the world that get lots of sunlight, are near salt water, and could use more fresh water. So this sounds like a good idea, but it isn't going to be installed everywhere.

Re: Desalinisation

[Anonymous Coward]

At a guess, cooling would be via a nearby adsorption chiller - one of those ways to cool things with waste heat, often used in cogen plants to recover waste heat from the generator's gas turbine exhaust. Actually, the article confirms this (and spells it right!).

This looks like a good design for small-scale solar concentration to get power & use the otherwise wasted heat. FWIW, their 80% efficiency number may come in part from factoring in the reclamation of said waste heat.

Re:Desalinisation

[Anonymous Coward]

Absorption fridges as found in RV's etc, they have a mixture of ammonia and water, heat applied boils the mixture in a hot section, which condenses on the condensor. This is made of of metal coils with fins that allow the ammonia gas to dissipate its heat and condense to form liquid ammonia.
The liquid ammonia then makes its way to the evaporator, where it mixes with hydrogen and evaporates, removing heat from inside the refrigerator. The mixture of ammonia and hydrogen gases flows to the absorber.
Here, the water that has spilled from the separator is mixed with the ammonia and hydrogen mixture. Ammonia readily mixes with water and returns to the generator while the hydrogen does not mix, so is separated for return to the evaporator. Its all thermosyphon and gas change driven, no pumps at all.

These could use the same system I agree.

Re: Desalinisation

[Overzeetop]

"80% efficiency number may come in part from factoring in the reclamation of said waste heat"

I would say that would be absolutely necessary, given that the most perfectly efficient process possible with a room temperature heat sink would require that the active portion of the generator be running at 1500C (Carnot efficiency = 80% with a sink at 25C)

It is nice that they spelled adsorption correctly, given that practically every other technical part of the article gets the units so wrong they're scientifically impossible.

Re: Desalinisation

[Overzeetop]

And that's why I should always read the article. They are running at 1500C (though how they're achieving theoretical carnot efficiency is a mystery). They also spelled adsorption wrong. *sigh*

Let me guess without RTFA...

[Bodhammer]

"It is not ready for commercial application but should be in 3-5 years."

How did I do?

Re:Let me guess without RTFA...

[geekoid]

They can build them now. Their is nothing magical about this. YOU could build one now. well, noy YOU, but anyone with some skills and common sense.

Re:Sounds great

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It may not need to do that. Both heat and cold can be stored already, and electricity can be initially used during the day, and later storage can be added as the options develop. (Having said that, I'd still like to see the economic practicality of this whole thing compared to other options that don't require heavy moving parts.)

Sources

[TubeSteak]

The UK press release is more informative.

https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/40912.wss
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/uk/en/pressrelease/44972.wss

There's also a video of a TED@IBM talk (which I haven't watched)
http://fora.tv/2014/09/23/Solving_the_Energy_Crisis_One_Sunflower_at_a_Time

Rule of thumb: $1/kW or forget it.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

A dollar capital cost per kW of generation (with a couple decades lifetime minimum) is the ballpark for the breakeven point between grid power and solar generation on mid-US-latitude sunny sites (5ish solar hours/day), with grid power available.

Being remote (so running grid is pricey) or having a small load (so basic connection fees aren't justified) shifts the point to higher dollars/watt, as does an increase in utility rates. Shade, dark weater, and high lattitude shifts it downward. (Forget about solar in Seattle, for instance.)

Solar panels are just starting to drop below $1/W, making them practical in far more places, and making the load size and associated system costs (mounting, inverters, storage) more of a factor.

Over $/W? It needs some exceptional situation to compete with cheap flat panels.

Re:Rule of thumb: $1/W (NOT kW) or forget it.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Oops. Typoed $/watt to $/kW in part of the above and accidentally hit submit rather than preview. My bad.

I would like to politely remind the real trolls.

[flayzernax]

Who have been consistently modding me down and flaming me.

That this is a fine example of one of those 'myriad' resources for generating power that I was talking about.

This is just 1.... and this is not new. It's just finally been commercialized a bit. Perhaps. Or IBM will sell it and another company will sit on it. Or so until 20 yrs later and more mental programing destroys peoples ability to set up their own power infrastructures outside of what they 'expect' from state, and government and corporate america.

hahahahahaha :(

Re:Sounds great

[Blaskowicz]

What is leftist about it? Free subsidies to corporations and a lack of will to do anything about global warming is a right-wing thing.

Winter?

[Anonymous Coward]

I live at a high(er) lattitude. There are a crapload of farmers who could would want this at a cheap price. They live on the farm year round --even in winter-- and so the first question: will it work at mid to high latitudes, and the second: is it cheap enough and small enough for a single farmer?

This story will disappear.

[Anonymous Coward]

The manic comments above point to why stuff like this keeps showing up in the mainstream press.

Solar insolation in Arizona is far less than the 1.3 kW/m^2 claimed. It is closer to 650 W/m^2 on a good day. You dont get to 1.3 kw/m^3 until you climb to about 130,000 feet of altitude. It is 1.6 kW in low earth orbit. sheesh.

A realistic expectation for solar energy yield in a large part of the US is more like 4 to 6 kWh/m^2 per day over the course of a year for a good location, and a lot less in many areas.

The 80% figure is also bogus. It may approach 80% of Carnot efficiency on the incident on the entire structure, and fine...including thermal and water production, that is great. The concentration of thermal energy raises the Carnot efficiency to make high efficiencies possible. But that is not at all 80% of the entire radiation incident on the surface.

Some things need explaining better than the popular press seems capable of...

Dimensional analysis please.

[evo2]

Put off by the title. "12 kW on a sunny day" means something "12 kW/day" has nonsense dimensions.

Re:link to a genuine source, not this shitty artic

[fleebait]

The writer is resigning as a writer-editor, and moving directly to sales and advertising, with a corresponding commission/bonus. Creativity is an asset.

really? Kw per day & cubic gallons is your suc

[raymorris]

Seriously? Even a third grader with zero knowledge of anything related to power production would immediately recognize thus as pure BS. It produces cubic gallons if water and kilowatts per day? The claims are obviously _not_even_wrong_. Their marketing department needs to do about eight times better to even reach the point of writing intelligible bullshit. This is what you're claiming as what you've been promoting?

Well I guess it's good that you're clearly admitting that the stuff you advocate is stuff that would get a grade of D- as a fourth grade assignment.

Re:were not running out of oil yet BUT

[__aanbvm4272]

The cost of fossil fuel will go higher due to secret trade agreements not to disclose who is actually buying the oil @ $100.00 plus a barrel Twice the cost of what the analysts say it should be. We can figure out where the biggest drain on the economy is. And what wars are the oil companies helping to fight? I say let's try any new energy system even if the petroleum CEOs don't like it.

Re:Sounds great

[Anonymous Coward]

What is leftist about it?

Duh - They're trying to do something that might be good for poor peeps, obviously leftist...

We're all going to die!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who allowed these crazy people to increase the sun's radiation by 2000 times? Or maybe when the sun overheats, all the extra energy will warp us to a 9-dimensional alternate universe where they have cubic liters and where it makes sense to divide kilowatts by days.

Re:really? Kw per day & cubic gallons is your

[Anonanonaon]

I read your post.

I find your knee-jerk reaction really peculiar, but also uniform across a certain subsection of posters.

I've never understood what mechanism it is that drives some people to, apparently, exhibit actual deep-felt hatred for the idea of using technology to exploit a free resource like solar energy.

It has all the earmarks of some kind of cognitive sickness. Very strange.

Cheaters

[Anonymous Coward]

a parabolic dish that increases the sun's radiation by 2,000 times

Cheaters. If you increase the Sun's radiation by 2000 times, every solar power application becomes feasible. Too bad the article does not describe how this is accomplished and how it impacts the Sun's remaining lifetime.

The Facts from IBM scientists on Sunflower

[IBMResearch]

Glad to see so much interest on Slashdot for our sunflower. I'd like to address a few misunderstandings and share with you how YOU can test one of our systems in your home town. 1. The standard commercial system will be available in 2017 for both heat and electricity, the water desalination will come later. 2. This presentation explains the science behind the sunflower and how it can also provide cooling: http://www.zurich.ibm.com/pdf/... By means of a thermally driven sorption chiller, cool air can also be produced. A sorption chiller is a device that converts heat into cooling via a thermal cycle applied to a liquid or solid sorption material. Adsorption chillers, with solid silica gel adsorbers and with water as a working fluid, can replace compression chillers, which place a burden on electrical grids in hot climates and contain working fluids that are harmful to the ozone layer. Although absorption (liquid sorption) systems are already available for combination with the HCPVT system, they provide less cooling output compared to low-temperature driving heat for the adsorption (solid sorption) systems under development at IBM. The systems can also be customized with a transparent back for urban installations. 3. This presentation highlights the regions and the commercial applications: http://www.zurich.ibm.com/pdf/... 4. Here is a YouTube video showing the prototype in Biasca, Switzerland http://youtu.be/JVB9_3IKIAE 5. The news was announced at a TED conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. You can watch the presentation here: http://fora.tv/2014/09/23/Solv...

Re:Sounds great

[Issarlk]

Heard a few milenia ago: "Sails sounds great, but how do they push the boat when there's no wind ? I'm surprised the smart people in Constantinople don't realise that. *plonk*"

Regenerative power is doomed.

[Ihlosi]

At least, that is, if they keep getting energy and power mixed up. You can't design a working system if you mess up the very basics.

The man with the golden gun called.

[Ihlosi]

He said something about wanting his Solex back.

increases sun radiation

[YoungManKlaus]

you mean it _bundles_ the suns radiation, thats slightly different from increasing the output ;)

The sickness of science and reality

[Overzeetop]

Hey, I love solar power. Of all the "green" ways to produce energy, it's my favorite because it is direct from the source and generally produces the lowest byproduct problems.

However, the GP is correct - the article is so fraught with errors that anyone with any scientific knowledge assumes the project management to be either utterly incompetent or, more likely, dealing in absolute fraud. Anyone who has passed basic science classes knows that if your units come out wrong when you do math, it means your answer is guaranteed to be wrong. If you do a problem which requires that your answer be in units of volume, and you come out with length to the ninth power, you've made an error. If you need power (kwh) and you come up with energy (kw) you've missed a term (or several). Any time the units for a project are incorrect, you invalidate your arguments.

Now, there are better articles on this - no doubt. But defending this makes you look like the legion of people who funded that LED roadway indegogo project. It's not that it isn't cool, but if you assumed they got the efficiency they wanted and it worked perfectly and ran their own numbers, you find out that to make their ultimate goal work would cost something like 250 Trillion dollars. But, hey, a pretty picture and an promise is all we need, right?

Re:The sickness of science and reality

[bws111]

I am curious as to why you would think a poorly written article in Computerworld points to even the slightest indication of 'incompetent project management' or 'absolute fraud'. If I write 'Bill Gates wrote the Linux kernel in PERL' does that mean that the Linux project management is completely incompent, or, more likely, absolute fraud? Or does it just mean I am an idiot?

This is an article in Computerworld written by some hack who took an IBM press release and completely rewrote it introducing all kinds of errors not present in the original (such as the idiotic units). It is not a submission to a scientifc journal or some such.

A little critical thinking goes a long way, and you seem to not have any.

Re:The sickness of science and reality

[geekoid]

Why to you trust journalist to be correct? are you new? How about the writer is making gross mistakes? Did that even begin to enter you hate filled brain? At any point did you think 'this sounds interesting,. but this writer make no sense, lets find another article on an actual decent science engineering site?

NO, you did not, you immediately went to 'fraud'.

The poster is NOT defending the article, he is talking about the technology.

Exactly!

[trout007]

You are exactly right. The fact is on earth we only get about 1 kW/m^2 which at today's rates is worth about $2/day. Chasing conversion efficiency is a waste of time and resources. The real goal is installed $/kW. Get that down low enough and every roof can be covered.

Re:Rule of thumb: $1/kW or forget it.

[necro81]

Shade, dark weater, and high lattitude shifts it downward. (Forget about solar in Seattle, for instance.)

Someone ought to tell that to Germany, which has a mean latitude of 51 and plenty of cloudy days, and generates a significant fraction of their power from photovoltaics.

Naw, who am I kidding, everyone knows that the reason Germany is so successful with PV is because they get more sun! Seattle doesn't stand a chance by comparison!

Re:link to a genuine source, not this shitty artic

[necro81]

Read much more coherent coverage from IEEE Spectrum.

Spectrum is great - important and well-written technological articles that 1) get their units correct and 2) don't get breathlessly hyped up like a press release. For a while, the print magazine was the main reason I kept my IEEE membership current. Now the whole thing is posted for free online.

What the hell is

[n6kuy]

.... a kW/day?

Re:Rule of thumb: $1/kW or forget it.

[DuckDodgers]

As you said, higher utility costs change the break-even point. My in-laws in rural Virginia pay $0.04 per kwh for electricity. I'm closer to a city and pay $0.16 per kwh.

Government "economic stimulus" program effectiveness depends upon what the job does. The fundamental problem with jobs in the US is that every industry is more labor efficient than it has been in any other point in human history. That's driving the total market demand for labor down, while the supply is much higher. Since supply dramatically exceeds demand, prices are dropping. There is no free market solution, except maybe letting 30% of the population starve. And any government intervention to artificially constrain the supply of labor (restrictions on overtime, mandatory vacation, government-run make work programs like FDR's Public Works Administration) will be ruthlessly opposed by conservatives. So the 99% is on a slow slide to hell even while the GDP is growing nicely.

Re:really? Kw per day & cubic gallons is your

[bws111]

Who is this 'they' you are speaking of? All of the stupid units, etc were put it by some idiot writer from Computerworld. The IBM press release says 'Such a system could provide 30-40 liters of drinkable water per square meter of receiver area per day, while still generating electricity with a more than 25 percent yield or two kilowatt hours per day'.

Do always base your assesment of a technology solely on what some hack writer says?

Quoting my own policy paper ...

[raymorris]

> I've never understood what mechanism it is that drives some people to, apparently, exhibit actual deep-felt hatred for the idea of using technology to exploit a free resource like solar energy.

Quoting myself, in my national energy policy paper:

        Solar electric is another option that has received significant attention, and it has some very attractive qualities.
        Lewis and Nocera (2006) calculated that the total amount of solar energy striking the earth and it’s atmosphere
        in one hour is more than humans use in a year. Sunshine will not be exhausted over the long term, though daily
        and hourly fluctuations will occur.

Your concept of making critical national policy decisions based on your current emotions ("hatred") is interesting.
My post you replied to is based on the fact that I know how energy is measured. Donkey cubed is not a measure of power.
The proponents of this project clearly have no idea what they're talking about, none at all. As I said above, they're not even
wrong - they're unintelligible. Advocating nonsense instead of actual, workable renewable energy is how we've remained
stuck with coal-fired power plants. Rather than moving forward with cleaner options that actually work, we've wasted
decades, and billions of dollars, on pump-and-dump schemes promising "free energy". Quoting Morris (2014) again: ... This media interest can also create significant public relations issues for the solar industry and solar advocates.

      In 2006 story, the chief news editor for Nature called Nanosolar “the poster child for Silicon Valley’s interest in solar power”.
      Six years later, this “poster child” announced they would soon start shipping panels, thereby gaining more media attention
      and investment (Wang 2012). Just one year later, Nanosolar closed down and was auctioning their office furniture,
      having spent $450 million of investors’ money (Wang 2012).

        Nanosolar is not the only solar company to vanish after getting hundreds of millions of dollars from hopeful investors.
        In 2011, ABC news showed FBI raids of Solyndra offices and the homes of the Solyndra founders, with the FBI seeking
        to find out what happened to over half a billion dollars in taxpayer funds which had been directed to Solyndra (Greene & Mosk, 2011).

Do you think hyping this kind of fraud _helps_ the public perception of renewable energy?

Based on your tolerance for absolutely sloppy work, I'm guessing you're education is limited to government school,
probably in California, DC, or New York, so it's not exactly your fault that you're accustomed to accepting extremely
poor quality work. Your history textbook probably said that the Constitution was signed in 1976, and that's the quality
of work you've come to expect. Many of us won't bet the nation's future on investing in people who don't seem to know
the very basics about the field in which they claim to be making miraculous advancements. We expect people to actually
know what they're talking about.

Re:Quoting my own policy paper ...

[bws111]

Based on your acceptance of an article in Computerworld(!) as being a reliable source or a true reflection of what was actually stated, I would say you are a moron.

Re:Rule of thumb: $1/kW or forget it.

[geekoid]

"Forget about solar in Seattle, for instance."
well, that tells me you know nothing of solar, and should be ignored regarding this issue.

Holy Fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

"...increases the sun's radiation by 2,000 times..."

Did you not even read the summary?

Somebody update the story with a link

[geekoid]

to the post above me.

Or better yet: Contact IBM and ask some questions.

it has active cooling.

[idji]

so a pump failure would bring a sever meltdown of the chips.

Referenced Article is poorly written

[Anonymous Coward]

" increases the sun's radiation by 2,000 times" .... seriously? Please use a better reference.

http://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/corporateservicecorps/solar.html