MIT Develops Ultra Thin, Light Weight, Efficient Solar Cells (blastingnews.com)

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MIT Develops Ultra Thin, Light Weight, Efficient Solar Cells (blastingnews.com)

Posted by yaelk on Tuesday March 1, 2016 @07:06AM from the power-it-up dept.

MarkWhittington writes: Researchers at MIT have developed a gossamer thin solar cell that is made of layers of flexible polymers. The cell is so light that it can rest on a soap bubble without breaking it. As a bonus, the thin, light cells puts out 400 times more power than the standard, glass covered photovoltaic cells, at about six watts per gram. According to the researchers, this new development could help power the next generation of portable electronic devices.

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How damage resistant is it? by Sowelu · 2016-03-01 07:10 · Score: 3, Insightful

Many other types of solar cells suffer badly from any damage anywhere, however small. Putting this stuff on clothes or on a notebook, or on a vehicle that might get whacked by a rock, seems like a pretty damage heavy environment...rooftop solar doesn't usually have that problem because it's stationary.
1. Re:How damage resistant is it? by MightyMartian · 2016-03-01 07:13 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  Does it matter? It threatens oil companies' revenues, and therefore it should be made a death penalty offense to even think about solar panels. Anyone advocating for alternative energy sources is a repugnant monster who should be executed after months of horrifying torture. Costing the Koch Brothers money should lead to unbelievably harsh sentences.
  
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  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
2. Re:How damage resistant is it? by gstoddart · 2016-03-01 07:14 · Score: 1
  
  Flexible implies far more damage resistant, no?
  If it's more bendy it's less break-y.
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
3. Re: How damage resistant is it? by johnsmithperson123 · 2016-03-01 07:18 · Score: 2
  
  Watts per square inch is more important. If I have a ultrathin solar panel and it gets that many grams/watt it probably takes a huge surface area to get that power.
4. Re:How damage resistant is it? by zlives · 2016-03-01 07:19 · Score: 1
  
  i think they said its as resiliant as a soap bubble... err weight
5. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 07:26 · Score: 0
  
  To certain kinds of forces yes. There are many more forces that impact a vehicle that flexibility will not help.
6. Re:How damage resistant is it? by mark-t · 2016-03-01 07:28 · Score: 2
  
  I know you were trying to troll, but this doesn't threaten oil companies... the applications for this kind of cell are mainly restricted to those where weight is a more important factor than strictly just the cell's efficiency, which is generally limited to things that are either space or near-space bound.
  
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  File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
7. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Nutria · 2016-03-01 07:31 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, hush.
  
  --
  "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
8. Re: How damage resistant is it? by Ravaldy · 2016-03-01 07:42 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Watts per square inch is more important. If I have a ultrathin solar panel and it gets that many grams/watt it probably takes a huge surface area to get that power.
  You need to read the article to understand why it's an advance. For 1 the process itself creates clearer cells hence an increase in efficiency. It you want to compare conventional cells to this one you need to have comparative data as you mentioned which we do not have. In their application watts per grams is ideal because their current intended use is on flying objects such as weather balloons. Here's the part of the article:
  
  While the solar cell in this demonstration device is not especially efficient, because of its low weight, its power-to-weight ratio is among the highest ever achieved. That’s important for applications where weight is important, such as on spacecraft or on high-altitude helium balloons used for research. Whereas a typical silicon-based solar module, whose weight is dominated by a glass cover, may produce about 15 watts of power per kilogram of weight, the new cells have already demonstrated an output of 6 watts per gram — about 400 times higher.
9. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 08:06 · Score: 0
  
  I take it you live in an area with no weather at all? I live in an area that gets hail at least 4 times a year, often much more. Add on snow, chubby rain, wind, etc and I start to worry about damage resistance.
10. Re:How damage resistant is it? by MightyMartian · 2016-03-01 08:06 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Space craft should also use oil and coal, like Jesus would want. Jesus despises renewables, and anyone advocating them will go to Hell, after they've been thoroughly beaten by God-fearing fossil fuel advocates. Remember, God loves fossil fuels, and will make advocates of other energy sources pay for eternity.
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
11. Re: How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 08:16 · Score: 0
  
  Chubby rain? It's raining men?
12. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 08:18 · Score: 0
  
  I would have moved far away by now if there's that much hail per year.
13. Re:How damage resistant is it? by mark-t · 2016-03-01 08:20 · Score: 1
  
  Again... not an issue insomuch as this article is concerned. It may interest you (or not) to know that fossil fuels *are* used to typically get things into space.
  
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  File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
14. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 08:27 · Score: 0
  
  You asked a question and the AC answered it. Then you throw out a straw man argument and act like an ass. Pretty much par for the course from gstoddart.
15. Re:How damage resistant is it? by NatasRevol · 2016-03-01 08:33 · Score: 1
  
  Typically?
  Has any other fuel ever actually gotten anything to space?
  
  --
  There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
16. Re: How damage resistant is it? by NatasRevol · 2016-03-01 08:37 · Score: 1
  
  The comment on clearer cells made me wonder if you could use it in layers. Obviously, lower layers get less sun, but it might make up for the efficiency to a certain degree even if each layer drops by 50%, you could put 3 or 4 layers and have a decent output.
  
  --
  There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
17. Re:How damage resistant is it? by avandesande · 2016-03-01 08:39 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, kerosene is gods sacrament to interstellar space travel
  
  --
  love is just extroverted narcissism
18. Re:How damage resistant is it? by kheldan · 2016-03-01 08:47 · Score: 1
  
  I think you should be more cognizant of the difference between 'trolling' and 'bitter sarcasm', of which that comment (and his next one) are the latter.
  
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19. Re:How damage resistant is it? by PopeRatzo · 2016-03-01 08:49 · Score: 1
  
  Seen on a bumper sticker:
  "If it ain't fossil fuel, then it ain't energy"
  
  --
  You are welcome on my lawn.
20. Re:How damage resistant is it? by dpidcoe · 2016-03-01 09:00 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  A manhole cover quite possibly made it to space on nuclear alone after an incident involving underground testing. The high speed footage puts its minimum speed at something well past escape velocity.
21. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 09:05 · Score: 0
  
  You forgot hail and wind blown debris. Also the parylene coating needs additional chemical treatment to give it UV resistance.
22. Re:How damage resistant is it? by MachineShedFred · 2016-03-01 09:12 · Score: 0
  
  Costing the Koch Brothers money should lead to unbelievably harsh sentences.
  Does that mean we get to banish (or at least maim) the vast wasteland that is fallen Republican Presidential Candidates?
  
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  Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
23. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 09:22 · Score: 0
  
  Weight's still an issue on earth. Solar panels on the roof can still be hefty and often require additional structure to support. Making them lighter ripples through the design of the building, allowing for smaller structures, lighter buildings, more space within the building, etc.
24. Re:How damage resistant is it? by MachineShedFred · 2016-03-01 09:25 · Score: 1
  
  Cloth is pretty flexible, but it still rips when hard things hit it really fast.
  
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  Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
25. Re:How damage resistant is it? by mark-t · 2016-03-01 09:26 · Score: 1
  
  They aren't efficient enough to be practical for rooftop solar, as far as I can tell.
  
  --
  File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
26. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 09:30 · Score: 0
  
  4x hail per year is not uncommon. Usually it is small (think pea-sized) hail which does minimal or no damage. Once in a great while it gets to be golf-ball sized or larger, at which point it causes significant damage to cars, plants, house roofing, etc. Usually the cells that produce that size hail are very small so very little area is impacted.
  There are very few places - in the US, at least - where some sort of damaging storm or natural disaster doesn't happen with regularity:
  East coast: hurricanes, blizzards
  Southeast, midwest, great lakes: tornadoes, blizzards, hail
  Southwest: desert
  Rockies: summer fires and winter blizzards
  Southern California: earthquakes
  Washington: the occasional volcano
  Alaska: it's cold
  That leaves Oregon and northern California as places that seem to have a much smaller frequency of storms or natural disasters happening.
27. Re:How damage resistant is it? by hey! · 2016-03-01 09:31 · Score: 1
  
  Well, I should imagine that's a complicated question, because damage resistance is ultimately a property of the overall installation and design, not just individual components.
  The lightness and flexibility of the thing suggests that as a component it would be easy to damage; for example you could pick it up and crease it like a piece of paper. But those same properties would make it possible to install it in ways that would be quite damage resistant. For example on a notebook you could glue them to the surface of the notebook and cover it with a hard, transparent lacquer. Then if you dropped the notebook the force experienced by the cell and its interconnects would be quite small because the acceleration would be that much less than a more massive solar cell.
  
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  Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
28. Re:How damage resistant is it? by NatasRevol · 2016-03-01 09:37 · Score: 2
  
  Source? Cause that'd be cool to see.
  
  --
  There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
29. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 09:45 · Score: 0
  
  Southwest: desert
  Uhh okay. Deserts are neither a storm or natural disaster.
  Now if you said dust storms I would agree with you!
30. Re:How damage resistant is it? by scdeimos · 2016-03-01 09:53 · Score: 1
  
  You must have missed this, then:
  
  The final ultra-thin, flexible solar cells, including substrate and overcoating, are just one-fiftieth of the thickness of a human hair and one-thousandth of the thickness of equivalent cells on glass substrates — about two micrometers thick — yet they convert sunlight into electricity just as efficiently as their glass-based counterparts.
31. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 09:59 · Score: 0
  
  Or it was vaporized in the atmosphere, since the people conducting the test have still not found it.
32. Re:How damage resistant is it? by tnk1 · 2016-03-01 10:36 · Score: 1
  
  True, although not finding it would be true of both stories. If it made escape velocity, it is now in orbit around the Sun somewhere and probably not all that easy to locate without a good track.
33. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 10:47 · Score: 0
  
  That was a rather odd response to a rather factual answer. Nothing about the AC response implied that the material was useless, just that it could still be damaged by other types of forces, some of which you can certainly come across in an extreme environment like space. Wasn't that what you asked?
34. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 11:02 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob#Propulsion_of_steel_plate_cap
35. Re: How damage resistant is it? by Squirmy+McPhee · 2016-03-01 11:16 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Watts per square inch is more important. If I have a ultrathin solar panel and it gets that many grams/watt it probably takes a huge surface area to get that power.
  You need to read the article to understand why it's an advance. For 1 the process itself creates clearer cells hence an increase in efficiency. It you want to compare conventional cells to this one you need to have comparative data as you mentioned which we do not have. In their application watts per grams is ideal because their current intended use is on flying objects such as weather balloons. Here's the part of the article:
  
  While the solar cell in this demonstration device is not especially efficient, because of its low weight, its power-to-weight ratio is among the highest ever achieved. That’s important for applications where weight is important, such as on spacecraft or on high-altitude helium balloons used for research. Whereas a typical silicon-based solar module, whose weight is dominated by a glass cover, may produce about 15 watts of power per kilogram of weight, the new cells have already demonstrated an output of 6 watts per gram — about 400 times higher.
  "Clearer cells" does not mean an increase in efficiency, in fact it means just the opposite. A clear solar cell is not absorbing a significant amount of light (or at least if it is, it is not producing a significant voltage, and hence not much power), whereas conventional opaque solar cells absorb extremely efficiently in the part of the spectrum where the sun produces the most photons.
  Furthermore, the W/g comparison from the article is utterly meaningless. A solar cell made from a 180-micron-thick silicon wafer can't survive the elements without encapsulation, hence the heavy glass sheet for terrestrial solar modules. Even solar cells launched into space are protected by a polymer encapsulant and a glass sheet (though both are much thinner and lighter than for a terrestrial module). Implying that you can replace a fully encapsulated solar module with a completely unprotected polymer solar cell 1/10th the thickness of a sheet of cellophane to is like saying you can replace a boat's sail with a sheet of gauze and steer your way through a gale. Sure, maybe the cell does put out more W/g than a conventional cell, but quantifying the claim like this makes them look dishonest.
  Finally, to date, organic solar cell degrade rapidly when exposed to light -- so rapidly that organic cell researchers have been known to transport their cells to certification labs in light-tight boxes and supervise their efficiency measurements to ensure the cells are not needlessly exposed to light for even a few minutes. Add the high-radiation environment of space to the mix and you aren't likely to see these cells being shot into space anytime soon. Not to mention that even undegraded the cells are only 2.3%-efficient. The cells used in space applications are already significantly lighter than the structures they're mounted on, so cutting the efficiency by more than a factor of 10 is likely to result in increased weight no matter how light the cells are.
36. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Squirmy+McPhee · 2016-03-01 11:47 · Score: 1
  
  You must have missed this, then:
  
  The final ultra-thin, flexible solar cells, including substrate and overcoating, are just one-fiftieth of the thickness of a human hair and one-thousandth of the thickness of equivalent cells on glass substrates — about two micrometers thick — yet they convert sunlight into electricity just as efficiently as their glass-based counterparts.
  I'll ignore the statement about "glass-based counterparts" -- there's no such thing as a glass-based solar cell -- and assume they mean "silicon-based counterparts," as is rather clear from the article. Pedantry aside, if the snippet you quote is true then they've completely failed to report the real story, which is that they not only have set an efficiency record for organic solar cells, but beat the old record by a factor of 4-5. Alas, if you check the journal article that goes with this press release you'll find that their actual efficiency was 2.3%, or about half the current record for an organic solar cell, an eighth that of a typical commercially available silicon solar cell, and less than a tenth of the best commercially available silicon solar cell. On some level, this is acknowledged a few lines after the one you quote:
  
  While the solar cell in this demonstration device is not especially efficient, because of its low weight, its power-to-weight ratio is among the highest ever achieved.
37. Re:How damage resistant is it? by FatdogHaiku · 2016-03-01 12:13 · Score: 1
  
  I know you were trying to troll, but this doesn't threaten oil companies... the applications for this kind of cell are mainly restricted to those where weight is a more important factor than strictly just the cell's efficiency, which is generally limited to things that are either space or near-space bound.
  I don't know, something that can rest on a soap bubble could be worked into the top coat of vehicle paint and that's quite a bit of square footage. If you could pick up an extra 10% of power while driving your EV I would think that would make long hauls a bit more feasible. In places with a lot of sunshine it would be great to always be pulling down extra power during daylight. And I wonder what kind of wattage you could get by covering a couple hundred railroad cars with the stuff. Ultra light aircraft might also be able to do fossil fuel takeoff and then use electric propulsion... that's more of a use the power now, don't charge heavy batteries application, but still doable.
  
  --
  You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
38. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Ol+Olsoc · 2016-03-01 13:20 · Score: 1
  
  Does it matter? It threatens oil companies' revenues, and therefore it should be made a death penalty offense to even think about solar panels.
  Sorta trollish, sorta true.
  There's been a lot of articles lately that are anathema to the right thinking crowd.
  Some advances in batteries recently, now this. Imagine if you will, a automobile body with this ultra flexible solar cell. Can't be done? I dunno, reading the article makes me think it or some advance upon it will make just such a thing not only possible but likely.
  
  --
  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
39. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Ol+Olsoc · 2016-03-01 13:30 · Score: 1
  
  Typically?
  Has any other fuel ever actually gotten anything to space?
  LOX and Liquid Hydrogen?
  Aluminum and a perchlorate?
  Syntin? (synthesis
  C-Stoff?
  You are of course thinking of LOX/Kerosene, which is a fossil fuel. But non-fossil fuels abound.
  
  --
  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
40. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Ol+Olsoc · 2016-03-01 13:43 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, kerosene is gods sacrament to interstellar space travel
  Probably not Kerosene. LOX/Kerosene is the fuel du jour for launching heavy loads from ground level, although syntin has a little higher specific impulse.
  But after getting to outer space, the balls to the wall aspect of LOX/Kerosene is more of a drawback than a feature.
  
  --
  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
41. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 14:05 · Score: 0
  
  >> I know you were trying to troll, but this doesn't threaten oil companies...
  > I think you should be more cognizant of the difference between 'trolling' and 'bitter sarcasm'
  I'm invoking Poe's Law because I have actually heard right-wingnuts say exactly these things, except for naming the Koch Bros. explicitly.
42. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 14:08 · Score: 1
  
  Well, duh. Everybody knows glass and silicon have nothing in common!
43. Re:How damage resistant is it? by BarbaraHudson · 2016-03-01 14:29 · Score: 1
  
  Typically?
  Has any other fuel ever actually gotten anything to space?
  Hydrogen and Oxygen aren't fossil fuels, and when it comes to putting things into space they're pretty cool (literally).
  
  --
  "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
44. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Khyber · 2016-03-01 14:30 · Score: 0
  
  "there's no such thing as a glass-based solar cell"
  Fucking what? Glass is silicon. Most solar cells are silicon. Which dimension did you pop in from, sonny?
  
  --
  Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
45. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 18:59 · Score: 0
  
  Today, 95% of hydrogen is produced either from wood or from fossil fuels, such as natural gas and oil.
46. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Squirmy+McPhee · 2016-03-01 20:06 · Score: 2
  
  "there's no such thing as a glass-based solar cell"
  Fucking what? Glass is silicon. Most solar cells are silicon. Which dimension did you pop in from, sonny?
  Glass is silicon? Really? You must think water is hydrogen, too, then.
  Let me correct you: Glass is (mostly) silicon dioxide. Silicon and silicon dioxide are not the same thing -- they are fundamentally different compounds with fundamentally different physical properties. Just like water is partly composed of hydrogen atoms, but water and hydrogen are fundamentally different compounds. If you had ever actually seen silicon before there's no way you would mistake it for glass.
47. Re:How damage resistant is it? by michelcolman · 2016-03-01 21:33 · Score: 1
  
  It's not fossil fuel, the Lord placed it there to fool us into thinking it came from fossils. It's Holy Fuel!
48. Re: How damage resistant is it? by ooloorie · 2016-03-02 00:21 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, all us evil non lefties object to is subsidies for green energy, just like we object to subsidies for fossil fuel extraction.
49. Re: How damage resistant is it? by ooloorie · 2016-03-02 00:23 · Score: 1
  
  Space craft certainly should use non renewable energy, namely deuterium, uranium, and thorium. We're not ever going to get much of a space program with solar cells.
50. Re: How damage resistant is it? by ooloorie · 2016-03-02 00:38 · Score: 1
  
  A gallon of gasoline is about 33kWh and lasts you about an hour. Solar power is about 1000W/m2 and the efficiency of these cells is less than 5%, meaning you get maybe 50W/m2 under ideal conditions. Let's say your car roof is 2 m2. If you do the math, that means such a solar roof panel would give you at most 0.2% of the power you get from gasoline, under ideal solar conditions.
51. Re:How damage resistant is it? by dcw3 · 2016-03-02 00:47 · Score: 1
  
  Would that be like saying rust is oxygen?
  
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  Just another day in Paradise
52. Re: How damage resistant is it? by FatdogHaiku · 2016-03-02 03:53 · Score: 1
  
  I did not see 5% efficiency mentioned in TFA, just 6 watts per gram of solar cells. Checking elsewhere, I still can't find a 5% efficiency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell_efficiency. With a material so thin and light, I can't see just using the roof of anything, I would cover every exposed surface as the exposure angle would constantly be changing. If you are already driving an EV, every free watt you can pick up while moving will only extend your range. And with something so thin and light, I would use two layers to cover gaps in the film as seen in TFA photos... More people will be driving EVs at some time in the future, why not grab every free electron at that point.
  
  --
  You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
53. Re:How damage resistant is it? by BarbaraHudson · 2016-03-02 04:27 · Score: 1
  
  wood (and other biomass) are not fossil fuels.
  
  --
  "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
54. Re: How damage resistant is it? by Ol+Olsoc · 2016-03-02 05:18 · Score: 2
  
  Actually, all us evil non lefties object to is subsidies for green energy, just like we object to subsidies for fossil fuel extraction.
  Odd, every far right winger I know tells me that the subsidies for oil and gas extraction are needed because the oil and gas are critical needs.
  Case in point. Former Governor of Pennsylvania claimed that taxes on natural gas production would force Natural gas companies to drill elsewhere. DO I need to mention just how asinine a statement that is? Considering that even God's own Texas taxes energy production, that 20 percent or so makes for something that looks a whole lot like a subsidy.
  And we gave it away.
  Is giving things away part of the invisible hand of the free market? Seems to me that no matter who you are, a god fearing free marketeer, of some syphilitic inbred left of center socialist asshole, if you have a desirable commodity, you should be compensated for it. Meanwhile, they drilled like crazy for a few years, helped create a natural gas glut, and have now left, with all the jerbs they promised. Or better said, allowed dumbasses to believe they were creating.
  
  --
  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
55. Re:How damage resistant is it? by aestrivex · 2016-03-02 05:37 · Score: 1
  
  Rooftop solar does have to deal with things like, wind, and snow, and occasionally, hail.
56. Re:How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-02 05:44 · Score: 0
  
  True, but they don't mention the percentage of hydrogen produced from wood (charcoal gasification) is very low.
  The Wikipedia article estimates 48% from methane, 30% from oil, 18% from coal and 4% from hydrolysis.
57. Re: How damage resistant is it? by angel'o'sphere · 2016-03-02 06:56 · Score: 1
  
  Perhaps you should read up how 'space crafts' actually work?
  Feel free to give suggestions why deuterium, uranium and thorium work in a space crafts engine and why solar cells don't.
  So we have a laugh ...
  This post most likely reaches you "via solar cells" ...
  
  --
  Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
58. Re: How damage resistant is it? by ooloorie · 2016-03-02 15:07 · Score: 1
  
  Feel free to give suggestions why deuterium, uranium and thorium work in a space crafts engine and why solar cells don't.
  It's basic physics: inverse square law and power to weight ratios. You can power non-propulsive electronics within the inner solar system if you can keep aiming at the sun, but they become increasingly useless the further out you go. And for propulsion, the only realistic options for manned and most robotic missions are chemical, fission, fusion, or antimatter.
59. Re: How damage resistant is it? by ooloorie · 2016-03-02 15:34 · Score: 1
  
  Odd, every far right winger I know tells me that the subsidies for oil and gas extraction are needed because the oil and gas are critical needs.
  Well, you talk to the wrong people. And "non-lefties" are overwhelmingly not "right wingers". Finally, the views of Republican politicians are certainly not representative of "non-left wingers".
  
  Is giving things away part of the invisible hand of the free market?
  Since the PA severance tax is for removal of natural resources from public lands and set through political processes, there is no free market or invisible hand involved in this price setting at all. Without a market, nobody can tell whether the payments by the gas industry are a subsidy or not. The solution is to auction off the drilling and resource recovery rights.
  
  Meanwhile, they drilled like crazy for a few years, helped create a natural gas glut, and have now left, with all the jerbs they promised.
  Yes, that is another problem with the lack of a free market and government taxation: it means that people end up drilling like crazy, instead of treating the natural resources as an investment in the future.
60. Re: How damage resistant is it? by ooloorie · 2016-03-02 15:38 · Score: 1
  
  I did not see 5% efficiency mentioned in TFA, just 6 watts per gram of solar cells
  Somebody here did the math; look it up.
  
  ith a material so thin and light, I can't see just using the roof of anything, I would cover every exposed surface as the exposure angle would constantly be changing
  You'd still only have about 2m2 capturing energy; the number I gave was an upper bound.
  
  More people will be driving EVs at some time in the future, why not grab every free electron at that point.
  Because solar cells aren't free, and spending thousands of dollars on generating miniscule amounts of energy isn't worth it.
61. Re: How damage resistant is it? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-02 19:05 · Score: 0
  
  Antimatter? I thought you said 'realistic.'
62. Re: How damage resistant is it? by angel'o'sphere · 2016-03-03 07:34 · Score: 1
  
  You can power non-propulsive electronics within the inner solar system if you can keep aiming at the sun, but they become increasingly useless the further out you go.
  And the three things don't power anything.
  A nuclear reactor running on deuterium: does not exist.
  A nuclear reactor running on uranium: is super heavy and still needs mass to eject out. On itself it does not produce any "impulse".
  A nuclear reactor that runs on thorium: does not exist. It is only paper work, and see previous point: you still need some mass to eject.
  And for propulsion, the only realistic options for manned and most robotic missions are chemical, fission, fusion, or antimatter.
  Exactly. And that is why we are using solar panels and plasma drives or ion drives. (Facepalm)
  Chemical "burning" we use for lifts. Everything else is meanwhile ion drives. You should know that. Neither fission nor fusion drives do exist ... nor will ever.
  
  --
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63. Re: How damage resistant is it? by ooloorie · 2016-03-03 16:38 · Score: 1
  
  A nuclear reactor running on deuterium: does not exist.
  I'm sorry, I thought any halfway educated person would know that deuterium is not used to power nuclear reactors but fusion reactors.
  
  Exactly. And that is why we are using solar panels and plasma drives or ion drives. (Facepalm)
  As I was saying: the only realistic options for manned and most robotic missions are chemical, fission, fusion, or antimatter. That sentence doesn't say anything about whether the necessary reactors already exist, nor does it deny the existence of other technologies. But I shouldn't be so harsh on you: English is a difficult language and you obviously are struggling with it.
  
  You should know that. Neither fission nor fusion drives do exist ... nor will ever.
  Well, anything is possible. Maybe Germanic hordes will destroy civilization again or another German Reich or communist superstate will finally manage to oppress science globally. But much as you may desire such outcomes, I don't think they are very likely.
64. Re: How damage resistant is it? by angel'o'sphere · 2016-03-06 01:11 · Score: 1
  
  You seem not to grasp it, even with a fusion drive: you nee mass to expel out of the craft.
  You seem not to grasp it, even with a fission drive: you nee mass to expel out of the craft.
  Hence we use solar cells and ion drives. Or plasma drives. Granted, for a plasma drive a small fusion or fission reactor "cold be interesting" but then we have a small problem: how to make them small (in case of fission) and how to make them at all (in case of fusion).
  I only answered to you because you said "realistic option" ... which is plain wrong as we already have "realistic options" that run on technology you neglect. The technology you propose is not "realistic" as it is not existing.
  So ... you are full with contradictions. But thanx for attempting to improve my english. That is always welcome.
  
  --
  Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
65. Re: How damage resistant is it? by ooloorie · 2016-03-06 15:45 · Score: 1
  
  Here is what I said:
  
  Space craft certainly should use non renewable energy, namely deuterium, uranium, and thorium. We're not ever going to get much of a space program with solar cells.
  I.e., I implied that we must use fission and/or fusion, not that we don't need reaction mass. In fact, many designs for such rockets use the fission/fusion products directly as reaction mass (preferably outside the atmosphere).
  Now:
  
  which is plain wrong as we already have "realistic options" that run on technology you neglect.
  You're missing the point here. When I said "we're not ever going to get much of a space program with solar cells", that implies that I acknowledge that we are using solar cells (and ion propulsion). My point is that they don't amount to "much of a space program": we launch tiny, slow interplanetary spacecraft every few years, and if we're lucky, they send back a bit of data. The use of solar cells and avoidance of nuclear fuels has been a major impediment to unmanned exploration of the solar system. In addition, solar cells are completely unusable for manned voyages. If we ever want to have a real space program, as opposed to the joke we have right now, we need to develop and implement nuclear propulsion and use nuclear power to power our robots.
Watts per gram? by LynnwoodRooster · 2016-03-01 07:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

Interesting, but portable products are also fairly limited by available surface area, which apparently has not changed in terms of amount needed per Watt.

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1. Re:Watts per gram? by zlives · 2016-03-01 07:18 · Score: 1
  
  maybe it could be used as a trickle charger in addition to battery...
2. Re: Watts per gram? by johnsmithperson123 · 2016-03-01 07:19 · Score: 1
  
  Oops, I think I accidently copied your comment. Was thinking the exact same thing, apparently. Sorry.
3. Re:Watts per gram? by gstoddart · 2016-03-01 07:19 · Score: 1
  
  If it's paper thin, flexible, and really light ... you can cram a lot of surface area into a rolled up tube.
  
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  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
4. Re:Watts per gram? by zlives · 2016-03-01 07:22 · Score: 1
  
  i for one welcome the return of our solyndra overlords
5. Re:Watts per gram? by ShanghaiBill · 2016-03-01 07:23 · Score: 1
  
  portable products are also fairly limited by available surface area
  A flexible panel can be rolled up and stuffed in a backpack, and then unrolled to charge a phone or tablet.
6. Re:Watts per gram? by alvinrod · 2016-03-01 07:29 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, it's about as useful as measuring the performance of an engine in terms of how many people named Barry worked on the team that developed it. Our new engine has over 5 times the HP/Barry as our previous model!
  
  While it's nice to know that potentially coating a product with these won't add to the overall weight in a meaningful way, it doesn't mean that they'll be able to generate enough power to keep the device running. There's also the matter of how expensive are these to manufacture. The article makes the process sound radically different from current methods which likely means doing this at scale is going to require an entirely new manufacturing setup, which may itself be incredibly expensive.
  
  Sure it could be the breakthrough that changes things, or it could just be another piece of technology that we've developed but can't produce commercially because the manufacturing process is either expensive, slow, or troublesome for other reasons.
7. Re:Watts per gram? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 07:34 · Score: 0
  
  Interesting, but portable products are also fairly limited by available surface area, which apparently has not changed in terms of amount needed per Watt.
  Well devices will be less power hungry with new high res wafers. Solar panels can be also woven into clothing or strapped on using velcro. Later probably makes more sense for the cheaper casual kind.
8. Re:Watts per gram? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 07:37 · Score: 0
  
  >Sure it could be the breakthrough that changes things
  solar panels for satellites come to mind
9. Re:Watts per gram? by MattskEE · 2016-03-01 07:53 · Score: 1
  
  In fact from the paper (subscription probably required) the efficiency of this cell is about 2.3%, about 1/10 that of conventional silicon solar cells - so per unit area you're much better off with silicon. The watts per gram metric is more about them showing that very little material is needed for this cell which is a component towards achieving low cost.
  The idea of this work is that organic cells in principle might be able to become cheaper per unit area than silicon solar cells (they will need to be much cheaper to account for the lower efficiency), and can be laminated onto curved surface and thus integrated more easily into products and more locations. Remains to be seen if that will happen and I'm not familiar enough with organic solar cells to say. And the reliability over time and environmental factors will need to be proven out.
10. Re:Watts per gram? by ganv · 2016-03-01 08:43 · Score: 1
  
  Yes it might be useful in very low power applications that benefit from light weight But the article says the current version is not very efficient, meaning it only extracts a small fraction of the energy in the light striking it. Standard solar cells might be 10% to 25% efficient. This may be only a few percent. In most applications I can think of, solar power is more limited by collecting area than by photocell weight, so this seems like niche product.
11. Re:Watts per gram? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 08:51 · Score: 0
  
  Pointing out the weight to power ratio for this stuff as a selling point seems really odd, even for rooftop applications where the weight of the system actually is relevant. That is, until you bring spacecraft into the equation.
  Getting more energy bang for your kilogram buck is marvelous news for engineers who design satellites, provided that these cells can withstand the radiation they would have to endure in space with or without modification, and that a support system can be devised that doesn't eat all of the weight that you just freed up. Maybe an inflating system would do the job since these are so light and thin.
  Given the very low efficiency of the cells, I don't think terrestrial power generation is the ideal role for these unless they're just absurdly cheap in practice. That remains to be seen.
12. Re:Watts per gram? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 09:00 · Score: 0
  
  The article talks about applications where watts per gram can be a limiting factor (e.g. weather balloons). Integrating this into fabric is also an interesting possibility, not just for gimmicky clothing. For example, you could have a tent whose entire surface generates power, without adding any weight! The efficiency isn't as important as the weight here - the size of the surface available is much bigger than any rigid glass panel you'd carry with you while hiking.
13. Re:Watts per gram? by Solandri · 2016-03-01 09:21 · Score: 1
  
  Cost to launch a payload into low earth orbit is currently around $3000/kg for the smaller rockets, $10,000/kg for the larger ones. About $20,000 - $30,000/kg for geosynchronous orbit. So yeah this is a really big deal.
14. Re:Watts per gram? by Mr+D+from+63 · 2016-03-01 09:48 · Score: 1
  
  A flexible panel can be rolled up and stuffed in a backpack, and then unrolled to charge a phone or tablet.
  And that would be another cool product that very few people would actually buy and use, just like the folding panels available now. Makes much more sense to buy a backup battery or charger pack unless you are on some kind of long outdoor stint.
15. Re:Watts per gram? by dsmatthews9379 · 2016-03-01 10:17 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  How about this for an application, the cells are so light that they can form the skin of a hydrogen lofted blimp with enough surface area to run all of it's payload and convert it's water ballast to hydrogen to allow for buoyancy control. The reverse process of ballast recovery uses a hydrogen/oxygen fuel cell so that no water is lost in total, and additional power is generated. What we are talking about here is mid to upper stratosphere cruising blimps with an endurance measured in years. e.g. Project Loon type communications networks. These are particularly important as they can be deployed very quickly if our communications satellites are destroyed by a solar flare and we can't put more of them up quickly because the dead ones also triggered a space junk collision cascade.
16. Re:Watts per gram? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 19:02 · Score: 0
  
  panel efficiency by m2 has a maximum, because the sun will not bring you more solar power than 1400 W/m2. Solar panels nowdays are able to get up to 40% of that (note that commercially available products get up to 20% only). That means that though you can get a lot of improvement in the power surface density, there is much more room for development in W/gram and other conveniences like flexibility and durability.
17. Re:Watts per gram? by dcw3 · 2016-03-02 01:05 · Score: 1
  
  ... run all of it's payload and convert it's water ballast to hydrogen to allow for buoyancy control.
  Please learn the difference between its and it's or get the fuck off of Slashdot.
  Please go fuck your grammar-nazi self.
  
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Watts per gram by ickleberry · 2016-03-01 07:20 · Score: 1

Thats a new way of defining solar cell efficiency, usually they go by area. It certainly won't power the next generation of electronic devices, maybe in 10 or 20 years something like this might see production
1. Re: Watts per gram by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 07:28 · Score: 0
  
  It'll at least extend significantly thr amount of time between charges needed for your phone. And in desperate situations at least turning your phone off for sometime may give you that extra juice needed to make some emergency calls when you don't have a charger
2. Re:Watts per gram by MachineShedFred · 2016-03-01 09:51 · Score: 1
  
  Sometimes weight is more important, especially when you can make big sheets of this that can be unrolled by some mechanical means. For example, when you need to use solar power as part of a package going on the pointy end of a rocket meant to exit the atmosphere.
  For that kind of thing, weight is everything.
  
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3. Re:Watts per gram by Squirmy+McPhee · 2016-03-01 11:29 · Score: 1
  
  Thats a new way of defining solar cell efficiency, usually they go by area. It certainly won't power the next generation of electronic devices, maybe in 10 or 20 years something like this might see production
  I think they got the idea from the less common metric g/W. A little over a decade ago there was a shortage of purfied silicon that lasted quite a few years, and during that time the solar industry became very interested in the number of grams of silicon that were required to produce a watt of power. Naturally, the power conversion efficiency of the cell has an impact on this number, but so do things like the thickness of the wafer, how much silicon is lost during production, and so forth. My guess is that these guys saw this metric in the PV literature but thought big numbers sound better than small ones, so they inverted it instead of saying 0.17 g/W. By way of comparison, a typical silicon solar module these days requires about 5.3 g/W (though that's just grams of silicon, not the total weight of the module -- but even so it's a fairer comparison, since a solar cell as thin as this one is also going to need some packaging to protect it).
  Or maybe their choice was motivated by something else important to organic electronics people. I don't know, I'm a silicon solar guy.
  As for your last statement, even the organic solar guys I know (except for one at Oxford Solar) think 10-20 years to see organic solar cells in production, except perhaps for niche applications, is quite optimistic.
Huh? by laing · 2016-03-01 07:37 · Score: 1

How do such lightweight cells dissipate the heat created while they are operating? It seems to me that they would self-destruct in a very short time.
400 times more power per gram? Great news! by jeffb+(2.718) · 2016-03-01 07:42 · Score: 1

That means that instead of using a single layer of conventional cells, you can have hundreds of layers of these, generating hundreds of times more power per surface area!
Oh, wait. That doesn't actually work, and that's one reason we always hear about power per area, but rarely per volume or per mass.
Now, if these can be produced as cheap, disposable decals, where you just stick on another one when your current one gets too torn up -- that could be seriously useful. Even better if we can unfurl them by the square kilometer in orbit.
1. Re:400 times more power per gram? Great news! by gstoddart · 2016-03-01 08:08 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  You know, I bet if you could unfurl 10 or 20 feet of it, it would also be useful in a lot of places.
  Hell, for camping make an entire tarp out of it. It's both your shelter over the picnic table and your power source. If it's portable, light, and flexible it's not like there aren't situations in which you can simply let it cover area once you get it there.
  If the mass is low enough, getting a sufficient area to a location to be useful becomes a whole lot easier.
  I can imagine tons of places where people would say "yeah, so, I've got 50' of space I can put this". How many watts can you get out of a 50' strip? I'm betting more than enough to be useful.
  
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  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
2. Re:400 times more power per gram? Great news! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 08:10 · Score: 0
  
  This might have applications in space based missions?
3. Re:400 times more power per gram? Great news! by afidel · 2016-03-01 08:37 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly, make your rain fly out of it, now when you setup your tent your also generating electricity. Or put it as the outer layer on your jacket, now you're generating electricity wherever you go.
  
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4. Re:400 times more power per gram? Great news! by laing · 2016-03-01 09:45 · Score: 1
  
  It actually DOES work in some cases. Many spacecraft presently use triple junction GaAs photovoltaics with ~30% efficiency. Typical single junction Si cells top out at around 12% efficiency. Quad junction cells exist (~43% efficiency), but I'm not aware of any that have flown yet (which doesn't mean they haven't).
5. Re:400 times more power per gram? Great news! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 15:06 · Score: 0
  
  That 400x is a lot of marketing bs and unworthy of MIT News (or the scientists.. whoever said that).
  They're comparing a bare wafer that can float on bubbles against a module who's weight is "dominated by a glass cover". If they can tell me that bare wafer can withstand the abuse that a module can then they have something to crow about... A more realistic compare would be... .what's the advantage of that bare wafer vs a bare silicon wafer in terms of watts/gram? I expect that wafer will need a glass cover as well if you want to put it where a silicon module can go.
6. Re:400 times more power per gram? Great news! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-02 03:09 · Score: 0
  
  You could wrap the blades and tower with this stuff. Your wind farm is now solar too.
Not useful but.... by avandesande · 2016-03-01 07:50 · Score: 1

a really lightweight solar model plane or drone would be cool

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So.... by mdsolar · 2016-03-01 07:52 · Score: 1

Definitely more energy dense than uranium ore.... Done with that canard at least.
Re:Home Depot by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 07:54 · Score: 0

It's a Lowes exclusive
Interesting change of definitions and requirements by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 07:55 · Score: 0

They claim that the new solar cells put out 400 times more power than the older cells, but they do so by using the mass of the cells, not the area that the cells cover.
One more time by DeathToBill · 2016-03-01 07:59 · Score: 1

Just one more time: We don't care about W/g. We care about $/W.

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1. Re:One more time by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 08:36 · Score: 1
  
  Wrong. Since we're buying drugs here, the important metric is $/g
2. Re:One more time by afidel · 2016-03-01 08:51 · Score: 2
  
  That totally depends on the application. For backpacking I care about W/g, for delivering to the middle of nowhere I care about W/g and W/L (each gallon of fuel delivered to a forward base in Afghanistan cost $400). For my roof I care about $/W and W/m^2. It all depends on use case as to what parameter you need to optimize for.
  
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3. Re:One more time by gregfortune · 2016-03-01 10:03 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly. I've been watching for a choice that makes good sense for back-country power needs and solar just isn't there yet for my usage.
  Warning, shoddy math ahead. TLDR; This new cell could save 9-10oz off of the current weight of a popular backpacking solar product bringing it in line with the power provided by a 10K mAh power pack over a 5 backpacking day trip. Yay, solar might finally be efficient enough to consider!
  I pack a 10K mAh Anker lithium power pack that weighs about 8 ozs. A GoalZero Guide 10 needs to be charged around 4 times to full (plus the one full charge you started with) to match up with the power pack. That takes something like 24 hours of direct sunlight with the included Nomad 7 (7 watt) panel which is probably 4 or 5 days in an average sort of situation. The whole bundle weighs about 19 oz. If I instead bring two 10K mAh batteries at 16 oz, I'm closer to the same weight comparison. That means I need to be on a trip of 8-10 days or more to break even. Anything shorter and I'm better off just carrying charged lithium power packs. Any long periods of cloudy/bad weather, and I'm better off with the power packs. Solar is a tough sell right now.
  If I instead was carrying a solar panel at 6g per watt, that would end up around 48g of panel for 7 watts plus whatever weight in fabric you want to hold the solar cells. Let's say we add a nice thick 500 denier cordura fabric backing at 8 oz per sq yard. Since I need about 1 sq ft of backing for the same size of panel as the Nomad 7, that ends up being about 25g of added fabric (heavy duty fabric...). So the new panel would weigh around 75-100g (3-4oz). The Nomad 7 panel weighs 363g (13oz) saving me 8oz or more off the overall weight of 19 oz. Now I'm comparing my 8 oz lithium power pack to an 11 oz solar solution that provides about the same energy over 4-5 days. Suddenly, solar is looking like a possibility for a reasonable length hike especially during months where you can expect better weather.
  Now, given that the weight of the panel is no longer a significant portion of the overall weight of the solution, it would make sense to increase the size a little to make it more weight effective. Double the size of the panel and the output to 14W which would add 3-4 more ozs bring it to ~15oz to provide the same power over 5 days that two 10K mAh lithium batteries supply at 16oz. If this "back of the napkin" math is even close, this change by itself will make solar relevant for shorter trips with lowish power needs (10-20K mAh is 4-8 full charges of my cell phone, for example).
4. Re:One more time by CurryCamel · 2016-03-02 00:03 · Score: 1
  
  Or W/soapbubble?
  Can a soap bubble carry 6W worth of solar cells? Can the sun provide enough energy for such an area. Or, how big a soapbubble are we talking about? Don't soapbubbles burst spontaneously, i.e. they don't carry any weitght?
  I used to think of MIT as a world-class technical university. But with these sort of releases, I can no longer be sure.
I didn't read cheap in that long list by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 07:59 · Score: 0

These eggheads are working on problems that don't exist. How about Watts/$
Re:Home Depot by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 08:03 · Score: 0

Until I can pick up a roll at Home Depot, this is useless to me.
Fortunately, science news does not care what you personally consider useful. It is interesting research with promising potential - that makes it 'news for nerds'.
Durability by ThatsNotPudding · 2016-03-01 08:08 · Score: 0

"How long does it last?"

"I would like another question."
Solar Powered Blimp by jpiratefish · 2016-03-01 08:15 · Score: 1

I've always liked the idea of retiring in the sky - nothing keeps the relatives away better. Now maybe my solar-powered blimp can happen..
light enough to power ion drives by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 08:32 · Score: 0

for space probes.
Think drones, planes and satellites. by denzacar · 2016-03-01 08:40 · Score: 1

Anything that flies cares about the weight. A lot.
This process boils down to making a thin film (2 micrometers) of flexible solar cells by throwing out the bottom (or top - depending on the cell) part of the solar cell and using the same thin film as both the top and the bottom layer.
I.e. Both the solar cell carrier and the coating are made out of ultra-thin coating.
Think mounting solar cells on transparent sticky tape, then adding another layer of same tape on top as protective coating.
Only a lot thinner than that. Human hair is about 100 micrometers "thick".

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Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Re:Home Depot by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 10:16 · Score: 0

Then why are you reading article on cutting edge technology if it doesn't interest you?
Obviously the Watts per sq Meter is poor by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 10:23 · Score: 0

One of the primary rules of reading press release is that if the PR doesn't tell you the value for an important parameter then you can be sure that they suck at it.
Press releases are written by people are trying their damnedest to puff up any possible claim to superiority.
No mention of watts per square? OK, clearly you suck at that.
puts out 400 times more power by swell · 2016-03-01 11:03 · Score: 3, Insightful

watts per gram ?
Since when is that a measurement standard?
By that standard, my car provides152HP per muffler bearing. Its MTBF is 32 dog years and fuel efficiency is 1.4 teaspoons per nautical mile . . . Oh, I get it- this is more slash spam where big numbers are inserted somewhere to wow the ignorant.

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...omphaloskepsis often...
1. Re:puts out 400 times more power by mandolin · 2016-03-01 12:16 · Score: 1
  
  watts per gram ? Since when is that a measurement standard?
  It isn't, yet. But, I first heard of "performance per watt" when Transmeta debuted their first CPU, and similarly thought "who (expletive) cares about that"? Today, performance per watt actually matters in some applications (parallel systems, possibly data centers ...).
  Point is, somebody may find a compelling use for these devices if they can be made practical, be they solar-powered robo-flies or whatever.
2. Re:puts out 400 times more power by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 12:16 · Score: 0
  
  TFA states that they're looking at applications where weight reduction is important, such as satellites, weather balloons, or other space and aviation-based uses thus output-to-weight is actually relevant... ...Oh I get it, your comment is more 'Good ol' days' nostalgia spam about the degradation of Slashdot as a 'worthy' source of tech news to bait responses. Well played.
3. Re:puts out 400 times more power by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 14:51 · Score: 0
  
  watts per gram ? Since when is that a measurement standard?
  Specific power is important when talking about motors in vehicles, but that's about it apart from solar cells in space.
4. Re:puts out 400 times more power by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-02 06:53 · Score: 0
  
  In other news, cancer has been cured for the third time this week.
400 times by EmperorOfCanada · 2016-03-01 11:26 · Score: 1

400 times might make a big difference when talking weight ratios and something like a PV powered aircraft. But for my roof. 400 times is misleading. Surface area is al that matters in that equation.
Thunder well by fyngyrz · 2016-03-01 11:57 · Score: 1

Someone mod this up to 11, please.
The term "thunder well" has just become permanently established in my long-term memory, right next to where I keep my gibbering fear of forces I cannot comprehend.

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Complete bullshit by gweihir · 2016-03-01 12:17 · Score: 2

You do not measure solar cell efficiency in "watt per gram", you measure them in percent of the light-energy converted to current. But I guess with conventional cells now up to 20% or so, they could not have claimed a completely inane "400x improvement".

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1. Re:Complete bullshit by ventsyv · 2016-03-02 05:18 · Score: 1
  
  The article is not talking about solar cell efficiency, it's talking about power per unit of weight. I guess your reading comprehension is not that good, so let me try "As a bonus, [the new cells] puts out 400 times more power [than the old cells] per gram"
2. Re:Complete bullshit by gweihir · 2016-03-02 07:37 · Score: 1
  
  Power per unit of weight is completely meaningless for solar cells. But I guess your understanding of the subject matter is not that good.
  
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Airships by tsotha · 2016-03-01 12:52 · Score: 1

This seems like just the thing for an electric airship.
Bad summary by GPS+Pilot · 2016-03-01 13:12 · Score: 1

the thin, light cells puts out 400 times more power than the standard, glass covered photovoltaic cells
Wrong; they put out 400 times more specific power than standard cells. The summary omits the word "specific," which makes for a huge error.

--
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Another breakthrough! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 18:18 · Score: 0

That's the fifth new paradigm of solar panel to be developed this year! I'll stick it on the shelf, next to the promising cures for AIDS, the new electric battery techs, and the fusion research breakthroughs. Wake me when it's actually a thing.
They didn't come up with it. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-01 23:23 · Score: 0

Nuke fluffers and pro-oil deniers did. How many times have we seen "Energy density per kg" for lithium batteries and gasolene compared by the two classes of aforementioned idiots? Countless times.
Cost? by slashkitty · 2016-03-02 01:32 · Score: 1

Vapor Deposition can be very expensive. High heat and energy are required for even small amounts. Look at how small that sample is! Sure, light weight cells could be useful in certain applications, but that's really not the problem right now for massive installations.

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-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
The military will love them by ventsyv · 2016-03-02 05:21 · Score: 1

Flexible and light yet as efficient - perfect recipe for replacing fossil fuel generators in combat zones where fuel costs up to $30 per gallon.