New Record For Solar Cell Power Efficiency 351
mdsolar writes "Renewable Energy Access is reporting that a consortium led by researchers at the University of Delaware has achieved 42.8% efficiency with a silicon solar cell. The method uses lower concentration (factor of 20 magnification) than the previous record holder (40.7% efficiency) so that it may have a broader range of applications, since tolerances for pointing the device will be larger. They are now partnering with DuPont to build engineering and manufacturing prototypes. They expect to be in production in 2010. On a roof, such cells would require less than half the surface area to produce the same amount of power as today's standard solar panels, which have an efficiency of about 17%."
The real question.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, while I'm glad they are making a more efficient solar panel, when will they make a cost-effecient solar panel for mass-adoption?
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Smog (Score:5, Funny)
Waiting (Score:5, Funny)
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feasible (Score:2)
Re:feasible (Score:5, Informative)
But in places like California, solar panels indeed pay for themselves
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I'm not too sure about that. How about a PV panel powering a ground-source heat pump? I'm willing to bet that would give you more hot water than direct solar heating, at least in most climates.
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Not too bad (Score:5, Informative)
Why didn't I get the ground based system? Because when it's over 100 F and your main AC unit dies, I couldn't wait for the ground based unit installation taking over a week. I will plan for one at my next house though.
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Compare to direct solar heating, where damn near 100% of the energy you absorb gets transferred to the water. After all, the desired end product is heat, and it's trivial to convert 100% of any energy form into heat
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A decent heat pump will have a COP of around 3.5-4.0. So that 14% becomes 56%. Still losing to direct solar heat.
=Smidge=
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being in the process of doing a solar water heater myself, regardless the path you choose, you still have to run a pump, to even get close to a 14% solar direct to water heater efficiency.
IE you can place the storage tank above the heater, and pull your fresh water through the heater,
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Along with that getting specialized home appliances can be cost effective; special extreme efficiency 24 volt DC refridgerator, for example. Reducin
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Re:feasible (Score:5, Informative)
A search on 'water cooled pv' [google.com] gives some interesting documents about experiments done with this combination. Read them and then go and build something like that. My 2 puny 11 watt panels are somewhat to small for this application but anyone who has (plans for) panels on the roof AND a need of warm water does him/herself a disservice by not looking in to this IMnsHO...
Being done in New Mexico (Score:4, Interesting)
--
Register your home for solar power; fixed competitive rates for up to 25 years: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
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The problem with wind power is that it's much more noticeable to your neighbors than solar. I live sort of at the top of a hill on 1.25 acres, and it's fairly windy. Theoretically, I could put of a few windmills and probably meet most (if not all) of my electricity needs, but my neighbors would definitely be complaining. The advantage of solar is that if you have good southern exposure and efficient panels, you can pr
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Biggest problem is these new cells are essentially worthless on a home. collector systems means you have to have trackers for every bank of 2 or 3 pan
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Why? You planning on putting a 50:1 solar concentrator mirror/lens in your yard?
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Re:feasible (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems like if you deliberately spend money on things that are less polluting than the mainstream offerings, you're helping to make that industry more economically viable. For example: if you buy residential wind turbines, the company that makes them will profit. Yes, some of that money will probably be spent on things that cause pollution, like employee salaries or airline tickets, however it will also be spent on improving and marketing a product that can reduce pollution dramatically.
No institution or individual can ever have zero negative impact on the environment, but they can have a greater positive impact, so that their damage is offset overall. The question becomes, is a supposedly "green" institution really helping the environment more than they're hurting it? Some companies really are, and it's great to give them business, but some are just using environmental concerns as a marketing niche, and giving them money will do nothing but enrich them, and possibly allow them to create more pollution.
I agree with your general sentiment, though. The key is being critical and informed about where your money goes. When you spend money, it doesn't just disappear - it goes on to pay for things that may be destructive or immoral, and couldn't happen without your money. Or, it may go on to pay for things that are constructive and really awesome. Though the amount of money you spend may be similar, the difference between these transactions is vast when you consider the consequences.
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I think you're presupposing that all possible things someone can spend money on have the same CO2-emission potential. $1 worth of burnt coal (in the form of electricity) produces X amount of CO2. If MiracleTurbine becomes successful, and I get to keep that dollar, I'm not necessarily going to spend it on something that also emits X CO2
hmmm. (Score:5, Informative)
The main problem is the general public. Everybody wants wind power (but not in their back yard) you have to actually change the law and rubbish collection to get them to recycle, and everybody needs to buy the latest and most powerful gadget on the market.
Making a more efficient solar cell is an excellent step, but I'd be more interested in a more *cheap* one so they can be taken up on a mass scale.
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Everybody wants wind power (but not in their back yard)
That's one thing that I've never understood. I used to live about an hour's drive from a wind turbine and drove by it several times a day. I could never wait to drive by because I loved the sight. My new home is very windy and could benefit greatly from wind power. I simply cannot fathom the resistance to wind turbines.
One thing I have always wondered though: given the fairly large surface area of the turbine blades, would it be possible to add a photosensitive material and pull a bit of power from the s
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As for solar power from blades' surface - the tower where the turbine is seated has more surface area than the blades, extra mass is not usually a problem, and you have a sun-facing side - the blades don't always have a sun-facing side (so you'll need to put panels on both side
Re:hmmm. (Score:4, Informative)
Things did get better when they started replacing the small turbines with fewer, much larger ones. The turbines closest to their house were removed, and the new turbines ran at much lower rpm which means they produce less noise.
As for sticking solar panels onto the turbine blades: this would make the blades heavier and less efficient. Also, you'd have to add slip rings on the root of each blade, and on the main shaft to transfer the power.
Slip rings are expensive, heavy and they need maintenance, especially when you're transferring significant amounts of power through them.
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What really depresses me is seeing the general public in interview and their complacency and dismissiveness about global climate change. People's sense of entitlement is astonishing: "I work hard so I have the right to a low-cost long-haul flight," even if we've done without that "right" for thousands of years and those flights are ultimately destroying the planet.
There is also the huge number of people who believe that the consensus of thousands of scientists on climate change is a "global conspiracy"
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There's another idea about this gaining attention. Suppose people do care and start conserving energy. They pay less for their energy bill, so that means they own more money. What do they do with this money? Spend it on other things of course! So that means other people are earning more money, for example in other parts of the world that are currently using less energy. What will they do with this extra money? Yes, spend it and in that process use more energy than they would have before!
Net result? 0
Ma
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Not everything that can be bought is bad for the environment.
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Re:hmmm. (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of making more money, people could work less. Instead of buying all sorts of shit, people could do much cleaner things such as talking, writing, riding a bike, going to a brothel, taking a walk, singing, playing a part on a play, painting, fighting (if not pushed too far it is not necessarily bad for some people...).
It is way too simplistic to say that there is a law of nature that says we will end up using every resource available. We are supposed to be rational beings even if we often do stupid things. One of the things of being rational (or partly rational) is that we can choose what we do. We don't simply answer any call of the wild (even if there is such a thing).
We are changing from a production society to a consumer one. We are becoming a bunch of morons that just sit and receive stuff. Not very different from the Eloi in H. G. Wells' The Time Machine. I don't think just consuming is satisfying enough. It is much easier (and faster) just to watch a movie than it is to tell a story and we end up watching 10 movies. Maybe a little boredom is good for creativity. It certainly is much cleaner than riding a car 100 km to do anything "new".
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Not really, since there are several spices on top of various food chains, and they don't eat a whole lot more than their stomachs can hold. But your point reaches to the root of the problem however: the reason these creatures don't virally consume the world like we do, is that they are una
Re:hmmm. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are long term trends not taken into account in these reports, for example. It is rubbish to say that we cannot accurately predict climate that far into the future because our short-term predictions are not very good. After all, we cannot predict the little ups & downs in next month's weather, but we can predict that winter will follow summer and autumn, and we know what the trends are in each of those seasons. The long-term trends in global weather can be predicted as well.
On a geological timescale, we are in high summer. Winter is coming, and in 10.000 years we'll be in an ice age. The start of the downward trend in average temperatures is imminent (which means anywhere between now and 1.000 years)... Perhaps that is why the IPCC report does not look any further than the year 2100, the scary hockeystick curve will flatten out after that year, and if you look even further it will drop. Our distant descendants (if any) may even be grateful for the extra CO2 we have released, since it might make the next ice age a little less severe.
But with all that said, conservation and reducing our dependancy on a limited resource is a good thing. But I refuse to join in the mindless panic.
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2) Both sides are trying to muddy the waters. You don't hear "Everything will be fine" and you don't hear "We are all going to die" because there is some give and ta
Re:hmmm. (Score:4, Interesting)
And while you've raised the issue, shall we discuss political meddling in the opposite direction (cough EPA report cough)?
It is true that eventually we will enter a new ice age, regardless of global warming, but no one is "ignoring" this fact. It's just farther off into the future; right now, the warming is what we have to deal with. If warming is a problem, you can't just ignore it because someday it will be cooler.
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Here's one [heartland.org]. The same happened with two scientists in a Dutch government-run climatological research institute. I'm sure you can find others, and I am also sure each of these examples can (and have) been countered by arguments of these scientists being fired for bad science or using "improper channels" to release their counter-claims.
My point is that the entir
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Here's one.
A rather one-sided presentation, I might add, but since you concede that this has already been countered by pointing out Albright's poor science and publishing his own website calling his boss's work a "myth", I don't need to get into details.
The same happened with two scientists in a Dutch government-run climatological research institute.
Really? Who? The only one I've heard of is Tennekes, and as far as I've ever been able to determine, he was not fired — he simply retired. He certainly has said nothing to the contrary himself; all the claims about him being fired can be traced back to an of
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I've got to disagree with
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Among the general public, basically they've had the "global warming" concept beat into their heads, but they're watching the people doing it fly around the world in private jets and live in houses with 4K/month electricity bills.
Among the geek skeptics, like myself, what I see is not science, it's religion. It's "we've solved this problem, we know it's happening, so NO MORE DEBATE ABOUT IT!!!!". That's not science. We're still debat
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My friend lives about a mile away from a small wind farm. I is very noisy, it sounds like cars on a freeway, but far too regular. Almost like a loud heart beat. And when the sun catches the blades you get a nice strobe effect which sends you fucking crazy after an hour or so.
My friend is selling up.
I can't wait, we never visit him any more. His house sucks.
Wind farms are ok - so long as they aren't in your back yard. Solar and Nuke is the real future.
monk.e.boy
PS check my .sig for Open Source Flash Cha
Spot on. (Score:4, Informative)
I recently had a new lady move in with me... and she insisted on actually unplugging things like my stereo when we were not using it. I was skeptical about the benefits of this tactic to save electricity, but being a curious person I was willing to humor her.
By unplugging all of my electronic devices (there are many of them) when not in use we saved around $30 U.S. a month. Where was all that energy going? Not sure.
If you are the type of person that has electronics in every room give it a try for yourself. Even if you don't care about being 'green' you will likely see a difference in your energy bill. Either way you win.
Regards.
Re:Spot on. (Score:5, Informative)
Some equipment behaves nicely on standby. Use a Wattmeter to check how much your stuff actually consumes in standby mode; you'd be surprised how little some things consume when idle, and there is little use in unplugging these completely. You might also be surprised at the large amount of power drawn by plug in transformers (The "wall warts"). Removing these when you are not using them saves a lot.
Another good way to save without sacrificing convenience, is to use a "master-slave" power block with your computer. I have a lot of inefficient transformer power supplies next to the computer, for printers, routers, LCDs, speakers, etc. I installed a "master-slave" system, that will automatically switch off all this rubbish when the computer is switched off. The power draw of this system when idle is minimal compared to those transformers, and you don't have to switch off every individual piece of equipment either,
Standby vs. remote power-on (Score:2)
Re:hmmm. (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, a lot of devices are always on, like DVRs, game stations with online access, and more. They do a lot of work at night updating databases, downloading new content, etc, and simply have to remain on. The fact that an XBox 360 doesn't spin down the graphic system power and down clock it's CPUs is a design issue we can change. An Apple TV box uses less than 20 watts when "asleep" and that included downloading content over wireless. Why can't the XBox and PS3 do that? They could even drop into an even lower power state when idle, spin down the HDD, and only "wake up" every 90 minutes or so to check for content without spinning the drive up again unless it needs to.
Unfortunately, there are even more devices we can't really do anything about that are the real sappers in the house. The cable modem, wireless router/firewall, VoIP modem, second access point to cover downstairs, possibly an extra switch to add more than 4 wired devices (I have 7), and base station and answering machine for wireless phones. That's just the network. Now add the garage door opener, automatic sprinkler system, home alarm and smoke detectors (most run on house power and rechargeable batteries now), safety lights in your halls and bathrooms (night lights), and several clocks.
I work for a computer systems manufacturer. We've got a meter (magnetic ring type thing) at the office that encircles a power line and displays the power being used by the device. We have it so we can document in our white papers the power consumption of our devices. I brought it home and played with it a few months ago when having a forum argument with another individual on this. My 27" tube TV used about 2 watts when sleeping. My 37" LCD used less than 1. My PS2 used no power (but the transformer was using 2 watts). My cable box used 12 watts when asleep, DVR used between 20 and 50 depending on what it was doing when asleep. What surprised me was the coffee pot was using 3 watts when off (it has a tiny built in clock). The 2 alarm clocks we have each use 5 watts. Adding up all my idle devices I was just over 220Watts in use! 10% of that was in scent plug-ins around the house and night lights, about 20% was in our cable boxes alone. 25% was in devices I can't turn off, like the garage opener, stove clock, built in microwave, etc. Another 20% was in my home theater equipment (amp, dvd, vcr, and TVs). There were some other random devices around as well, not including my network setup...
After finding this out, I installed a "step on" power extension (like people use under the Christmas tree) in line between the wall and home theater, so I can press one switch at night to turn off all the device in the HT setup (except the DVR which has to stay pugged in all the time per the cable company or they'll void the warranty on the device). I threw out all the scent plug-ins in favor of passively diffused oils and popuri. I changed the few night lights we had out for LCD versions. I now have a programmable timer power strip in the computer room that I have 2 laptops, a small TV, a printer and a network switch hooked up to. Each night at 11:00PM the adapter cuts power to the laptops (which hibernate automatically after 15 minutes when on battery), my printers, the switch they're connected to, and the TV and cable box in there. My HTPC now uses sleep mode with Wake on Lan to save power and automatically shuts down and powers
Solar cell? Pfftt..... (Score:4, Funny)
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Lunar power (Score:2)
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Can't find a reference at the moment though.
What a pointless comparison (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me guess: you'll leave how your roof empty to produce the same electricity, or take the whole roof to produce more than twice the electricity. Hard dilemma...
At this point solar energy seems inevitable in our future. Not long from now we'll have more efficient electric motors and even more efficient solar cells, so that would make it a viable backup to a car battery charge and mean you can drive for days and days at long distance without recharging.
The big money now will go to those people who manage to best make use of our existing infrastructure and our new technologies (stellar examples include Toyota's hybrids... imagine if that electric motor they use also has few solar panels to help it in the next models).
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They use conventional panels (17%). This one is 42%. Also I'm suggesting they won't run on pure solar, but support the electric motor in the same way the electric motor supports the diesel one in hybrids nowadays.
It may drop your fuel consumption 15%, using "free" solar energy, still worth it.
Re:What a pointless comparison (Score:5, Informative)
You can get at most 20 HP of power from that. In your real situation, with maybe 5 square meters of surface available in the morning, and lower solar power, and the 40% efficiency solar cells, you get 2HP (or 1.5KW). Does it help? A bit, yes. If your car can load itself all day with energy, and know when she will reach destination, she could bleed the electricity storage battery (and reload it later). This way, you could get 10 square meters of max power, 8 hours a day, and with perfect efficiency in rest (charge, discharge, motor) you get 80 HP hours - or two hours at 40HP. Good enough for a commute... but...
Now, you could buy solar panels at $5000 per kW (and 20 pounds). Assuming double efficiency is treble the price - you need $15,000 per square meter, so you'll pay $150,000 for solar on your car. Is it worth to drop your fuel consumption 50%? Or completely?
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Seeing a car's power rated in terms of horsepower has always seemed somewhat excessive to me. For a long time, people used a single horse[1] to get around. They were quite slow for long distances, but could achieve something close to the legal speed limit for built-up areas. Since we're playing with absolutely ideal numbers, let's try another one; the car has zero mass.
According to Wikipedia, the Sun produces approximately 1KW of energy per square metre. Your 20 square metre car then has a 20kW energy
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http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/06/2006_solar _drag.html [greencarcongress.com]
Solar drag racing (without batteries) can run the 1/4 kilometer (800 feet) in 57 seconds (using no batteries).
Well, the new record is 30 seconds for 820 feet, and 50 mph on finish - see http://users.applecapital.net/~jim/solardragrace.h tm [applecapital.net]
And the future is shiny:
"As the race develops over time, solar dragsters may eventually exceed two horsepower"
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Re:What a pointless comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the point where the central market planners jump in and shout that we should subsidize solar panels. But why does that solar panel cost $15,000 per square metre? Because of all the resources, energy, and labour consumed in producing it. Chances are those more than offset the gas you're not burning.
When the manufacturer can make panels efficiently enough to be more affordable than gasoline, it'll be because they're finally less wasteful and polluting overall.
A similar principle holds with recycling, by the way. In the instances where recycling actually saves on energy and raw materials, there is a cost savings as well, and the recycler will pay *you* for your bottles and cans. If the government has to make you do it, it's because the process is not cost-effective overall, and more waste is taking place in the recycling process than the recycling itself saves.
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Consider that, aside from police cars and taxis, most cars spend most of the time PARKED, either in a parking lot at work, or a driveway at home. The average car's lifespan is mostly spent at rest, with about a 1/2 hr drive to work and a 1/2 hr drive home.
Why is it NOT prudent to build a solar panel into the roof and/or engine hood to help recharge the batteries while the damn thing spends 8 hrs per day parked in the sunshine?
Hell, if we could take the heat that builds up inside
pfft... (Score:2)
It was more than 15 years ago when similar comments were being tossed about, as the Japanese Govt. began pumping money into solar as a technology. The prediction then was that within the decade, solar energy woul
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> Not long from now we'll have more efficient electric motors
Currently, brushless (3 phase) digitally controlled motors are already in the high 95~98%+ level at 'optimal' RPM, dropping into the 80% area when running at less than optimal RPM. Incremental gains from improved stator materials, smoother bearings/sleeves, more efficient drivers (MOSFET/IGBT) will come but for the most part you're already looking at technology that is extremely efficient.
Some things I'd really like to see are;
1. a good
Equation? (Score:2)
I'm not a solar panel expert, but the statement
"On a roof, such cells would require less than half the surface area to produce the same amount of power as today's standard solar panels, which have an efficiency of about 17%."
purely based on efficiency is dangerous. A lot of solar cells require a certain minimal light threshold before they start producing energy, and for reallife application, a lower threshold matters more than a few percent more of peak efficiency.
IOW efficiency is a function of among other
How much power? (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, but how much of a typical house's power would that supply? (I realize this depends on location and time of year.)
Or how many panels would it take to give you a daily, full recharge of a plug-in hybrid in, say, Los Angeles? (Imagine that that would do for LA's smog.)
Re:How much power? (Score:4, Informative)
Assuming you are going at work using 10kW (14 HP) average for two hours (both ways), and assuming 6 hours a day peak power, and your losses are zero, you need less than 15 square meters (160 square feet).
Now, if you add 50% losses in the recharge system (car and house), you need to double that - 30 square meters, or some 300+ square feet of solar installation, inclined to an angle equal to your location's latitude (equator- flat roof top, Alaska - sharp roof)
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In my case, I have at least 400 sq ft of south-facing garage roof (at a 12-12 pitch) and about twice as much on the house. Last month
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Significant indeed (Score:2)
A satellite-based solar panel could easily have the solar tracking device - however, tracking devices are expensive, could be affected by strong winds (for big installations), and use some power by themselves. Such a kit could bring higher efficiency in stationary panels, or (as suggested in article) could be used by the army as recharge packs for and inst
someone convince my local government (Score:5, Interesting)
why?
because my HOA (home owners association) does not permit them. As such it would take State or local laws to override the HOA; because in many States the HOA rules have strong legal backing at the State level.
This is akin to the problems satellite TV faced in many locales. There were numerous ordinaces, both at the HOA and local level which blocked satellite dishes. Even the small ones we are accustomed to today were blocked. It took a Federal Law to end that restriction. Unfortunately its going to take another such law to allow many of us to use renewable energy. Hell, I cannot even get rain barrels approved even though they would not be visible from the street.
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Efficiency is less important... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Another kind of efficiency (Score:3, Interesting)
These new panels may produce twice the energy, but is there any chance that they cost less than twice the dollars? What is the limiting factor in solar panel costs?
I've heard that some people are working on polymer solar panels, this would seem to deal with the dependence on expensive silicon...
About payback times (Score:3, Informative)
The calculation that produces a three year period says that you start saving money after three years. It assumes that you borrow money
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Assuming maintenance free operation for 20 years, of course. No panel breakage or degradation, equipment failures, need to replace batteries..
Re:Another kind of efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see energy getting any cheaper on this planet, and I don't see energy consumption decreasing.
The problem is it's not just the solar panels: it's the batteries and other infrastructure (and then maintenance!), and the last time I looked at it, it was closer to 20-yrs to pay back a whole system, and the system had a 20-yr life expectancy. That's break-even assuming it makes it to life expectancy.
What I am interested in is directly attaching an AC unit to a solar panel. Where I live it's generally only hot when it's sunny, so the AC would run for free.
Since the AC is one of the most expensive things to run it's win-win-win-win:
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Exactly. Also, the life expectancy of a solar roof is even worse if you live in a high-risk area, such as Florida. How well does a solar roof hold up to a hurricane? How much will it cost to repair?
How
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Rude awakening when we moved to Florida: "solar heated pool" means "it's heated by the sun." :(
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why don't they... (Score:2)
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So maybe there is an upside... (Score:2)
Massive scale solar farming (Score:3, Interesting)
In summary, the ideal location would have:
Sun
Sand
Oil
You see what I did there!?
fail (Score:4, Funny)
Economically feasible? (Score:3, Interesting)
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What matters to me: Do those new cells finally "produce" more energy during their life than they required during manufactoring?
What do you mean "finally"? They always have, though nowadays they recover the energy used in their production much faster than they used to. A few years to recovery is typical, and you really have to be trying to make it more than a decade. By contrast, the solar panels themselves are waranteed for 20+ years and thought to have useful lifetimes of 30+ years.
Concentration Is Good (Score:4, Insightful)
But also the concentrators are a lot cheaper than the cells. The concentrator is usually a cheap (compared to the cell) lens or mirror. So a 20x concentrator gets 20x the input energy, but for a much lower cost than 20 cells. And that cell is operating at higher efficiency, on 20x the input. So a $10 cell fed by 20 $5 concentrators costs only $110 instead of $200. 5% more efficiency in the cell is applied to all 20 concentrators, not just the 1 cell, for 200% efficiency. So it's double the efficiency at 55% the price, or over 3.6x the $:energy efficiency. In reality, the concentrators are better than 5x cheaper, and the efficiency gains can go higher than 5% greater.
And then there's all the savings from cheaper replacement concentrators, which could even last longer than the cells (though the cells typically last >30 years), and dropping all the other HW from the 19 (or however many) extra cells in favor of "dumb" concentrators. In fact, since concentrators are so cheap, the cells might not require HW to track the Sun for maximum absorbtion, but just array the concentrators in an arc (or bubble) that always leaves an array of concentrators facing the Sun (and the rest off-axis), without consuming energy to move. Or extra parts, or computing, and saving all the maintenance costs, too.
So the more concentration, the better. After all, that's how the engineers thought up this stuff.
What I'll never understand... (Score:2)
Full systems to run a home only cost $10k-15k, and single fairly large panels and the needed wiring are ~$1k without batteries or other complexity.
It would also bring dow
Impossible economics, take 761, action! (Score:2)
So, how's UV solar coming along? (Score:2)
Speaking of solar power, have we yet come up with a way of capturing ambient heat and doing something with it? When I look at my car in the midday sun, I'm reminded of Texas prison movies with prisoners getting put in "the box." Sheesh! Can't somebody do something with all that heat just sitting aro
But how much is it? (Score:2)
Put some things into perspective (Score:5, Informative)
I will try to put a summary to the interested folks around:
A photovoltaic system is composed today by:
- Module
- Inverter DC/AC
- Mounting system
- Cabling
- Measuring/Protection electrical stuff
Most of the cost today is the module. Systems go (net) for 4-5$/Watt.
More efficient cells (and modules) mean less installation costs. For the future, it will be important since cell and module prices will go down.
Today, in California, if you take a system lifetime of 25 years, the kWh equivalent "price" is about 25-30cent.
System price decrease is expected to be 5-10% yearly for the next 5-10 years at least. This means that very soon the PV power will be cheaper than the one sold by the utility.
PV systems are perfect for distributed energy: a centralized power plant is not really cheaper or more efficient than a 5kW roof installation. And the energy transport kills the small margin that you had in favour of the big thing. That is why most utilities are not hot about PV: it is against their business model.
For the moment, it is not cheap to get "disconnected" from the grid. Therefore, a mix of PV and other electricity is necessary. PV has a nice peak at max. consumption peak. However, the evening consumption must be covered otherwise. Wind, biomass, ocean waves, geothermal, whatever.
PV in order to charge e-cars is OK today already. A car that uses 10 liter to do 100km, at a 20kW mean power, is using 20kWh energy for 10 liter gas, at 1$/liter it would be 50 cent/kWh. Make the calculation with your local gas price/gallon and you see that, even today, it is competitive. And cleaner. Only e-cars are not yet developed/deployed as they need to be.
About Solar-thermal energy for cold- it works for mid-big sized equipments, it is cheaper and especially more reliable than electricity... PV supporting electrical AC is still a bit more expensive but both run a nice race.
Ah, the typical guy asks about energy payback times: depending on technology, after 1-4 years your system has produced the energy needed to make it. Longer times belong to PV prehistory and to right-wing-thinktank analysis.
Cheers!
Wow, how innaccurate (Score:3, Informative)
> produce the same amount of power as today's standard solar panels,
> which have an efficiency of about 17%."
The article being quoted clearly states that these cells require concentrated sunlight -- this is true of all thin-film high-TSE cells. So basically you can't mount them on the roof, you'll get no power at all.
Further, most solar panels get about 11% efficiency. There are ones that get into the 15-17% range, but these are much more expensive and see considerably less use as a result.
These new cells will be very useful for large-scale energy developments, like large solar farms in the desert. They are completely useless for rooftop deployment.
Maury
Roottop concentrators are being delivered (Score:3, Informative)
You won't be all that competitive is you are producing 11% efficient solar today. I think perhaps you are thinking that most solar panels already sold have a lower efficiency. One company is selling at $3.00/watt for lower efficency panels as compared with $4.20/watt for most. You hav
High tech one offs (Score:3, Insightful)
If I wanted to create super sci-fi stuff for my spy that's not so hard, custom made stuff with lots of money behind it can do amazing things.
I'm really hoping that their method is mass manufacturable.
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