Lasers Etch a 'Perfect' Solar Energy Absorber (phys.org) 82
fahrbot-bot shares a report from Phys.Org: The University of Rochester research lab that recently used lasers to create unsinkable metallic structures has now demonstrated how the same technology could be used to create highly efficient solar power generators. In a paper published in Light: Science & Applications, the lab of Chunlei Guo, professor of optics also affiliated with Physics and the Material Sciences Program, describes using powerful femto-second laser pulses to etch metal surfaces with nanoscale structures that selectively absorb light only at the solar wavelengths, but not elsewhere.
A regular metal surface is shiny and highly reflective. Years ago, the Guo lab developed a black metal technology that turned shiny metals pitch black. "But to make a perfect solar absorber," Guo says, "We need more than a black metal and the result is this selective absorber." This surface not only enhances the energy absorption from sunlight, but also reduces heat dissipation at other wavelengths, in effect, "making a perfect metallic solar absorber for the first time," Guo says. "We also demonstrate solar energy harnessing with a thermal electric generator device." "This will be useful for any thermal solar energy absorber or harvesting device," particularly in places with abundant sunlight, he adds.
A regular metal surface is shiny and highly reflective. Years ago, the Guo lab developed a black metal technology that turned shiny metals pitch black. "But to make a perfect solar absorber," Guo says, "We need more than a black metal and the result is this selective absorber." This surface not only enhances the energy absorption from sunlight, but also reduces heat dissipation at other wavelengths, in effect, "making a perfect metallic solar absorber for the first time," Guo says. "We also demonstrate solar energy harnessing with a thermal electric generator device." "This will be useful for any thermal solar energy absorber or harvesting device," particularly in places with abundant sunlight, he adds.
Only Solar Wavelengths (Score:1)
"selectively absorb light only at the solar wavelengths"
Considering the sun emits pretty much across the entire goddamned EM spectrum, did they mean to say VISIBLE wavelengths instead of solar wavelengths? Perhaps they meant to say "selectively absorb wavelengths of light within the solar constant" (which would include all solar radiation, not just the visible wavelengths.)
Re: Only Solar Wavelengths (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, that part was a little confusing right along the lines that this is thermal energy, not photovoltaic which is what I immediately presumed based on the headlines. My second thought was how this absorbs "solar" energy but ignore EMR considering you can't have one without the other? Hell, if they can tune these nanoscale structures this well, then we might have a way to create more accurate, and fewer parts, fixed RF systems.
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The paper describes it a bit more:
[A]n ideal solar light absorber has nearly 100% absorbance within the solar spectrum [300–2500nm] and negligible thermal emittance within the blackbody radiation spectral range at mid-to-high temperatures (100–500C)
The radiation from a blackbody at 100–500C peaks at around 8000–4000nm (in the infrared). So the idea is to maximize the energy absorbed from sunlight, while also minimizing losses due to thermal radiation.
Presumably your solar absorber will also be insulated with a vacuum or something, to cut down on convection / conduction losses.
Re: Only Solar Wavelengths (Score:2)
So orbital solar arrays as close as mercury, in theory, could divert massive amounts of solar radiation into power without melting, assuming the rest of the structure can hold up to neutron bombardment over time from the solar winds. Obviously it would have to be in equatorial regions to avoid the fast solar winds, but I would think, given the inverse square law, that there could still be a nuclide risk even in the slow solar wind belt. The higher atomic number elements tend to have more neutron-proton, and
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So orbital solar arrays as close as mercury, in theory, could divert massive amounts of solar radiation into power without melting, assuming the rest of the structure can hold up to neutron bombardment over time from the solar winds.
No. This stuff gets extremely hot, and radiates little heat. It would melt quickly.
This is solar-thermal, not photovoltaic.
Re: I'm sick of being harassed by every Internet " (Score:1)
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He probably got arrested at some protest rally, got stuffed into a police van, and then released later. That or he's Antifa and got unmasked (oops).
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(TrueScore: 4, Thoughtful)
Protip: If you feel the need to include this at the start of your post, >95% of readers will identify you as a whiny brat with nothing meaningful to say. And you don't exactly break the mold.
We didn't get an article about those unsinkable (Score:3, Informative)
Probably had to be cut due to more important topics like Trump Appleing Bitcoin...
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It's neat.
Re:Solar power is still dilute and unreliable. (Score:4, Insightful)
As a proponent of nuclear I could agree with you but man did you derail this discussion.
I must disagree a bit though. Solar, even if not used for baseload exactly, is a very useful technology. Every house equipped with solar panels and batteries could become akin to a tiny capacitor in the grid smoothing out peaks.
Not to mention decentralized production might also counter blackouts and transportation losses (to a degree).
So I think subsidizing solar isn't a bad thing but blocking other technologies with the mantra of "Solar is cheaper [only because China pisses on people and the planet], ecological [it isn't, obviously, it just ahs a different footprint] and can do baseload yes, by bending over backwards on batteries]!" pisses me the hell off.
I love the idea of many small homes and businesses producing small amounts of electricity while something like nuclear provides the bulk of the energy. That would make the grid equivalent of motherships with auxiliary fleets.
That speaks to my inner nerd ;).
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If you are a US resident, I can easily believe that painting roofs white would do more for energy conservation than rooftop solar ever could for production.
However, other parts of the world do not build like you and I doubt that idea holds up everywhere on the planet.
Also wouldn't you have to repaint that roof twice a year to get the optimum out of that scheme?
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" Rooftop solar is double, triple, or even quadruple the costs of utility scale solar"
Can you include in your estimates the benefit of independence from the grid?
Your house has solar PV and one or two day's worth of battery storage. Grid goes down, you still have lights and refrigeration, and even a TV. Pull out the camping stove, or you have a gas range, and life goes on, with a bit of an adventure for the kids. Maybe you have to boil water on the camp stove to take a bath.
If you're totally grid-dependent,
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After a couple days, neighbors invade you and take your shit. Who's gonna me OK then? :)
Re:Solar power is still dilute and unreliable. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah mate, this is Australia. I'd be more likely to put up a sign saying "Electricity here! Come and charge your phone and laptops, put your kids through a bath and cook your dinner on my stove!'
Or haven't you been paying attention to the bushfire stories?
"Invaders" would most likely be given short shrift from my neighbours. I'm sorry you seem to live where hostile invasion is even a possibility. Makes me glad I don't live there.
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Actually, I was thinking you are from the USA.
I'm okay where I live, although it's considered a 3rd world country.
Re: Solar power is still dilute and unreliable. (Score:1)
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Most Australians don't have pay TV. Over-the-air is still the most popular TV delivery mechanism.
Solar power is still worse than wind power. (Score:2)
Can you include in your estimates the benefit of independence from the grid?
Solar panels and batteries will not make a home independent from the grid, not at any cost that is cheaper than a grid connection excepting some very remote areas. People with solar panels, batteries, and a grid connection, are primarily relying on the grid and batteries, not the solar panels.
Also, there's more than one way to manage a utility outage. I've seen the math on micro-CHP (combined heat and power) and this is a promising technology for going off grid. I've also seen the math on using gas light
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I don't think you got my point.
You pay a price to become independent* from the grid. It's not about whether it's cheaper than a grid connection, it's whether you view continued operations during a blackout as worth the cost. You could use a portable genset to provide the electricity, of course - but they need fossil fuel, too, so you're going to need to stockpile a couple of day's worth of petrol or diesel, and that stuff goes off, so you have to actively practice stock rotation, etc. I'd rather have a big,
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I don't think you got my point.
I believe you didn't read my entire post.
I covered the issue of going totally off grid in my first paragraph, then I went on to cover that there's less expensive means to handle a power outage than solar panels and batteries. Technologies that people have been using for decades, or even centuries, before solar panels came about.
You mention that fuel can go bad if not used, and that has some truth to it. What you don't seem to understand is that there are more uses for this fuel than running a backup gener
Re:Solar power is still dilute and unreliable. (Score:4, Informative)
Not living in America, living somewhere that doesn't have snow, I'm looking at this article that says thermal generation of electricity is improved 130%.
Also looking at a newspaper article that says with conservative assumptions, the cost of solar is a bit under US$61 per month; that savings would be about US$61 to US$87 per month.
A federal government website that says the payback time for a solar installation being 3-5 years, if you DON'T have batteries, extended with batteries.
A consumer choice magazine that advises waiting until next year for a drop in battery prices will mean solar+battery systems will pay back in less than 10 years. An energy council page that says the home solar and home energy storage markets are growing; that my country added 3GW of solar power to its generation mostly from residential rooftops and per capita is leading the world in solar deployment, followed by Japan, the Netherlands and South Korea. Plus, "The world's top three greatest populations - China, India and USA - are ranked 7,14 and 8 respectively, in terms of solar deployment rate per capita".
And where I live, the payback time for a 5kW system is sitting at about 3 years.
Let's now even talk about America, seeing as it's supposedly the centre of the whole frigging planet.
New Mexico, California and Hawaii are supposed to be great places to be getting parity-economic solar soon. And that rate is growing and looking to cover about half the country.
Nuclear? Fine. Suits me, I don't mind. But "Solar power is just a bad idea for anyplace on Earth with access to the electrical grid" is an idiotic statement that fails to take improving technology, consequent costs of not using a renewable technology. According to NASA, smoke from our bushfires could circle the globe a few times and with any luck, it'll make you cough hard enough to stop saying such unpleasant damned things, plus, your frigging stupid "I am armed" is not going to make you free of smoke, fumes and every other pollutant. Why yes, we're also a country that introduced gun laws with buy-back schemes, by a CONSERVATIVE prime minister and we have way fewer school massacres than you.
We need something that's energy dense, not personally.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/fin... [thenewdaily.com.au]
https://www.energy.gov.au/hous... [energy.gov.au]
https://www.choice.com.au/home... [choice.com.au]
https://www.energycouncil.com.... [energycouncil.com.au]
https://theconversation.com/wh... [theconversation.com]
> My point is that there is ample evidence that rooftop solar is a very bad idea
Not providing any evidence of your ample evidence is a very bad idea and densely so.
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"I am armed" etc
I can't figure out why the guy is opposed to independence. Relying on the grid is, to me, a rejection of self-reliance.
I think the idea of nukes for baseload is OK, although fraught with promises of "today's designs are *so* much better". But rejecting cheap adjuncts to electricity generation is just blind ignorance.
Re: Solar power is still dilute and unreliable. (Score:1)
Re: Solar power is still dilute and unreliable. (Score:3, Informative)
My solar home in Northern California has utility bills almost exactly $100 cheaper than my previous home 30 miles away. Same utility rates. Also using electronic water heater at the new place, the old one was gas. So a lot of variables mean this isn't scientific at all.
Saving $1200 a year means a modest system might take 10 years to pay off, even after the tax credit. Breaking even before it needs to be replaced is good, but no way is it paid in 3 years.
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I had rooftop solar panels installed in December. My system is about 8.5kw. I do not have any battery backup, so if the grid goes down, I go down. [I will most likely install batteries at some point.]
The system cost in the low-20ks, and I am expecting around a 6k rebate from the power company. Additionally, there is a 30% federal tax credit for systems installed in 2019 that should be similar to the 6k power company rebate. There are no state-level tax credits in my state.
My net cost to have panels installe
Re:Solar power is still dilute and unreliable. (Score:5, Insightful)
"I believe subsidizing anything is a bad idea."
Lucky that no nuke plants ever need or ever had subsidies, hey?
Here's a thought - cut *all* subsidies to *all* forms of energy production, and let the market sort it out? Isn't that the free-market way? Only it's not, and never has been. Socialise the costs (such as environmental problems), and privatise the profits.
Cut all direct subsidies, all tax credits, all deferred payments, let's see how how that goes?
Solar these days only needs subsidies to compete with the embedded, institutional, subsidies of fossil fuel. If fossil fuel companies suddenly had to pay for all the downstream costs of their products, they'd implode. And yes, I'd be happy to pay an extra 5 - 10% for my solar panels for end-of-life processing.
Contrary to your opinions, rooftop solar PV and batteries as a distributed energy generation and storage system makes sense. Each house in a street contributes to the supply, and each house in the street has a reserve capacity when the grid suffers a fault. It wouldn't work everywhere, of course, but in temperate zones you're just being stubborn if you ignore or dismiss the benefits. House A: fully grid-dependent. House B: some independence. All other things being equal, would you be prepared to pay more for option B, or take your chances?
Anyway, the market is already speaking - houses here in Oz are already attracting a premium when they have solar PV. It's happening, and it's happening faster than acceptance of any other forms, including nuclear, of electricity generation. The uptake - subsidised - of solar PV here has been so rapid, it's taken the traditional generators by surprise, and now they're worried about the impact on the grid of so much rooftop-generated electricity.
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goddamnit. Not that I had mod points anyway, but I logged in to post to this same guy before seeing your nice post plus that you're in the same country. I would've modded you up if I could. Thanks.
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> Lucky that no nuke plants ever need or ever had subsidies, hey?
Socialized nuclear insurance is the specific reason global warming is even a topic today.
And there are incentives on every side of that issue both aligned with humanity and against it. The problem is that unnatural monopolies distort market information flow and humans cannot be trusted to act foremost in others' interests.
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Lucky that no nuke plants ever need or ever had subsidies
Let's put that a bit more boldly: nuclear power is the only power source in actual use that has never been put into practice without government support.
Unfortunately - mostly due to raw material price hikes - we have now reached a point where it is not even commercially viable to build such a plant _with_ government support. It will probably become succesfull again as smaller/cheaper solutions reach the market, but that takes quite some time.
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let's see how how that goes?
It never fails to comprehend the vast lack of comprehension that people have. Energy is a vitally important resource. If we don't have it, we will suffer. We don't treat it like any other resource for solid reasons: if we let the market rise and fall, eventually it would fall flat and civilization as we know it would come to a halt. Since this is obviously a negative outcome, we don't allow it to happen. How is it that educated people don't know this?
This goes for food, t
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I thought the sarcasm was obvious.
Dude, I live in a country with universal, taxpayer-funded healthcare. My taxes subsidise other people's healthcare, and I've very happy about it. I have no problem subsidising a transitional phase to renewable energy sources.
Let's look at it this way: fossil fuels are, for the moment, cheap and plentiful. But it's a finite resource and it *will* run out one day, and become prohibitively expensive before that day. Why not make the best use of it now, to facilitate constructi
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what about in that region of your continent where everyone builds subterranean homes? Is PV viable there? I have to admit, your continent is one of the quirkiest on the planet. What works there most likely wont always work elsewhere. The whole ecosystem dismisses that whole noahs arc bullshit outright. The animals and plants there evolved so much differently than the rest of the planet. I think we have like ONE marsupial species in all of north america. Seems like in Oz, everything is either marsupial or on
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Here's a thought - cut *all* subsidies to *all* forms of energy production, and let the market sort it out? Isn't that the free-market way? Only it's not, and never has been. Socialise the costs (such as environmental problems), and privatise the profits.
To truly avoid subsidizing anything, it's necessary to find a way to make the energy producer cover all the costs, including the externalities. As long as someone else is bearing part of the cost, there's still an implicit subsidy.
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Re: Solar power is still dilute and unreliable. (Score:3)
Sorry, but you are living in a world that is not feasible. You rail against solar subs saying they distort pricing options but there isn't a energy source that is not in various ways subsidized. Solar gets very little in total subs compared to Nuclear or Coal/Oil. The price a home owner sees at the home for grid power is heavily regulated and comes with a massive price distortion.
Paint our roofs white? That's not going to happen in the US. Just like replacing 1/2 of golf courses with trees. Or just havi
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Aren't rooftop solar panels often installed slightly above the roof, putting the roof in the shade, anyway?
As far as painting roofs white, that seems like a lot of maintenance. But using white or light-colored roofing in the first place does work, and that's done in a lot of hot places, even without the push from energy codes toward
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My take is that everyone here is right. Paint the sides not facing south (north for you guys who have the southern Cross in the sky) a silvery-white, and the side facing the sun, use solar panels with some long-lasting battery technology, like Ni-Fe batteries or a good lithium battery chemistry. That will help with peak times, especially with air conditioning. Additionally, heat based solar "panels" can be used with a desiccant based air conditioning technology to make air conditioning units two to three
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"No, it's an expensive and labor intensive energy source with poor returns on investment."
You keep saying this but it simply isn't true. Hasn't been since I dropped out of solar PV manufacturing. Panels can be had as cheaply as a quarter a watt-hour. I've seen plenty of systems have a full turnaround payback time of 8 months. That leaves almost 30 years of good power (to 80% original output.)
Maybe in YOUR area, but down in the SouthWest, we could PV a small area and provide you non-believers across the worl
Re:Solar power is still dilute and unreliable. (Score:4, Interesting)
You do realise that the whole baseload concept is only a thing because coal (and later nuclear) power plants couldn't follow load? Remove both from the equation and the need for baseload disappears immediately.
Re:Solar power is still dilute and unreliable. (Score:4, Interesting)
You do realise that the whole baseload concept is only a thing because coal (and later nuclear) power plants couldn't follow load? Remove both from the equation and the need for baseload disappears immediately.
Nuclear power reactors can follow loads just fine. Reactors on ships in the US Navy have to follow load and they are not all that different than the reactors in civilian power plants. The difference is the margins on cost and safety. The Navy also uses a few more "tricks" to avoid problems like iodine neutron poisoning that comes with load following. There are prototypes for next generation civilian nuclear power plants that are being built now to take advantage of some of these "tricks", but without having to compromise on safety and economics because we learned a few things in the last 40 years since we effectively stopped building any new nuclear power plants.
One big change that will allow for nuclear power load following is to do away with the water cooling and steam turbines. Instead the reactor core would be cooled with a molten salt or molten metal, with the heat transferred to open cycle air turbines to turn the generators. Even if this doesn't go as planned with the prototypes there is still room to gain on the ability to load follow better with steam turbines by better management of iodine buildup, and using moderators other than water.
What's going to happen is the USA will be building new nuclear reactors. We have little choice to do otherwise. Once we get past some problems of having to relearn what was forgotten by failing to keep building nuclear power plants then we will see costs go down and more advanced nuclear power than the already affordable and exceedingly safe nuclear power plants we are building today.
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I have told you this numerous times, and here it is again:
Old nuclear used to go boom when load-following. See Chernobyl. This was (mostly) fixed in the 60's, modern nuclear do not have a technical problem with load following.
However, that is entirely irrelevant when nuclear fuel is free and the capital cost is huge. This means the marginal price of nuclear electricity is zero, so it is entirely stupid to do load-following with nuclear.
Wind is exactly the same, you only stop producing wind power if the grid
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I have told you this numerous times, and here it is again:
And you are still wrong, repeating it doesn't make it any more true.
Your claim of it being "stupid" to use nuclear power to load follow only remains true when there is another option to load follow that is of a lower cost. Will load following with natural gas remain cheaper than nuclear in a time when natural gas is scarce and when burning it carries the additional costs of a carbon tax? We will continue to need the electrical supply to meet demand, so something has to follow the load. We can do this wit
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Your claim of it being "stupid" to use nuclear power to load follow only remains true when there is another option to load follow that is of a lower cost.
Which there always is. New nuclear costs at least £90/MWh when run flat out. The market price is practically never above £90/MWh, so load following nuclear will be in use a few days a year. How will you possibly get any return on investment on that?
New development brings costs down. (Score:2)
How will you possibly get any return on investment on that?
By lowering the costs of nuclear power with more research and development run concurrently with new deployment bringing economy of scale. In other words, the same way we were able to lower costs with solar and wind power. What nuclear power does not have to deal with though is reliance on dilute and unreliable wind and sun.
Wind and solar power will always be unreliable and dilute. As inexpensive and reliable hydro and geothermal power might be it is reliant on suitable climate and geography, something th
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Nuclear power reactors can follow loads just fine. ... so why your stupid nitpicking again?
You very well know that most existing power plants can not. You also know most plants are on land and not in a sub
Re: Solar power is still dilute and unreliable. (Score:2)
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The attempts to label it as political will ultimately fail since the concept is a consequence of both the economics of how we consume power and the physics of how it is produced.
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As a proponent of nuclear I could agree with you but man did you derail this discussion.
I must disagree a bit though. Solar, even if not used for baseload exactly, is a very useful technology. Every house equipped with solar panels and batteries could become akin to a tiny capacitor in the grid smoothing out peaks.
Not to mention decentralized production might also counter blackouts and transportation losses (to a degree).
With proper infrastructure, the houses might not even need batteries once a critical mass of people are driving around in 100+kWh electric cars. In 2018, the average household energy consumption was around 33kWh/day, so depending on time of year, and method of heating/cooling, you could run a house for from 2 days to a week on two cars.
If parking lots had enough hookups, you'd set your car to allow it to discharge down to a set percent at a minimum of $0.x per kWh, go to work, plug in, and let your employer
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Perhaps this wasn't spelled out explicitly but the implication is that this will be a technology that will make solar power more efficient, and therefore cheaper.
It is, but not for photovoltaic panels. This is for thermal solar power. Think of the absorber at the top of a solar power tower [wikipedia.org]. That's what it's aimed at.
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I'm thinking thermal solar for hot water. Maybe seems pointless to the non-Alaskan Americans here, but elsewhere in the world domestic heating can be a major consumer of energy, and it's usually gas.
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I'm thinking thermal solar for hot water. Maybe seems pointless to the non-Alaskan Americans here, but elsewhere in the world domestic heating can be a major consumer of energy, and it's usually gas.
Surprisingly (at least to me), solar hot water is often better/cheaper/easier to do with photovoltaics. Solar panels have become amazingly cheap and electrical wiring is often much easier to deal with than plumbing is, so the total cost of installation is no longer heavily weighted in either direction. Lifespan and maintenance considerations tilt towards PV.
https://youtu.be/KVeGummoXS0 [youtu.be]
Re: Solar power is still dilute and unreliable. (Score:2)
A better battery is compressed hydrogen. Its highly transportable, burns clean, and the earth is covered in the stuff in the form of seawater.
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If only it were efficient to separate hydrogen, it might be a good way to store power. But it isn't, so it isn't.
You do lose power when charging batteries, but you lose a lot more when making hydrogen.
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you are working on old information my friend. The old math of electrolysis is a thing of the past. Certain catalysts have been found to reduce this energy requirement. One catalyst even works in combination with sunlight to do it without other energy input.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/engli... [xinhuanet.com]
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com]
https://setis.ec.europa.eu/pub... [europa.eu] [see section about large scale and using solar thermal energy]
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Lol Cobalt, nickel, and zinc on a silicon wafer. Sounds real clean.
Re: Solar power is still dilute and unreliable. (Score:2)
Compared to li-ion? That stuff is a toxic waste nightmare. Even the tiny credit card sized batteries in a GPS can spontaneously catch on fire and burn the whole car down. I saw the aftermath on that one.. omg the car was totaled. Li-ion is a good stop-gap solution until we get better use out of hydrogen. Hydrogen has the highest energy to mass ratio of just about anything. So ultimately we _will_ move to that technology. Its not a matter of IF but WHEN.
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Hydrogen is a TERRIBLE battery. It's extremely dangerous to store or transport, leaks out of just about every container, and is extremely inefficient to produce, and even more so to compress.
There's a good reason it's losing the battle to lithium ion despite massive government subsidies (yes, more than other EV technologies) and gobs of money being thrown at it by oil companies (yes, oil companies, nearly 100% of hydrogen is generated from fossil fuels, not water, and it fits their existing distribution mod
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you are talking about 20yr old information. New hydrogen fuel cells make storage significantly simpler than using cylinder tanks or cryo. As far as efficiency you also are talking 20yr old information. New catalysts in the last 5 years alone have shown to _greatly_ reduce the energy requirement to produce. I dont think you understand what a BATTERY is from an engineering perspective. Otherwise you would not be saying stupid shit like mentioning lithium-ion. How many lithium-ion batteries are you going to st
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A better storage technology is pumped hydroelectric electricity storage
Most of the good hydroelectric sites are already taken by (are you ready?) hydroelectric power generation dams. Ecologically it's a frelling disaster for everything downriver as well, as warm stagnant water suddenly gets dumped into a running stream. For the couple dozen sites in North America where it won't cause environmental havoc it's a possibility, but most of them are nowhere near where the power is going to be used.
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It sounds like this technology is used to create a surface that will more efficiently absorb solar heat (i.e. a heating coil for a pool on a hot roof), not collect solar energy (i.e. solar panels). For example, you could use this to heat water during the day,saving on the costs of using other energy sources to make hot water.
The key word in the article is "Thermal" as in heat: "This will be useful for any thermal solar energy absorber or harvesting device"
Solar Panels use photons (light) to generate elect
Siunds good for solar water heaters (Score:2)
If it's cheap enough. That is the real appeal of that particular technology. I don't see how that would work for electrical generation. Solar thermal seems to all be focused on concentrating collector designs.
Needless to say it does nothing to address solar's real problem, that turning on the lights doesn't turn on the sun.
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I don't see how that would work for electrical generation. Solar thermal seems to all be focused on concentrating collector designs.
Theoretically, you'd need less of a concentration and/or a smaller collecting surface to generate the same amount of heat.
Needless to say it does nothing to address solar's real problem, that turning on the lights doesn't turn on the sun.
Wow! You must be the first person to have ever realized this problem. It's too bad they haven't developed a variety of storage technologies to deal with this problem. Or that load happens to be highest when the sun is up.
This vs. hohlraum (Score:3)
Can anyone explain why a surface etched in this fashion would be better than directing sunlight via a solar concentrator into the aperture of a hohlraum?
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It sounds like the effect is basically the same, but this is just a big flat surface which is macroscopicly uniform.
This will be mostly worthless (Score:1)
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Sorry, but it's just solar thermal collector and solar thermal has all but completely failed in favor of solar PE which generates much more useful electricity and is easier to install and even easier to maintain since wires are easier than pipes.
Perhaps you should learn about this amazing thing called "a shower". Or "a bath". They require heating water.
Or you could learn about this odd thing called "central heating".
Even better, you could learn about this thing called "paragraphs".
Holographic filters (Score:2)