[thorvaldr]

And now includes the “fry birds in flight” feature at no extra charge!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

33 foot tall sunflower ?

[kevkrom]

Initial reaction: Cool!

Second reaction: But how long will this technology take to be practical to the average homeowner?

Third reaction: Of course, if I wait 10 minutes, someone will come by and show why the claims are wildly exaggerated, anyway.

Fourth reaction: What’s for lunch?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From the comments:

******************EXCERPT***************************

Cristian Mataoanu • 7 hours ago

I think that the cells that can convert 30% of sunshine to electricity are pretty expensive but for this design they need only a small area. In the IBM published material they state that a price of 250$/sqm can be achieved. And the idea of recovering the heat for home use is a good one.

[SparkyBass]

[reg45]

Roasting birds 60% faster.

[from occupied ga]

WOW! 40 year old technology revived.

[Vision Thing]

“IBM scientists are taking a page from the supercomputer playbook to keep them at a relatively cool 105 degrees with a water radiator system.”

It would be nice if they could use this water radiation system to steam a small turbine, which would generate even more power.

[Prophet2520]

This is not a new idea but a good one. The problem is that at smaller scales for a single home it is hard to make all the equipment payback in a short time.

This should have virtually no impact on birds compared to Ivanpah which has thousands of times more mirror area and great distances covered for birds to fly through.

[cicero2k]

IBM has lots of experience cooling chips inside mainframe computers. I saw a grid of 192 processors each with a metal rod in contact that conducted heat to a coolant fluid. This has long been the limiting factor in concentrated photovotaic conversion.

The intermiitancy of sun light problem remains.

Plus what controlling entity is going to allow ugly parabolics on the landscape?

[Billthedrill]

I’m working on a dark concentrator myself. It seems to work pretty well but it sucks the electricity out of the house. :-(

[zeugma]

As a supplimental power generation point, these look fairly promising. However, in order to understand whether or not they make sense, you have to ask some specific questions:

• How much does a unit cost?
• What is it's peak, average, and mean output?
• What does the power output curve look like over the course of a day? How does this change with the advance of seasons?
• How much is maintenance? (Quarter/year/lifetime)
• How long will it last?

Things like this might be useful for easing the burden on the grid of peak daylight times, but they are less than useful as you near dusk, and until some time after dawn. If it makes economic sense, then by all means, deploy the suckers. If it doesn't then it's good research that I applaud and await further developments.