This sort of news scares the heck out of radical Islam. They know their window of opportunity to defeat the west is dependent on oil profits.
Bump for later gettin-off-the-grid reading.
It's not that efficient if it needs a much larger sized-are of concentrator to make the small chip work. In theory, almost any solar cell would do better with large concentrator focusing more sunlight on it.
And don't expect that if an answer is found, that it will be made available to the regular Joe for alternative energy. There's no money to be made that way.
A free energy source would cripple our economy as we know it.
It seems to me that a system of reclined troughs which track the sun, and focus onto concentrating solar cells -- which are cooled by a liquid flowing from bottom to top, and then into a water system pre-heater, would combine enough efficiency to be of great interest to the homowner.
Especially this homeowner. Hmm, make a great camper, too.
What kind of working fuild will be used to carry away the heat?
Be fun to see how these turn out for residentail use.
Boeing? Cool. It would be great to have a solar house. Hopefully similar breakthroughs will come soon, for battery technology--to date the weak link.
Honda will bring Hydrogen cars out, soon. And they won't wait for the massive "infrastructure" delivery system problems.
Honda, long maker of small portable generators, will introduce household size hydrogen converters. Buy a car and converter as a system.
Apparently hydrogen can be made from natural gas.Thinking broadly on such developments, both seem to encourage property and home ownership.
A personal solar generating system is unlikely to be so portable, as to allow a renter to carry it from apartment to apartment.
And I doubt an apartment owner could easily set up for multiple converters to hook up to natural gas lines.
In both cases, property owners are favored. One more set of reasons for investing in real estate.
Just what we need.
Hire the illegals to polish the lenses everyday.
Maybe they can make a machine like a lawn mower and they can ride on it and do the four acres.
Nice job in manufacturing.
In the future, for driving, the feds are going to need a sun tax. And for taking a break, a shade tax.
OK, here's my idea.
Manufacture 10-ft dishes that resemble the home satellite receiver dishes of the early 80s. However, the surface would be a mirror.
These dishes would be balanced so that they are able to move and track the sun with very little power required.
At the focal ppoint of the dish, you would mount solar receptor capable of receiving/converting HIGH tempratures into voltage.
This voltage is used to crack the hydrogen out of water. They hydrogen is then used to power fuel cells.
What the heck ever happened to the spray on solar stuff that got some press a while back?
I thought they were Stirling engines, but hey, I didn't go to MIT.
Maybe I'm missing something, they say it takes 4 square miles of sunlight using traditional cells to generate 1 power plant.. with the new refractors you only need about a backyards worth of space of actual cells... which is good.. but if the cells are only twice as effective as current cells, the refractors total input area would need to be 2 square miles, even if the actual cells only took up a backyards worth of space to get the same output?
Not very practicle for replacing the power plant entirely, or maybe I'm just not understanding.
It sounds like its cheapening the expense of them, and doubling the output which isn't bad.. but you still have the diffusion issue. What sort of load can you realistically expect from a typical solar installation today? And if it were doubled would that really make them viable in most areas (Ie Areas that aren't desert or sunny most of the year)?
read later
Any time solar power becomes really affordable, I'll be the first to buy it. But it's nowhere near there yet.
You need an inverter, batteries, switches, wiring, and some place to stick the whole business that won't look too horrible. At the moment it's completely out of the question. But it's possible that they will work out the kinks, and at that point I'll jump in.
The sunlight isn't great in Vermont, but our power company is VERY expensive, which balances it out to some extent. One of our neighbors is installing solar power, but it's a feel-good exercise. They admit it will cost them a lot more than they'll save.
Get me off the grid reminder bump! ;-)