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I wonder why they are bothering with gallium-arsenide panels when using a solar thermal setup would be a lot more cost efficient and probably more energy effici
by x0054 11y ago
I wonder why they are bothering with gallium-arsenide panels when using a solar thermal setup would be a lot more cost efficient and probably more energy efficient as well. You simply run some kind of coolant through the collector, exchange the heat into water, and run a steam turbine from the resulting steam. You can even collect the water afterwords and condense it to get distilled water. There are many power plants that run on that principle, but it would be cool to see something that can be mounted in the back yard. And the materials necessary are very common and cheep, so the entire product could be much cheeper as well.
- Faint 11y agoWell, you'd end up with something like this: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~wang30y/csp/ParabolicDish.html https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~wang30y/csp/ParabolicDish.html GaAs panels have ~40% efficiency. It's not easy/dirt cheap (you need high temperatures, and materials to go with that) to get that much efficiency out of steam turbine (or Stirling engine). For example your typical nuclear power plant would have about 33% thermal efficiency. And with the panels you have less moving mechanical parts that need servicing. And the panels are silent vs. steam turbine. Lighter also. Pure solar thermal has been tried/used many times before.
- brrt 11y agoOn the other hand, their setup claims to melt iron, at 1518C. Which would give you a pretty good carnot efficiency if you'd use it directly to fire a steam turbine.