11 ms·
Using carbon nanotubes and rectennas to yield a 90% efficient solar cell
- pashabitz 8y agorectennas sounds like something cartman has
- jartelt 8y agoJust want to post a reminder that solar cells are already efficient enough and cheap enough to be cost effective for power generation in many regions of the world. I am all for continued research to improve efficiency or decrease cost, but sometimes articles like this one lead people to believe that solar cells are not yet cost effective. They already are!
- nihil75 8y agoDo keep in mind that while they are "cost effective" - it takes a few years to recoup the initial investment. A more efficient panel will repay its value sooner, or will require lower initial investment. Second, the possible applications - Low efficiency cells will support low power appliances, Or you'll need more of them / storage for more power hungry applications. A more efficient cell enables new applications where weight is an issue.
- polskibus 8y agoIs there a calculator that can take into consideration the weather over entire year?
- ip26 8y agoHave you examined PVWatts?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- DoctorOetker 8y agoI'd also like to know where I can find decent insolation maps
- FlyMoreRockets 8y agohttps://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html
- Retric 8y agoIn terms of power / weight solar can already beat many IC engines. The only thing more efficient solar brings is less packaging and use in extremely confined spaces like the roof of a car. PS: The car thing should start taking off in a few years. A Tesla model 3 is 4.6 meters long 1.85 meters wide so 8.7 meters square. At 40% your talking about around 30kwh per day which could really extend the range and for less used cars minimize recharging.
- gpm 8y agoWoah, 30kwh =~ 210 km... that could eliminate charging on even moderately used cars.
- microcolonel 8y ago> In terms of power / weight solar can already beat many IC engines. What? That is an extremely strange oranges-to-bananas comparison but rolling with it: a Honda B16A7 (not considered a particularly weight-efficient, or weight-inefficient IC engine) weighs ~183kg and produces 118,000W continuously in the standard configuration. A Talesun TP660P-235 (a reasonably efficient, reasonably light solar panel) produces maybe 212W intermittently under reasonable conditions, and weighs 20kg. So, charitably, 212W / 20kg = 10.6W/kg, and 118,000W / 183kg = 645W/kg. For a newer Toyota 2AR engine, it's something like 133,000W / 150kg = 887W/kg Again, I have no idea how you thought of this comparison, but a common IC engine produces around 60x more power per kilogram than a solar panel.
- rightbyte 8y agoWhy is weight an issue when we are talking power plants for housing? Here's a 8.3 kW diesel generator (6.3 kW generator) from Home Depo: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Boss-Precision-Products-Inc-Portable-Generator-2-Speed-12-HP-120-240-Volt-Diesel-Motor-with-Single-Cylinder-Vertical-4-Stroke-Air-Cooled-DY8500LN-D/306061038 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Boss-Precision-Products-Inc-Port... 3900 USD. 367 lbs + fuel = 180 kg + fuel http://www.nordensolar.se/produktdetaljer/solceller-luxor-solar-265w-poly/ http://www.nordensolar.se/produktdetaljer/solceller-luxor-so... One random 265W solar panel, you need 31 off them, one is 18,6 kg gives 582 kg of solar panels to get to 8.3 kW (obviously you wont get 8.3 kW cont. from them). Not counting inverters, mounting rackets etc. So for equal weight and way more power you have one 8,3 kW diesel generator and 402 kg of diesel. 1 kg diesel is ca 12 kWh energy. Lets guess 30% efficiency gives 1447 kWh electricty for the same weigth. That's about as much as the solar panels will produce in 2,4 months assuming 129 kWh/m2/year. According to this site it's 3,14 USD per watt solar panel installation for consumers. https://news.energysage.com/10kw-solar-systems-compare-prices-installers/ https://news.energysage.com/10kw-solar-systems-compare-price... 8300 * 3,14 = 26 000 USD. So, you can buy a generator and 22 000 USD of diesel (about 22 000 litres or 22 000 litres * 10kWh * 0,3 efficiency = 66 000 kWh electricty) for about the same price. Or about what the same dollar in solar panels will produce in 8 years with way lower peak power.
- vezycash 8y agoYou are right. But let's humor the pitch. What happens if solar gets to 60% efficiency and costs - 20cents per watt?
- nihil75 8y agoThat solar-powered plane that circled the globe can carry three times as many people ;)
- nihil75 8y agoBut seriously - The energy density of sunlight is around 1KW/m2 at sea level. So at 60% efficiency you get 600 watt - almost 1 horsepower (~750watt). That's enough to power a scooter, and with no batteries!
- pipnasti 8y agoDo you realize how big a square meter is?
- petra 8y agoGiven that often, cars park outside most of the day, could they charge enough , enabling cars with much smaller batteries(for going to work for ex.) sold meaningfully cheaper - without needing creation of a charger network, which is a huge barrier?
- gregknicholson 8y agoIf Sono Motors' Sion lives up to its description, it's approaching usable for commuting using only solar power. https://sonomotors.com/sion.html/#st-viSono https://sonomotors.com/sion.html/#st-viSono Edit: Ah, this car is mentioned in the article. Good!
- SideburnsOfDoom 8y agoFrom that site: > This in turn means that up to 30 kilometers’ additional range can be generated per day in Germany through solar energy I suppose that 30km does cover a lot of commutes (15km each way), although "up to" is a notorious weasel word.
- simion314 8y agoStill could be good if the surface area available is limited.
- brownbat 8y agoJust to footstomp this, there are other costs that are already beginning to dominate the analysis for solar, like customer acquisition costs. Convincing someone to attach something to their house has significant costs. Like, "over $2000 per install" significant.[0] Other soft costs, like land acquisition and taxes, still play dominant roles in many projects.[1] The naive assumption is that solar succeeds when there's lots of sun and it's all just physics. But these other factors, like, say opportunity costs (the cost of available substitutes), are why you're often better off installing solar in Alaska than Florida.[2] Theoretical physics are great, but at this point I'd be far more excited about big ideas to deal with the messy economics side of solar generation. An announcement that some sort of "solar council" was going to pursue a national marketing campaign to drive solar adoption would be huge news. Or Elon deciding that strip malls were his new target, to drive installation of solar on every commercially leased roof, which would reap huge efficiencies of scale in local installation costs over residential. Or, the cheesy TED talk clincher would be: the next big solution isn't always about electrons, sometimes it's about people. [0] https://www.solarreviews.com/solar-leads/customer-acquisition-costs-in-the-solar-industry-2017/ https://www.solarreviews.com/solar-leads/customer-acquisitio... [1] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68925.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68925.pdf [2] https://solarpowerrocks.com/solar-basics/how-much-electricity-does-a-solar-panel-produce/ https://solarpowerrocks.com/solar-basics/how-much-electricit...
- onetimemanytime 8y agoOK, can you just buy a solar heating panel? You and your best friend can install it...depending on location you can easily get hot water for 6-10 months a year. That's quite a savings. You don't have to solve everything today ;)
- lstodd 8y agoSolar heating panel? A bunch of wooden/plywood boxes, some glazing for them (can actually reuse thrown-away window panels), a bit of plumbing with PP pipe (ridiculously lego-like easy), some kind of top tank (a common steel drum?). And some making sure the roof/attic floor doesn't collapse, which usually is not a problem. This can be _build_from_scratch_ in a couple of weekends with a best friend. But for the construction codes. And unions. It's so low-tech, so I wonder why I haven't heard of 19th century installations. Me, I actuially built two in places where construction codes are not an issue. And have seen functioning installs dating from 1950s. I don't think it even makes any sense to mass-produce heat boxes the way the solar-electric panels have to be. It all can be either made on site or included into the house design from start. That's maybe why you can't buy solar heating off the shelf.
- baron816 8y agoThe real breaking point will be when solar is so cheap that it costs less to replace a coal or natural gas plant than it would be to continue running it.
- ams6110 8y agoWell you also need to solve the storage problem. Your solar plant will not replace the coal or natural gas plant at night or on cloudy days.
- atupis 8y agoJust convert electricity to hydrogen.
- Brakenshire 8y agoYes, actually it already is cheaper to build new solar or wind than run existing plants, at least in some situations. As you say intermittency and time of day is the issue. Although I think we should just reflect lower costs in time of day tariffs. I suspect there are a lot of use-cases where people would happily shift demand to save money. For instance if you could just put your clothes in a washer dryer, and leave it to handle the cheapest time. Or air conditioning which creates ice earlier in the day then uses the cache later. Provide the tariffs, open the market opportunity, and see what technologies emerge.
- Godel_unicode 8y agoSo you agree with GP that the storage problem is currently a problem and needs to be solved.
- PuffinBlue 8y agoControversial statement alert: The storage 'problem' doesn't really exist. Do we 'store' electricity currently? No, we just generate it all the time and it's 'used' straight away. Well, what we do technically now 'store' will continue to be stored if using wind/solar (e.g. pumped hydro 'Electric Mountain' in the UK). Shall we also pedantically say we current 'store' electricity in the form or chemical energy in gas/fossil fuels or whatever? We can use that definition I suppose. Even with that definition no leap to any new 'storage' method actually needed if we look at the functional output required to keep the system operating the same way it does now. You just need need to have enough renewable over-capacity to generate enough electricity to meet the 24h cycle. Which is functionally what we do now. The "it's always windy/sunny/tidal somewhere" solution is the same as what we do currently, we just put our hands over our eyes and ignore the 'energy security' implications of not producing enough oil/gas to meet our own needs so it feels like somehow what we have now is more certain. That's not to say it wouldn't be more efficient to store electricity and release it as needed. But just like now what would solve the problem is over capacity with enough resilience to feed the 24 hour cycle. Can that be done with 'just' wind and solar? I don't know,I guess not. Nuclear would seem a good addition to the mix, and tidal or wave power. But it seems like we should at least approach the problem openly without hamstringing ourselves worrying about 'storing' electricity being something we absolutely must 'solve' before renewables can be relied upon.
- agumonkey 8y agoI only wish we'd have less ~toxic PV cells production. So far silicon requires CO2 and chlor- compounds. Anyone with 20%~ efficiency and a clean manufacturing process is rich for the next millenium.
- smaddox 8y agoYou do realize that table salt is a "chlor- compound", right? Yes, refining silicon requires the use of dangerous chemicals. No, that does not make it "dirty" in the way that burning coal is dirty, i.e. expelling carcinogens into the air.
- agumonkey 8y agoI know but still.
- ben_w 8y agoNo, not “but still”. Water is one oxygen atom from being bleach. Chlorine is metabolically essential. Chemistry doesn’t care about buzzwords. If you don’t specify what exactly is bad about the industrial handling of whichever chemicals actually are toxic in this case, you’re just flag-waving, not helping.
- agumonkey 8y agowhat buzzword, the cleaner the process the easier it is to produce anywhere, the easier it is to use solar instead of fossile fuel. I just forgot the actual name: tetrachlorosilane when I typed my first comment To avoid this http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030802595.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03...
- bsder 8y agoUm, you do realize that silicon fab lines generally recycle practically everything in terms of waste materials? It used to be that the waste material from processing was more pure than the actual industrial infeed material. So, the first thing that semiconductor fab lines would do would be to take their "new" industrial material and feed it into their "used" line for reprocessing. I think this has changed as the industrial sources have gotten better, but I suspect that recapture is still almost perfect.
- sfifs 8y agoThis misses the investment context which leads to companies choosing coal oil and gas over solar. The limiting factor on deployments continues to be "what to do when the sun doesn't shine bright". Night for starters and in a lot of the world, you have whole seasons where the skies are overcast nearly all day (monsoons). If you anyway have to couple solar with something else to make up for the variability in power generation (largely fuel based because Hydro and nuclear are massive government led projects) and you have to invest in expensive and bulky power storage to handle even the nights, why not pay a little more incremental money and get a slightly bigger fuel based power plant.
- jamesrcole 8y agoIt's also important to realise that, in any given situation 'cost effective' doesn't necessarily mean 'affordable' (or affordable-enough to lead to the people installing them). The people need to have the available funds, etc. It may save momey but that's not an immediate payoff. Any increase in efficiency vs costs will help with that equation.
- kumarvvr 8y agoImproving efficiency means lower footprint per kW of installed capacity. People are now viewing solar in terms of area of installation, contract with power company, etc. Even in rural India, the idea that solar is cheap has crept in. Farmers are buying solar power pumps across many states.
- zmix 8y agoIt's not just about costs. It's about size! The higher the efficiency, the less solar cells you need. This has impacts on environment (solar cell farms), adds possibilities for miniaturization (what, if a vehicles rooftop could feed all the energy needs of said vehicle or, at least, constantly refuel it?), mobile device chargers (could be even become the outer hull of a battery, so you just need to place the battery in light to charge it), small cells, that produce high energy, could be made part of clothing (must not be this tech, I am thinking about miniaturization in general). Possibilities seem endless...
- sna1l 8y ago> And like so many other ideas, if the sales pitch is real, if the scientists can deliver, if the hypothesis can move to theory – and the theory become applicable in a scalable, manufacturable good – then all the rules change.
- baybal2 8y ago>yield a 90% efficient solar cell Yield a 90% efficient solace cell for a single wavelength
- unchocked 8y ago... per carbon nanotube, of which there are trillions, each tuned to a different wavelength.
- isoprophlex 8y agoNot true if you check the spectral absorbance chart they show...
- darkmighty 8y agoedit: actually, I'm wrong, see below You're right, I believe. I don't have time to investigate, but if the claim is 90% efficiency w.r.t. total radiation input, it's certainly wrong. Doing so would violate the 2nd law. For example, room temperature thermal radiation has significant emmitance in the radio range of the spectrum. Needless to say nobody can build radio antennas to turn this energy into work. If it is 90% of the thermodynamic limit, then maybe. But then I think multijunction cells are already significantly close to the thermodynamic limit (much better than 22% claimed). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot%27s_theorem_(thermodynamics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot%27s_theorem_(thermodyna... (obs1: substituting Tsun as Th and Tearth as Tc left as an exercise to the reader ;) ) (obs2: try changing Tc to CMB temperature! )
- Dylan16807 8y agoThose "significant" amounts of radio are an extremely small amount compared to the visible and near infrared output of the sun. > substituting Tsun as Th and Tearth as Tc left as an exercise to the reader Left to the reader because doing the math reveals that it's only a 6% difference and undermines your point? ;)
- darkmighty 8y agoOh thanks. I hadn't actually plugged in the numbers, shame on me :P It seems the maximum efficiency in this case is ~94.8%, so the claim does seem plausible at least.
- isoprophlex 8y agoHere's the money shot: https://l0dl1j3lc42iebd82042pgl2-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/11/antennae-600x300.jpg https://l0dl1j3lc42iebd82042pgl2-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-... If they can really make that happen cheaply (green shaded areas, meaning efficient collection of power from near IR photons) this is revolutionary. Current silicon based tech (blue shaded) is useless for light energies below red.
- znpy 8y agoI am always fascinated by how people that don't waste their time with the latest data visualization trends can come up with slides so ugly according to latest trends yet so effective at exposing information.
- pfortuny 8y agoApart from the (ugly) colors, the plot looks like standard R/gnuplot/whatever tool existing since (I grow old, I grow old) the beginning of time...
- Iv 8y agoMy fascination is more at how dysfunctional "prettifiers" of graph manage to turn useful data into. That graph is perfect. Axis labeled, legend present, shit is legible and has pixel resolution. Way to go!
- colanderman 8y agoI'm surprised that the nanotube antennas seem to capture all frequencies equally. I would have expected resonances and nulls.
- neltnerb 8y agoI would imagine they rely on the nanotube lengths being non-uniform. Manufacturing variability as a feature!
- mabbo 8y agoI think scientists and inventors often do themselves no favors by making claims like "90% efficient". That's the theoretical maximum. Now if they hit 80%, we'll all say they failed despite it being an incredible achievement. They should claim "75% or more", and then hit 80% and blow our minds. The Scotty Factor[0] should be liberally applied when possible[0]. [0]http://wiki.c2.com/?ScottyFactor http://wiki.c2.com/?ScottyFactor
- sharemywin 8y agoThe more important number is .3cents/KWh a 1/10th the cost of current prices. Also, they don't use the exotic materials.
- Dylan16807 8y agoI don't think that's an issue at all. If the panel actually comes out and it's 60% at comparable prices to existing ones I'll still be overjoyed.
- nabla9 8y agoAny technology that surpasses 50% efficiency will never double its efficiency again. We are already very close to 50% with 40-46% efficient solar cells. The installation cost, scaffolding cost, maintenance and the cell price start to dominate. Solar panel tilt can improve efficiency up to 30 percent (flat panel versus sun following 2-axis panel).
- unchocked 8y agoIf you double efficiency you halve the size, roughly halving the installation, scaffolding, & etc. costs you mention. Also those 40-46% efficient cells are expensive, requiring 3 different layers of semiconductors each tuned to a different band-gap. The panels we all buy for ~$1/watt are about 20% efficient, single-layer designs.
- Brakenshire 8y agoThise multijunction cells are very exotic in their materials and manufacture. Carbon nanotubes sound easier in principle.
- unchocked 8y agoWow - this is a totally different approach than crystalline silicon, and could be much cheaper to produce as well as more efficient. Something new is going to be required to do much better than 35% efficiency, as you can only do so much lining up the band-gap of semiconductors. On another note, it's nice to see that crystalline silicon PV is perceived to be so successful that people are lining up to comment on how a dramatic improvement in power density and cost wouldn't really matter.
- headgasket 8y agoI this is actually true and feasible, this has immense implications. Imagine mirror powered airplanes.
- KaiserPro 8y agoA carbon nano tube antenna that is capable of working at infra-red frequencies have been around a few years, thats fairly simple[1] The hard part was finding a diode/rectifier that was capable of running at terahertz frequency. I cant see how this rectifies. I assume its to do with the layout: https://l0dl1j3lc42iebd82042pgl2-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/11/materials.jpg https://l0dl1j3lc42iebd82042pgl2-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-... If they are not telling porkies, then this is a wondrous breakthrough. (assuming the nanotubes are UV stable.) [1] 1/2 wavelength conductor, which is possible with carbon nanotubes
- driverdan 8y agoThere's a speculative solar announcement like this every week. Until they actually produce results don't get your hopes up.
- smaddox 8y agoNice in theory. Very difficult to get anywhere near that efficiency in practice. Best of luck to them, but I'm not holding my breath.
- plaidfuji 8y agoTheir argument that it will be cheaper because of raw materials costs is pure rubbish. That was supposed to be the point of silicon - it’s just sand! Then people realized that the structure (crystalline) and energy intensive processing required to obtain that structure were the real cost drivers, not to mention the housing, transparent electrode arrays, and installation costs. Nanotechnology is difficult to manufacture because of the energetic factors working against the formation of long-range nanostructure.
- whatshisface 8y agoEnergetic? It sounds like it would be entropic. Every crystal or polymer is a long-range nanostructure.
- plaidfuji 8y agoSorry, you’re right- but entropy is a part of the thermodynamic free energy of a structure, I was glibly rolling all that into “energy”.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_free_energy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_free_energy
- tlb 8y agoWe can use simple processes to create crystals and polymers for only slightly more energy than the Gibbs energy of the resulting structure. Currently, fabricating custom nanostructures requires vastly more energy than that. A resist + lithography + etching process has to manipulate hundreds of atoms to get each bit of entropy. Biological systems are efficient at creating nanostructures. That may be the future of fabrication. It'll never be repeatable enough for silicon structures like DRAM, but it might someday work for bulk surfaces like solar cells.
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago90%? I thought the theoretical maximum was 86%: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_efficiency_limit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_efficiency_lim...
- SeanAnderson 8y agohttps://l0dl1j3lc42iebd82042pgl2-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/11/materials.jpg https://l0dl1j3lc42iebd82042pgl2-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-... This one shows 85% efficiency? :)
- std_throwawayay 8y agoI think you are on to something. For non-concentrated solar, what a low-cost application would use, the limit is given as 43%. The numbers given trigger my bull-detector hard and I've had some insight into the difficulties that you face if you actually want to build a rectifying diode. Those things are hard. Really hard. You're getting nowhere near where you'd have to be to achieve the limit. To satisfy the claims given, these guys have to be geniuses beyond imagination. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
- chriscappuccio 8y agothe actual numbers in the article are 42.5% and 85%
- robomartin 8y agoJust a random thought on the idea that there might be a limit function as it pertains to the desirablility of increased efficiency. We have a 13 kW array. I make it a point to keep it cleen. However, this isn’t something one can expect to accomplish daily. At the very least it would waste a lot of water. As a result of this, my panels, on average, enjoy a combination of dust, leaves and, yes, bird poo, sometimes lots of it. If we had 90% efficient panels the combination of dirt, dust and a determined flock of birds could take out 50% of my energy generation capacity. Having a less efficient system distributed across a larger area might actually be a better idea.
- llukas 8y ago90% efficient panels would have ~4x smaller area. Wouldn't be that easier to clean and secure from bird poo etc?
- robomartin 8y agoI don’t feel like getting too scientific today. My gut feeling is that the accelerated loss rate due to greater Watts per square meter will at some point intersect with the curve denoting cleaning needs. At one point water waste and man-hours might become a problem.
- GeorgeTirebiter 8y agoFolks here are missing the fact that the rectifying diodes must operate in the THz region. The fact that NovaSolix has demonstrated Proof-of-Concept chips says they are able to build diodes that work at 100s of THz. That, alone, seems impressive to me. (example: green is 630 nm; f = c / lambda, that is, 476 THz)
- gpm 8y agoJust to check my understanding: A green light would create a AC current at 476 THz. We put this through a diode to capture the pulses of current that are moving in the right direction?
- std_throwawayay 8y agoYes. Also, the voltage won't be very high. The diodes have to be efficient in the millivolt regime.
- DoctorOetker 8y agoyours is a really good question, one of the links answers it: https://today.uconn.edu/2013/02/uconn-professors-patented-technique-key-to-new-solar-power-technology/# https://today.uconn.edu/2013/02/uconn-professors-patented-te... Look at the picture of the electrode with triangles and the other rectangular. The distance between the tip of the triangle and the other electrode is required to be on the order of a nm (in this reference here 1.5nm). This allows electrons to tunnel from one electrode to the other. A charge on an electrode tries to spread out, and the density is higher near pointed protrusions. So in the cycle the triangle-electrode is negatively charged, the electrons can tunnel to the other electrode, but in the other half of the cycle the electrodes prefer to spread out differently on the rectangular electrode. That's how the diode is implemented. Edit: just adding, so the asymmetry of the diode is due to the asymmetry between electrodes and the asymmetry between electron and hole mobilities
- narrator 8y agoCarbon nanotubes, the wonder material that's only as toxic as asbestos [1]. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon-nanotube-danger/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon-nanotube-d...
- nkoren 8y agoThis set off one of those "hey, didn't I read about this a long time ago? Like quite a few decades ago?" bells. A quick trip down memory lane, and here's an archive of one of the stories I was following, back in the day: http://rexresearch.com/marks2/marks.htm http://rexresearch.com/marks2/marks.htm. Lumeloid was broadly the same as what NovaSolix proposes -- cheap ultra-high-efficiency PV with optical rectennas -- albeit using polymers rather than carbon nanotubes. I had high hopes that these would be just around the corner in the 1990s, but alas the technology seems to have vanished into the mist. I'm curious to know why: was it a failure of the technology? Financing? Personalities? Alas its demise seems have been undocumented. Hopefully NovaSolix will fare better; at least today there is complementary infrastructure (far better batteries, electric cars, etc.) which makes investment in any kind of solar tech much more viable than it would have been in the 1990s.
- makmanalp 8y agoI wonder if the older iteration counts as prior art now?
- new299 8y agoOutside of the patents for Lumeloid were there any publications? I skimmed Alvin Marks’ parents. A few things stuck me. There are a lot of them, like hundreds? They mostly have one inventor (for something like this, I’m used to seeing teams). None of the patents I looked at showed any supporting real data. Usually if something is working, early experimental data is shown to support the concept. They are pretty broad (their are patents for “space train” and “Quantum 3D displays”. My gut tells me it probably just didn’t work. The basic approach doesn’t look hard to replicate, and I’d expect to see some publications if it worked. So if anyone knows of any publications I’d be curious to see them.
- agumonkey 8y agoThere's a 10min interview from 1991 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMGyob166Cg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMGyob166Cg crazy to think that so many things were already done and fell below the radar
- 8y ago
- djrogers 8y ago> hopes to use carbon nanotubes to... > a process they hope will yield... Yawn. I hope to get a new truck for Christmas- let me know when Santa Claus is real.
- WheelsAtLarge 8y agoThe highest cost of Solar installations these days is the installation cost itself and the batteries -- if you're willing to spend the cost for the batteries. 90% efficient is great but the real value for most would be in reducing the cost in the additionals to the solar cells. Less than 40% of the installation costs are the actual solar panels. If someone came out with a DIY solar installation, that would be a major advance.
- codingdave 8y agoI've done numerous DIY solar installs, to power outbuildings on my property, as off-grid battery-powered systems. I hired professional help for our system that powers the main house, as the scale was larger and the grid-tie was beyond my expertise. But an experienced electrician could surely do that part as well. So the lack of DIY installs is less about the solar tech, and more about where any given individual's DIY skills fall.
- stevespang 8y agoRectennas have been proposed before. . . and never realized. Chinese have already stolen this ip.
- Solar19 8y agoI assume this won't ever hit the market at the promised performance and cost. In the past decade or so we've been inundated with hundreds of stories, maybe thousands, about new solar breakthroughs and they never come to pass. The same is true of all the battery "breakthroughs". For some reason this stuff is never commercially viable. I wish I understood why.
- samstave 8y agoELI5: What is a 'rectenna'
- tim333 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectenna Radio waves jiggle the electrons back and forth in your chunk of metal. Stick in a diode so they can only go one way and you have power.