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How to Build a Low-Tech Solar Panel?
- dmos62 5y agoI really enjoy this magazine.
- gene-h 5y agoIt's a cute approach, but perovskite solar cells can probably do much better. Perovskite solar cells can be made at close to room temperature, use relatively common elements, and can be made fairly thin. The current efficiency record for perovskite solar cells is 25.6%[0]. [0]https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/06/unist-epfl-claim-25-6-efficiency-world-record-for-perovskite-solar-cell/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/06/unist-epfl-claim-25-6...
- Kliment 5y agoYeah, that's a really promising material for both efficiency and manufacturing cost. It's unfortunate it's so toxic.
- kamranjon 5y agoThe purpose of the article was to explore diy manufacturing of pv cells. I don't think this korean/swiss collaboration on high efficiency perovskite solar cells is within the reach of your backyard fabricator.
- Kliment 5y agoPerovskite cell manufacturing is quite DIYable. There's been several experiments (lab-scale, not industry-scale) with making the lead-based perovskite film from waste with very minimal equipment. The main problem is toxicity, both to people handling it and to environment if disposed of improperly. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ2bz6jlbz0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ2bz6jlbz0
- labcomputer 5y agoThe purpose of the article is mental masturbation. The intro motivates the topic by noting that silicon solar cells present a toxic environmental hazard. The author then, apparently with a straight face, posits that cells made from antimony or selenium, of all things, would be a good alternative. For more laughs, the author goes on to suggest that one of advantages of such antimony and selenium cells is that you could build them without a protective covering—-that the semiconductor would be fully exposed to any passerby. It’s like those renfair cosplayers who reject electric motors for their zombie apocalypse scenarios, and plan to repopulate the earth using hydraulic machinery with “easy to procure from any junkyard” flexible hydraulic hoses.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- vamin 5y agoPerovskites break down when exposed to moisture, so while I do think you could DIY a solar cell pretty easily, it wouldn't last long. There are ways around the moisture problem, but they're not so easily DIYable. "In particular, water promotes fast decomposition, leading to a drastic decrease in device performance." [0] [0]https://www.nature.com/articles/s43246-020-00104-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s43246-020-00104-z
- mah4k4l 5y agoBut why not more microscale concentrated solar especially for DIY? For example parabolic mirror from a thin steel plate, or just a bended steel plate, (both in themselves >90% efficient?) -> liquid salt -> steam boiler system -> DC motor seems necessarily to me be a) more efficient b) cheaper to build than perovskite and also c) the skill - level required is very low tech (except the optional liquid salt phase).
- johnklos 5y agoWhy is it never surprising when we hear stories like how Edison bought a thermoelectric generator company (Clamonds’s Improved Thermopile) and ceased development. How much human progress is hampered by the desire of some to profit, no matter the cost to the world?
- pjc50 5y agoI've not heard that one. I've heard of Edison hiring the mob to beat up competing film companies; that's why Hollywood is on the west coast, to get away from him. https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2021/03/thomas-edison-the-unintentional-founder-of-hollywood/ https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2021/03/thomas-edison-th... (thermoelectric generators have pretty terrible efficiency, though)
- ca98am79 5y agoIf it were really that valuable to human progress wouldn't another company or competitor to Clamonds’s Improved Thermopile become extremely profitable and valulable?
- c54 5y agoUnfortunately no, there’s no law of nature which says companies/competitors will appear to serve this kind of function. Mostly bc short term profit maximization can be thought of as a greedy optimization which is blind to long term gains. This is why the tragedy of the commons happens
- mjmahone17 5y agoMaybe? But sometimes people don’t see “obvious wins” for a very long time. Look at Musk’s electric car story: there were a variety of electric cars that companies killed off (like the EV1) years earlier than the Tesla was released. It’s unclear if anyone who had the capital would have seriously entered the space if Tesla as a company did not exist. Maybe we’d be exactly as far along, but there’s a good chance the lack of “electric car infrastructure” and internal company incentives would basically keep anyone from going far enough before killing their project. When the path to profit is only a short journey from where we are now, you’re right that some other company will probably adopt it. But add two or three hard steps that they need to overcome first, and it’s pretty common for human progress to stagnate in a local maxima for a long time.
- Uninen 5y ago"This website runs on a solar powered server located in Barcelona, and will go off-line during longer periods of bad weather." - https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/power.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/power.html What a lovely idea.
- kitd 5y agoI feel a backup wind generator could solve much of that problem.
- Faaak 5y agoAn extra solar panel would be cheaper per w I'm pretty sure
- Syonyk 5y agoThey've done some analysis, it's not really that clean, once you count embodied energy. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/01/how-sustainable-is-a-solar-powered-website.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/01/how-sustainable-is...
- montalbano 5y agoEmbodied carbon is amortised over time, and is not considered for the Spanish grid comparison, as noted in the article, unless I missed it later on?
- squarefoot 5y agoTrue, but... From the server's data: Power used 2.62W With these figures they could easily rely on used solar panels and batteries, therefore adding nothing to the environmental cost of building new ones and reducing the impact of recycling them by increasing their active life. Gradual repurposing of used cells and batteries to less demanding uses should be always considered before sending them to recycling. I do this all time with normal batteries, including non rechargeable ones such as alkalines: a battery that can't supply a toy with motors anymore will likely work in a small radio, and the one which is becoming too weak to supply a radio can work for some months in a TV remote.
- opwieurposiu 5y agoI put some used PV panels on my shed's roof and wired them up to the bottom element of my electric water heater. This cut my household electric use in half. Not connected to the grid so no expensive permits needed.
- zz865 5y agoYeah I wish there was more of this happening. BTW what happens when your water is fully hot and the sun is shining - does that panel detect there is no load so doesn't generate?
- simplicio 5y agoPresumably over-shooting to some degree in the middle of the day is good, since it provides a cheap form of energy storage. Obviously you'd want a cut off at some temp though, for safety concerns.
- zz865 5y agoYeah exactly 60 degree water will take your skin off.
- opwieurposiu 5y agoThere is no thermostat for the PV panels. The summer power output of the panels comes into equilibrium with the heat loss of the tank at 80-85C. I did add a 93C thermal fuse to augment the safety of the PTV value. I have a mixing valve on the output of the water heater to mix with cold down to about 50C. This lets you get around 2x the nameplate capacity of hot water out of the tank so there is enough to bridge a cloudy day. To get the full capacity of the panels, it necessary to choose a water heater element that matches the source impedance(Vmpp/Immp) of the solar panel array.
- saruken 5y agoSounds neat! I'd like to read a writeup on your build if one exists.
- jvanderbot 5y agoThis is such a simple thing to test and write up as a business plan. My oven doesn't go to 500C, but from the description it does sound like a simple factory process could produce these. I'd work on this.
- technotarek 5y agoMy father and I built a solar powered dog house heater in the 80s. We got the idea and plans from a Detroit area newspaper. The “cell” was simply plywood painted black behind a piece of glass with room in between for air movement. It successfully raised a fully sealed box (perhaps almost 1sq meter) to 40 deg C in the dead of Michigan winter. It also got me a blue ribbon at the science fair. I’ve been intrigued by solar power ever since, but only in terms of tracking the science progress.
- colpabar 5y agoThis is pretty cool on its own but the fact you did it before the internet using a newspaper is very interesting. I really struggle to imagine how I'd do anything without looking online.
- jimmyswimmy 5y agoThere used to be bookstores and magazine shops. I don't quite mean to say these no longer exist outside of airport waiting areas but they were ubiquitous. Libraries were a source of knowledge rather than a place to get free wifi. Wikipedia's predecessor came as a shelf of books. This sounds snarky but I don't mean it as such. It's what was available and how much knowledge was passed around. It wasn't hard to learn about even esoteric things if you had a good library. It was hard to find more than one such book though, so there wasn't as much opportunity for expansion of knowledge by comparing approaches. I like the internet age better though it has become more challenging to separate fact and fiction. The library didn't have too many fake science books.
- ghaff 5y agoAy one level, obtaining knowledge was different. You went to libraries--assuming you had access to a good university or city one--and good bookstores, which were also somewhat limited outside of major cities. You called people or wrote them letters. Etc. It was however also just harder and more limited. I definitely had projects in school that required looking through the library stacks and probably ended up with more "winging it" and depending on one or two old sources than would be the case today.
- jakedata 5y agohttps://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/power.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/power.html The website is powered entirely by solar and is currently consuming 2.44 watts. With that massive power consumption they are probably mining bitcoin too.
- ljf 5y ago2.4w? My led bulbs use 4w - I doubt you could mine much bitcoin with that low a power?
- EastOfTruth 5y agoPretty sure he was kidding? But either way, you could mine bitcoins using 0-watt of conventional electricity: https://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and-paper.html https://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-an...
- ljf 5y agoMy sarcasm detector was fully broken that day. It is obvious it was a joke now, but on some ramdom pre coffee morning I didn't get it - doh!
- BizarroLand 5y ago2.4w is raspi zero range energy usage with no monitor, just processor, ram, & ethernet.
- aclarry 5y agoThe title made me think of my final first year chemistry lab where we made dye-sensitized solar cells from raspberries. It was an incredibly low-tech process aside from the conductive oxide-coated glass slides used as the electrodes. I'd love to see an in-depth guide on this solar panel design.
- foxhop 5y agoAfter school, my son Carter and I explored engineering, science, and math, with our first experiment: Attaching a Bilge Pump to a 100 watt solar panel. The Setup Could move Thousands Gallons of Water Off Grid! Reference: https://youtu.be/E9Ea2n1vryo https://youtu.be/E9Ea2n1vryo
- smaddox 5y agoThis is quite fascinating, if true. Having studied solar photovoltaics fairly extensively in both undergrad and grad school, I'm a bit skeptical that he achieved such efficiency with such a simple design, but it's not completely impossible. It's important to note, though, that most of the cost of present day polysilicon solar cells comes not from the semiconductor device and contacts, but from the module and supporting electronics. So trading cell efficiency for cost will actually degrade overall installation cost per watt (since you'll need more of the more expensive parts), AND increase the amount of land required.
- mechagodzilla 5y agoI think the "interesting" part of this is that you could generate useful amounts of electricity with panels that could be made and repaired/maintained/recycled in a very DIY fashion. They would definitely be worse than commercial Si panels in every other way, but when a ~400W panel on my roof breaks, it's probably going to wind up in a landfill rather than me troubleshooting and fixing it. A 5%-efficient panel that was very DIY-friendly would be pretty neat.
- smaddox 5y agoIf not for EVA encapsulation, silicon solar cells can be "recycled" by a 30 minute forming gas anneal at 400C. I don't know if all panels have EVA encapsulation or not. If so, then I doubt these ZnSb would degrade any better without a similar encapsulation. It's really hard to beat silicon.
- paulhart 5y agoThe person who was in touch with the author of the article, Philip Pesavento, appears to have a background in electrical systems that would be relevant to the material (i.e. he's not a crank)... https://patents.justia.com/inventor/philip-pesavento https://patents.justia.com/inventor/philip-pesavento