4 ms·

Cheap, spray-on solar cells developed by Canadian researchers

42 points by fraqed 13y ago

cunninghamd 13y ago
OK, great, where can I buy a spray-can's worth? Now, as facetious as that may sound, I'm quite serious. I've been watching Nano Solar and their promise of $1/watt solar energy for years, and I have yet to see it in practice. I'd honestly love to be able to drop $50 on solar cells and know that I can produce 50 watts of power (at peak), but since Nano Solar is only selling to industry, the end consumer is left in the (coal) dust until this stuff catches on. I guess ultimately, I'll be watching this company now, too. Maybe I can become Walter White, and start "cooking" solar cells at home based on their article.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Nanosolar is bankrupt, and their assets are/were sold off: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Nanosolar-Thin-Film-Solar-Hype-Firm-Officially-Dead http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Nanosolar-Thin-F...
- mchannon 13y ago
  Solar panels can be regularly gotten for under $0.80/watt these days. You'll have to spring for over 150 watts to get that price range.
grannyg00se 13y ago
"The fact that they’re “so cheap to make,” she added, means they will only have to reach 7.5 per cent efficiency before they will be commercially competitive with conventional energy sources such as coal-electric generation." How does that make sense? If I have to cover my entire yard with this stuff to get a decent amount of power that doesn't compete well.
- eigenvector 13y ago
  They're clearly referring to commercial energy production (i.e. solar farms) not DG applications like rooftop solar. People don't commonly have coal-fired thermal plants in their yards either.
- jccooper 13y ago
  And what efficiency are they at now? Must be really terrible. University press release doesn't say, and article is paywalled (for science!). Maybe at the scale they're currently at they don't even know. Good luck to them getting it higher; thin film silicon can get up to 20% cell efficiency, and should eventually be pretty cheap, so they'll have to get it reasonably efficient to be useful.
- umsm 13y ago
  Well, how about not thinking of reducing your dependence on conventional energy sources to zero, but to reduce it down to 20%. If it would cost you $1k to purchase and install, but it would save you $1k in 5 years, wouldn't it be worth it? I thought of it more in terms of "baby steps" instead of covering my entire yard.
contingencies 13y ago
Space inefficiency is an issue in an era where more and more people live in apartments and have no yard. While Canadians can revel in spatial wealth, meanwhile in the realistic future-preview world (over here in Asia) every square meter of land is in use. Usually at multiple levels in a high vertical stack.
- mapt 13y ago
  Space inefficiency is an issue that ubiquitous low-efficiency solar power does not have at all: Land is simply not a particularly scarce commodity somewhere within a few hundred kilometers of your house. Space inefficiency is only an issue for the concept of the power infrastructure being 100% distributed as some kind of local self-sufficiency element. May as well be growing your own wheat. Even so, an average-sized residential roof will generate quite a lot of power relative to what the inhabitants use on all but apartment towers - and those are usually surrounded by enough parking, on which we can build sunshades with solar panels, to compensate.
  - contingencies 13y ago
    Land is simply not a particularly scarce commodity somewhere within a few hundred kilometers of your house "Got rice?" Not here in Asia, where most people live. Even so, an average-sized residential roof will generate quite a lot of power relative to what the inhabitants use on all but apartment towers - and those are usually surrounded by enough parking, on which we can build sunshades with solar panels, to compensate. The developing world is rapidly urbanizing and moving in to - you guessed it - apartment towers. The world at large is also moving away from cars. What is your idea of an 'average sized' residential roof, anyway? Perhaps you are aware that US houses have the largest floorspace per capita of anywhere in the world, except Australia? No offence but it looks like you have a very North American (chiefly US) perspective.
    - mapt 13y ago
      The latter part of my argument, about neighborhood and building-scale self-sufficiency (a concept I believe to be somewhat silly) was indeed premised on Western living patterns... but not the rest. Show me a city in Asia, and I will show you land 100-200km (often 25-50km) away that is barely used, having been given over to scrub or wilderness or low-value agriculture. Only in the centers of the most dense cities do land prices even eclipse solar panel prices when considering this power generation method. This has to be the case, for transportation reasons: a city can only grow where it has access to significant amounts of land to feed itself. The amount of land required to feed a person tends to vastly overshadow the amount of land required to power that person's share of the generation infrastructure. 200kg of rice staple a year per person (estimate from Burma of strict rice consumption diet) / 4 tons rice per hectare (world average) = 500 square meters per person, for a no-protein diet. Replace rice with wheat, and add some meat + dairy, and you increase that figure by several times. ... Napkin Math (Guaranteed to one order of magnitude): China uses about 500 watts per person. Beijing's region gets about 5kwh/m^2/d of insolation At 10% efficiency that's 500wh/m^2/d That means 1 person needs 24m^2 of land given over to solar panels Beijing has 20M people That's 480 km^2 (a square plot of land 20km x 24km) that Beijing would have to find to place solar panels; Compare with, for example, the size of Beijing. ... The Chinese province of Inner Mongolia has sufficient unused desert scrubland to power the entire world several times over, if: A) The solar panel price problem is solved B) The energy storage problem is solved C) Electrical distribution infrastructure is approached in a systematic manner
zackmorris 13y ago
A rallying cry for open source if I've ever seen one.

42 points by fraqed 13y ago

OK, great, where can I buy a spray-can's worth? Now, as facetious as that may sound, I'm quite serious. I've been watching Nano Solar and their promise of $1/watt solar energy for years, and I have yet to see it in practice. I'd honestly love to be able to drop $50 on solar cells and know that I can produce 50 watts of power (at peak), but since Nano Solar is only selling to industry, the end consumer is left in the (coal) dust until this stuff catches on. I guess ultimately, I'll be watching this company now, too. Maybe I can become Walter White, and start "cooking" solar cells at home based on their article.

toomuchtodo 13y ago
Nanosolar is bankrupt, and their assets are/were sold off: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Nanosolar-Thin-Film-Solar-Hype-Firm-Officially-Dead http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Nanosolar-Thin-F...
mchannon 13y ago
Solar panels can be regularly gotten for under $0.80/watt these days. You'll have to spring for over 150 watts to get that price range.

grannyg00se 13y ago

"The fact that they’re “so cheap to make,” she added, means they will only have to reach 7.5 per cent efficiency before they will be commercially competitive with conventional energy sources such as coal-electric generation." How does that make sense? If I have to cover my entire yard with this stuff to get a decent amount of power that doesn't compete well.

eigenvector 13y ago
They're clearly referring to commercial energy production (i.e. solar farms) not DG applications like rooftop solar. People don't commonly have coal-fired thermal plants in their yards either.
jccooper 13y ago
And what efficiency are they at now? Must be really terrible. University press release doesn't say, and article is paywalled (for science!). Maybe at the scale they're currently at they don't even know. Good luck to them getting it higher; thin film silicon can get up to 20% cell efficiency, and should eventually be pretty cheap, so they'll have to get it reasonably efficient to be useful.
umsm 13y ago
Well, how about not thinking of reducing your dependence on conventional energy sources to zero, but to reduce it down to 20%. If it would cost you $1k to purchase and install, but it would save you $1k in 5 years, wouldn't it be worth it? I thought of it more in terms of "baby steps" instead of covering my entire yard.

contingencies 13y ago

Space inefficiency is an issue in an era where more and more people live in apartments and have no yard. While Canadians can revel in spatial wealth, meanwhile in the realistic future-preview world (over here in Asia) every square meter of land is in use. Usually at multiple levels in a high vertical stack.

mapt 13y ago
Space inefficiency is an issue that ubiquitous low-efficiency solar power does not have at all: Land is simply not a particularly scarce commodity somewhere within a few hundred kilometers of your house. Space inefficiency is only an issue for the concept of the power infrastructure being 100% distributed as some kind of local self-sufficiency element. May as well be growing your own wheat. Even so, an average-sized residential roof will generate quite a lot of power relative to what the inhabitants use on all but apartment towers - and those are usually surrounded by enough parking, on which we can build sunshades with solar panels, to compensate.
- contingencies 13y ago
  Land is simply not a particularly scarce commodity somewhere within a few hundred kilometers of your house "Got rice?" Not here in Asia, where most people live. Even so, an average-sized residential roof will generate quite a lot of power relative to what the inhabitants use on all but apartment towers - and those are usually surrounded by enough parking, on which we can build sunshades with solar panels, to compensate. The developing world is rapidly urbanizing and moving in to - you guessed it - apartment towers. The world at large is also moving away from cars. What is your idea of an 'average sized' residential roof, anyway? Perhaps you are aware that US houses have the largest floorspace per capita of anywhere in the world, except Australia? No offence but it looks like you have a very North American (chiefly US) perspective.
  - mapt 13y ago
    The latter part of my argument, about neighborhood and building-scale self-sufficiency (a concept I believe to be somewhat silly) was indeed premised on Western living patterns... but not the rest. Show me a city in Asia, and I will show you land 100-200km (often 25-50km) away that is barely used, having been given over to scrub or wilderness or low-value agriculture. Only in the centers of the most dense cities do land prices even eclipse solar panel prices when considering this power generation method. This has to be the case, for transportation reasons: a city can only grow where it has access to significant amounts of land to feed itself. The amount of land required to feed a person tends to vastly overshadow the amount of land required to power that person's share of the generation infrastructure. 200kg of rice staple a year per person (estimate from Burma of strict rice consumption diet) / 4 tons rice per hectare (world average) = 500 square meters per person, for a no-protein diet. Replace rice with wheat, and add some meat + dairy, and you increase that figure by several times. ... Napkin Math (Guaranteed to one order of magnitude): China uses about 500 watts per person. Beijing's region gets about 5kwh/m^2/d of insolation At 10% efficiency that's 500wh/m^2/d That means 1 person needs 24m^2 of land given over to solar panels Beijing has 20M people That's 480 km^2 (a square plot of land 20km x 24km) that Beijing would have to find to place solar panels; Compare with, for example, the size of Beijing. ... The Chinese province of Inner Mongolia has sufficient unused desert scrubland to power the entire world several times over, if: A) The solar panel price problem is solved B) The energy storage problem is solved C) Electrical distribution infrastructure is approached in a systematic manner

zackmorris 13y ago

A rallying cry for open source if I've ever seen one.