Spray-On Solar-Power Cells Are True Breakthrough
SOLAR REVOLUTION – Solar Paint
Ted Sargent is a pioneer in solar science. He's working on solar technology that could literally be woven into every aspect of daily life, from our clothes to our roads, using what is known as a spray-on solar cell. The implications for our energy systems are profound. As Ted says, "Solar energy is not just an exciting science problem, but an incredibly important human problem."
Ted is working on solar nanotechnology with the potential to make solar energy very cheap and allow society to collect it on a huge scale. Currently, solar technology costs more to build and install than most people are willing to pay. Solar panels, for example, the technology most commonly associated with solar energy, are installed on your rooftop. The cost of collecting one kilowatt per hour of solar energy (about a third of the electricity an average household uses on any given day) is about $11,000.
Not only are panels expensive to install, they capture only the visible portion of the sun's rays so they work only on sunny days. Ted's focus is the infrared portion of the sun's rays which accounts for more than half of all solar energy. What's more, infrared energy is available to us even in cloudy weather.
A quantum dot is a semiconductor nanostructure that confines the motion of conduction band electrons, valence band holes, or excitons (bound pairs of conduction band electrons and valence band holes) in all three spatial directions. The confinement can be due to electrostatic potentials (generated by external electrodes, doping, strain, impurities), the presence of an interface between different semiconductor materials (e.g. in core-shell nanocrystal systems), the presence of the semiconductor surface (e.g. semiconductor nanocrystal), or a combination of these. A quantum dot has a discrete quantized energy spectrum. The corresponding wave functions are spatially localized within the quantum dot, but extend over many periods of the crystal lattice. A quantum dot contains a small finite number (of the order of 1-100) of conduction band electrons, valence band holes, or excitons, i.e., a finite number of elementary electric charges.
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Comments on Spray-On Solar-Power Cells Are True Breakthrough »
Wouldn't it be better to build huge solar fields in space and convert the electric energy into microwave energy and beam it down to an earth receptor station? It could produce a huge amount of clean electricity permanently.
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blame the politicians and beaurocrats
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The problem with cheaper oil is that people then don't feel as great a need to invest in alternative energies. I have seen more innovations and more alternate energies being used in the past few years than in the past few decades. Look at the oil crisis of the 70's. After that the auto manufacturers looked into building more efficient vehicles. Now they should be looking into electrics that can be charged by solar power and get off the oil completely. Cheaper oil won't persuade them to do that.
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A google search of "elevator return energy", found that modern elevator systems in tall buildings do have special drive mechanisms that generates return energy when the elevator is going down. Thus, the complete needed technology for storing residential solar energy in a special heavy-concrete-weighted solar energy storage elevator is already available. The "overall energy" use for tall building elevators is very small ( just the cost of resistance and inefficiency ). No explosive hydrogen.
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thanks much
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the numbers being thrown out is that this tech would be 1/10 the cost of current silicon cells. The first real generation of this stuff should start to be seen in 2010 by companies such as Innovalight and Nanosolar. The flexibility will make it likely that companies will build it into roof shingles. OkSolar is already selling shingles using more expensive conventional silicon technology.
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What's the cost of this stuff? Is it durable? Standard cells last only 10 years, hardly worth considering for the average U.S. citizen, considering replacement costs. And out of the question for those living in mud huts. If the cost were cut in half, or the life of the cells doubled, I'd have them on my roof, even if I only broke even. But at this point, we're better off growing a garden than installing solar cells. Which I'm doing.
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DEPOPULATION THAT IS…
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and done by economist, and the banks would feel more sound backing it because it would be a set allotment, or allocation, at set dates. Other than that marketing marketing and advertising of new energies is something that is needed. in reply to "we Got to do something"
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dealt out to nations now and every ten years and every hundred years. i estimate at least 400katrillion per nation. This would solve current problem as well as many past problems, and would help to curve future problems. It is something they already do, though not as lucratively, it's something studied
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i suggest maybe bring oil prices down for three to four years 2 let people catch up with new energies. especially for the transportation industries. there are many, many peoples willing to do that, as it is a world wide issue. i might also suggest a world agreeded upon monetary allotment, possibly backed by outerspace real estate ( if need be) to be
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Can you make a dark loght solar cell from this product?
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blame the democrats? dont u mean "blame the replublicans?"
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The shareholders of the big energy companies are fuelled by their capitalist greed. As more and more people use alternative sources of energy, their profits will be under threat, therefore energy costs will rise. We need to harness all forms of free energy, recycle, re-use and reduce our waste, before it's too late.
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I thought people would stereotypically blame republicans for being friendly to "big oil"
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If the power companies go the way of the blacksmith who used to shoe horses for a living the economy will adjust and do just fine.
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The fossil fuels are why you have YouTube. And everything else. Don't knock your stepping stones, before or after you've stepped. We used to beat animals to move stuff.
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And the enviromental groups. They aren't interested in any green tech. They want population control.
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That's 100% correct. They definitely don't want us to make our own power which is why the overwhelming misconception out there (which is believed by most of the world) is that you can't create or harness your own energy for free. While it is admittedly very bad for our economy (and we must consider that) to bankrupt power companies, it is an ideal solution to a huge problem to simply let everyone produce their own power. The grid can stay in place, but it will be communal.
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That was HILARIOUS erod1944. You're absolutely right though. He was wrong on the translation.
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HEY
WE GOT TO DO SOMETHING NOW
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No, blame the democrats.
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The biggest thing that opposes such a technology as this and sends it back to the way of geothermal, tidal generation etc etc.. is that the everyday guy cannot do it. Therefore there is no megabuck incentive. You get a man with a can and some wires? And he is independent of the grid? Big power goes broke.
YOU can't build a tidal generation station in your back yard. BUT you can paint your house to make the juice you need! but not if the big boys have their say. What's the incentive?
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blame big oil for killing off any new energy
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