Theoretic limit yes, but we have only begun eeking out everything that we can, and the cost will come down in comparison to earlier cells. That is almost a guarantee. I think we are seeing similar issues and successes with LI batteries. It's just taken some time, but it is moving in the right direction. Nano tech is both unbelievably exciting and scary. The possibilities of it is amazing to me. But I agree, cutting the need for consumption is much cheaper especially if it is built into the system to begin with.
I know nothing about them but what little I have read at your links makes me scard too - Is there anything inside that big building? Could this PR be a scam? You can always sell the building later. later by edit: I have looked at them a little more now. Here is what I found: “... As far as the first three of our commercial panels are concerned: Panel #1 will remain at Nanosolar for exhibit. Panel #2 can be purchased by you in an auction on eBay starting today. Panel #3 has been donated to the Tech Museum in San Jose. ... eBay cancelled our auction — due to its charitable angle! Our eBay auction started at 99 cents for the panel and quickly reached more than $13,000.00, with the highest bid submitted at $70,000 when eBay cancelled the auction because we had declared the proceeds would be used for charitable purpose. ...” From: http://www.nanosolar.com/blog3/ Which is where their latest corporate site link* (June 2008: 1GW CIGS deposition throughput achieved. [More info]) takes you if click on the “more information” button * http://www.nanosolar.com/history.htm Auction was cancelled, I suspect, because they do not want any independent test of their claimed 14.5% efficiency with printed solar cells – I will stop smelling scam, when that is confirmed. Does it seem reasonable that E-bay will not let your give the proceeds to charity? And cancelled the auction? If yes, I have a bridge in Brooklynn I will sell you cheap.
Yes, but. Because of nano tech it's no longer a more expensive approach and that is an example of a leap that I was talking about. We can expect them to continue to come down in cost and improve efficiency. How much more efficient is one thing, the cost reduction will depend largely on the demand.
To jppal: See the edit added to my last post, 42. Has any indepent test been done? Frankly I think 14.5% efficiency from a printed PV cell is fiction, but I could be wrong.
It's a good question which I could not confirm. Did a little research into the company and like most start ups tend to more about pr but they also seem to be expanding their production. Regardless of how well they do, the tech is there and is being researched and developed by companies which I would not consider start ups or simply pr machines, like Siemens and Konarka. It creates a better base to build from and I wouldn't be suprised at all to see leaps in the efficiency. That is the hope of course.
You may deduce from your quote of Billy T that he does care: He makes a moral appeal not to burn up all the petrochemical furniture, lest our descendants suffer for our selfishness. That he is not obsessed with the political aspects does not mean he's unethical, especially considering that politics by any name has always consistently trended toward the unethical. Back on topic, although solar power is a doubtful energy panacea, it is the most direct conversion of our solar system's primary energy source yet developed, and the technology is now available to the mid and upper class planet-wide. Which is a significant human achievement. To me, this is not just the best thing since sliced bread- it may be even better than harnessing fire (since it's cleaner/more sustainable). And with the acceleration of the tech, we're moving far beyond the 1970s rubbing-2-sticks-together equivalent. We can flip a ($20k) switch now and power up the average home almost anywhere in the most populous latitudes. Yes, nature discovered photosynthesis (which its electrical stage at the molecular level) long before we and our brains evolved- but we're improving on the conversion, at a speed that leaves evolution in the dust. I expect that our imitation of nature will continue, to the point when certain living "plants" that self-assemble and coexist well with the "natural" environment will grow electrical outlets that we'll plug into. That Billy T respects nature's way more than the apparent potential of human-engineered PV doesn't make him immoral- just a wee bit technophobic IMO.
I like to think that photovoltaics aren't the best way to harness sunlight. Photovoltaics are high tech and yet a couple of mirrors or lenses can boil water at higher efficiency. An idea I have is to put water condensers at high altitudes and harness the gravitational potential of the condensed water. The way the water vapor got up there is through evaporation, which is powered by the sun.
Check out Enviromission and other large solar-chimney concepts (if you haven't already). These harness latent heat.
It would be a rainmaker in the desert, too! But funding and siting are still bogged down, which is a crying shame.
I said: "... energy rich fossil deposits are too valuable to burn - that is a crime against future generations. They should be used mainly as chemical fed stocks." and you quoted me, so why do you need to ask this My position most would consider extremely ethical and moral - much too moral for them, as they still want to have gasoline for their car, etc. and to Hell with later generations that will have much more expensive plastics and other chemical products. I want the world to stop burning oil, natural gas and coal for heat and switch to more efficient systems that use renewables, like alcohol from plants and direct solar heating. ~ 40 years ago, I built a well insulated house that I heated with fire wood, which I cut myself from some wooded acreage I had bought. Most fire places actually make a net cooling of the house in winter as they draw cold outside air into the house thru cracks to use for combustion. This also makes the air in the home have very low humidity. My fire place had a metal pipe to the outside thru back wall thru which the combustion air entered and the fire was sealed inside glass doors, only briefly opened to add wood. The wood burned on an array of about 20 1.5 inch diameter pipes (heavy walled “boiler pipe”) with connected to an equal number of vertical riser pipes at the back, and they then, via more horizontal pipes about the fire, connected to and thru the top of the stationary metal part of the glass doors unit to discharge hot air into the room. This air was driven by a fan in the ceiling of the basement (coldest air in the house) into some passageway I had cast into the concrete floor of the fire place. It then entered the cast iron manifold feeding the 20 or so pipes I first mentioned. The rate of combustion was controlled by a standard flue damper. My special, experimental, 5-year education program at Cornell, soon discontinued as too rough for most, included using all the standard machine tools so I built this heat exchanger myself (and earlier, everything needed for my experimental Ph. D. to save time waiting for a lowly graduate student’s job to come to the top of the shops workman’s list. (Professor’s needs always were first served.) I also have a long expired patent that permits solar thermal electric power generation (sort of "power tower" design with a field of mirrors) which can operate at much higher temperatures for better Carnot conversion efficiency as the re-radiation losses are essentially zero independent of the absorber temperature. See US patent 4033118 for complete details. In recent post I outlined how it works and now note it is very economical to build. No exotic materials, only glass, quartz, and a steel tube plus insulation and a pump. SUMMARY: I was highly moral and concerned about man's energy problems quite possibly before you were even born. I have always been able to foresee problems coming far in advance of most others.
soo essentially your moral base is socialist as you wish the wider community and others to conform to a level of personal choice that is currently deemed as free market rights with capitalism... i am basically the same with the opinion we need to keep democracy appearing to work in spite of the fact the best leadership and best choices is not going to be democratically chosen so must be dictated. personal debt and the global credit crisis and global famine are good examples to prove this mandate. gas is ideal as a new product to move towards as it is vastly better than coal and wood. however... that does not detract from the reality that there is vastly superior technology for cleaner burning of these products than currently exist on the market. money is the key and people will never choose to spend more for cleaner burning machines when they cant afford to buy what they want. look at the big car market in the usa. it is only the fact that credit has dried up that people have stopped buying and running them. i personally support liberal mixed market economy with a socialist base frame work to manage and regulate the free market to avoid things like homeless people and lack of health care and market predation like the prime housing thing etc...
Most of the problems I can foresee are in some sense related to economics (energy certainly is if you really understand what economics is all about.) I have no way to know your age, but your posts seem immature and overly concerned with political systems. For example, your post 54 states with no knowledge that I am socialistic, despite my having already told you that I am not focused on which social organization system is in use. Being smart about how we meet our energy needs is not a political, but technical question. Implimenting the choice is a political problem, I will leave to others.
Possibly more true than you realize. In my younger graduate student days I was a leader in the civil right movement - once beaten by old lady's cane and often spit upon. On a good day, I had more than 200 troops and nearly 30 cars to command. (My official title was “transportation coordinator,” but at the operational level, I ran the effort.) I took my “priorized target list” from the all-black high command, but they took me along (the “token white” Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ) to some of the negotiations with the restaurant association, RA. The RA was well organized and we had to hit the restaurants essentially simultaneously as they had a telephone alert system that got the doors locked before the BBs (black bodies) could get in to join the WBs waiting at their tables. (Usually 3 as the WBs entered separtely, sat alone with the "days marker" on the table so BBs would know who to join if they could not see and wave to the BBs quickly entering. -perhaps a pencil or torn paper, etc.) The WBs had already placed their orders. – That helped increase the economic pressure when the police thru us out. Timing was critical* - perhaps more that in Ike's Normandy invasion and much harder to achieve as most of the BBs were teenager without watches. All of the BBs, leadership 6 included, used CPT (Colored People's Time) which could vary from EST by an hour. Fortunate, we had more simple BBs than would fit in cars and the late comers to the scattered assembly areas were just left behind when I said: "Go." They did not mind as it was summer and there was nothing else for them to do. We open the downtown Baltimore movie houses and department store lunch counters in less than a week, but it took all summer and then with the RA's support, the Maryland legislature made it illegal to discriminate based on skin color. (We could not close all restaurants at the same time - none wanted or dared to be first to serve blacks. But we could significantly hurt all economically, so the RA joined us to legally end discrimination, at least in Baltimore. – Perhaps the state, I forget.) But as you say, I am an old guy now - Except for advocacy here**, I have passed the torch to the younger folks. - Still IMHO, a lot of work for them to do, but not likely to be as exciting. ----------- * Not only the timing was critical, but I had to keep records of which WBs I sent where. - I could not repeat as if even one was recognized that would trigger the RA alarm phone system and all doors would be locked prior to BB arrivals AND, horror of horrors, the WBs would need to pay for the food they had ordered! Fortunately, most WBs would tell me if I screwed up and tried to send a WB back to the same restaurant. I'm sure we WBs triggered some false alarms that hurt economically also. - I rarely ate alone in restaurant, but when I did in one I last visited, I put something strange and obvious on the table. - At least once that got the doors locked for about 10 minutes. Cars were also always parked a block away from the target and there was at least one local commander with a watch to control when the BBs ran thru the doors of the restaurant - a simultaneous strike at up to 25 restaurants on Sundays at peak lunch crowd if all went well. (Perhaps 3 groups of BBs would not get to the target on schedule and find the doors already locked.) It did not matter much if stranded WBs had only ordered a coke and hamburger as told to as we all picketed out side later for at least and hour. Ike would have been proud of me, at least of my strike execution - I don't know his POV on discrimination but bet he would have been on our side there too. **Thing like support for efficient economical solar energy via tropical plants and ending local funding of schools, so all get opportunity at good education. PS: One of the proudest days in my life happen by chance: I was ~30 years later in a nice Baltimore restaurant and there was a large and somewhat noisy (lots of laughing) all black family group celebrating something - about 5 tables pushed together in the center of the restaurant. Most of the tables along the walls were occupied by white people and none were even paying much attention or looking at the celebrating blacks. Certainly no one was complaining about them. - I thought to myself: I made that happen / possible. It felt very good – better than when JHU’s dean handed me my Ph. D. PS 2 My motivation was not all civic. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! (We were called the "Civic Interest Group"). At least half of the cars came with rich girls from Goucher College*** just north of Baltimore. My some strange coincidences, I was almost always in the car of one of the prettiest. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! (I was not an "old man" back then.) *** Co-ed now, but girls only back then and very well thought of. Father of one of the girls I dated a few times, owned entirely a small Hawian Island.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Thanks for sharing that- and for giving a damn. You did make a difference and "passing the torch" makes a difference too. I hope you'll keep on passing it for a long time.
