New Photovoltaics Made with Titanium Foil 346
Memorize writes "A company called Daystartech has released a new type of photovoltaic cell which, unlike almost all the cells currently in use, does not silicon. This is based on a thin titanium film. Given the current shortage of solar-grade silicon, and all-time high oil prices, maybe titanium solar panels are here at the right time. The questions are, will they release it as a consumer solar product, and what will be the price per kilowatt hour?"
price? (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, ridiculously overpriced, and unavailable to the average consumer for the next decade.
Price per kilowatt hour... (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously, the marginal price per kilowatt hour is $0. The difference between obtaining 100 kilowatt hours and 101 kilowatt hours is nothing. You would simply have to wait for enough sunlight to hit the solar panel to generate that extra 1 kilowatt hour.
The true cost of investing in solar energy is in the intial cost of manufacturing and setting up the panel.
Thus, the actual cost per kilowatt hour depends on how long you use the solar panel. The longer you use the panel, the cheaper each kilowatt hour becomes.
Re:Price per kilowatt hour... (Score:5, Insightful)
Priority (Score:3, Insightful)
"DayStar Technologies Unveils LightFoil Photovoltaic Product for Military and Homeland Security Applications"
Ok, photo voltaics for "Homeland Security". What kind of priority is this? Easier to get "funding" this way?
Stephan
Re:Slicon Shortage (Score:5, Insightful)
This has all been gone over before... (Score:1, Insightful)
You can't magically make this change. You can take up the square meters with cells or with mirrors and send the light to fewer cells. It doesn't matter.
We could have been using nuclear fission reactors that even an AOL user could not make malfunction more than thirty years ago, but the public's fascination with hypothetical disasters and poor understanding of physics, biology, and every area of engineering not related to lifting a Coke to their lips is the opening every anti-nuke nutcase has exploited.
To keep linking nuclear power to nuclear weapons is like linking wood burning stoves to witches being burned at the stake. Their lack of basic knowledge on modern nuclear reactor design when the texts are availible at public university and college libraries across the USA combined with so many having (liberal arts) degrees is its own area of the concept of "irony".
Meanwhile, the animal environmentalists can only argue with the alternate energy environmentalists over endangered birds being chopped up in California windmills and we keep burning extremely valuable petrochemicals which would be much more useful in other endeavors while we wait for the unobtanium reactor that only puts out clean energy and bunny farts is developed.
If things keep going the way they have we will eventually reach the point where we don't have the resources to escape Earth and colonize the system where the resources for more energy than we'll ever need short of fantastic sci-fi megaengineering are waiting.
Nice technological advance, but in the end useful mostly for Casio calculators and whatnot.
Re:Price per kilowatt hour... (Score:3, Insightful)
Main benefit is low weight. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Priority (Score:3, Insightful)
I was hoping the article would actually say something about what it is and how it works, but I was dissappointed. Are the using the metal, the oxide, the nitride or something else? With chemical vapour deposition doing strange stuff with titanium metal or compounds in thin films is relatively cheap and low-tech - vacuum pumps and high voltage get the job done. The tricky bit is working out what to plate onto the substrate.
Re:Slicon Shortage (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This has all been gone over before... (Score:4, Insightful)
You have to choose your evils. If you want to avoid radiation, fine, but don't complain when you have to deal with other forms of pollution to compensate for the energy-thirsty needs of modern society.
Re:Price per kilowatt hour... (Score:2, Insightful)
So you're telling me that I really didn't lose my investment in this piece of shit solar panel I got stuck with? You're telling me that all I need to do is to wait an extra fifty years for my return on investment? I take it you're a bridge salesman in your other job...
Re:This has all been gone over before... (Score:3, Insightful)
World power consumption is 13.94 trillion kWh.
Even if all of those cells were in production today, it would still fall short by a factor of about 500, if my calculations are correct. It would take more than a century to replace everything, and that's assuming an annual 25% growth in shipped capacity with only 10% being replaced each year and zero growth in annual energy usage. As countries like China and India come into the modern ages as a rule, worldwide energy demand is going to grow even faster than its current (IIRC) 5% rate.
Re:Slicon Shortage (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This has all been gone over before... (Score:5, Insightful)
* Wind: Dead birds, intermittency in many areas, large surface areas, noise
Dead bird thing is mostly a myth. You will kill a thousand times more birds of prey by putting in a highway & getting them hit while munching on roadkill. Radio towers and bridges are just as dangerous as wind tubines to birds.
see http://www.homepower.com/files/birds.pdf
"Wind Generators and Birds: Power Politics?"
Large surface area: most wind farms are dual use, cows still munch the grass, only a small percent of land is lost to use, and that is mostly from access roads.
Noise: true for 1970's turbines. All new turbines are geared and rotate quite slowly. I've stood under one of the new 200' tall versions in 40mph winds.. you just hear a gentle swoosh. From a 1/4 mile away you don't hear it at all.
* Solar: Sigificant chemical wastes, large surface areas
just to note the really nasty galium arsenide solar cells are a tiny fraction (ie only NASA & similar use them). Most solar cells are made from recycled Si from the chipmaking process. That waste is already being made by computer chip makers; the solar cell manufacture process actually reduces existing industrial waste!
* Tidal: Beach erosion, corrosion of power units
Beach erosion? Please explain how dampening waves causes beach erosion? I just don't see it. Even if you unmix "tides" with "wind waves". Tide power is fairly hard to harness unless you live in an area of freak tidal range.
* Hydroelectric: Large loss of land, high greenhouse gas releases
The "high greenhouse gas releases" is a misleading arguement at best. Long and the short of it is that methane from anoxic lake sediment is not a net change to the carbon budget. Burning fossil fuels is.
see this comment for a fuller justification: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=14407
Re:For those wanting to use solar for everything.. (Score:2, Insightful)
You're neglecting the fact that, unlike nuclear, photovoltaic power generation doesn't have to be central. In fact, you largely eliminate transmission losses if you distribute the panels all over town. That eliminates the one point of failure. You probably don't want to do that with nuclear.