The Best Of What's New 2007

BlaineZilla pointed us to one of the earliest annual 'best of' roundups: Popular Science's Best of What's New awards. The winner this year is a nanosolar powersheet that may someday change the way we think about renewable energy. Other winners include the corot satellite, a project aimed at searching out habitable planets in other solar systems, and the world's most advanced bionic hand.

Re:when ?

[vertinox]

http://finance.google.com/finance?cid=1666450 [google.com]

I wouldn't say vaporware because NanoSolar does have a $9 million dollar contract with the DOE and has a working prototype production of said solar film that actually works. History Chanel had a small clip about their production line (not the History Channel Clip but shows the same machine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4riNlqZHCTQ [youtube.com] ) so its out of the R&D theory stage and will have to go into mass production phase.

Its no longer a question of "if?", but rather "when?"

Re:nanoSolar

[hibji]

It seemed very promising to me as well. However, on further research, it seems that nanosolar may not be as rock solid as I first thought.

In June, nanosolar lost one of its chief scientist.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9727336-7.html [news.com]
What do other slashdotter think of this?

Touch Bionics i-LIMB Hand -- YouTube link

[jdb2]

Here's a link to a longer and better video ( that works in Linux ) that shows off more of the capabilities of this thing :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMFrL7xt7kI [youtube.com]

jdb2

two more

[zogger]

There are two more technologies that are here and now and if implemented on very large scales would do more than a lot of the other alternatives, and those are geothermal and superinsulation techniques. Ground loop geothermal *works*, and works well, as does superinsulation. I've worked on several superinsulation projects and the results are quite simply fantastic. It's not sexy or gee whizz new tech, just using old tech smarter, it doesn't produce any more energy, but dollar for dollar it has everything else out there beat, hands down. You can spend the big bucks producing more power just to waste it, or small to medium bucks and save a bundle..forever, the life of the building. If building codes and mortgage approvals were altered to reflect that, for new construction and for title transfers, we could drop demand every year for a long time.

Besides that I agree with you, the solution is "all of the above as fast as possible" right now. I think the US could do good by making with the 100% tax credits for alternative energy and insulation projects for at least the next decade, and not wait for 150 to 200 buck a barrel oil to think about that. Not partial credits or deductions, 100%, with multi year carry-overs. The increase in practical and useful non burger flipping jobs and industries on one side will offset the tax in one place and replace it in another, so the net would be a wash dollar wise, but we'd all wind up with a ton of "free stuff", good energy and conservation measures, great for the nation, great for your personal wallet, so what's not to like? Energy independence is a good goal. Drop demand the same time you increase and diversify production, eventually you hit that magic sweet spot of independence, from there on out it's gravy. But ya, we can't keep farting around studying it and waiting for the mysterious mr. fusion to arrive, that's just silly, we can go with what we have now just fine, it is plenty good enough. There are millions of roofs out there facing south doing nothing more than rotting shingles. Plenty of backyards could get the ditchwitch action and have the groundloops installed. and etc. Solar thermal air heating and water heating are old tech now, work just fine and are cheap really.

      The computers ten years from now will be much better, but they are still good enough now to use them and not wait ten years to get one. Same deal really. The future got here, it is the 21st century, time to start acting like it.

    For some examples of the complete self powered homes plus car, look to the latest solar decathlon [solardecathlon.org] winners for some ideas.

Re:Solar hype again...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Cheapest? It is by far the most expensive."

Not Nanosolar cells, according to the article [popsci.com]:

That means even the cheapest solar panels cost about $3 per watt of energy they go on to produce. To compete with coal, that figure has to shrink to just $1 per watt. Nanosolar's cells use no silicon, and the company's manufacturing process allows it to create cells that are as efficient as most commercial cells for as little as 30 cents a watt.

If this is correct, at 30% of the lifetime price of coal generation, this technology would be the cheapest way to produce electrity. Full stop.

"even if they were 100% efficient, unless you cover hundreds of square miles they still wouldn't produce enough power to even generate within an order of magnitude how much power a large coal power plant produces."

You should have done some calculations.

Incident solar energy at 40 Degrees latitude is ~600W per square meter. Given an average of 8 daylight hours, at your (impossible) 100% efficiency this is 4.8KWh per square meter per day.
So that is 4.8 Gigawatt hours of solar energy per square kilometer per day. Hazelwood Power Station, Victoria, Australia [wikipedia.org] (AFAICT the largest power station in my state) produces 1.6GW of electricity, or 38.4GWh per day. The area of the Open-Pit mine, cooling pond and power station are currently over 15 square kilometers.

At 100% efficiency, you would need 8 square kilometers to produce the equivalent amount of power as this power station in a day. Of course, these solar cells claim 19.5% efficiency, so you would need to cover 42 square kilometers with these panels.

Anyway, unlike Coal Power stations you can put solar panels on your roof, (with more than enough energy to power your house), so area is not really an issue.

---- James hopes he hasn't made any horrendous errors

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