The Best Of What's New 2007 66
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.
Ahh.. to think of all the things.. (Score:1)
And the winner is...... (Score:1)
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when ? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:when ? (Score:5, Informative)
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?"
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The it would tagged as slashvertasing, people would complain about the editor etc etc.
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Please sign up here to be notified of our upcoming public product launch
www.nanosolar.com [nanosolar.com]
MY question is about the practical side of it. How do
install it? If you cut it to size, how do you "seal" the
end where you cut it? How do you connect each length to
the grid of the apparatus to be powered? Guess we'll find
out soon enough.
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Just because I can't walk into a hardware store and buy a brown paper bag full of carbon nanotubes and a fistful of buckyballs doesn't make them any less relevant or significant.
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Just because I can't walk into a hardware store and buy a brown paper bag full of carbon nanotubes and a fistful of buckyballs doesn't make them any less relevant or significant.
Nanosolar is specifically touting their cost-effectiveness. Thus the price to actually buy the product is extremely relevant. Anyone can claim that their product will be a better deal, but until it ships, such claims are hot air.
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I'm not sure if this is solely the manufacutring cost, or what they'll be selling the panels for in bulk.
And my point was that nanoSolar probably won't produce any products that you'll be able to go out any buy yourself. They're not that kind of company, and their product doesn't really lend itself to that sort of distribution channel.
They'll instead cater to other manufacturers to allow them to package the panels into their own products. 3M
nanoSolar (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as the cells are cheap enough, the applications for it are impressively extensive. The cells themselves are incredibly light and thin, and looks like it can be applied to just about any flat surface. It won't power your car, but it might make your hybrid/electric go a few extra miles before the next charge. Flat-roofed buildings can cover themselves in the stuff, and greatly reduce their energy usage. (Alternatively, a facility such as a warehouse could possibly even break even on its energy usage by keeping itself lit during the day with skylights, and selling the energy from the roof back to the grid. During the night, power for artificial light is taken from the grid)
You might even be able to apply the film directly to the body of a car or to roofing materials, given that the underlying backing doesn't need to be anything terribly special.
The fact that they're doing the majority of their research and production in the US and Germany also suggest that the manufacturing process will be relatively clean, and that their workers will be paid decent wages.
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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?
I too am skeptical (Score:1, Interesting)
Many companies and researchers are working on CIGS photovoltaic technology. The fact that this particular company uses the word 'nano' makes me worry even more.
Lots of people working on the technology means that any really easy solutions don't exist. Nobody is claiming that the technology is more than half as efficient as conventional technology. The fact that this company uses marketing terminology to describe their project makes them look like
Efficiency? (Score:2)
Oh well, Nanosolar's technology seems cheap and easy to deploy, which is good news.
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Thin-film deposition is a very promising area of research for a variety of applications, allowing for very advanced surfaces to be "printed" onto ordinary materials. The fact that they've proven that photovoltaics can be produced in such a manner is extremely significant.
nanoSolar seem to have worked the hard bits out, and actually appear to have a working prototype, along with a production strategy that's fast, efficient, and comparatively inexpensive, m
Touch Bionics i-LIMB Hand -- YouTube link (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMFrL7xt7kI [youtube.com]
jdb2
Mod parent two thumbs up! (Score:1)
Looks interesting but, (Score:1)
Nanosolar -- Can anyone say... (Score:1)
jdb2
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Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
"First Post", psychology, car of the year (Score:3, Interesting)
First and foremost... you want to be first with your list of what was best of the year. If a rival publishes theirs first, everybody will be talking about it already. By the time you publish yours, less people are going to be interested in it - and those who are, will be comparing your list to their list; which has a subtle but very important difference from people comparing their list to your list. Granted - if your list is, in content, much better than the others' the
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That said, all a list like this needs to do is say "Best of 2007" and in small print, add "(so far)". Any cons
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Solar hype again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Proponents of solar power usually talk about how its efficiency is about to jump several times in the near future, but even if you improved the efficicency tenfold ( which would put you above 100% efficiency) you would still not even be within 1% of pressent energy consumption. Seriously, maybe in a century, but photovoltaics just isn't going to replace Oil before it runs out.
To get a slight idea about what will be required to phase out fossil fuels, have a look at this diagram: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:World_energy_usage_width_chart.svg [wikipedia.org]
Solar and Wind just ins't going to solve that issue alone. Neither is nuclear, biofuels, or clean coal. It should be damn obvious from that diagram alone that we are going to need every piece of clean energy we can get our hands on. Expanding the use of nuclear and biomass 5 times, would take care of the first 50%. Carbon capture and storage with coal sticks you up at 75%, and expanding wind power 100 times can provide the remainder. All of this assumes strict energy conservation measures to keep the overall energy use at pressent levels. Of course, with the developing world industrialising this appears unlikely, so you will need some more energy, but ff we go for the optimistic goal of preventing overall energy consumption from increasing by more than 50%, then it is doable, PROVIDED we use all energy sources we can get. To reject carbon capture and storage, nuclear or other energy sources, based on some delusional pipe-dream of solar power coming to the rescue is however just wishful thinking.
two more (Score:3, Informative)
Mod parent up. (Score:1)
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credits (Score:1)
As to income taxes in general, that's another subject entirely, basically I am opposed to them because the US currently uses a non asset based fiat money system, with the money "injected
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Re:credits/cool (Score:1)
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"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 en
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Oddly enough, efficiency is exactly the WRONG measurement here. Cost per watt is the primary factor. If we could produce a 100% efficient solar cell for $10/watt, it STILL wouldn't sell except for satellite applications.
However, a 15% efficient cell that's easy to install and costs $0.30 per watt (as the nanosolar is supposed to) will sell BIG. Given those figures, even with the rather cheap power I get from the grid, I could see a 2-4 year ROI installing that on my roof. OTOH, the $10/watt 100% efficient
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Watts measure power, energy is measured in Joules.
Solar installations are measured in Watts. The comparitive cost of a particular solar technology is measured in money/Watts. This is true of any system that generates power. Power consumption is also measured in Watts. Electrical energy is priced based on Watt-hours (or KWh).
Time to payback (cost break-even) is computed in terms of the cost/watt-hour of grid electricity, cost/watt of the solar system and average hours/day of useful sunlight. I didn't b
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What's missing isn't apparently money, it's political will. The amount of cash we've flushed blowing up brown people the last few years would have bought a LOT nuclear plants. Had we chosen to spend the money on something worthwhile and done the manufacturing domestically (for national security reasons, of course), we would be in a much better position today.
In a related story . . . (Score:2)
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iPhone best "gadget" of 2007? (Score:1)
Good Boost not a solution (Score:1, Insightful)
However, it just isn't a solution for long term major power. We can't just replace everything out ther with solar as much as we'd like to. There are a few reasons why:
1) What happens when it's cloudy, if everything runs on sun in an area, cloudy days could mean blackouts. Now not only is there little light due to a storm, but your lights also don't work.
2) Surface are
Meraki Wireless (Score:2)