Posted on 05/15/2008 1:24:29 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
They could use the heat to desalinate water and get 2 bangs for their buck.
Call me naive, but, that is impressive.
I'm not impressed. I've seen a woman go from 1600 degrees to below freezing in a matter of seconds. Fortunately I lived to tell about it.
when my father died he had some IBM stock....not much...but I am proud to say that my 22yro and my 30 yro each have 6 whole shares apiece!
IBM is also using its scrap wafers, from chip production, for solar cells.
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22504.wss
Oh mercy
I have no issue with calling Fresno in honor Jim’s and freerepublic.com hometown.
I see your point with it being a cost efficiency issue.... However, I noticed that they’re claiming that it produces 70 watts from a concentrated 230 watts.
That’s 30.4% efficiency, a remarkably high efficiency for solar cells. Are these Gallium-Arsenide cells? Those are the only ones I’ve ever seen break 30%. But they’re danged expensive, so minimizing the amount used would be critical.
The other thing that I don’t remember a thing about that I wonder with this is what the effect of temperature on efficiency is on a typical array. The best of both worlds would be if concentrating the sun reduced the amount of cells you needed, and the cells used would increase in efficiency at a higher operating temperature.... You might need to cool them, still, but like a car engine, which runs best at a careful balance well above ambient temps....
Multi-layer is definitely worth pursuing as well, of course....
That’s been one of the biggest breakthroughs in recent years with digital cameras (see the X3 chip from Foveon, for an example)....
The trick lies in IBM's ability to cool the tiny solar cell. Concentrating the equivalent of 2000 suns on such a small area generates enough heat to melt stainless steel, something the researchers experienced first hand in their experiments. But by borrowing innovations from its own R&D in cooling computer chips, the team was able to cool the solar cell from greater than 1600 degrees Celsius to just 85 degrees Celsius.Of course, this is done (mostly) at the expense of the other cells which would have received those rays and generated power. :')
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