. It`s called a Sunflower.
Posted on 05/17/2011 9:36:31 AM PDT by dangerdoc
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Efficiency is a problem with today’s solar panels; they only collect about 20 percent of available light. Now, a University of Missouri engineer has developed a flexible solar sheet that captures more than 90 percent of available light, and he plans to make prototypes available to consumers within the next five years.
Patrick Pinhero, an associate professor in the MU Chemical Engineering Department, is developing a flexible solar sheet that captures more than 90 percent of available light. Today’s solar panels only collect 20 percent of available light. Patrick Pinhero, an associate professor in the MU Chemical Engineering Department, says energy generated using traditional photovoltaic (PV) methods of solar collection is inefficient and neglects much of the available solar electromagnetic (sunlight) spectrum. The device his team has developed – essentially a thin, moldable sheet of small antennas called nantenna – can harvest the heat from industrial processes and convert it into usable electricity. Their ambition is to extend this concept to a direct solar facing nantenna device capable of collecting solar irradiation in the near infrared and optical regions of the solar spectrum.
Working with his former team at the Idaho National Laboratory and Garrett Moddel, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Colorado, Pinhero and his team have now developed a way to extract electricity from the collected heat and sunlight using special high-speed electrical circuitry. This team also partners with Dennis Slafer of MicroContinuum, Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., to immediately port laboratory bench-scale technologies into manufacturable devices that can be inexpensively mass-produced.
“Our overall goal is to collect and utilize as much solar energy as is theoretically possible and bring it to the commercial market in an inexpensive package that is accessible to everyone,” Pinhero said. “If successful, this product will put us orders of magnitudes ahead of the current solar energy technologies we have available to us today.”
As part of a rollout plan, the team is securing funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and private investors. The second phase features an energy-harvesting device for existing industrial infrastructure, including heat-process factories and solar farms.
Within five years, the research team believes they will have a product that complements conventional PV solar panels. Because it’s a flexible film, Pinhero believes it could be incorporated into roof shingle products, or be custom-made to power vehicles.
Once the funding is secure, Pinhero envisions several commercial product spin-offs, including infrared (IR) detection. These include improved contraband-identifying products for airports and the military, optical computing, and infrared line-of-sight telecommunications.
Ah, Grasshoppa, so much to learn, so little time: even if you could produce 100% of your electrical needs the gov’t will find a way to tax your use of your own electricity or demand it be fed back into the grid for you to repurchase. They are moving adroitly and aggressivly to ensure no one can truly live off the grid.
If the average home uses around 2kw to 3kw daily, and average sunlight wattage per meter is around 164 watts at sea level on average over 24 hours...
That's a lot of your property that'd need to be carpeted with your Supercells just to keep things running while the suns up. Gods forbid you hit a cloudy stretch.
But, if they make 'em cheap enough... Even someone like me would replace every flat sq/inch of my roof line with them. Redundancy is good.
More cheap power= better quality of life.
“Capturing the light and then converting it to energy are two different things...”
#####
That was my initial thought as well.
That and the miraculous and sudden, quantum leap from 20% to 90% collecting efficiency.
Just a stream of consciousness attempt at humor: 95% absorption = black, black = the Black album by Spinal Tap. Hence the quote.
This sounds like a photocopy of a typewritten paper made by a friend of the professor’s friend’s friend that thought he might invest $100 into it and see what investors his faxed press release would bring in.
It’s amazing that every free energy project is always “five years” away from release.
This is total bullshit.
. It`s called a Sunflower.
Do you mean kilowatt-hours?
Regards,
So... I can power my laptop with the heat generated by my laptop.
Added bonus; you have little or no grass to mow. ;)
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_watts_does_an_average_home_use_per_day
Google strikes again. Wattage per hour. Kilowatts per day...
I’m picking a lot of this up on the fly. Sorry for any errors. As I said, “please correct me if I’m wrong...”. ;-)
I have a couple of acres. Lots of oaks and maple with a few scattered pines. I like my lawn just the way it is. :-)
At 90% effiency, you wouldn’t neet to change your lawn, your roof would be space enough.
Most you can get out of sunlight is 1300 watts per square meter of Earth.
Most you can get out of sunlight is 1300 watts per square meter of Earth.
If I'm not completely missing the point on these numbers, I assume that the power generated at sea level is 3.936 kWHr per day per square meter (that's 164 watts constant average rate times 24 hours). At 90% efficiency, that should cover a 3 kWHr per day household usage. With one square meter.
So I'm thinking that this doesn't sound right. One of the numbers above must be off.
Now, of course, even if right, that presumes 90% efficiency and proper batteries to store energy from sunlight hours for use at other times, plus you'd want some kind of backup for prolonged overcast conditions.
Okay... a little digging says that the average US household consumption is about 31 kWHr per day. At 3.5 kWHr (90% efficiency at sea level, unobstructed) per square meter, that house would need just under 9 square meters of solar collectors to cover its needs, subject to conditions about storage and backup sources as noted above.
Not enough energy density to power a car but plenty to power a house.
Not enough energy density to power a car but plenty to power a house.
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