Live data from Hacker News

Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

theartnewspaper.com

51–60 of 143 posts

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#51
post #42

The thought of future archaeologists being thoroughly confused by Roman terracotta tiles that apparently generates electricity amuses me.

Future archaeologists will probably have access to the HackerNews archive. Archaeology is not as fun in the future as it is today.

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#52
post #42

The thought of future archaeologists being thoroughly confused by Roman terracotta tiles that apparently generates electricity amuses me.

Sufficiently advanced civilizations seem likely to integrate energy generation technology to the point of invisibility, optimizing for aesthetics and potentially going classical and opting for something that looks like ancient Rome or Egypt.

It seems unlikely that the pyramids were power plants and obelisks energy receivers [1], but maybe power plants of the future will look like the pyramids and energy receivers like obelisks.

The pyramids seem to have been built in the 26th century BCE rather than 100th, but an advanced ur-civilization may have developed the means and will that "they actually got out with whisk brooms, scoop shovels and little spoons and cleared out every single trace of their daily lives, their utensils, their pottery, their wood, their tools and so on" [2].

1. https://medium.com/understanding-reality/were-the-pyramids-p...

2. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/explore/howold2.html

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#53

Here's the product datasheet: https://www.dyaqua.it/invisiblesolar/_en/documents/rooftile-... An independent research center lists the efficiency as 0.111: https://integratedpv.eurac.edu/en/products/modules/invisible... Anybody know how that compares to an average panel on the market today? From a quick search it seems like the best you can actually buy is 0.22 efficiency. Edit: The best available on this site is 0.2…

I have worked in the solar industry. As a reference, the average efficiency of "normal" solar panels is around 16% today.

Does that mean that in high intensity regions you'd need active cooling or is that not a problem?

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#54

Here's the product datasheet: https://www.dyaqua.it/invisiblesolar/_en/documents/rooftile-... An independent research center lists the efficiency as 0.111: https://integratedpv.eurac.edu/en/products/modules/invisible... Anybody know how that compares to an average panel on the market today? From a quick search it seems like the best you can actually buy is 0.22 efficiency. Edit: The best available on this site is 0.2…

I believe Longi sell a 22.8% module. Individual cells run 26%.

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#55
post #51
post #42

The thought of future archaeologists being thoroughly confused by Roman terracotta tiles that apparently generates electricity amuses me.

Future archaeologists will probably have access to the HackerNews archive. Archaeology is not as fun in the future as it is today.

I have often thought of how strange it would be to watch HD video of ancient people like the Romans, and wonder what that experience will be like for future archaeologists. Assuming any of this survives the next few thousand years.

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#56
post #51
post #42

The thought of future archaeologists being thoroughly confused by Roman terracotta tiles that apparently generates electricity amuses me.

Future archaeologists will probably have access to the HackerNews archive. Archaeology is not as fun in the future as it is today.

Nah, in the event of societal collapse, pretty much all digital information storage will likely be lost forever. Even without societal collapse, a lot of digital information storage is likely lost forever. As near as I can tell, some of the software that I released into the public domain (when open source was still very much a niche thing) in the 80s has vanished completely. I’d kind of like to find my VMS¹ and CMS² software for the TeX ecosystem, if only to revisit my younger self.

1. I did some nice integration of TeX and friends into the VMS CLI setup so that, e.g., one could access iniTeX by doing TEX/INIT or set a number of parameters via command line prompts.

2. I completed ports of some of the fringe TeX-related apps like MFT and also wrote a DVI previewer which could display a preview of TeX output for people connected to their VM/CMS system via the Kermit terminal software which supported Tektronics graphics. A developer in Germany contributed GDDM support for IBM’s graphics terminals.

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#57
post #4
post #2

The company that makes them: https://www.dyaqua.it/invisiblesolar/_en/

> Inside the module there are incorporated standard monocrystalline silicon cells. The surface, that is opaque at the sight but translucent to sun rays, allows the light to enter and feed the cells. When they talk about "sun rays", do they mean the UV portion of sunlight? Because if the material were transparent to visible light, it would be, well, transparent, wouldn't it?

You could get away with scattering 30% of the red light and have it look opaque. Letting most of the rest through.

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer for traditional solar panels is about 2 months IIRC. The answer for these should be significantly less, because you should only count the delta between solar tiles and non-solar tiles rather than the entire footprint.

> The answer for traditional solar panels is about 2 months IIRC. Do you have a citation for that? A quick Google said normal panels take three years.

Frauenhofer pv report says 4 months to 3 years EPBT depending on travel distance, grid losses (both in manufacture and generation) and install location. If you install on a single axis tracker in Chile and use the energy DC then 2 months is believable. These lose about half the light, so up to six years assuming the decorative tile part is negligibly higher carbon than what would go there anyway.

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#60
post #40

Artisanal production - nope nope nope nope nope Give me a lights-out factory without a single human being churning out a gazillion units per day with 100% test coverage please. Anything else will have all kinds of quality control and reliability problems when trying to produce a bunch of nominally-identical widgets.

It's a niche product for a very specific environment.
Post reply on HN