31–40 of 174 posts
Could this be used to create a nuclear power generator without moving parts? Some radioactive material in the center, some coating to absorb the radiation, and a shell of these cells to generate electricity.
This just becomes interesting if electricity can be produced from reflected photons by the moon such as at night energy production is possible. Other than that I believe in fusion although the giant fusion reactor does help during the day. Instead of making photovoltaic more efficient they should do this with batteries
Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's the temperature of light emitter, not of the panel it's pretty much saying "efficient (for a photovoltaic) electricity from powerful infrared" Sun is 6000 degrees, so most of its emergy is in different frequency Instead, this panel is planned to be used in thermal batteries, I think the article says. I guess main competition is steam turbine or smth?
FWIW when we say "a light at 6000 K" it means "a light with the same color as a black body heated to 6000 Kelvin", so it has nothing to do with temperature, it's only a (veery rough) way of characterizing color.
Could this be used to create a nuclear power generator without moving parts? Some radioactive material in the center, some coating to absorb the radiation, and a shell of these cells to generate electricity.
There are betavoltaic generators [1] that directly produce electricity from decay electrons using p-n junctions (similar to photovoltaic cells). However, in the vast majority of applications, they get outperformed by modern lithium batteries (i.e. coin cells). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device
Could this be used to create a nuclear power generator without moving parts? Some radioactive material in the center, some coating to absorb the radiation, and a shell of these cells to generate electricity.
We already have a fusion reactor at a relatively safe distance called the sun.
GE's combined cycle turbines can get system level efficiency of around 63% from these sorts of temperatures.
(For those not familiar with them: They're basically aircraft jet engines followed by steam turbines using the hot exhaust. They are in widespread use to generate electricity from gas, but they can also run off any other liquid fuel, or simply off anything that gets very hot.)
This just becomes interesting if electricity can be produced from reflected photons by the moon such as at night energy production is possible. Other than that I believe in fusion although the giant fusion reactor does help during the day. Instead of making photovoltaic more efficient they should do this with batteries
I believe we will build a functional net energy gain fusion reactor probably in the next decade if things go well (I’m rooting for SPARC), but we will still need to build an actual power plant (designed for long life, serviceability, improve efficiency based on what was learned before) and that will take a while. And then we need to build lots of them. And they will be very expensive. Probably fusion power will not b…
Given most demand is during the day and early evening solar is a good complement, but the more mixed renewals you have in your grid the better it will tolerate shocks in supply and demand.
Could this be used to create a nuclear power generator without moving parts? Some radioactive material in the center, some coating to absorb the radiation, and a shell of these cells to generate electricity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because utility-scale batteries are around 86% round trip efficiency. Pumped storage is around 79%. 40% as a conversion efficiency alone isn't good. That's not a round-trip value; heat loss in storage has to be considered, too.
In a heat-based system couldn't you use more cells to absorb remaining heat?
Sometimes you can sacrifice some efficiency by warming the coolant to e.g. 75°C and distributing that as district heating.