Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
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Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#2Seems like something they could scale up and mass produce.
Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#3The article says we still need better battery technology, and there's truth to that. But even without batteries, just providing power on days when air conditioners run continuously, solar could make a huge difference in the energy picture.
Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#4That is some amazing technology right there, almost fun to read because it sounds like science fiction but it's real.
And privately designed/built/owned particle accelerators? It's definitely a new era.
What if one day the other side of the globe getting sunlight powered the grid for the other half? Of course this would require very peaceful nations on each continent, so even if we had the cost-effective technology now, it would take hundreds if not thousands of years to happen politically.
Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#5The article says we still need better battery technology, and there's truth to that. But even without batteries, just providing power on days when air conditioners run continuously, solar could make a huge difference in the energy picture.
And using electric cars for battery storage too for excess power generation.
Just imagine the world if it was 10 cents per watt instead of $1 a watt for solar. I hope I live long enough to see it. Dare we dream 1 cent per watt, just like what has happened with CPU development in the past three decades? Could we have 1 cent per watt solar in 30 years? 50 years? 100?
Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#6Seems like something they could scale up and mass produce.
Looking at Twin Creeks' website[0], it appears they are in the wafer manufacturing business and are using solar to promote their technology. It doesn't seem clear from their website that they would ever be the ones selling solar panels - but they might manufacture them for a client. They are selling their services, one application of which is solar cells.
Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#7That is some amazing technology right there, almost fun to read because it sounds like science fiction but it's real. And privately designed/built/owned particle accelerators? It's definitely a new era. What if one day the other side of the globe getting sunlight powered the grid for the other half? Of course this would require very peaceful nations on each continent, so even if we had the cost-effective technology n…
> And privately designed/built/owned particle accelerators? It's definitely a new era.
https://www.google.com/search?q=mass+spectrometer&tbm=sh...
I guess it's just a question of power!
Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#8That is some amazing technology right there, almost fun to read because it sounds like science fiction but it's real. And privately designed/built/owned particle accelerators? It's definitely a new era. What if one day the other side of the globe getting sunlight powered the grid for the other half? Of course this would require very peaceful nations on each continent, so even if we had the cost-effective technology n…
We're already buying energy from nations that aren't very peaceful, so the political issues may be solveable. I think, though, that transmitting energy halfway around the world would present engineering problems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission
Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#9That is some amazing technology right there, almost fun to read because it sounds like science fiction but it's real. And privately designed/built/owned particle accelerators? It's definitely a new era. What if one day the other side of the globe getting sunlight powered the grid for the other half? Of course this would require very peaceful nations on each continent, so even if we had the cost-effective technology n…
Transportation of electricity around the globe is not neccessary. Electricity usage is considerably lower during nighttime. Thus solar and wind fit in with our natural rhythm quite nicely. And it is also produced near the place there it is being consumed. Another plus.
But still the author is right, we need ways to store electricity and we will also need a much more flexible grid than the one we have today.
The neo liberal FDP here in Germany is trying to kill off the solar market by drastically reducing the fee you get for feeding solar electricity into the system. But we already have net parity, therefore it is feasible to put up a photovoltaic system on your house, when you size it carefully and consume much of the energy by yourself. It simply reduces your utility bill. If this new technology really halves the price of modules, people for sure will continue installing new systems. Yay!
Re: Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
#10The article says we still need better battery technology, and there's truth to that. But even without batteries, just providing power on days when air conditioners run continuously, solar could make a huge difference in the energy picture.
Or only burning coal at night.
Once solar is significantly cheaper than coal and demand pricing kicks in, a lot of time-shifting of energy use could occur. Right now, night-time electricity is cheaper because demand is lower at night, but if the supply of daylight electricity increases dramatically, any activity which currently benefits from cheap nighttime electricity could be shifted back to the daylight hours.
Data centers currently consume something like 2% of electricity -- it is probably possible to shift at least some of that to bright, sunny days. It may stop being cost-effective to run night shifts at factories, especially if your manufacturing process is energy-intensive. We might end up charging our electric cars at our offices during the day instead of over night at our homes. It'd be pretty silly to fill a battery with solar electricity during the day just to transfer it to another battery at night.
Even without batteries, solar energy could still pick up a lot of our current nighttime energy usage because a lot of our nighttime energy usage doesn't actually have to be at night.