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See-Through Solar Is Tomorrow’s Threat to Oil

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Re: See-Through Solar Is Tomorrow’s Threat to Oil

#21

Post by diafygi »

> See-Through Solar Is Tomorrow’s Threat to Oil

> ...screens and windows that soak up light could power your home or your phone

These two things don't compute. Oil is mostly used for mobile energy, and solar is mostly used for stationary energy. However...

I work in solar, and solar is a threat to oil. Why? Not because of transparent photovoltaics, but because it and batteries are getting so goddamn cheap. The Department of Energy has a goal of $0.06/kWh for solar by 2020[1], and Tesla aims to reduce the cost of lithium ion batteries by 50% by 2020[2]. That's only 4.7 years away.

When things get that cheap, we can just slap solar everywhere and have "gas stations" with excess inventory of swappable batteries for cars. It baffles me why more entrepreneurs haven't realized that 87% of the energy sources we use are going to be switching to other sources in our lifetimes[3].

[1]: http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/mission

[2]: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Teslas-Giga-Batt...

[3]: http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/

Re: See-Through Solar Is Tomorrow’s Threat to Oil

#22

Post by jndetlefsen »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #15

Does this tech, or even regular PVs, break-even energy-wise? I.e. do they produce more energy during their life-time than it takes to create them? Because if not, then a widespread deployment will only make our problems worse. EDIT: thanks for replies!

4-6 years, that's why we need to make them cheaper and not fancier.

Re: See-Through Solar Is Tomorrow’s Threat to Oil

#23

Post by S_A_P »

Again, this is tomorrows revolutionary technology. Im all for solar, I am excited by the prospect of solar! I work in an area that partially depends on the oil industry for a large portion of the work I do. As has been said in this thread, Oil is never going away until its gone, there is just too much utility to be had from the stuff. However, being able to generate electricity from our sun would be a great boon to our society and emerging nations. I think its great that research is being put into this, but what we really need for solar to take off is something akin to Moore's law for solar. It needs to get cheaper every generation by half for the same kwh. When we figure that out, solar will take off. If I can get mostly off the grid for a couple grand(not 10s of thousands) I will jump on board immediately.

Re: See-Through Solar Is Tomorrow’s Threat to Oil

#24

Post by dangravell »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #15

Does this tech, or even regular PVs, break-even energy-wise? I.e. do they produce more energy during their life-time than it takes to create them? Because if not, then a widespread deployment will only make our problems worse. EDIT: thanks for replies!

Regular PV breaks even with ease, assuming sensible use of the panels (e.g. don't mount them in the shade, mount them the right way around, don't smash them up etc).

Look up "embodied energy".

Re: See-Through Solar Is Tomorrow’s Threat to Oil

#25

Post by jndetlefsen »

higherpurpose wrote: post #20
experiment0 wrote: post #11

We are already struggling to make low cost solar panels that have a high efficiency using light absorbed from the visible spectrum (which accounts for most of the sun's spectral irradiation [1]). Furthermore, you can't just have solar cells that absorb a wide range of the solar spectrum, there is an optimum band gap for these materials of around 1.34 eV [2]. This means that the most popular solar cells in development…

As they say in the video, even if these are half as efficient as regular solar panels, you could still see them on other types of surfaces where current solar panels can't be used right now: think windows or smartphone screens. We could also see them on large buildings or rich people's villas whose owners perhaps want to use energy from solar panels, but don't like the "look" of solar panels on those buildings. So th…

i get smartphone screens, but it's not that every other surface has been covered already or that you can't transport electricity from A to B.

Re: See-Through Solar Is Tomorrow’s Threat to Oil

#26

Post by yessql »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #15

Does this tech, or even regular PVs, break-even energy-wise? I.e. do they produce more energy during their life-time than it takes to create them? Because if not, then a widespread deployment will only make our problems worse. EDIT: thanks for replies!

PV energy payback is typically on the order of 1 or 2 years.

Re: See-Through Solar Is Tomorrow’s Threat to Oil

#27

Post by experiment0 »

higherpurpose wrote: post #20
experiment0 wrote: post #11

We are already struggling to make low cost solar panels that have a high efficiency using light absorbed from the visible spectrum (which accounts for most of the sun's spectral irradiation [1]). Furthermore, you can't just have solar cells that absorb a wide range of the solar spectrum, there is an optimum band gap for these materials of around 1.34 eV [2]. This means that the most popular solar cells in development…

As they say in the video, even if these are half as efficient as regular solar panels, you could still see them on other types of surfaces where current solar panels can't be used right now: think windows or smartphone screens. We could also see them on large buildings or rich people's villas whose owners perhaps want to use energy from solar panels, but don't like the "look" of solar panels on those buildings. So th…

We really don't have a shortage of space to put solar panels. The challenge is making solar panels that are cost effective (e.g. $ per Watt).

In response to your edit: That is a possibility, that yes they may find a niche in the fancy of the rich.

But the point I'm making is that the article is hyperbolic and misleading.

Transparent solar is not the future of utility scale power generation. It is not going to solve any of the problems currently holding back solar power from becoming ubiquitous.

Re: See-Through Solar Is Tomorrow’s Threat to Oil

#28

Post by onion2k »

joss82 wrote: post #2

Oil is primarily used as fuel for transportation. How can I power my kilowatt car with these? How about flying a megawatt plane? This seems more like a milliwatt application. Probably nice and useful for phone, but not to replace oil. The title is misleading. What is the efficiency of this technology compared to the usual solar panels? We need terawatt-scale energy sources if we want to meet actual demand. How many s…

The tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, has a total of 120,000 square metres of windows. It's already got some solar panels that generate 690MWh of energy a year, as well as heating most of the water used in the residential bit. Obviously that's a special case (it's huge and it's in an ideal location) but it's not entirely unbelievable that other buildings could benefit from this sort of technology.

Re: See-Through Solar Is Tomorrow’s Threat to Oil

#30

Post by jameswilsterman »

diafygi wrote: post #21

> See-Through Solar Is Tomorrow’s Threat to Oil > ...screens and windows that soak up light could power your home or your phone These two things don't compute. Oil is mostly used for mobile energy, and solar is mostly used for stationary energy. However... I work in solar, and solar is a threat to oil. Why? Not because of transparent photovoltaics, but because it and batteries are getting so goddamn cheap. The Depart…

"It baffles me why more entrepreneurs haven't realized that 87% of the energy sources we use are going to be switching to other sources in our lifetimes"

What leads you to think entrepreneurs haven't realized this? What should they be doing once they do realize it?

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