News Spray-On Solar-Power Cells Are True Breakthrough

Interesting article from a less than obvious source: National Geographic.

Scientists have invented a plastic solar cell that can turn the sun's power into electrical energy, even on a cloudy day.

The plastic material uses nanotechnology and contains the first solar cells able to harness the sun's invisible, infrared rays. The breakthrough has led theorists to predict that plastic solar cells could one day become five times more efficient than current solar cell technology.

Like paint, the composite can be sprayed onto other materials and used as portable electricity. A sweater coated in the material could power a cell phone or other wireless devices. A hydrogen-powered car painted with the film could potentially convert enough energy into electricity to continually recharge the car's battery.

The researchers envision that one day "solar farms" consisting of the plastic material could be rolled across deserts to generate enough clean energy to supply the entire planet's power needs.

There's more when you step through the yellow rectangle...

This has some serious promise. Comsumer electronics with a coating of this on the casing could keep them selves topped up indefinitly, what with the non visible portion of light being available now. So your cellphone / pda / laptop would still charge on an overcast day.

 

"If we could cover 0.1 percent of the Earth's surface with [very efficient] large-area solar cells," he said, "we could in principle replace all of our energy habits with a source of power which is clean and renewable."

It sounds very promising, if only it could be implimented a lot sooner

Usefull for the UK public

 

if they as good as they sound then you could have your house painted with them and have all the power you need with out a electric supplier

 

I'm sure some giant megacorp like Shell or Exxon will be pleased to hear that the oil they hoard so jealously will one day be nothing more that black liquid they dug from the ground.

Hey, Blair, you hear that?

*Silence*

Its the winds of change......
No more outrageous motorists-only hugely-inflated fuel tax!
Still, I suppose he could still charge me "Energy Tax" for using the Sun. Hell, he probably thinks he's entitled to it, as he also clearly believes it is shining out of this backside.

 

I am expecting there too be a "sun tax" as well.

 

Well we do already pay for the rain that falls off our property, I still maintain that UK will be the first country to charge taxes on the air we breathe

 

in fact, the whole EU is doing exactly that now - the carbon emissions allowances scheme charges companies for (imaginatively enough) emitting carbonous gases, and ultimately consumers pay the passed through cost. So in a round about but very real way, you already do pay tax for the air you breathe!

Actually most of the major oil corps have foreseen this long ago and are heavily investing in research into alternative power sources (notably hydrogen and renewables), so if and when the curtain finally falls on the wonder years of 'black gold', they're going to be very comfortably able to handle the transition while keeping shareholders' pockets reassuringly full.

Also, I don't believe oil will ever be superseded entirely. At least, not for a VERY long time. For a start, oil derivatives are an incredibly compact and readily accessible source of energy. It's all very well to have a solar or hydrogen powered car, but current technology won't produce an alternatively powered airliner for a long time - the weight and area of solar panels you'd need to power a 100,000 bhp jet engine would be monstrous, and I'm sure the witnesses of the Hindenburg catastrophe would have something to say about the wisdom of pumping a passenger aircraft full of hydrogen.

Secondly, I can't imagine many petrolheads going for a car powered by electricity or fuel cells until the power, acceleration, torque, handling, engine noise and the buzz of driving them matches that of a petrol car. Given that the move is towards quieter, more foolproof vehicles, I doubt this will ever happen.

Imagine fuel-cel powered formula 1. Do you reckon that would draw in the Sunday afternoon tv audiences like the av-gas guzzling monsters that scream around the track today? Not a chance. Can you imagine Murray Walker just chatting away at a normal volume as the cars whisper past behind him with not enough noise to disturb a sleeping baby.

So planes, sports cars and motorsport, there's three markets just off the top of my head that eill not be touched for a long time by the alternatives to oil derivatives.

Add in the fact that electricity requirements are going up despite energy efficiency becoming much better, and that the additional production capacity is being met for the most part not by wind / tidal / solar generation (too expensive to build compared to relatively low output) nor by nuclear generation (very cheap marginal cost of generation, but hugely expensive plants and politically very unpopular) but by combined cycle gas turbines, and you'll see the market for oil isn't in any danger.

Sorry to go off topic. Just read this back and realised it does meander a bit!

 

wouldn't motorsport just switch to hydrogen. it explodes and it doesn't have to be stored for long since races don't last for more than a day. they could just use cheap solar elecy to separate H from H2O.

 

It's also possible that that same magacorp (or group of them, or political group like OPEC) would just buy all the rights to the tech and lock it up in a very thick deep vault and not let us see it for 30 years or so.

FYI - early in the last century, oil companies bought up many local streetcar companies in north and south america and then ripped out the tracks and shut them down. Just to make people buy more petroleum..... Food for thought.

 

Hmm, possibly. I'd still contend you'd see a lot of reluctance to move away from high octane fuel derived from oil, however. If nothing else they just sound so amazing - it's that low down growl with a howling scream over the top that i've never heard come out of an engine that didn't drink hardcore petrochemicals

 

Yeah, slap a big fat patent on it and no-one will be able to use the technology for 20 years even if it's in the public domain. I think that's a shocking abuse of patent law but it wouldn't be beneath them to do that while they spin out their oil money for as long as possible.

However, whoever invents that tech would enjoy a very lucrative retirement

 

Does anyone else seem a possible problem with absoribing and converting all this energy from the sun? ie. "With further advances, the new plastic 'could allow up to 30 percent of the sun's radiant energy to be harnessed, compared to 6 percent in today's best plastic solar cells..." If they made these huge solar farms, the land in that area could get pretty cold.

 

ah but we'd have lots of elecy to heat us up

 

An internal combustion engine running on hydrogen would most likely sound exactly the same. Motorsport is more likely to use alcohol based fuels over hydrogen too, they already do where the rules allow.

 

Aye, but I mean actual individual tax, or including it with Council Tax.

/off topic
The US has recently introduced a similar system over there, although it isn't compolsory as yet but will become soon.
It works like a share trading system, where a company who produced lower emissions than the allocated figure get to auction off the rest to other companies who go over the figure.

Or something like that, it sounds like a great idea since its boils down to business hence companies will have to start being greener otherwise they lose profits.
/off topic

Didn't this already happen a while back when someone invented a water based engine? Or am I remembering wrong?

 

Hello,

More of a lurker than a poster, but figured I had some insight on this one. My entire education has been based in Automotive Technology and rest assured that the big oil companies will not let this happen until they have some way to profit from it. Not to go all "Conspiracy Theory" on you all, but that is what lobbyists, politicians, and large corporations are all about. Here in the states it would never happen now (with "W" in office), and it would take major political changes to ever see it in the future. The citizens would have to unite (I'm talking unheard of 85% style numbers) to force the politicians and big business into implementing, and even then they would still have their pockets lined by the whole process.

It's just the way the world works.

Clanure

 

I saw an article on a prototype car that burnt hydrogen in cylinders lined with an 'ultra-hard' photoelectric cell that converted the intense IR radiation of the burning into electricity. This charged internal batteries that ran the car. Must've been at least 5 years ago that I saw this. This new technology looks like a variation of that.

 

So instead of all the green hippies complaining about global warming, they will be complaining about global cooling?

Sounds like fun to me

 

A little message to those of you badmouthing hydrogen for exploding, especially noting the hindenburg; the hindenburg didnt go up because of hydrogen; it went up because the exterior cloth, which was supposed to be really reflective, contained Iron Oxide (rust) and powdered aluminium (or aluminum, whichever you prefer). Those of you who like to know this sort of stuff knows that aluminum and iron oxide are the ingredients to thermite paste; hydrogen burns off extremely quickly with an intense blue flame that lasts only a short time. They actually burned a piece of hindenburg fabric to prove it wasnt the hydrogen; everyone who saw the fire at the Hindenburg said it was a billowing orange fireball. Hydrogen is only badmouthed because people didnt do their research about the hindenburg incident.

Now, as for these plastic, infrared detecting solar cells; when can we start expecting them on building roofs? Major metropolitan areas with these at the tops of skyscrapers and other buildings could power themselves

 

You still have to admit that compressing an already unstable element is not the best of ideas, even though imo it's no worse than carrying 20 gallons of flamable petrol (gas for us Americans) in your tank.