What is Digg?Sponsored by Best Buy
The camera starts rolling on Best Buy holiday campaign. view!
www.youtube.com/bestbuy - A behind the scenes look at one employee's singing debut.
156 Comments
- phreak79, on 11/04/2008, -3/+528Released to market or it didn't happen.
- LeviTheSmith, on 11/04/2008, -11/+207So that means around the house there will only be 4% of regular sunlight!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
IT WILL DARKEN THE WORLD - BAN THIS - VOTE NO ON NEW COATING. - baramunchies, on 11/04/2008, -7/+147absorb, harvest, wtf?
how much does it convert into electricity? i doubt that current solar panels convert two thirds. isn't it more like under 20%? - Rxbrent, on 11/04/2008, -6/+110There is a new one of these "solar panel achieves record performance" almost every day. I hear it so much I just don't care anymore. Kind of like the election.
- Frozo, on 11/04/2008, -5/+106Released to a market where more than only 5% consumers can afford it or it didn't happen.
- yuanzhoulu, on 11/04/2008, -0/+59argh. misinformed reporters. i'm almost sure that what they should have said is that the coating makes the panels ABSORB 96.2% of available light.
before, they would ABSORB 2/3 and reflect a bunch, and what this does is make them absorb more by making the surface not reflective to most wavelengths.
that extra absorbed amount will of course allow for higher electric current production but i am almost sure the light-to-electricity efficiency cannot be 96.2% - grexeo, on 11/04/2008, -2/+53Not sure why you're getting buried because you have a valid comment. Harvest != Converted to electricity.
- Navicerts, on 11/04/2008, -1/+37I know what you mean. It doesn't mean jack until I walk into home depot and can buy a few panels for cheap install them myself and reap the benefits. That would be world changing. (How improbable is that?)
- boneit, on 11/04/2008, -0/+33Judging by the number of claims, we should be over unity by now and panels come in cereal packets.
- inactive, on 11/04/2008, -1/+32This is talking about how much sunlight is being captured. This is one part of the equation, the other is how much electricity can be created from that sunlight.
- Chris2389, on 11/04/2008, -11/+38The energy crisis - once again been averted by the power of Digg...
- p3ngwin, on 11/04/2008, -1/+27true, the theoretical limit for common photovoltaics is thought to be ~40%
- karmabandit, on 11/04/2008, -0/+26Here's what REALLY happened.
These guys designed a coating that reduces **reflection**, so that light isn't wasted by simply bouncing off of the front of the solar cell. Reflection is due to a change in "refractive index", so these guys made a coating which only changes index very gradually, so it reduces the reflection. Similar coatings have been around for years, but these guys' one is better because it prevents reflection of *more* of the suns various colors, from blue to the near infrared.
This does NOT mean that solar cells no longer have to point towards the sun. Solar cells will always get more light if they point towards the sun, for the same reason that you turn a sail on a sailboat into the wind so that the wind hits the largest possible area of the sail.
Honestly, was that so hard for the news people to explain? - shifty2, on 11/04/2008, -1/+26Mr Burns:
"For millions of years, man has yearned to destroy the sun..." - laserdog, on 11/04/2008, -2/+26Search digg for "solar panel efficient", and then add up all the +% increases there have been, in the last year alone.
As far as I can tell, solar panels should be 368% efficient by now! - naturalpapa, on 11/04/2008, -0/+21Is this a War on Sunshine? A sunshine crisis?
- pandaro, on 11/04/2008, -1/+21Finally, an example of "inappropriate sarcasm."
- Rothbardosaurus, on 11/04/2008, -3/+22Good news, but an inaccurate description. And once again, all these headlines about solar breakthroughs only describe what one guy did in a lab. I'll echo the first post and say "released to market or it didn't happen."
The description is inaccurate because the poster thinks current solar panels get ~66% of the energy that hits them, and the "30%" increase in efficiency talked about in the article gets the rest of the way up to 96%. His starting premise is wrong. Solar panels get about 20% efficiency tops, except for a few more recent cutting-edge panels. At best, their efficiency is one third, not two thirds. A 30% increase in performance from a 25% efficient solar panel would put it at 32.5% efficiency.
It's an improvement, but something tells me it won't be economical. - elitedw, on 11/04/2008, -1/+18We need more focus on using energy from the sun. An endless sort of energy that no country has to fight over. Instead of drill baby drill we need to fund baby fund. Increase funds to allow further research that would lead to an inexpensive way of mass producing solar panels to decrease our effect on earth.
- GunOfSod, on 11/04/2008, -1/+18My guess is that they now have a solar panel that is still only ~10% efficient but gets very hot. But I suppose they're after venture capital.
- reluctanthands, on 11/04/2008, -0/+17This ***** needs to be way cheaper.
- TheZorch, on 11/04/2008, -0/+17Saw this on Planet Green, the coating is holograms of lenses. Strangely enough, the hologram of a lens actually has the same light focusing properties of the real lens.
- regression, on 11/04/2008, -2/+19too bad he never cries. :-(
- dafragsta, on 11/04/2008, -2/+16It's simple: Kevin Rose's tears cure cancer and make an extremely efficient solar panel coating.
- videographer, on 11/04/2008, -0/+13FTA:
"It's not going to require many added instruments too adopted this technology," he said.
What language is this in?
Wake me up when this is released and I can retrofit it to my solar panels. - inactive, on 11/04/2008, -0/+12There are two parts to improving solar cell efficiency: capturing sunlight and using it to make electricity.
This improves the amount of sunlight that is captured but efficiency is still lost when its used to make electricity. It would be damn near impossible to create a solar panel that converts 96% of light into electricity. At least, in our lifetimes it would be.
The real value of something like this is its potential to reduce the cost of solar panel arrays. It captures sunlight from any angle so they don't have to be built so that they move throughout the day as the suns position in the sky changes. Of course that depends on how expensive it would be to make solar cells with this coating but you can't develop a cost effective manufacturing process until you have something to manufacture.
I wonder how this will change the competition between the classic photovoltaics and the thin-film technology. I doubt something like this would be worth putting on the cheaper and less efficient thin-film cells. - Murdats, on 11/04/2008, -6/+16if you don't care about developments in science and only care about mass market budget technologies the just don't read about scientific developments and read catalogues instead.
some of us happen to be interested in science and scientific progression though, and from those of us who are, please kindly stfu. - solarweasel, on 11/04/2008, -2/+12apparently you guys don't understand how research and development works.
once the technology is developed AND it becomes more economical than current means of photovoltaic energy capture or other sources of energy for that matter, THEN it will thrive in the market.
these things don't go from concept to sears overnight. - spaceshipsix, on 11/04/2008, -1/+10I wrote a paper on this crap a couple years ago in college and p3ngwin is right (you can not mathematically get above the 40-50% range with the technology used for solar panels). The ridiculously expensive ones they put on satellites are close to that.
- jspelc, on 11/04/2008, -3/+12In order for a solar panel to convert photons from sunlight into electricity, the photons have to be "harvested" or absorbed by the panel, rather than being reflected off the panel. This coating actually refers to an ANTI-reflective coating that prevents sunlight from being reflected, thus allowing more photons to be absorbed. Moving from an uncoated Silicon panel to a Silicon panel with only 4% reflected would create an efficiency improvement of about 30%, which would be a big deal.
"Harvested" = absorbed = photons possible to be converted to electricity - elitedw, on 11/04/2008, -2/+10Exxon wins if people care less. With increased awareness of our economy (which is also suffering from increased expenses of oil) people will be mad. Like I am. I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. I'm going to use solar panels to lessen my impact. I just wish that some people who don't care would get mad also.
- inajeep, on 11/04/2008, -1/+9Plus with the new coating those solar panels will stay crunchy in milk.
- ThecNiqueMan, on 11/04/2008, -6/+14Old news, they're already at 150% from what I've heard.
- The2DQuartet, on 11/04/2008, -1/+9Shame on Julie Steenhuysen and Anthony Boadle. They should be sent back to school for grammar lessons before they are allowed to write or edit for Reuters again:
"That is a tremendous savings"
"It's not going to require many added instruments too adopted this technology"
Even if these are direct quotes from someone whose first language is not English, they should have been corrected before submitting this article. - ChileanGoD, on 11/04/2008, -6/+13Black paint absorbs nearly 100% of sunlight yet it's not on the news.
- Navicerts, on 11/04/2008, -0/+7Granted, but you think greed would play out in the end and if there is a way some company would manufacturer these things cheap and get their own lobbyists(and get rich).
- lornefs, on 11/04/2008, -0/+7Because it converts it all to heat not electricity.
This is good for heating applications. - fahrvergnuugen, on 11/04/2008, -0/+7Go RPI
- dejanigma, on 11/04/2008, -2/+9Current solar technology just crested 30% efficiency for the latest commercial products.. better than making eletricity on gas generators.
- jimmy17, on 11/04/2008, -0/+5Given the quantity of greenhouse gasses given out every time digg fries a server I'd say it's about even.
- gearhead364, on 11/04/2008, -0/+5Wow, a technology post actually made it to the front page and on election day.
- Timmmm, on 11/04/2008, -1/+6They're called zone plates. But I think they work by blocking out some of the light. Seems like it would be more sensible and cheaper to use a real lens.
Edit: After reading the article this is simply an anti-reflective coating. Nothing to do with holograms. Anti-reflective coatings work by smoothly changing the refractive index of the material from that of air (1.0) to that of the solar panel. Apparently moths have anti-reflective coatings on their eyes, which is pretty cool. - xevidentx, on 11/04/2008, -1/+6i agree, i always see an article like this on digg and get my hope up, but nothing ever comes of it.
- dmbchris, on 11/04/2008, -0/+5Stuff like this has already been out for 10 years
http://gochermann.com/
He makes cell coatings that channel incident light to the cell, boosting output. Of course, the cost is about $20,000 per square meter, so hopefully this new stuff is cheaper. - yoda17, on 11/04/2008, -0/+5http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem. ...
There you go. - BigManOnCampus, on 11/04/2008, -0/+5
Buried for being Incorrectly quoted.
A new coating ensures that the glassy surface on top of the solar collector only reflects back 4% of the sun instead of 32.6%, this does not imply that the silicon solar collector converts 96% of solar radiation into electricity. - vandy, on 11/04/2008, -0/+5Great. Only we still need proper storage technologies to actually make any solar panel infrastructure feasible.
- mcleaver, on 11/04/2008, -0/+5Hopefully it will also make solar panels considerably less ugly. Southern Germany is covered in a blight of pearly blue solar panels. Despite how good they are for the environment in some respects, they wreck it in others.
- Narcowski, on 11/04/2008, -1/+6Just get me a copy of the patent... :)
- spaceshipsix, on 11/04/2008, -0/+5Spoken like a true businessman (or some one with no money).
-
Show 51 - 100 of 159 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is