What is Digg?12 Comments
- cdlavalle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Let's see the plans!
- azermuffin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4And whats stopping you from donating YOUR time and money instead of other people's ?
- flipside3, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Meanwhile here in Texas our main power provider is asking for air quality exemptions so it can build more coal powered power plants. Coal!?! We've got some kids at MIT cobbling together working solar technologies using off the shelf parts, and all the big power companies can think of is coal?
I'd love to see a government subsidized program for distributed power generation using a variety of technologies. Even if home generation doesn't cover the entire usage of the household, at least it would take some load off the grid... and keep a couple coal powered plants from being built. - mso999, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1We hope to make a version of the blueprints and operating instruction manual available to the public later this year. Progress on the field trials conducted at MIT and in Lesotho will be posted on our website www.synergeticpower.org
- MIT solar turbine group - Twango, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Guys who work on stuff like this - heros - could use some funding. Billions for nuclear, thousands for solar is the way it's always been. If it can't be forced to run through a pipe, a wire, or a tube, it gets no funding.
Great to hear people are working on things, better to hear about something that already works. - donotcompute, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I hear you, and the only available wind power is on the east coast (of Michigan). As far as I know there are no subsidies and the power companies here do not buy back electric power.
- geoffreycox, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Because they can't stand the heat?
- TechScribe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1When I lived in Texas I was able to buy a certain amount of wind and solar generated power through Austin Energy. It'd be great if you could purchase power from a utility that offers such an option.
- rusty0101, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1As suggested by geoffreycox, heat does become a potential problem. At some point you are going to want to draw the electricity off the solar cells. The usual method of insuring you have a good electrical connection to do that is to solder your leads to the contacts on the cells. Depending upon the variety of solder used, it melts at between 361 and 621 degrees Farenheit. Depending upon the variety of bread you are making, it is often cooked at around 430-450 deg F. Since that is what the guy who came up with the first described idea was doing with the parabolic mirrors, you can figure that you are probably going to be dealing with something like that tempreture. In other words you will probably need something else to bond your connections to the solar cells. I would also be curious as to the conversion efficiency as the cells increase in tempreture.
- andyd273, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1If only this would work better up in Michigan.
I guess I could try to build one, and then I'd have electricity on the twelve sunny days we have each year. - agentgonzo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Presumably you could apply a similar techique of using a parabolic reflector usnig existing solar cells. That way, you only need a small area of expensive solar cells to generate a lot of power from the reflected sunlight. Does anyone know why we don't do this already, rather than just lying them on the ground pointing upwards?
- Dlog, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0About a year ago there were many news reports of a guy who had cracked the problem of putting solar cells on a flower-like structure that turned each 'petal' to maximize sun-angle. Each of the "solar flowers" was oriented by a computer. I dareday Wired news has it archived.
Check out the new & improved 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is