Finally add back side some cooling and turn heat to electricity too and increase solar panel efficiency. There is many good simple ideas out there. But in space solar and earth solar are whole different things, because if we don't have clouds, we still have some hundred kilometer or so layer of air. Dirty, sometimes more dirty. Space is cool, very cool backside of panel, it increases efficiency too. If you cool hot panel at day, when temp goes lower, it knoks more electrons to move versus panel that is hot already. It's weird that cooling isn't calculated to effect enough for it would be used already. And heat flow from panels could be turned to electricity many ways. Not enough effect I quess, or something else? Used fuel rods from nuclear plants could make electricity very long time too, same way if wanted, now they just cool of those without getting anything. Old system that throws money for fossils goes on forever. That thing dosen't bring money back, it just gives energy and from huge cost. Same time it gives something to our next generations that they dosen't have choice to deny it..
Several projects have analyzed the efficiency of wide angle solar reflective collectors. IIRC they have a natural peak no one knows how to beat because increasing the curve starts reflecting light back out. So now with 3D printing the cost race will focus on holding cost steady while increasing durability. A 50 yr durability has to be the goal so the panels can replace home roofs at low cost. The LCOE bust be cheap to make the solar roof cheap. A solar roof with "forever" durability makes the LCOE nearly free, so durability nearly excludes anything else from importance. In contrast, utilities can focus on more efficient panels and simply produce a big pile of spent solar panels.
Places that are super sunny usually don’t have lots of water. I.e, deserts. Also, using active cooling might rob you of any of the efficiency gains from concentrating sunlight in the first place
@@NiftyShifty1 there are plenty of places with tons of sunlight, and lots of water. I live on the Gulf Coast. It's hot, it's humid, and when it rains, it's often torrential, but only for a couple of hours, at most. I promise you, the sun is very oppressive here. Also, there is not always water shortages in deserts. Pipelines exist. When we decided to build a city in a desert, such as Los Angeles, the second largest city in the US, we work out how to water it.
Wow blast from the past, this is what I worked on with my graduate thesis some 20+ odd years ago in grad school. I also showed that you could get increased efficiency with increased concentration and at the time solar was much more expensive than it is today, but that wasn't exactly anything new either, couldn't exactly do too much of a cost analysis as I was quite literally funding everything out of my own pocket so there was a lot of DIY kludged together things, if it wasn't for a "personality dispute" with my grad advisor I may have actually gotten to the point of writing a paper on all of it, I still did finish grad school I just had to do a 180 on the focus I took. But yeah all the same issues are ones I dealt with, cooling was the biggest, but also some level of tracking is needed, one idea I had was a "trough mirror" and the solar away from the Sun, that idea is still used except it's used to heat fluid to spin turbines to make electricity instead of making electricity directly
Wow indeed. I beat you by ten years :-) I just posted my version of this concept. Same concept, same funding problems. Same dead end. Maybe our time has come.
I just thought of a solution that might reduce the cost of moving panels towards the sun. Study how flower plants manage to move their stems to improve their abortion of sunlight. Because nature is usually very efficient at what it does it can probably help us to come up with a solution to make sunlight more available for absorption. PS: Please accept this correction: "abortion" should be read as "absorption".
The idea of moving the collection point around in the panel using 2 small dc motors (it’s a plane so very simple to implement and low power consumption) is pretty good solution. If the lens requires “z-movement” to adjust the focus then yeah another motor is needed (or other way to handle focusing) but maybe not even needed if the focus doesn’t change much. I really think that would be the easiest idea to implement for the panel and much smaller power consumption than moving the whole panel around!
I hope you consider getting back into this field of research, and while you might not be able to do much with concentrated solar since others are already working on it, the field could use all the smart people it can get to help expedite the work, and explore other ideas for better efficiency.
Renogy flexible panels are covered in dots that are supposed to allow light to gather from multiple angles. It's not concentrated of course, but it's something. When purchasing solar panels, efficiency took a backseat to lifespan for me. A 22% panel that loses 20% of its power over 25 years is way less efficient long term than a cheaper 20% panel that only loses 10% of its power over 25 years.
Yup. I would much rather buy 20% roof panels that only lose 10% over 50 years than pay the same money for a 22% panel that loses 20% 25 years. When I buy bricks, I want those bricks to mostly do their job in 25, 50, 100 years not inconveniently stop working the day I pay off the mortgage. Panel life expectancy is way more important to focus on today and not efficiency gains using exotic materials.
One system I have read about is using a pair of mirrors set between the panels. You do not move the panels with this system since the mirrors reflect the suns angle in a straighter form onto the panels. There very little heat buildup from this system and additional cooling is not required, but the efficiency is increased a large percentage.
My aunt & I, just 2 women interested in the world of solar power since 1980s. I have loved watching the advancement of solar energy. I have a small system on my van. I live in Ohio & the power companies here have put a lot of lobbying into qertailing solar power here. However I am so very happy, our Cincinnati zoo has property in my county & they are halfway to installing solar fields. I would like to believe this will help homeowners see the advantage & advancement of alternative power. Not shattering news but gives my heart a happy beat. Thank you for all your information you share. I'm not an engineer, just a grandmother looking forward to a world that doesn't rely on fossil fuels.
I worked with cooled PV and concentrated light 20 years ago. PV cells were very expensive then and had only some 10-15% efficiency at normal intensity back then. As prices dropped and efficiency went up, the economy of concentrated solutions evaporated.
You need to keep in mind that a concentrator has to take up the same amount of square footage as a standard PV panel, even if the cell itself is smaller, or a lot smaller. So your panels end up being the same size! That's because they all face the sun, with it's 1 KW/square meter. So your roof installation is still the same size. What could make a difference is higher efficiency cells, but currently it's a lot cheaper to just add more standard panels rather than buy special high-output panels or tracking hardware.
As he mentioned around 8:30 mark, the actual energy created for the same size panel is actually roughly 2.5 times as much. So you can get the same amount of energy for less real estate.
Careful wordsmithing can lead you to the wrong conclusions. The bottom line is... Twice the sunlight requires twice the collector area. You don't get something for nothing.
@@richard77231 actually read the details It's claiming to get 952 watts at ~45% efficiency from a 55x55 cm square. The sun only produces ~1400 watts on a 100x100 cm square. The only way for that to happen would be the PV cell being 55x55 and the actual panel/collector being WAY bigger (on the order of 100x200 at a minimum)
Super nice video, I have just a couple of doubts on the efficiency part: as far as I know the total electricity generated goes with the log of the light irradiance, this means that doubling the light intensity on a PV module gives you less than double the electricity due to an higher charge recombination rate. If that's the case, in the example at 8:00 you should get less electricity on the right part compared to the one on the left. Where did you get the efficiency plot at 7:40? This is just out of curiosity btw :)
The weight of these lens is also a big problem for rooftop solar. And with regards to thermal losses due to lens material... that's actually a really difficult problem to solve cheaply. Optical glass can get very expensive and most other materials (such as plastics) will degrade quickly from the UV. -Matt
@@celtshaun1427 the thing is, you don't need to climb on the roof of polish headlights, and there's usually only two of them. It would be a much more grueling task to to that to the entirety of a solar array.
The weight of the plastic lenses may be compensated for by requiring smaller/less PV cells. I think you can coat plastics with an UV resistant and absorbing layer. Car windows often have a plastic layer that absorbs UV.
@@GerbenWulff I don't think so. The actual solar cells don't weight that much... I mean, think about it. They are wafer-thin. Its everything else around them that adds the real weight. And these lens are very thick... we aren't talking paper-thin here, we are talking multiple inches.
@@junkerzn7312 You are right about the weight of the wafer. Most of the weight is in the glass. But if you use less solar cell surface, you might also be able use less glass surface. And the plastic layer might allow the use of a thinner layer of glass. I know there are cells that have either top and back layer made of glass and cells that have a plastic foil backing.
I’m still running some Arco panels that had reflectors trained on the in the late ‘70s at the Carrizzo Plains plant in California. The hotter temps due to reflection actually reduced efficiency and darkened the backing. They put out about 50% of their rating.
This reminds me of when I was cycling through France, past fields and fields of sunflowers. They would open in the morning and track the sun across the sky before closing at night. With these pyramid filters the panels could be flower shaped. The PV cell itself is quite small, and the rest of the panel is pretty much just glass, right? The thing is, sunflowers are small but there are lots of them, and I think that might be the way you could get these things on roofs. Perhaps lots of smaller cells that move independently (with a small profile) on the same mechanism could be the way forward? You could even put them behind a sheet of glass to keep them safe from the elements. Maybe even air cool them and use the air for a sand battery. Just a thought. We can get all of the heat and electricity we need from the sun. It's just a matter of engineering the perfect solution.
They're actually already is a product that looks like a giant flower and tracks the Sun. It's pretty cool because the panels are shaped like pedals and mounted on a central hub. The panels rotate behind each other at night to protect the cells from the elements. Has the neat side effect of looking like a flower with all but one pedal plucked at night
I've seen a thing called a "solar flower" that sits on a pole and has "petals" that are pie shaped, that open up when the sun comes up and tracks the sun till it goes down and then they close up. The action of closing up also cleans them. They are sized for a home, but you'd need a clear area that is unshaded.
I think perhaps the cells don't need to move. The angle of light on to the surface of the actual cell doesn't need to be absolutely direct, right? The concentration of sunlight does though, right? What if you could keep the cells in the same place but have a big glass lens with multiple focus points that moves to focus the light on to the cell throughout the day? I mean, the sun is always going to be roughly the same distance from the earth, right (as far as the cells are concerned anyway)? If you could manufacture an array of cells with just one moving part that focusses the light beams on the various cells, the mechanism would be much more simple. Similarly, you could have the array of cells move but keep the lens stationary. Either way, incorporating the focussing lens/lenses in to the lid of the panel makes a lot of sense to me. The idea of using multiple smaller cells in this way would lower the profile of the panel itself and make it more practical for roof use. I mean, I have a very basic engineering qualification, but it works in my head at least.
The issue with solar is not cost. It never has been. The problems are: 1: The massive environmental damage caused by destroying habits, the caustic chemicals needed to keep them clean, and the rapid rate of deterioration of the receiving surfaces. 2: The amount of energy hitting the Earth is NOT the same as that which reaches the surface. Only 0.1% hits the surface of the Earth. This is a good thing. If all the energy which hits the Earth made its way to the surface, we would all be dead. The only way to power the whole world would be to cover the ENTIRE EARTH in solar panels using the cells shown in this video.
Very interesting analysis. I would strongly suggest that the academic researchers collaborate with their colleagues in the School of Architecture. What we need even more than a boost in efficiency is a breakthrough in “Building Integrated Photo Voltaics” (BIPV). A “panel” that could easily be semi transparent might be formed into a very nice window or skylight or door or …
It does, but in practice only total surface area matters, because the panels are insulated pretty well. You have to balance pump hours vs. temperature. You don't want the pump to always run, because it takes energy to do so. You don't want to switch the pump on and off a lot, because that would break the pump quickly. The optimum is in between. In practice, 60 degrees of fluid temp seems about right and it allows you to use the heat directly. Please also not that modern floor heating works with temperatures only slightly higher than room temperature (2-5) degrees. What I would want is a solar panel that on the rear is cooled by water, the heat of which is transfered to a vat, from which all warm water for the house (water as well as heat) is generated. Combine this with a heat pump and you get a pretty efficient system, me thinks.
@@juliusfucik4011 If you power the pump directly from PV it only runs when the sun is shining. This complements a drain-back solar thermal system in climates where nighttime freezing could be a problem.
Great video. You should do a video on the new solar technology being developed by the British company "Cambridge Photon Technology" (CPT), who have been published in Nature Science journal. They are working on a transparent layer which could be placed over EXISTING solar panels, and this layer makes use energy from different parts of the light wavelength which are not used at all by normal solar panels, and it converts that otherwise unusable range into EXTRA photons of light that can be used, and passes those, along with the other light, onto the solar panel below. In brief, it does this by converting the normally unusable light into pairs of excitons which, via quantum dots, then causes the film to emit lower energy photons that the solar panels CAN then use in addition to the normal light bands the current do. This can effectively potentially double or more the efficiency of existing solar panels! Solar is already the cheapest way of making electricity, but if we can DOUBLE the amount of energy generated in by the same area of panels, then it would, when paired with batteries to make the energy available 24/7, change the world overnight to 100% renewable, clean, cheap and limitless energy. As the saying goes "If God had wanted us to have clean and limitless free energy then God would have put a huge nuclear fusion reactor in the sky... oh wait, God already did that, we call it the Sun!" Solar power is a way of simply using the same natural nuclear fusion energy that has provided the energy for all life on Earth, via heat and photosynthesis - so as all of life's energy comes from the Sun, it makes sense that ALL our energy should come from the same eternally reliable source!
1:52 Just a quick comment... when talking about the cost of solar, you should try to find the cost without government subsidies. Those subsidies are taken out of our taxes, which means we're still paying it, just not upfront. Those additional costs-through-taxes should be accounted for when discussing the cost of solar when compared to other forms of energy production.
subsidies aren't taken out of anyone's taxes. Solar has a tax credit, so if I made 100k and owed 20k in taxes, going solar, allows me to keep my own money... and its not easy to do anyway, because governments subsidize oil and gas in a big way. so very tricky
4:54 ... concentrating solar energy onto a cell increases the heat which decreases efficiency... so how can they say it improves performance? I'm confused... is that performance a comparison to non-concentrated solar cells?
The heat issue is quite substantial, which makes me wonder if light concentration really pays off if the substrate breaks down faster. The spot increase of electric potential with a concentrator needs to be offset by any longevity issues.
Anyone remember the company Solyndra? This is the entry in Wiki at the beginning, and it's wrong: Solyndra was a manufacturer of cylindrical panels of copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) thin film solar cells based in Fremont, California. Heavily promoted as a leader in the sustainable energy sector for its unusual technology, Solyndra was not able to compete with conventional solar panel manufacturers of crystalline silicon.[1] About two years after the Obama administration co-signed $535 million loans to Solyndra,[2] the company filed for bankruptcy on September 1, 2011.[3][4] A 2015 report from the Department of Energy found major flaws in Solyndra's business practices and claimed the company made "inaccurate and misleading" statements to obtain the loan guarantees, and also found fault with Department of Energy oversight.[5] What REALLY happened was the cost of silica had kept going up, and because of this it was worth looking at making solar panels differently than we have been. China has some big deposits of silica, and when prices started going up 2006 - 2010 time period, China opened this up for mining, and the price of silicia dropped to 1/10th it's value, and this once again made solar panels based on silicone very inexpensive. Solyndra was doing THIS exact kind of work, developing more efficient panels and using different elements, but when China took control of the solar industry and they effectively dropped the cost of panels by about 80% through mining and improving manufacturing, etc.... like what this video said without saying this ALL happened in China, that killed Solyndra. Solyndra failed because the Chinese were successful and getting panels to the very low cost they are now. So, while they might not have been quite upfront with what was happening 2006 - 2010, they didn't fail because they were a BAD company. This was well researched in fact and they failed because of the success of the Chinese companies, which killed the need at that time to do more research and try to SELL more expensive and more efficient panels.
One of the interesting factors about net zero is how long it would take us to make the parts, vs how long to install them. It could take more than 20,000 years to mine some of the ingredients we need globally - even assuming the quantity we need is available. Every time you can double the efficiency without adding complexity or rare ingredients, you halve a bunch of factors that stand in the way. If you halve it enough times then the practical barriers disappear. Efficiencies are awesome. Hoping we keep pumping them out at the rate we have been :-)
@@imzjustplayin used fiberglass blades up to 80 feet in length are a problem because of wide area of distribution, size and weight. Can you think of a use or manner of material recovery?
All sounds great but I have a question: After buying outdoor solar lights and nightlights with photocells, I notice a good bit of discoloration after a year or two. Will these plastics that focus light have similar problems? If so, is there a way that the top layer could easily be replaced?
Here's an Idea: Would it be possible to apply this geometry to a pool and have a panel at the bottom using water as a diffraction material? It would use a big "dead space", it would heat the pool and cool the panel and a heat pump could use the water as a heat source when it gets too warm to use the energy as effectively as possible.
@@klepow that is why I was thinking to use it as a heat source on a heat pump. That would extract the heat and send it to your boiler, a modified dryer and in to the soil for later use. This would both increase the efficiency of the heat pump and cool the water to a preset temp.
I like your thinking...I was just thinking that water droplets act like a magnifying glass so if you use a large magnifying glass on solar pannel the problem is excess heat so I thought spray solar pannel with water mister on a timer and use PC fans too blow across this water mist on pannel creating evaporation cooling which is very strong cooling this will offset the excess heat from big magnifying sheet above but also the water mist droplets on top off pannel each fine droplet will also be acting like a micro magnifying glass so like a million nano magnifying glasses on pannel with a bigger lense above with your PC fans blowing across this should be a working idea too improve light catching and amplifying light and also you want too mist underside n blow fan across also now your pannels will be nice n chilly with the increased light capture from large lenses above and nano water lenses on top pannel...if you want too see what I mean put some tiny water droplets on your phone screen and you can see the individual dots off light that make up the picture on phone screen as its magnifying it...cheers
Is there a way of capturing a thermal heat from concentrating said light if it is could you use it in different systems like water heater Heating in the winter time thank you
I would love to hear more about how concentrated PV's may be used in northern/cooler climates requiring less cooling, especially in winter. Could they be the answer in the Pacific Northwest?
It depends how clear the skys are. The concentration only works in direct sunlight (e lens produces an image of the sun into the solar cell, and if you can't see the sun you can only image a cloud). So these are far far more affected by cloud cover than normal cells.
Oppositely, could have home panel systems using these on say, the edges of the panels somehow? Or edge of the roof? Both? IDK Rocky desert regions bordering villages and towns: Lots of solar panels. Capture heat in water somehow too. Can't really terraform those anytime soon. Sandy deserts: terraform with cow dung and planting coprophilic fungi in them to turn methane into carbon dioxide as they help to fertilise the ground. Bit later plant hardy plants. Grasses. 50 years time, suitable for planting lots of trees and doing more work to transform total sandy desert to work as massive CO2 sinks with clean drinkable water stores.
I mean, winter sun still exist. I'm getting solar panels on my house in northern England, and they'll still generate some energy in winter. The big issue is the clouds tbf
@@waqasahmed939 Oh yes as someone a little familiar with Northern England, those clouds indeed. The weather the last ten years, and certainly last two is arguably an indication disruption caused by climate change is already starting to affect even drizzly damp Northern England. What I'd like to see is people allowed their own small Vertical Axis wind turbines in their yards or gardens if they have them. Also massively loosening planning regs to just get more normal wind turbines build in general. The NIMBYs are a loud minority who should be ignored for everyone's own good. Then from there soon as any high quality home storage available at massive scale, the State helping everyone get sorted with them, who can't afford to buy their own. I think we might see Lithium's role decrease from forecasts, with it ultimately at the moment being best for lightweight applications, when cheaper and also more emissions friendly, but less energy dense battery tech is coming in. Very few homes will have both pressing need and the money available for a fancy Powerwall, for example?
Would it be possible to use a simple layer of water between the cell and the lens? As water diffuses incoming light allowing better spread and could be used as a coolant. Or perhaps a more viscous liquid with reflective and cooling properties?
Efficiency is a vanity metric in most cases, it's only important if your solar-collection real estate is limited. So maybe for large PV farms, or space applications it's important. In most cases it's really just $/Wh that matter.
Nice, I’m working on this very technology in a startup here in Italy. This is still expensive as hell but the latest cells with 40+ efficiency have a lot of potential to bring down costs. plus we are coupling cpv with csp so with a mix of electric energy and thermal energy production we could reach 80+ % global efficiency
It's actually amazing how many ideas & proven concepts we now have. We could get to a point where we have a very diversely creative power grid BUT it CONTINUOUSLY seems to get blocked/stopped from happening due to "nitpicking initial manufacturing cost" *which is totally absurd in all Honesty because these projects/goals/concepts are out of this world and (remember how much the first B & W TVs, VHS players, blueray player's Cost when they first started coming out?) We didn't stop that then?? Now look how much that benefited that category of the market? It just needs that beginning support and patience to let a manufacturing foundation baseline occur. (I really hope we can start to see it's worth it in taking the risk "at first" for a potential life/societal improvement.) They just need to be smart and practical with the ideas they choose. If they green light everything it would defeat the purpose and muddy the water and make people and investors not want to support anyone. So we need to find a middle ground & be intelligent and analytical towards the projects we decide to test how tie into the power grid and how they fit into the marketplace. Whether it's industrial supply or private personal product supply. We can enhance our power grid. I know we can.
Have faith in the market, to get a tech to scale requires massive investment and the folks who build the factorys know what they are doing. If a technology dosent get to scale its because there's a reason that's been located by the folks who are designing the process.
Once again here to mention "Blowhole" type wave power generation as it is a game changer. Wave Swell Energy's remarkable UniWave 200 is a sea platform that uses an artificial blowhole formation to create air pressure changes that drive a turbine and feed energy back to shore. After a year of testing, the company reports excellent results. As we've discussed before, the UniWave system is a floatable device that can be towed to any coastal location and connected to the local energy grid. It's designed so that wave swells force water into a specially designed concrete chamber, pressurizing the air in the chamber and forcing it through an outlet valve. Then as the water recedes, it generates a powerful vacuum, which sucks air in through a turbine at the top and generates electricity that's fed into the grid via a cable. As a result, it draws energy from the entire column of water that enters its chamber, a fact the team says makes it more efficient than wave energy devices that only harvest energy from the surface or the sea floor. WSE's key innovation here is that one-way generation; other devices that harvest the same effect use bi-directional turbines, requiring the ability to reverse blade pitch or redirect the airflow. WSE says its design allows for far cheaper and simpler turbines, that should also last longer since they're not getting as much salt water splashed through them when a big wave hits. Indeed, all this device's moving parts are above the waterline, a fact that should help extend its service life as well as making it completely harmless to marine life. Interestingly, the UniWave's design also makes it easy to incorporate into breakwaters and seawalls, where it can take a coastal erosion protection project and turn it into a clean energy source.
Imagine using it in conjunction with other passive systems, pull off the excess Heat preheat for your water heater, air for your heat pump system. There's a lot of heat that can be pulled off and used in a passive systems to help boost your houses efficiency.
Gather the light to a point and then bounce it off of a nickel mirror surface to capture the heat and reflect the rest of the spectrum to a solar cell. Reduces wear on the solar cell.
I pitched this same product idea to investors back in 2011, but couldn't get anyone of them to invest in it. One of the investes told me that he "finds it interesting". I even had solutions to the generated heat on those solar cells, but still no interest. They were only interested in social media ventures.
same. the idea makes sense. the magnifying glass is too strong for our current technology tho. if we can diffuse the effect and keep it easier on the panel it would be better. ppl have already thought of other good ideas using this same thing, like melting sand with mirrors and using it as a heat battery.. that works. but currently too expensive.. yet building nuclear plants isn't considered expensive. the goal is to make electricity in smart ways.. cost shouldn't be the issue, we can work on that later. another idea would be to divert light to a panel that would naturally not get sunlight at certain times of day. imagine if we could have a space mirror divert light at night onto solar panels. that would solve the "sun doesn't always shine" problem. but then comes the "you can weaponize it, you fuck up the day and night cycle for humans and animals" argument. however.. it would be nice cuz solar panels could basically power the world at night this way. since ppl generally use less electricity at night. and we could burn less stuff as well. i would use that space mirror technique near the poles of earth where day and night cycle switches every half a year or so. they could benefit the fuck out of that. and it would be an interesting localised experiment.
@@robertg7249 China is already planning to deploy your space mirror idea, let's see how that works out for them, maybe we can learn a few things from how it affects them and find out it's pros and cons, most importantly know if it's worth working on or not 😂
@Absolute Mad Chad It also comes down to whether or not you can drain that heat away before the cell suffers any damage. We saw how they pulled this off in that "Solar Cell that doesn't run on sunshine video."
The cost per watt figures.. over what span of time are those numbers spread across? Or could you possibly elaborate on how those numbers are calculated. Thanks in advance! I appreciate your time and effort.
I believe it is calculated as the total cost of a panel (or cell) divided by the watt rating on the panel. The watt rating is the watts produced in an hour in optimal conditions.
For regular solar cells this is probably a bad idea except in cold climates where overheating wouldn't be an issue. However high temp solar panels (500c)do exist and using those with mirrors makes more sense economically.
great points, yeah I think it would come down to economics, like if energy was expensive and you had a panel that produced 2x the energy in the same area, and those costs meant sufficient profits to consider changing them out in 10-15 years or so, maybe it makes sense. plus maybe these panels could be sent it for refurbishment, where nothing but the tiny cells inside have to be swapped out and then the panels are shipped out again!
It actually makes sense to make lifetime of PV cells shorter because in this case customers won't be locked for 20+ years to their legacy cells, but can periodically upgrade them and get benefits of improving tech.
I always like to see what you find out there. I'm trying to build a pedal assist mobile home and vehicle all in one that a young or old couple could live in comfortably year round. I've been able to cut about 70% of the electrical cost to maintain this vehicle any time of year by designing and manufacturing some of my own version of electrical products. Watching channels like yours always keep me thinking. All I can say is you're awesome! Have a wonderful day my friend.
I wish someone would make sheets of reflectors like that so it could be placed on older panels in the winter to help compensate for the more overcast days and lower sun.
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Random but it rained the other day and as it was drying out and the sun came back out my solar output spiked by 25% normal output. I suspect the water droplets were functioning like tiny magnifying glasses.
Just to throw something in to this interesting and important topic. Greenhouses can have automatic opening windows, when the temperature rises. They use some kind of mineral wax, in a piston. Possibly could be used in a mechanism to track the sun, which could be less complicated than electric motors etc...
Concentrating light for improved power output is a great idea. Two complications not mentioned come to mind. Lenses to concentrate light will also be more affected by dust, leaves, bird droppings and other wonderful impediments that will decrease available light. Also, photovoltaic cell lifespans may be reduced by increased intensity of light itself along with higher temperatures. Even so, I imagine that engineers and scientists can find ways to work around such challenges. Just remember; things take time.
50-90 TWh is insane, that might be all data centers for 1 year, which is not power of 15TW... 15TW constantly for 24 hours is 3,810TWh, hope that helps clarify.
Why not use a light collector and then transmit the light through fiber optics for a cool clean light source to concentrate the photons on the solar cells that could be contained in a small portable cube or sphere?
Interesting. The first time I saw this technology. A month or two back. I bought some small lenses that are magnifying glass sheets to fit the size of my small solar panels. To prove a point to my son that I could get more out of a solar panel. Worked perfectly. Now you're showing this, cool.
I have a couple of largish commercial buildings to take care of, over 65,000 square feet, and our hot water consumption is pretty significant. We also have pumps and tanks for the hot water. Plumbing in heat exchangers for the solar collectors would be an obvious backup for the water heaters.
When you say “halves the cost” does this account for the cost of the more robust/exotic materials needed to deal with the heat of energy concentration, the additional cooling requirements and operational and maintenance costs of greater system complexity? This is especially so for home systems which, as you pointed out, are largely “install it and forget it”.
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Radio shack had kits with lenses on top of solar cells a long time ago. It was in every hobby kit back in the early '80s. Also, there was a company in the '90s that were using diamonds to do the same thing.
By the way, sticking a flat mirror in the garden - bouncing sky light through an un-sunlit window really works well, no tracking needed. See my other posts for my version of the concept in this video. Efficiency is irrelevant if it's free lighting.
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The cost of panels in the UK has gone up for the first time. I paid £5,000 for 4kW of PV and now it costs about £7,000. The thing is I'm a reseller and I know the wholesale price for the equipment hasn't changed, so the installers are just ripping people off. Yes they have reasonable cost increases but not £2,000 worth.
Unless these panels can be aligned like normal solar farms so we can wash them with our brush systems, the wash cost will rise min four Times, we started machine washing over 7 years ago when hand wash was 30p U.K. a panel , we now wash below 10p , if a farm is close to mains water has a good boarder between end of panel run for equipment to turn round also clearance gaps between the panel rows, then sound firm ground well drained, NO cables above ground, prices for wash can be £380 per Meg on 30 to 70 meg farms, however in U.K. most farms are 5 to 10 meg these can cost up to £500 per meg or more depending on overground cable runs or if they must be cleaned at night because of the shadowing problem, IF these new panels can’t take machine washing, they will need self cleaning systems fitted to them that will kill them dead, one thing I can say for 110% cleaning the panels is vital maintenance that’s a fixed cost not going away, 👍
This is BIG. Can't wait for real production version - that would be amazing, having 10kWp array replaced by, let's say, 50kWp with smaller footprint, having more room for green roof to slow down rain water...
This is so big, if it only where not just a prototype fantasy. Less then halve this stuff actually makes it out of the lab. Don't believe the hype. That is just too attract investment. Scientist and engineers need a salary to.
Fresnel lenses have been historically important in architecture since they were first used in lighthouses. This could be the next historically important use.
"The cost of solar panels has dropped dramatically in recent years" Well, funny thing is, when asking for a quote to equip my roof with solar panels, I don't notice any drop in price anywhere...
i am dabbling with 1000x sun solar cells used in space applications. I am finding the Fresnel lens costs can be as much as the cell themselves, plus optical efficiencies with concentrating light arent great, take much of the gains away. The other problem is tracking is required and clear skies are mandatory. So how are these more efficient overall? The big savings is in weight, so portable trackers are possibe, meaning for camping, cabins, etc.
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Another idea to address overheating might be some kind of responsive tinting in the glass. I'm thinking similar to eyeglasses that become sunglasses in bright light. Perhaps that reaction can be tuned to the optimal light level the cell needs.
@Mitchell Couchman Nah, I'm talking about reducing the light only at the point where the pv cell reaches its limit. Any additional light at that point will be lost anyway.
@Mitchell Couchman The problem with pulling heat out to do work is the extra cost and maintenance required for that equipment. Doping glass to make it tint in sunlight is relatively cheap and adds no moving parts. A similar idea would be smart glass, but I'm not sure if that can be made cheap enough.
Help me understand: Since the cell conversion rate is 30%, the remaining 70% of the energy becomes HEAT. If the NON-magnified cell temperature rises about 25 degrees C, a 665X cocentrator will cause a rise of 25 x 665 = 16000 degrees C! The life-span of the cell will be measured in micro-seconds!!!
I know people love technology news channels like this as they are the single one source of good news. Yes, we all want to hear great news, but drifting away from reality will be worse in the end. ..and for your info the end already seized Europe where burning wood and coal is the real prospect. The energy crisis hit Europe before the war in Ukraine due to the failure of renewable energy technologies. Even worse, it was always known stuff like these solar panels were never near enough for mass consumption. Why did they go ahead anyway? One reason was unrealistic expectations based on good news like this one. Here in America, according to Goldman Sachs, renewable energy technologies have received almost 4 TRILLION dollars over the past decade. Yet, fossil fuel contribution to energy supply stayed around 80%, barely dropping 1 or 2% A serious evaluation on technologies is way due. The internet is full of amazing technologies to change the world, turn everything around, etc. Quantum computers, cold fusion, nanotechnology, etc. But all that I notice is petty, fun and shiny tech gadgets. Medicine, meantime , cannot heal chronic pain, like rheumatoid arthritis or gout.
Great video and some great comments. But how can solar power the whole world? How do you store the energy to use at night? Solar is great in many countries but not in Northern Europe. Especially Britain. London in the South is further North than any city in Canada.
Something that Rick implied is the the heat could go to a sand battery. It's interesting, but I'm not sure if it would get hot enough, or cool it enough.
There are many solar farms popping up here in north Texas. I am curious as to how the ground around them always grass free. Surely they are not poisoning our ground water with herbicides?
In western Washington I have not had to clean my panels since they were installed 3 years ago. The pitch of my roof is just enough that they self clean but also allow the northern side of my roof to get sunlight so I can put more panels there.
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Can that lens be adapted as a retrofit for curent panels?! Even at 3suns you would have a power increase and way better efficiency in cloudy days, without having to worry about the heat.
I think the problem would be whether the thermoelectric cell would drain heat fast enough to cool the PV cell. Perhaps adding a prism to separate the infrared light from the visible light and shine that on the thermoelectric cell instead?
@@Israel_Two_Bit I do believe a thermo-electric cell system would also have to incorporate a heat sink, perhaps one buried in the ground or a water cooled system even perhaps providing hot water.
11:52 "Set it and forget it" until the next hailstorm. There are three ways to install an inefficient solar panel on a roof. And those three ways are seen far more often than they ought to be.
The active cooling combined with the new thermal energy generation that was demonstrated recently by Penn State seems like a good match. Small areas generating high heat might be a good way to go, provided the costs can be kept down. I can picture liquid cooling behind the panel using radiator fins to pass the heat to a reservoir, and then harvesting the thermal energy for electricity. This assumes optimal temperature ranges overlapping, of course, but the potential seems worthy of investigation. Also, by using a medium with high heat density one could potentially store the energy for later harvesting (at night, for example). If combined with some variants of wind, again assuming costs are reasonable, there are high potential gains here.
Simplist fix is a water filled chamber with the magnifiers on the outside of a One Way mirror allowing the rays to be trapped and bouncing. The heated water can then be used for heating and cooling similar to the operation of a heat pump. Want to go to the next level? Since it is going to be producing temperature disparities use it as well with the best surface metallic spray for additional electrical generation. Use the force Luke. For every force there's an equal and opposite force so using both of them will definitely increase their potential output
Can they make PV panels in a triangle shape rather than rectangular/square? That would allow installing more panels on average roof styles. A geodesic dome building made with solar panels (sunny side of course), would be fantastic.
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Stop with clickbait
Good explanation, again. 😀
Finally add back side some cooling and turn heat to electricity too and increase solar panel efficiency. There is many good simple ideas out there. But in space solar and earth solar are whole different things, because if we don't have clouds, we still have some hundred kilometer or so layer of air. Dirty, sometimes more dirty. Space is cool, very cool backside of panel, it increases efficiency too. If you cool hot panel at day, when temp goes lower, it knoks more electrons to move versus panel that is hot already. It's weird that cooling isn't calculated to effect enough for it would be used already. And heat flow from panels could be turned to electricity many ways. Not enough effect I quess, or something else?
Used fuel rods from nuclear plants could make electricity very long time too, same way if wanted, now they just cool of those without getting anything. Old system that throws money for fossils goes on forever. That thing dosen't bring money back, it just gives energy and from huge cost. Same time it gives something to our next generations that they dosen't have choice to deny it..
Several projects have analyzed the efficiency of wide angle solar reflective collectors. IIRC they have a natural peak no one knows how to beat because increasing the curve starts reflecting light back out. So now with 3D printing the cost race will focus on holding cost steady while increasing durability. A 50 yr durability has to be the goal so the panels can replace home roofs at low cost. The LCOE bust be cheap to make the solar roof cheap. A solar roof with "forever" durability makes the LCOE nearly free, so durability nearly excludes anything else from importance. In contrast, utilities can focus on more efficient panels and simply produce a big pile of spent solar panels.
Its the second video you make to clickbait and take reviews.Boring and pointless.
You could use your house’s own indoor plumbing to cool the high-concentrated PV and easily offset water heating costs.
A pre heater before your water heater, also in Winter it would be nice to pump air through, to preheat the air before your heat pump.
And you’ll have constantly use the hot water from 9am to 5pm
@@kalrandom7387 Maybe you wouldn't even use a heat pump in this instance, more likely you would just have a radient heating system, no?
Places that are super sunny usually don’t have lots of water. I.e, deserts. Also, using active cooling might rob you of any of the efficiency gains from concentrating sunlight in the first place
@@NiftyShifty1 there are plenty of places with tons of sunlight, and lots of water. I live on the Gulf Coast. It's hot, it's humid, and when it rains, it's often torrential, but only for a couple of hours, at most. I promise you, the sun is very oppressive here. Also, there is not always water shortages in deserts. Pipelines exist. When we decided to build a city in a desert, such as Los Angeles, the second largest city in the US, we work out how to water it.
Wow blast from the past, this is what I worked on with my graduate thesis some 20+ odd years ago in grad school. I also showed that you could get increased efficiency with increased concentration and at the time solar was much more expensive than it is today, but that wasn't exactly anything new either, couldn't exactly do too much of a cost analysis as I was quite literally funding everything out of my own pocket so there was a lot of DIY kludged together things, if it wasn't for a "personality dispute" with my grad advisor I may have actually gotten to the point of writing a paper on all of it, I still did finish grad school I just had to do a 180 on the focus I took.
But yeah all the same issues are ones I dealt with, cooling was the biggest, but also some level of tracking is needed, one idea I had was a "trough mirror" and the solar away from the Sun, that idea is still used except it's used to heat fluid to spin turbines to make electricity instead of making electricity directly
Wow indeed. I beat you by ten years :-) I just posted my version of this concept. Same concept, same funding problems. Same dead end. Maybe our time has come.
I just thought of a solution that might reduce the cost of moving panels towards the sun. Study how flower plants manage to move their stems to improve their abortion of sunlight. Because nature is usually very efficient at what it does it can probably help us to come up with a solution to make sunlight more available for absorption. PS: Please accept this correction: "abortion" should be read as "absorption".
The idea of moving the collection point around in the panel using 2 small dc motors (it’s a plane so very simple to implement and low power consumption) is pretty good solution. If the lens requires “z-movement” to adjust the focus then yeah another motor is needed (or other way to handle focusing) but maybe not even needed if the focus doesn’t change much.
I really think that would be the easiest idea to implement for the panel and much smaller power consumption than moving the whole panel around!
Lol and where is it today? There's a raason you ain't work in there today: money.
I hope you consider getting back into this field of research, and while you might not be able to do much with concentrated solar since others are already working on it, the field could use all the smart people it can get to help expedite the work, and explore other ideas for better efficiency.
Renogy flexible panels are covered in dots that are supposed to allow light to gather from multiple angles. It's not concentrated of course, but it's something.
When purchasing solar panels, efficiency took a backseat to lifespan for me. A 22% panel that loses 20% of its power over 25 years is way less efficient long term than a cheaper 20% panel that only loses 10% of its power over 25 years.
Yup. I would much rather buy 20% roof panels that only lose 10% over 50 years than pay the same money for a 22% panel that loses 20% 25 years.
When I buy bricks, I want those bricks to mostly do their job in 25, 50, 100 years not inconveniently stop working the day I pay off the mortgage.
Panel life expectancy is way more important to focus on today and not efficiency gains using exotic materials.
interesting about renogy i'll check it out! yeah longevity is way important for sure.
Exactly, for home solar efficiency is good, longevity is better, price is king.
One system I have read about is using a pair of mirrors set between the panels. You do not move the panels with this system since the mirrors reflect the suns angle in a straighter form onto the panels. There very little heat buildup from this system and additional cooling is not required, but the efficiency is increased a large percentage.
@@mrspeigle1 I'd say that longevity is more important than cost even. Since installation is a major cost as well as the panels.
My aunt & I, just 2 women interested in the world of solar power since 1980s. I have loved watching the advancement of solar energy. I have a small system on my van. I live in Ohio & the power companies here have put a lot of lobbying into qertailing solar power here. However I am so very happy, our Cincinnati zoo has property in my county & they are halfway to installing solar fields. I would like to believe this will help homeowners see the advantage & advancement of alternative power. Not shattering news but gives my heart a happy beat. Thank you for all your information you share. I'm not an engineer, just a grandmother looking forward to a world that doesn't rely on fossil fuels.
I worked with cooled PV and concentrated light 20 years ago. PV cells were very expensive then and had only some 10-15% efficiency at normal intensity back then. As prices dropped and efficiency went up, the economy of concentrated solutions evaporated.
You need to keep in mind that a concentrator has to take up the same amount of square footage as a standard PV panel, even if the cell itself is smaller, or a lot smaller. So your panels end up being the same size! That's because they all face the sun, with it's 1 KW/square meter. So your roof installation is still the same size. What could make a difference is higher efficiency cells, but currently it's a lot cheaper to just add more standard panels rather than buy special high-output panels or tracking hardware.
As he mentioned around 8:30 mark, the actual energy created for the same size panel is actually roughly 2.5 times as much. So you can get the same amount of energy for less real estate.
Careful wordsmithing can lead you to the wrong conclusions.
The bottom line is... Twice the sunlight requires twice the collector area.
You don't get something for nothing.
@@richard77231 actually read the details
It's claiming to get 952 watts at ~45% efficiency from a 55x55 cm square. The sun only produces ~1400 watts on a 100x100 cm square.
The only way for that to happen would be the PV cell being 55x55 and the actual panel/collector being WAY bigger (on the order of 100x200 at a minimum)
Exactly what I came here to say
Super nice video, I have just a couple of doubts on the efficiency part: as far as I know the total electricity generated goes with the log of the light irradiance, this means that doubling the light intensity on a PV module gives you less than double the electricity due to an higher charge recombination rate. If that's the case, in the example at 8:00 you should get less electricity on the right part compared to the one on the left.
Where did you get the efficiency plot at 7:40?
This is just out of curiosity btw :)
The weight of these lens is also a big problem for rooftop solar. And with regards to thermal losses due to lens material... that's actually a really difficult problem to solve cheaply. Optical glass can get very expensive and most other materials (such as plastics) will degrade quickly from the UV.
-Matt
From my experience the UV damage is usually only on the surface which can be polished off similar to rejuvenating car headlight lenses that go opaque.
@@celtshaun1427 the thing is, you don't need to climb on the roof of polish headlights, and there's usually only two of them. It would be a much more grueling task to to that to the entirety of a solar array.
The weight of the plastic lenses may be compensated for by requiring smaller/less PV cells. I think you can coat plastics with an UV resistant and absorbing layer. Car windows often have a plastic layer that absorbs UV.
@@GerbenWulff I don't think so. The actual solar cells don't weight that much... I mean, think about it. They are wafer-thin. Its everything else around them that adds the real weight. And these lens are very thick... we aren't talking paper-thin here, we are talking multiple inches.
@@junkerzn7312 You are right about the weight of the wafer. Most of the weight is in the glass. But if you use less solar cell surface, you might also be able use less glass surface. And the plastic layer might allow the use of a thinner layer of glass. I know there are cells that have either top and back layer made of glass and cells that have a plastic foil backing.
I’m still running some Arco panels that had reflectors trained on the in the late ‘70s at the Carrizzo Plains plant in California. The hotter temps due to reflection actually reduced efficiency and darkened the backing. They put out about 50% of their rating.
This reminds me of when I was cycling through France, past fields and fields of sunflowers. They would open in the morning and track the sun across the sky before closing at night. With these pyramid filters the panels could be flower shaped. The PV cell itself is quite small, and the rest of the panel is pretty much just glass, right? The thing is, sunflowers are small but there are lots of them, and I think that might be the way you could get these things on roofs. Perhaps lots of smaller cells that move independently (with a small profile) on the same mechanism could be the way forward? You could even put them behind a sheet of glass to keep them safe from the elements. Maybe even air cool them and use the air for a sand battery. Just a thought. We can get all of the heat and electricity we need from the sun. It's just a matter of engineering the perfect solution.
They're actually already is a product that looks like a giant flower and tracks the Sun. It's pretty cool because the panels are shaped like pedals and mounted on a central hub. The panels rotate behind each other at night to protect the cells from the elements. Has the neat side effect of looking like a flower with all but one pedal plucked at night
I've seen a thing called a "solar flower" that sits on a pole and has "petals" that are pie shaped, that open up when the sun comes up and tracks the sun till it goes down and then they close up.
The action of closing up also cleans them.
They are sized for a home, but you'd need a clear area that is unshaded.
@@wernerdanler2742 yeah. I'm pretty sure that was the thing I was thinking about.
I think perhaps the cells don't need to move. The angle of light on to the surface of the actual cell doesn't need to be absolutely direct, right? The concentration of sunlight does though, right? What if you could keep the cells in the same place but have a big glass lens with multiple focus points that moves to focus the light on to the cell throughout the day? I mean, the sun is always going to be roughly the same distance from the earth, right (as far as the cells are concerned anyway)? If you could manufacture an array of cells with just one moving part that focusses the light beams on the various cells, the mechanism would be much more simple. Similarly, you could have the array of cells move but keep the lens stationary. Either way, incorporating the focussing lens/lenses in to the lid of the panel makes a lot of sense to me. The idea of using multiple smaller cells in this way would lower the profile of the panel itself and make it more practical for roof use. I mean, I have a very basic engineering qualification, but it works in my head at least.
I think the UV resistance of those lenses will be the biggest challenge. They will get less transparent, so basically block the energy.
The issue with solar is not cost. It never has been. The problems are:
1: The massive environmental damage caused by destroying habits, the caustic chemicals needed to keep them clean, and the rapid rate of deterioration of the receiving surfaces.
2: The amount of energy hitting the Earth is NOT the same as that which reaches the surface. Only 0.1% hits the surface of the Earth. This is a good thing. If all the energy which hits the Earth made its way to the surface, we would all be dead. The only way to power the whole world would be to cover the ENTIRE EARTH in solar panels using the cells shown in this video.
Very interesting analysis. I would strongly suggest that the academic researchers collaborate with their colleagues in the School of Architecture. What we need even more than a boost in efficiency is a breakthrough in “Building Integrated Photo Voltaics” (BIPV). A “panel” that could easily be semi transparent might be formed into a very nice window or skylight or door or …
This works well for direct heating solar water panels where heat is what you want
It does, but in practice only total surface area matters, because the panels are insulated pretty well.
You have to balance pump hours vs. temperature. You don't want the pump to always run, because it takes energy to do so. You don't want to switch the pump on and off a lot, because that would break the pump quickly. The optimum is in between. In practice, 60 degrees of fluid temp seems about right and it allows you to use the heat directly.
Please also not that modern floor heating works with temperatures only slightly higher than room temperature (2-5) degrees.
What I would want is a solar panel that on the rear is cooled by water, the heat of which is transfered to a vat, from which all warm water for the house (water as well as heat) is generated. Combine this with a heat pump and you get a pretty efficient system, me thinks.
@@juliusfucik4011 If you power the pump directly from PV it only runs when the sun is shining. This complements a drain-back solar thermal system in climates where nighttime freezing could be a problem.
Great video. You should do a video on the new solar technology being developed by the British company "Cambridge Photon Technology" (CPT), who have been published in Nature Science journal. They are working on a transparent layer which could be placed over EXISTING solar panels, and this layer makes use energy from different parts of the light wavelength which are not used at all by normal solar panels, and it converts that otherwise unusable range into EXTRA photons of light that can be used, and passes those, along with the other light, onto the solar panel below. In brief, it does this by converting the normally unusable light into pairs of excitons which, via quantum dots, then causes the film to emit lower energy photons that the solar panels CAN then use in addition to the normal light bands the current do. This can effectively potentially double or more the efficiency of existing solar panels! Solar is already the cheapest way of making electricity, but if we can DOUBLE the amount of energy generated in by the same area of panels, then it would, when paired with batteries to make the energy available 24/7, change the world overnight to 100% renewable, clean, cheap and limitless energy.
As the saying goes "If God had wanted us to have clean and limitless free energy then God would have put a huge nuclear fusion reactor in the sky... oh wait, God already did that, we call it the Sun!" Solar power is a way of simply using the same natural nuclear fusion energy that has provided the energy for all life on Earth, via heat and photosynthesis - so as all of life's energy comes from the Sun, it makes sense that ALL our energy should come from the same eternally reliable source!
wow that sounds fascinating, I'll check it out Tim!
1:52 Just a quick comment... when talking about the cost of solar, you should try to find the cost without government subsidies. Those subsidies are taken out of our taxes, which means we're still paying it, just not upfront. Those additional costs-through-taxes should be accounted for when discussing the cost of solar when compared to other forms of energy production.
subsidies aren't taken out of anyone's taxes. Solar has a tax credit, so if I made 100k and owed 20k in taxes, going solar, allows me to keep my own money... and its not easy to do anyway, because governments subsidize oil and gas in a big way. so very tricky
4:54 ... concentrating solar energy onto a cell increases the heat which decreases efficiency... so how can they say it improves performance? I'm confused... is that performance a comparison to non-concentrated solar cells?
I find comments like this funny when gas, and their infrastructure are also heavily subsidized. A lot of times more!
The heat issue is quite substantial, which makes me wonder if light concentration really pays off if the substrate breaks down faster. The spot increase of electric potential with a concentrator needs to be offset by any longevity issues.
just make an ocean array of solar panels
So Solar + hot water, and during the winter heating. What a bright idea.
Anyone remember the company Solyndra?
This is the entry in Wiki at the beginning, and it's wrong:
Solyndra was a manufacturer of cylindrical panels of copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) thin film solar cells based in Fremont, California. Heavily promoted as a leader in the sustainable energy sector for its unusual technology, Solyndra was not able to compete with conventional solar panel manufacturers of crystalline silicon.[1]
About two years after the Obama administration co-signed $535 million loans to Solyndra,[2] the company filed for bankruptcy on September 1, 2011.[3][4] A 2015 report from the Department of Energy found major flaws in Solyndra's business practices and claimed the company made "inaccurate and misleading" statements to obtain the loan guarantees, and also found fault with Department of Energy oversight.[5]
What REALLY happened was the cost of silica had kept going up, and because of this it was worth looking at making solar panels differently than we have been. China has some big deposits of silica, and when prices started going up 2006 - 2010 time period, China opened this up for mining, and the price of silicia dropped to 1/10th it's value, and this once again made solar panels based on silicone very inexpensive.
Solyndra was doing THIS exact kind of work, developing more efficient panels and using different elements, but when China took control of the solar industry and they effectively dropped the cost of panels by about 80% through mining and improving manufacturing, etc.... like what this video said without saying this ALL happened in China, that killed Solyndra. Solyndra failed because the Chinese were successful and getting panels to the very low cost they are now. So, while they might not have been quite upfront with what was happening 2006 - 2010, they didn't fail because they were a BAD company. This was well researched in fact and they failed because of the success of the Chinese companies, which killed the need at that time to do more research and try to SELL more expensive and more efficient panels.
One of the interesting factors about net zero is how long it would take us to make the parts, vs how long to install them. It could take more than 20,000 years to mine some of the ingredients we need globally - even assuming the quantity we need is available. Every time you can double the efficiency without adding complexity or rare ingredients, you halve a bunch of factors that stand in the way. If you halve it enough times then the practical barriers disappear. Efficiencies are awesome. Hoping we keep pumping them out at the rate we have been :-)
I couldn't have put it better myself!
And where to dump the used up ruins?
@@Plainsman1300 If there are enough of it, eventually there would be a way to economically mine them for their raw materials.
@@imzjustplayin used fiberglass blades up to 80 feet in length are a problem because of wide area of distribution, size and weight. Can you think of a use or manner of material recovery?
Who told you it would take 20k years to mine enough materials? That number is outrageous to me considering how much of these ingredients we mine.
All sounds great but I have a question: After buying outdoor solar lights and nightlights with photocells, I notice a good bit of discoloration after a year or two. Will these plastics that focus light have similar problems? If so, is there a way that the top layer could easily be replaced?
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Here's an Idea:
Would it be possible to apply this geometry to a pool and have a panel at the bottom using water as a diffraction material?
It would use a big "dead space", it would heat the pool and cool the panel and a heat pump could use the water as a heat source when it gets too warm to use the energy as effectively as possible.
The water in the pool would be hottest in the middle of summer.
@@klepow that is why I was thinking to use it as a heat source on a heat pump. That would extract the heat and send it to your boiler, a modified dryer and in to the soil for later use.
This would both increase the efficiency of the heat pump and cool the water to a preset temp.
@@GeorgeBP81 I doubt it would be worth it. Without this Rube Goldberg contraption, you would still get 500% efficiency.
I like your thinking...I was just thinking that water droplets act like a magnifying glass so if you use a large magnifying glass on solar pannel the problem is excess heat so I thought spray solar pannel with water mister on a timer and use PC fans too blow across this water mist on pannel creating evaporation cooling which is very strong cooling this will offset the excess heat from big magnifying sheet above but also the water mist droplets on top off pannel each fine droplet will also be acting like a micro magnifying glass so like a million nano magnifying glasses on pannel with a bigger lense above with your PC fans blowing across this should be a working idea too improve light catching and amplifying light and also you want too mist underside n blow fan across also now your pannels will be nice n chilly with the increased light capture from large lenses above and nano water lenses on top pannel...if you want too see what I mean put some tiny water droplets on your phone screen and you can see the individual dots off light that make up the picture on phone screen as its magnifying it...cheers
Is there a way of capturing a thermal heat from concentrating said light if it is could you use it in different systems like water heater Heating in the winter time thank you
I would love to hear more about how concentrated PV's may be used in northern/cooler climates requiring less cooling, especially in winter. Could they be the answer in the Pacific Northwest?
It depends how clear the skys are. The concentration only works in direct sunlight (e lens produces an image of the sun into the solar cell, and if you can't see the sun you can only image a cloud). So these are far far more affected by cloud cover than normal cells.
Bifacial for cooler areas
Oppositely, could have home panel systems using these on say, the edges of the panels somehow? Or edge of the roof? Both? IDK
Rocky desert regions bordering villages and towns: Lots of solar panels. Capture heat in water somehow too. Can't really terraform those anytime soon. Sandy deserts: terraform with cow dung and planting coprophilic fungi in them to turn methane into carbon dioxide as they help to fertilise the ground. Bit later plant hardy plants. Grasses.
50 years time, suitable for planting lots of trees and doing more work to transform total sandy desert to work as massive CO2 sinks with clean drinkable water stores.
I mean, winter sun still exist. I'm getting solar panels on my house in northern England, and they'll still generate some energy in winter. The big issue is the clouds tbf
@@waqasahmed939 Oh yes as someone a little familiar with Northern England, those clouds indeed.
The weather the last ten years, and certainly last two is arguably an indication disruption caused by climate change is already starting to affect even drizzly damp Northern England.
What I'd like to see is people allowed their own small Vertical Axis wind turbines in their yards or gardens if they have them.
Also massively loosening planning regs to just get more normal wind turbines build in general. The NIMBYs are a loud minority who should be ignored for everyone's own good.
Then from there soon as any high quality home storage available at massive scale, the State helping everyone get sorted with them, who can't afford to buy their own.
I think we might see Lithium's role decrease from forecasts, with it ultimately at the moment being best for lightweight applications, when cheaper and also more emissions friendly, but less energy dense battery tech is coming in.
Very few homes will have both pressing need and the money available for a fancy Powerwall, for example?
Would it be possible to use a simple layer of water between the cell and the lens? As water diffuses incoming light allowing better spread and could be used as a coolant. Or perhaps a more viscous liquid with reflective and cooling properties?
Efficiency is a vanity metric in most cases, it's only important if your solar-collection real estate is limited. So maybe for large PV farms, or space applications it's important.
In most cases it's really just $/Wh that matter.
I think you're spot on Richard, well said
Nice, I’m working on this very technology in a startup here in Italy. This is still expensive as hell but the latest cells with 40+ efficiency have a lot of potential to bring down costs. plus we are coupling cpv with csp so with a mix of electric energy and thermal energy production we could reach 80+ % global efficiency
It's actually amazing how many ideas & proven concepts we now have. We could get to a point where we have a very diversely creative power grid BUT it CONTINUOUSLY seems to get blocked/stopped from happening due to "nitpicking initial manufacturing cost" *which is totally absurd in all Honesty because these projects/goals/concepts are out of this world and (remember how much the first B & W TVs, VHS players, blueray player's Cost when they first started coming out?) We didn't stop that then?? Now look how much that benefited that category of the market? It just needs that beginning support and patience to let a manufacturing foundation baseline occur. (I really hope we can start to see it's worth it in taking the risk "at first" for a potential life/societal improvement.) They just need to be smart and practical with the ideas they choose. If they green light everything it would defeat the purpose and muddy the water and make people and investors not want to support anyone. So we need to find a middle ground & be intelligent and analytical towards the projects we decide to test how tie into the power grid and how they fit into the marketplace. Whether it's industrial supply or private personal product supply.
We can enhance our power grid. I know we can.
Have faith in the market, to get a tech to scale requires massive investment and the folks who build the factorys know what they are doing. If a technology dosent get to scale its because there's a reason that's been located by the folks who are designing the process.
I've been worried about the influx of money from the new IRA bill going to crackpot and fraudulent money grabbing ideas.
Once again here to mention "Blowhole" type wave power generation as it is a game changer.
Wave Swell Energy's remarkable UniWave 200 is a sea platform that uses an artificial blowhole formation to create air pressure changes that drive a turbine and feed energy back to shore. After a year of testing, the company reports excellent results.
As we've discussed before, the UniWave system is a floatable device that can be towed to any coastal location and connected to the local energy grid. It's designed so that wave swells force water into a specially designed concrete chamber, pressurizing the air in the chamber and forcing it through an outlet valve. Then as the water recedes, it generates a powerful vacuum, which sucks air in through a turbine at the top and generates electricity that's fed into the grid via a cable.
As a result, it draws energy from the entire column of water that enters its chamber, a fact the team says makes it more efficient than wave energy devices that only harvest energy from the surface or the sea floor.
WSE's key innovation here is that one-way generation; other devices that harvest the same effect use bi-directional turbines, requiring the ability to reverse blade pitch or redirect the airflow. WSE says its design allows for far cheaper and simpler turbines, that should also last longer since they're not getting as much salt water splashed through them when a big wave hits. Indeed, all this device's moving parts are above the waterline, a fact that should help extend its service life as well as making it completely harmless to marine life.
Interestingly, the UniWave's design also makes it easy to incorporate into breakwaters and seawalls, where it can take a coastal erosion protection project and turn it into a clean energy source.
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Imagine using it in conjunction with other passive systems, pull off the excess Heat preheat for your water heater, air for your heat pump system. There's a lot of heat that can be pulled off and used in a passive systems to help boost your houses efficiency.
You could also combine it with thermoeletric materials to convert the heat to electricity.
@@eddielopez5708 Good point. I wonder why they aren't already doing that?
Gather the light to a point and then bounce it off of a nickel mirror surface to capture the heat and reflect the rest of the spectrum to a solar cell. Reduces wear on the solar cell.
I pitched this same product idea to investors back in 2011, but couldn't get anyone of them to invest in it. One of the investes told me that he "finds it interesting". I even had solutions to the generated heat on those solar cells, but still no interest. They were only interested in social media ventures.
I invented this concept in my head 20 years ago. Seems very much like common sense. Had no idea the mfg costs would end up being cost effective
pretty crazy right?
You too eh? Join the club. I have counted five or more in this thread alone. I win first place - 30 + years ago !
Yes it appears a lot of us thought of this years ago. It's amazing how long it's taken for somebody to bring it to market.
Please absolutely positively DO NOT go down the rabbit hole of how that lithium gets mined
Damn. It's an amazing time to be alive. Thanks!
I COULDN'T have put it better myself, cheers!
This idea of using magnifying glass on solar panels has been hovering my head for a decade now..
efficiency actually increases, except so does heat which lowers efficiency, it comes down to how much concentration we're talking about... good stuff!
same.
the idea makes sense.
the magnifying glass is too strong for our current technology tho. if we can diffuse the effect and keep it easier on the panel it would be better.
ppl have already thought of other good ideas using this same thing, like melting sand with mirrors and using it as a heat battery.. that works. but currently too expensive.. yet building nuclear plants isn't considered expensive. the goal is to make electricity in smart ways.. cost shouldn't be the issue, we can work on that later.
another idea would be to divert light to a panel that would naturally not get sunlight at certain times of day.
imagine if we could have a space mirror divert light at night onto solar panels. that would solve the "sun doesn't always shine" problem.
but then comes the "you can weaponize it, you fuck up the day and night cycle for humans and animals" argument.
however.. it would be nice cuz solar panels could basically power the world at night this way. since ppl generally use less electricity at night. and we could burn less stuff as well.
i would use that space mirror technique near the poles of earth where day and night cycle switches every half a year or so. they could benefit the fuck out of that. and it would be an interesting localised experiment.
That idea was postulated back in the 70’s. Only the materials and electronics have improved.
@@robertg7249
China is already planning to deploy your space mirror idea, let's see how that works out for them, maybe we can learn a few things from how it affects them and find out it's pros and cons, most importantly know if it's worth working on or not 😂
@Absolute Mad Chad It also comes down to whether or not you can drain that heat away before the cell suffers any damage. We saw how they pulled this off in that "Solar Cell that doesn't run on sunshine video."
The cost per watt figures.. over what span of time are those numbers spread across? Or could you possibly elaborate on how those numbers are calculated. Thanks in advance! I appreciate your time and effort.
I believe it is calculated as the total cost of a panel (or cell) divided by the watt rating on the panel. The watt rating is the watts produced in an hour in optimal conditions.
Conventional pv panels usually last about 20 years, surely exposing them to concentrated light would seriously shorten their lifespan
For regular solar cells this is probably a bad idea except in cold climates where overheating wouldn't be an issue. However high temp solar panels (500c)do exist and using those with mirrors makes more sense economically.
great points, yeah I think it would come down to economics, like if energy was expensive and you had a panel that produced 2x the energy in the same area, and those costs meant sufficient profits to consider changing them out in 10-15 years or so, maybe it makes sense. plus maybe these panels could be sent it for refurbishment, where nothing but the tiny cells inside have to be swapped out and then the panels are shipped out again!
@@TwoBitDaVinci Great point. The bulk of the panel would definitely be reusable. Only the solar cells would neet to be replaced.
It actually makes sense to make lifetime of PV cells shorter because in this case customers won't be locked for 20+ years to their legacy cells, but can periodically upgrade them and get benefits of improving tech.
You're a great educator and cover the topic in an understandable way with good graphics. Big ups. Very much looking forward to the future of solar
That's great its electricity and heat both can be used in residentials sector very well ..no need of separate system
Tested these lens. Does not work.
So glad I've subscribed to your channel!👍👍🏻🔥
So glad to hear it Tray!
All kudos to those researching this concept. Potentially very exciting.
I always like to see what you find out there. I'm trying to build a pedal assist mobile home and vehicle all in one that a young or old couple could live in comfortably year round. I've been able to cut about 70% of the electrical cost to maintain this vehicle any time of year by designing and manufacturing some of my own version of electrical products. Watching channels like yours always keep me thinking. All I can say is you're awesome! Have a wonderful day my friend.
I wish someone would make sheets of reflectors like that so it could be placed on older panels in the winter to help compensate for the more overcast days and lower sun.
FANTASTIC SHOW...DEMONSTRATING A VIABLE ,ATTAINABLE SOLUTION, THAT CAN BE BUILT UPON ....WHAT ABOUT COST OF RECYCLING AND WASTE STREAM,,TO COMPLETE UNDERSTANDING... THANK YOU, RICKY YOUR THE BEST !
Random but it rained the other day and as it was drying out and the sun came back out my solar output spiked by 25% normal output. I suspect the water droplets were functioning like tiny magnifying glasses.
what about using it with where you want the heat as in a soler heater. can be used for heating water or air ?
Is there any simulation software for constructing these structures and analysing it?
Just to throw something in to this interesting and important topic. Greenhouses can have automatic opening windows, when the temperature rises. They use some kind of mineral wax, in a piston. Possibly could be used in a mechanism to track the sun, which could be less complicated than electric motors etc...
I wonder if the type of lens they use in old lighthouses for spreading the light out could be used for collecting the light from different angles
Exactly. It just works the other way around.
Yes - many of us thought about that decades ago, but none could get funding to move the concept forward.
Concentrating light for improved power output is a great idea. Two complications not mentioned come to mind. Lenses to concentrate light will also be more affected by dust, leaves, bird droppings and other wonderful impediments that will decrease available light. Also, photovoltaic cell lifespans may be reduced by increased intensity of light itself along with higher temperatures. Even so, I imagine that engineers and scientists can find ways to work around such challenges. Just remember; things take time.
Where is your 15tW figure coming from? Data center utilization alone is 50-90tWh
50-90 TWh is insane, that might be all data centers for 1 year, which is not power of 15TW... 15TW constantly for 24 hours is 3,810TWh, hope that helps clarify.
3:54 Can Multi-Junction Cells and CPVs be combined?
Why not use a light collector and then transmit the light through fiber optics for a cool clean light source to concentrate the photons on the solar cells that could be contained in a small portable cube or sphere?
What happened to the cheek shadows?! Lol only guy on RUclips with that crazy style man 😜
Thanks for your work, you got a good channel going here
Interesting. The first time I saw this technology. A month or two back. I bought some small lenses that are magnifying glass sheets to fit the size of my small solar panels. To prove a point to my son that I could get more out of a solar panel. Worked perfectly. Now you're showing this, cool.
What's the LCOS (levelized cost of storage) for these vs conventional cells?
I have a couple of largish commercial buildings to take care of, over 65,000 square feet, and our hot water consumption is pretty significant. We also have pumps and tanks for the hot water. Plumbing in heat exchangers for the solar collectors would be an obvious backup for the water heaters.
When you say “halves the cost” does this account for the cost of the more robust/exotic materials needed to deal with the heat of energy concentration, the additional cooling requirements and operational and maintenance costs of greater system complexity? This is especially so for home systems which, as you pointed out, are largely “install it and forget it”.
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Radio shack had kits with lenses on top of solar cells a long time ago. It was in every hobby kit back in the early '80s. Also, there was a company in the '90s that were using diamonds to do the same thing.
Good ole radio shack
another great video. thank you
Glad you enjoyed it Michael, cheers
By the way, sticking a flat mirror in the garden - bouncing sky light through an un-sunlit window really works well, no tracking needed. See my other posts for my version of the concept in this video. Efficiency is irrelevant if it's free lighting.
In Germany there were multicoulor solarpanels, more spectrum of light in one panel try that.
@Two Bit da Vinci. Please do a video on inverters. Is it true that this is actually one of the most expensive pieces of installing solar?
You got it!
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The cost of panels in the UK has gone up for the first time. I paid £5,000 for 4kW of PV and now it costs about £7,000. The thing is I'm a reseller and I know the wholesale price for the equipment hasn't changed, so the installers are just ripping people off. Yes they have reasonable cost increases but not £2,000 worth.
Unless these panels can be aligned like normal solar farms so we can wash them with our brush systems, the wash cost will rise min four Times, we started machine washing over 7 years ago when hand wash was 30p U.K. a panel , we now wash below 10p , if a farm is close to mains water has a good boarder between end of panel run for equipment to turn round also clearance gaps between the panel rows, then sound firm ground well drained, NO cables above ground, prices for wash can be £380 per Meg on 30 to 70 meg farms, however in U.K. most farms are 5 to 10 meg these can cost up to £500 per meg or more depending on overground cable runs or if they must be cleaned at night because of the shadowing problem, IF these new panels can’t take machine washing, they will need self cleaning systems fitted to them that will kill them dead, one thing I can say for 110% cleaning the panels is vital maintenance that’s a fixed cost not going away, 👍
This is BIG. Can't wait for real production version - that would be amazing, having 10kWp array replaced by, let's say, 50kWp with smaller footprint, having more room for green roof to slow down rain water...
This is so big, if it only where not just a prototype fantasy. Less then halve this stuff actually makes it out of the lab. Don't believe the hype. That is just too attract investment. Scientist and engineers need a salary to.
13:45 Hell yes I love hearing about this stuff and I think this is a huge game changer for solar.
So where can we find these solar panels?
But concentrated light increases heat that increases resistance and drying out solder joints.
How are they getting around these issues?
Fresnel lenses have been historically important in architecture since they were first used in lighthouses. This could be the next historically important use.
"The cost of solar panels has dropped dramatically in recent years"
Well, funny thing is, when asking for a quote to equip my roof with solar panels, I don't notice any drop in price anywhere...
This time your input was really good. Thank you 🙏
i am dabbling with 1000x sun solar cells used in space applications. I am finding the Fresnel lens costs can be as much as the cell themselves, plus optical efficiencies with concentrating light arent great, take much of the gains away. The other problem is tracking is required and clear skies are mandatory. So how are these more efficient overall? The big savings is in weight, so portable trackers are possibe, meaning for camping, cabins, etc.
The main cost of solar system today is not the panel but the installation.
Does the concentration still work with overcast skies?
yeah depending on the system, and specifics but yeah!
I wonder if you look deeper into the materials of the new designs how much of the total is recyclable?
Aluminum tubing to diffuse heat and reflect light in the light concentrator rings?
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Again, thank you!great presentation
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Another idea to address overheating might be some kind of responsive tinting in the glass. I'm thinking similar to eyeglasses that become sunglasses in bright light. Perhaps that reaction can be tuned to the optimal light level the cell needs.
@Mitchell Couchman Nah, I'm talking about reducing the light only at the point where the pv cell reaches its limit. Any additional light at that point will be lost anyway.
@Mitchell Couchman No need to yell. I understand what you said. We're just talking about different issues.
@Mitchell Couchman The problem with pulling heat out to do work is the extra cost and maintenance required for that equipment. Doping glass to make it tint in sunlight is relatively cheap and adds no moving parts.
A similar idea would be smart glass, but I'm not sure if that can be made cheap enough.
@Mitchell Couchman Tracking might be solved with lenses. If you can bring the cost down enough, you don't need nearly as much performance per cell.
@Mitchell Couchman There is one shown in this video.
Help me understand: Since the cell conversion rate is 30%, the remaining 70% of the energy becomes HEAT. If the NON-magnified cell temperature rises about 25 degrees C, a 665X cocentrator will cause a rise of 25 x 665 = 16000 degrees C! The life-span of the cell will be measured in micro-seconds!!!
It sounds like you need the Stanford concentrator and the backing to be used for solar water ' heating ' to assist in cooling the panels.
Future looks bright Mate!
Excellent video! Thanks a lot!
I know people love technology news channels like this as they are the single one source of good news. Yes, we all want to hear great news, but drifting away from reality will be worse in the end. ..and for your info the end already seized Europe where burning wood and coal is the real prospect.
The energy crisis hit Europe before the war in Ukraine due to the failure of renewable energy technologies. Even worse, it was always known stuff like these solar panels were never near enough for mass consumption. Why did they go ahead anyway?
One reason was unrealistic expectations based on good news like this one.
Here in America, according to Goldman Sachs, renewable energy technologies have received almost 4 TRILLION dollars over the past decade. Yet, fossil fuel contribution to energy supply stayed around 80%, barely dropping 1 or 2%
A serious evaluation on technologies is way due. The internet is full of amazing technologies to change the world, turn everything around, etc. Quantum computers, cold fusion, nanotechnology, etc. But all that I notice is petty, fun and shiny tech gadgets. Medicine, meantime , cannot heal chronic pain, like rheumatoid arthritis or gout.
Great video and some great comments. But how can solar power the whole world? How do you store the energy to use at night? Solar is great in many countries but not in Northern Europe. Especially Britain. London in the South is further North than any city in Canada.
Something that Rick implied is the the heat could go to a sand battery. It's interesting, but I'm not sure if it would get hot enough, or cool it enough.
Gives a whole new interpretation to, "pound sand!"
A better question is which substance would be called on to carry the heat back and forth?
@@jovetj that would be water.
@@klepow Yeah, and then when that's not found to be efficient enough...?
There are many solar farms popping up here in north Texas. I am curious as to how the ground around them always grass free. Surely they are not poisoning our ground water with herbicides?
In western Washington I have not had to clean my panels since they were installed 3 years ago. The pitch of my roof is just enough that they self clean but also allow the northern side of my roof to get sunlight so I can put more panels there.
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thank you for refraining from saying this is a gamechanger.
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Can that lens be adapted as a retrofit for curent panels?!
Even at 3suns you would have a power increase and way better efficiency in cloudy days, without having to worry about the heat.
yeah, you'd need a massive lens for a standard big array, but maybe i'll mess around and try to make my own in a future episode!
Is it possible to use a thermo- electric cells as a backings behind the PV cells to reduce thermal degradation and also provide extra electricity.
interesting...
I think the problem would be whether the thermoelectric cell would drain heat fast enough to cool the PV cell. Perhaps adding a prism to separate the infrared light from the visible light and shine that on the thermoelectric cell instead?
@@Israel_Two_Bit I do believe a thermo-electric cell system would also have to incorporate a heat sink, perhaps one buried in the ground or a water cooled system even perhaps providing hot water.
Can we buy those panels with new technology and which site link
11:52 "Set it and forget it" until the next hailstorm.
There are three ways to install an inefficient solar panel on a roof. And those three ways are seen far more often than they ought to be.
The active cooling combined with the new thermal energy generation that was demonstrated recently by Penn State seems like a good match. Small areas generating high heat might be a good way to go, provided the costs can be kept down. I can picture liquid cooling behind the panel using radiator fins to pass the heat to a reservoir, and then harvesting the thermal energy for electricity. This assumes optimal temperature ranges overlapping, of course, but the potential seems worthy of investigation.
Also, by using a medium with high heat density one could potentially store the energy for later harvesting (at night, for example). If combined with some variants of wind, again assuming costs are reasonable, there are high potential gains here.
this could also be done in reverse, filtering all but infrared to make heat for industrial use.
Simplist fix is a water filled chamber with the magnifiers on the outside of a One Way mirror allowing the rays to be trapped and bouncing.
The heated water can then be used for heating and cooling similar to the operation of a heat pump.
Want to go to the next level?
Since it is going to be producing temperature disparities use it as well with the best surface metallic spray for additional electrical generation.
Use the force Luke.
For every force there's an equal and opposite force so using both of them will definitely increase their potential output
🤗🤩🤩😎👍REALLY FASCINATING,RICKY 💚💚💚
Can they make PV panels in a triangle shape rather than rectangular/square? That would allow installing more panels on average roof styles. A geodesic dome building made with solar panels (sunny side of course), would be fantastic.
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