Which of these areas of research catches your eye? Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code UNDECIDED at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: incogni.com/undecided If you liked this, check out The Weird Science Behind Living Solar Panels ruclips.net/video/v8jsWkU6HdI/видео.html
Can you do an episode on thermophotovoltaic cells? And a colab with somebody where you show how to turn ordinary solar into 2500 degrees C (infrared solar cells can do 40%!) (at relatively high temps ...)
Love the optimism tempered with realism here. It’s easy to get swept up in the potential of solar, but these advancements really bring a balanced perspective on the future, especially with dye concentrators boosting efficiency in diffuse light. Great content!
There's no real practical way to recycle them. Most recycling of objects that have lots ofn Combined materials requires even more materials to process them back into components. Acids to melt and extract specific elements, and then extract the element back out. Creating vapours and just new chemicals that don't have any use and so are classed as hazardous waste products. Same with batteries. There's no real practical way devised yet for recycling lithium batteries. One factory I've heard of is starting to work on it at small scale, but that's about it.
In Syria, we use solar energy a lot. We focus on rebuilding home appliances in a 12v friendly way, but unfortunately we do it in a primitive way. I think we should focus on how to reduce the consumption of home appliances instead of increasing energy production.
@@Mohamed-wd1cv I had thought that yall were still trying to throw of the yoke of the Assad regime. Hunker down. Things will get real in the next few years as war engulfs the planet for a third time. And well we know where Assad will go
True. Batteries with rooftop solar is like magic IMO with that ~24hr clean power. They're almost like two parts of a whole like ying & yang. But, in practice, there are people and organizations that special in either of these technical specialties but not both. You wouldn't expect one group to halt R&D and investments in their specialty just for the other group to catch up. Besides that, as good as solar panels are, there is always room for them to get cheaper, improve efficiency, durability and use less materials. A common 400W solar panel is about $150 USD wholesale but wouldn't it be better if it were, say, $75? You'll be buying a dozen or more for most residential rooftop installations. It's also about the size of a 4ft x 8ft drywall sheet in area but wouldn't it be better if it were 75% or less of that? I'm still waiting for passive quantum dot film technology. It'll just be a layer in front of the silicon solar cells that will convert higher frequency light waves (optical) to lower frequency (infrared) that silicon is most reactive to. All that higher frequency light is otherwise reflected or absorbed as heat without triggering the photoelectric effect. It also matches up better with our sun since our sun emits most of its energy in the visible light spectrum.
It doesn't necessarily need to be only battery technology. Other forms of energy storage would be fine if they are relatively inexpensive and efficient and reliable and practical in many locations. Or perhaps it will be that a number of such technologies will be developed with each being used in places that are most appropriate for the technology being used. It could be pumping air into containers under water with extreme pressure. It could be heating up special liquids to extreme temperatures. It could be pumping water up hills to reservoirs. There are other possible solutions. We definitely need better batteries but that's not the only energy storage solution that should be researched.
Yeah but we need to remember that industrial applications take a lot of power. We should think bigger than merely residential or other civilian purposes. In the industries, if they can save cents, they would because of their volume that one cent difference can amount to a lot of money.
@@gamechannel1271 absolutely, I'm really interested in the heat cell batteries salt, sand ect. They are cheappp but need more efficient energy recovery. Same problem multiple avenues.
interesting research that's definitely worth keeping an eye on. It would be interesting to see whatever happened to some of the "old" solar research has gone. Remember solar roads, and solar sidewalks and solar roofing, which I see in youtubes ads that I always figure are another one of those scams just hoping I mistakenly click on it.
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of dead ideas along the solar research highway ... like the solar highway 😂. Even though some of those ideas were clearly never going to go anywhere, I'm always curious if they spawned any new ideas that did.
5 years ago I was involved in project using solar panels and mirrors to improve the performance in an urban application. It worked but got really complicated - ultimately using the mirrors to track the sun coupled with tracking for the solar panels. There were significant gains.
@@brunobrauer6301 I presume you're American so I'm typing slowly... Tracking the sun during the day in order maximise solar gain and sunlight is standard practice in larger solar arrays.
@@brunobrauer6301 Just guessing, but probably to get more accurate real time data. If the solar panel moves without correcting it, it will bring down the efficiency and if you are using a predetermined path its harder to correct any misalignment.
@@AL-lh2ht I presume you are also American so I am gonna go extra slow. The tracking here is not about figuring out where the sun is, but rather moving the mirror and the panel so they can take advantage. Let me know if you want me to slow it down more.
They all look very interesting. Perhaps we will one day see a combination of some of these technologies where they help each other to be better? Anything that improves solar technology is a benefit to civilization. I hope at least one of them makes it!
For 3D structures, keep in mind that the best you can do is collect energy in relationship to the thrown shadow of the structure. For a single structure such as a globe, this can be useful, but the concept breaks down very quickly as the collection area increases. This concept (the use of 3D structures) breaks down as the area you have to work with grows larger. A rooftop full of flat solar panels will be cheaper and easier to construct and still collect virtually the same amount of light as a rooftop full of globes or mechanical structure. It might require more solar panels, but it can still end up being cheaper because there are no moving parts and the panels are more structurally resilient. Incident light collected from other directions will be far lower energy, but the same concept applies. The larger the collection area, the less useful 3D structures are verses regular panels. Diffuse light collection from other directions works the same way... the larger the collection area, the less useful 3D structures become. -Matt
I've read that if we could build a globe about 40,000 km in diameter with a surface that is 71% water and 29% soil, rock or glaciers and with an atmosphere that is approximately 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% argon and 0.04% carbon dioxide then that globe might be able to capture a significant amount of solar energy.
I love the graphic at 7:22. I think the possibility of recapturing energy expended by indoor lighting is something that I've never really considered but makes a lot of sense. Even if the efficiency is low (or very low), it would be better than nothing. Reusable energy, in a way. Particularly in the winter months when we use more indoor lighting. Would be really interesting to know if any companies are working on projects to make indoor PV panels a thing.
iv got 2 1,000 lumen solar powered lights in my lounge that have a remote, supposed to be used for garage/driveway, the 2 panels are 25cm square and inside my windows. I use light filtered from kitchen light in the evenings on my laptop, but having these lights gives me a boost when i want extra light. They do much better than i thought they would, when fully charged they last an entire winter evening, but in winter, it takes 3-4 days to fully charge them
You of all youtubers deserve more followers! You've excited the STEM mind of mine and let my mind wonder well outside the metaphorical box. Thank you! Also since fixing my sub on your last video i'm finally seeing it within 12 hours vs the 3 days prior.
I am from India, I just watched the video in Hindi, i'd say it's working pretty good other than the lip sync it's working wonderfully!! it's not translating all the words like solar and efficiency, just like we do in real life so that's a plus ig
@@deepak00singh34 well original is always better ig for us long time viewers since we know matt's real voice, but it should be good for new folks specially who don't get English
As for using large pieces of land for solar farms, parking lots should be an easy win. I get making them fit and the taller installed height may cost more, but it doesn't take any extra space that isn't currently being used.
An excellent idea - similarly, EV charging stations could have a solar roof over them - for some reason it seems that EV charging areas are uncovered yet fossil fuel stations are not.
Put the dies over the metal buses and have them do side emission into the panel coating. No shadowing and maybe could be applied as a painted grid on top. Smart engineering will figure out how to pattern these as wave guides.
"Wonder if these technologies could be called a sorcery?" Yes, CPU is already a thinking stone that consumes mana (electricity) from dark material (magnets) by holy harness (electric wires).
I have been picking at a nitinol-based way of targeting the sun with solar, just using some mirrors to hit dark areas of the nitinol when the cell isn't pointed well, then using the heat to reshape the holder to track the sun passively.
one of the big issues the Australian CSIRO found when you made more efficient layered panels above 40% was heat. Increasing panel efficiency means you also have to develop a cooling system to compensate for all the heat that is generated.
Growing crops under/around solar arrays is an interesting potential to reduce the cost of purchasing the land to use for just solar arrays by allowing the farmer/landowner to continue to use the land. However, most of the implementations that I have seen use standard opaque solar arrays. As such the area directly under the arrays only get indirect light, reducing the types of crops that can be grown in the shadows. However, if the arrays were the thin film arrays discussed in this video that could be tuned to absorb only specific frequencies of light, then those frequencies which plants use most could be allowed to pass through the arrays while all of the other frequencies are absorbed by the panels and turned into electricity. Plants that require "full sun" could then still grow below the arrays.
Another interesting technique to extract more power out of solar panels with their existing technology is to cool them. Cooling should be done by installing fluid tubes to the backs of the panels. The heat from this can even be used for domestic hot water. Years ago when I was visiting universities for work I got introduced to this idea, I was sure that that would be next big thing, but I don't see many manufacturers with this combined tech. Hope Matt can cover this topic at one point, or if anyone else in the comments has any experience, please let me know!
The self moving micro panels seem like more delicate failure points. Ice and snow seem like they'd end up being outside the force abilities of such small movements. And hail strikes also would seem problematic to thin flex points. Flexible so it can be wrapped on surfaces is fabulous though.
Question please: I've been kicking around the idea of (basically) lining the inside of a 3D shape (sphere, dodecahedron, ...) with photovoltaic cells, and then 'piping' sunlight into the vessel, so that the light generates electricity, but also the reflected light also generates electricity. Have you seen anything like this, or is it (in your opinion) just a pipe dream? I have no concept of how much light is reflected off of a solar cell/panel...and if the reflected light is usable for producing more electricity. Thanks Matt.
The most expensive part of solar is the labor installing it. You can capitalize the land acquisition costs and last is artificially expensive. We need to remove the installer or make it so installation is so easy that it doesn’t require as much labor
I think the Solar everywhere approach is by far the one with the most potential. Even if those individual cells are considerably less efficient, the sheer abundance of them should be a huge boost. If it can be made into some kind of sticky back film that can cut anywhere and applied to almost any surface, and can be done cheaply, then I think it's pretty much energy problem solved.
If only it were that simple. If they were miraculously half the price of current panels, sure, I can see that take off. But unfortunately for many years it’s probably still going to be more expensive. Hopefully I’m wrong, though!
you could also set up a simple window wiper system that just sprays water on the panel then a car like window wiper swipes across the panel cleaning in and removing dust water snow
Pedantic point, but shape memory alloys (SMAs) aren’t moving the solar panels without a motor. SMA is a motor (in the same way cilia in bacteria can be a motor). Just not the type that people are most familiar with.
can you do a video on the most advanced or potentially latest sewage treatments available now or in the future? i.e what can happen instead of just the dilution of sewage into the ocean or our waterways.
It's pretty much a given that if PV cells hit near 80% efficiency you will see them on the roofs of every EV, and on hoods/trunks too. Charging is the Achilles heel of EV's and a panel that can recharge a pack in near real time would render ICE all but obsolete 🔥🔥🔥 And the applications don't end there - large roof vehicles like vans, trucks, buses, portable DC to AC inverters/generators, high-concentration dwelling applications, high-energy demand industries and remote/off-grid installs. Be excited for what is to come!!
the 3D panels could be VERY helpful in space applications allowing portions of panel to bend to make the most of the sunlight hitting them with less mechanical parts to fail
I have a tiny Decathlon flexible solar power (it's more like two panels jointed, really xD) that feeds into a USB stick and have used it a few times either hitched to a camping tent or draped over my backpack (I live in Italy, so summer has plenty of sun to go by) to charge my phone or external battery. If these techs could lead to more of this stuff, I'd love to give it a go ^^
I think that reducing the thickness of the solar cells will be more beneficial if they are placed in layers that are in between each other and transmit light to them.
They say that using masers in various ways helps increase the astrophysics photos become more detailed. So maybe by combining some sort of new technology quantum structures like some sort of nano fibers that trap light and bounce it around that enhances the energy. Also if the substance generates masers that further enhances the solar energy!
What really buggs me about incogni is that how it's advertised. "You don't want others to handle all your privat data right? Then just give us full legal rights over all your private data and the legal rights to mange those so that others don't"
The multi-junction tech is looking promising... but it's always looked promising. The mechanical tech and memory materials are a non-starter... no structural strength in inclement conditions (and will never achieve structural strength). Diffuse light can only generate a small portion of what would be generated in direct sun, though. Its like chasing crumbs. There just isn't much energy there to collect in the first place and no amount of technology can change that. UV is basically direct sun through a layer of clouds (you don't get UV from diffuse light). This will have significantly greater incident energy verses diffuse light, but it will still be maybe 1/10th what you get with direct unobstructed sunlight. Diffuse light: 1/30th the energy. UV light (direct sun through clouds): 1/10th the energy Direct unobstructed sunlight: Baseline energy for the above You can easily test this for yourself simply by building a simple thermal collector and seeing how much heat it is able to collect. This is more or less the best-case scenario in terms of energy collection. Something like 90% of the light's energy is collected, it just isn't converted into a useful form outside of thermal (heat). -Matt
Again, the issue is perovskite's stability and scalability, not efficiency. These two metrics are extremely poor in perovskite materials, which are worse than CdTe and much worse than Silicon. Not to mention the toxicity of perovskite which is much more toxic than elemental lead and CdTe.
This is all very interesting, but regular silicon multi junction cells with quantum filters will likely have enough efficiency to make placement sort of an afterthought. Plus, they'll still last basically forever & generate enough energy to make 1000's of more panels for each one we make. Manufacturing techniques just need to be implemented & scaled up. We're already basically there on that technology. Ten years from now Fusion will likely also be an afterthought.
Hey Matt I have an unrelated question to this video but I was watching the Net Zero house build and couldn't stop wondering why not build it with ICF? was it because you wanted a prefab process or is it a worse way of building? I'm looking at a lot of options for my future house and your opinion would be very helpful as i wanted to be as air tight nd efficient as it can be.
My problem with solar are the scummy sales tactics. They know your electric bill and your panels magically cost your electric bill. Then I got look at wholesale prices and just marvel at the markup they put on panels. As with anything if it’s semi fixed price the efficiency goes up and let’s say the price of the panel stayed the same. These scummy sales people will just lower the panel count and raise the price per panel. We see this in the EV industry where the price magically falls when tax incentives go away and when renewed the prices went back up. For many the federal incentive is the cost of a mobile charger and a hard wired charger in a home and some left over.
9:35 I have seen too many explainations of electricity as electrons moving as if they were little balls or water moving inside a hose. The analogy of electriicity behaving as a fluid (or a stream of balls) can be useful, but it is necessary to make the distinction. Electrons don't move out of the atom they belong to, otherwise the material would be changed (e.g., into an isotope) and at some point it may run out of electrons. Electricity is not composed by particles (e.g., a stream of a fluid or of little balls) but by a field (and charge, etc.). The former is easy to understand as we see that in our human experience, but we don't experience "fields" (with all their perks like current, charge, orthogonal magnetic field, etc.). We cannot touch or hold a field in our hands as we could do with particles (like little balls) or a fluid like water. It is difficult to explain electromagnetism in a simple relatable way (I remark that I acknowledge that), but that is no excuse to explain it incorrectly. Nonetheless thank you for your videos, they are super interesting and well made despite the mistakes.
Other than the memory material tracking, what’s different about using the folding array there vs. plain classic PV and an array of tiny panels? Why can’t we just put static tiny panels all over everything? A huge problem I can see with the memory wire moving panels in many places is potential for damage - sure, they may not need mechanical maintenance like sun trackers, but those things look *really* frail - I imagine them hanging off the back of a bench and then some kid bangs their bike against it and there go a half dozen of them. Personally, I think it’s cool and great that we’re exploring these technologies, but I also think we should just throw current PV anywhere convenient - if we covered every parking lot with awnings covered in them, that would probably be a huge amount of power we’re just missing out on… plus keep our cars cooler! And as we get the newest tech we can just upgrade things
A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"-- A.C. Clark. Corollary: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Everybody even people in comments afraid of this change as it can be seen. Change is always scary. Company scare of this technology. If you know a company who invest on this give me the name.
I'm fortunate enough to have enough roof area facing in near optimal orientation so that my solar panels are 100% efficient, meaning that they reduce the total energy bill on my all-electric home to $0.00 per month. I don't need any more efficiency than that.😀
Seems to me that the solar concentrator dyes are poorly described. The notion that coating a surface with anything can somehow increase (concentrate) the radiation (light) incident upon it is absurd. The only plausible, functioning similar concept I can envision would be a fluorescent sort of dye that would absorb radiation of higher frequency than what the PV module can absorb and reradiate that at the lower frequency that the PV module can absorb. If that’s what’s going on here, would it be that hard to say so?
@@seanrhone5306you do realise that monetarily speaking if you apy for 2k dollars worth of solar cells you will make it back in savings in like 2 years. That 22 percent efficiency is different. You seem to confuse technology and money
@@seanrhone5306Got quite the deranged fanatic 'ere, 'ent we, lads? Do you hold on to your car so long it becomes a classic and you "get your money back"? Are you waiting for your computer to become an antique so you can sell it to a museum and "get your money back"?
There are a lot of potential problems if you want to cover an electric car with solar panels. The color of such cars may be the least of them. Then again, most people buying a new car like being able to choose between different colors and finishes. If you add a red dye to the panels that makes them more efficient, it might make EVs covered in solar panels even more attractive. Or not. I am guessing that dye isn't going to color the panels cherry apple red.
If we could just make a roofing material that catches solar energy, we would be winners. See-through panels for windows are another big winner. the vast exterior of our homes, factories, and office blocks become power plants. However, if we had vast paddocks full of panels and no cows for meat and milk, we become losers.
I am positive I was subscribed to this channel, but when I checked, I wasn't. This is the second site in two days that I had to subscribe to again. I just wished I could remember which one I had been unsubscribed from yesterday. I just checked a half-dozen other channels, and I was still subscribed to them. I usually watch RUclips on a PC connected to my TV. In addition to subscribing to channels I like, I bookmark the videos page for the channel. I never "ring the bell" because I don't need a billion notifications, but if I don't see a video from a creator I like, I can check their page to see if they've uploaded anything. But what's up with people being unsubscribed from Matt's channel? Could it be there is a guy working at RUclips who hates indecisive content creators?
Why are these solar panel companies getting excited about the possibility of putting solar panels on cars when there are already cars with solar panels on them. OK, Sono failed to go into production but they did have working prototypes, and there is that three wheel vehicle that is suppose to be super efficient, and then wasn't there a Dutch super expensive solar car. Basically we already have the technology to put solar panels on cars, so why are researchers getting excited about the possibility of doing somethings that has already been done?
I believe you had a video demonstrating photovoltaics perpendicular to the sun showed an increase in performance??? If that is the case, 3D doesn't seem as beneficial as it may be sold as.
Which of these areas of research catches your eye? Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code UNDECIDED at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: incogni.com/undecided
If you liked this, check out The Weird Science Behind Living Solar Panels ruclips.net/video/v8jsWkU6HdI/видео.html
Can you do an episode on thermophotovoltaic cells? And a colab with somebody where you show how to turn ordinary solar into 2500 degrees C (infrared solar cells can do 40%!) (at relatively high temps ...)
Yep, that's the problem with solar cells. which one will stand out in the market?
You are right.......RUclips is outright scaming you, I am sure I was subscribed, but YT unsubscribed me. 😡
Love the optimism tempered with realism here. It’s easy to get swept up in the potential of solar, but these advancements really bring a balanced perspective on the future, especially with dye concentrators boosting efficiency in diffuse light. Great content!
Solar cell servicing and recycling should be explored and talked about more
Nope...ZPE. Zero Point Energy...that's what needs to be DISCLOSED.
@@edgewood99is it possible? It's not proven.
There's no real practical way to recycle them. Most recycling of objects that have lots ofn
Combined materials requires even more materials to process them back into components. Acids to melt and extract specific elements, and then extract the element back out. Creating vapours and just new chemicals that don't have any use and so are classed as hazardous waste products.
Same with batteries. There's no real practical way devised yet for recycling lithium batteries. One factory I've heard of is starting to work on it at small scale, but that's about it.
@@ge2719 "As of 2023, there are dozens of lithium-ion battery recycling plants operating worldwide...."- chatgpt 🤗
just throw it in the trash can we aint ever fixng trash
In Syria, we use solar energy a lot. We focus on rebuilding home appliances in a 12v friendly way, but unfortunately we do it in a primitive way. I think we should focus on how to reduce the consumption of home appliances instead of increasing energy production.
You're on to something very smart there. Reducing consumption, while still getting usefulness out of appliances is a worthy goal.
We should build more things to be serviceable and future proof.
A lot ? Cap. Installing 4 panels per 5-story building is not that impressive.
@@Mohamed-wd1cv I had thought that yall were still trying to throw of the yoke of the Assad regime. Hunker down. Things will get real in the next few years as war engulfs the planet for a third time. And well we know where Assad will go
@@nibrasalchoufi3450 Yeah I'm sure a country still recovering from a war is just raring to go with big fancy infrastructure projects
What we really need are innovations on battery technology. Solar panels are already the cheapest piece of the puzzle.
True. Batteries with rooftop solar is like magic IMO with that ~24hr clean power. They're almost like two parts of a whole like ying & yang. But, in practice, there are people and organizations that special in either of these technical specialties but not both. You wouldn't expect one group to halt R&D and investments in their specialty just for the other group to catch up.
Besides that, as good as solar panels are, there is always room for them to get cheaper, improve efficiency, durability and use less materials. A common 400W solar panel is about $150 USD wholesale but wouldn't it be better if it were, say, $75? You'll be buying a dozen or more for most residential rooftop installations. It's also about the size of a 4ft x 8ft drywall sheet in area but wouldn't it be better if it were 75% or less of that?
I'm still waiting for passive quantum dot film technology. It'll just be a layer in front of the silicon solar cells that will convert higher frequency light waves (optical) to lower frequency (infrared) that silicon is most reactive to. All that higher frequency light is otherwise reflected or absorbed as heat without triggering the photoelectric effect. It also matches up better with our sun since our sun emits most of its energy in the visible light spectrum.
There are many with limited roof space, so a higher power density could be very attractive, even if prices were higher per watt.
It doesn't necessarily need to be only battery technology.
Other forms of energy storage would be fine if they are relatively inexpensive and efficient and reliable and practical in many locations.
Or perhaps it will be that a number of such technologies will be developed with each being used in places that are most appropriate for the technology being used.
It could be pumping air into containers under water with extreme pressure.
It could be heating up special liquids to extreme temperatures.
It could be pumping water up hills to reservoirs.
There are other possible solutions.
We definitely need better batteries but that's not the only energy storage solution that should be researched.
Yeah but we need to remember that industrial applications take a lot of power. We should think bigger than merely residential or other civilian purposes. In the industries, if they can save cents, they would because of their volume that one cent difference can amount to a lot of money.
@@gamechannel1271 absolutely, I'm really interested in the heat cell batteries salt, sand ect. They are cheappp but need more efficient energy recovery. Same problem multiple avenues.
waiting for spray paint solar, wil be great on rooftops and quick to repair
interesting research that's definitely worth keeping an eye on. It would be interesting to see whatever happened to some of the "old" solar research has gone. Remember solar roads, and solar sidewalks and solar roofing, which I see in youtubes ads that I always figure are another one of those scams just hoping I mistakenly click on it.
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of dead ideas along the solar research highway ... like the solar highway 😂. Even though some of those ideas were clearly never going to go anywhere, I'm always curious if they spawned any new ideas that did.
What happened to the clear PV to use on office buildings? It is fun to watch things evolve and I have been doing so for decades.
5 years ago I was involved in project using solar panels and mirrors to improve the performance in an urban application. It worked but got really complicated - ultimately using the mirrors to track the sun coupled with tracking for the solar panels. There were significant gains.
Track the sun? The sun's position is known for the next couple of thousand years, every second of the year, why 'track' it?
@@brunobrauer6301 I presume you're American so I'm typing slowly... Tracking the sun during the day in order maximise solar gain and sunlight is standard practice in larger solar arrays.
@@steverichmond7142buddy I get you hate Americans but you can’t just pretend to misunderstand what he said.
@@brunobrauer6301 Just guessing, but probably to get more accurate real time data. If the solar panel moves without correcting it, it will bring down the efficiency and if you are using a predetermined path its harder to correct any misalignment.
@@AL-lh2ht I presume you are also American so I am gonna go extra slow. The tracking here is not about figuring out where the sun is, but rather moving the mirror and the panel so they can take advantage. Let me know if you want me to slow it down more.
"The future so bright, I have to wear" Perovskite" shades 😎!
??
@@zurgmuckerberg it's a song. lol
@zurgmuckerberg a paraphrase from song lyrics by Timbuk 3 while referencing the benefits of Perovskite.
@@ricoma6037 lol. I thought it's bot comment. 😂
😅 @@zurgmuckerberg
They all look very interesting.
Perhaps we will one day see a combination of some of these technologies where they help each other to be better?
Anything that improves solar technology is a benefit to civilization.
I hope at least one of them makes it!
For 3D structures, keep in mind that the best you can do is collect energy in relationship to the thrown shadow of the structure. For a single structure such as a globe, this can be useful, but the concept breaks down very quickly as the collection area increases.
This concept (the use of 3D structures) breaks down as the area you have to work with grows larger. A rooftop full of flat solar panels will be cheaper and easier to construct and still collect virtually the same amount of light as a rooftop full of globes or mechanical structure. It might require more solar panels, but it can still end up being cheaper because there are no moving parts and the panels are more structurally resilient.
Incident light collected from other directions will be far lower energy, but the same concept applies. The larger the collection area, the less useful 3D structures are verses regular panels. Diffuse light collection from other directions works the same way... the larger the collection area, the less useful 3D structures become.
-Matt
I've read that if we could build a globe about 40,000 km in diameter with a surface that is
71% water and 29% soil, rock or glaciers
and with an atmosphere that is approximately
78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% argon and 0.04% carbon dioxide
then that globe might be able to capture a significant amount of solar energy.
I love the graphic at 7:22. I think the possibility of recapturing energy expended by indoor lighting is something that I've never really considered but makes a lot of sense. Even if the efficiency is low (or very low), it would be better than nothing. Reusable energy, in a way. Particularly in the winter months when we use more indoor lighting. Would be really interesting to know if any companies are working on projects to make indoor PV panels a thing.
iv got 2 1,000 lumen solar powered lights in my lounge that have a remote, supposed to be used for garage/driveway, the 2 panels are 25cm square and inside my windows. I use light filtered from kitchen light in the evenings on my laptop, but having these lights gives me a boost when i want extra light. They do much better than i thought they would, when fully charged they last an entire winter evening, but in winter, it takes 3-4 days to fully charge them
You of all youtubers deserve more followers! You've excited the STEM mind of mine and let my mind wonder well outside the metaphorical box. Thank you! Also since fixing my sub on your last video i'm finally seeing it within 12 hours vs the 3 days prior.
Holy sh.... I'm surprising that you're talking about my Alma Mater :D Nice to hear about polish reasearches on Undecided!
I am from India, I just watched the video in Hindi, i'd say it's working pretty good other than the lip sync it's working wonderfully!!
it's not translating all the words like solar and efficiency, just like we do in real life so that's a plus ig
but its weird , i changed the audio to english quickly
@@deepak00singh34 well original is always better ig for us long time viewers since we know matt's real voice, but it should be good for new folks specially who don't get English
I don't speak the language but tried it, I'm impressed they got the rhythm/pacing right.
As for using large pieces of land for solar farms, parking lots should be an easy win. I get making them fit and the taller installed height may cost more, but it doesn't take any extra space that isn't currently being used.
And they make shade too !
An excellent idea - similarly, EV charging stations could have a solar roof over them - for some reason it seems that EV charging areas are uncovered yet fossil fuel stations are not.
so many urban applications for solar that could already be being used, like bus shelters, shops, churches, street lights
Put the dies over the metal buses and have them do side emission into the panel coating. No shadowing and maybe could be applied as a painted grid on top. Smart engineering will figure out how to pattern these as wave guides.
Nice technical video! This technology could be a game changer! Solar panels intergated everywhere!
"Wonder if these technologies could be called a sorcery?"
Yes, CPU is already a thinking stone that consumes mana (electricity) from dark material (magnets) by holy harness (electric wires).
I'd be interested in seeing if any of these can work along with Quantum Dots.
I have been picking at a nitinol-based way of targeting the sun with solar, just using some mirrors to hit dark areas of the nitinol when the cell isn't pointed well, then using the heat to reshape the holder to track the sun passively.
Great work, alway interesting. :-)
Love this, the perovskite especially. They also print them in Cardiff University in the UK.
Have a video on the subject 😅
Thank you and good morning!
Good morning
one of the big issues the Australian CSIRO found when you made more efficient layered panels above 40% was heat. Increasing panel efficiency means you also have to develop a cooling system to compensate for all the heat that is generated.
Growing crops under/around solar arrays is an interesting potential to reduce the cost of purchasing the land to use for just solar arrays by allowing the farmer/landowner to continue to use the land. However, most of the implementations that I have seen use standard opaque solar arrays. As such the area directly under the arrays only get indirect light, reducing the types of crops that can be grown in the shadows.
However, if the arrays were the thin film arrays discussed in this video that could be tuned to absorb only specific frequencies of light, then those frequencies which plants use most could be allowed to pass through the arrays while all of the other frequencies are absorbed by the panels and turned into electricity. Plants that require "full sun" could then still grow below the arrays.
Thank you and have a great week.
Another interesting technique to extract more power out of solar panels with their existing technology is to cool them. Cooling should be done by installing fluid tubes to the backs of the panels. The heat from this can even be used for domestic hot water. Years ago when I was visiting universities for work I got introduced to this idea, I was sure that that would be next big thing, but I don't see many manufacturers with this combined tech. Hope Matt can cover this topic at one point, or if anyone else in the comments has any experience, please let me know!
oh a high quality science channel Subbed and ty
Fun fact!
The Hooloovoo were created while looking for a dye concentrator.
Exciting, this was all very cool stuff. Future can be bright
The dye catches my eye.
The self moving micro panels seem like more delicate failure points. Ice and snow seem like they'd end up being outside the force abilities of such small movements. And hail strikes also would seem problematic to thin flex points. Flexible so it can be wrapped on surfaces is fabulous though.
Question please: I've been kicking around the idea of (basically) lining the inside of a 3D shape (sphere, dodecahedron, ...) with photovoltaic cells, and then 'piping' sunlight into the vessel, so that the light generates electricity, but also the reflected light also generates electricity. Have you seen anything like this, or is it (in your opinion) just a pipe dream?
I have no concept of how much light is reflected off of a solar cell/panel...and if the reflected light is usable for producing more electricity.
Thanks Matt.
I have seen a company working on that, they are called WAVJA. There was an article back in July about the tech.
The most expensive part of solar is the labor installing it. You can capitalize the land acquisition costs and last is artificially expensive. We need to remove the installer or make it so installation is so easy that it doesn’t require as much labor
I am imagining forest of these bendy solar panels like leaves on a tree like pole, with a lush understory underneath!
The Dye Concentrator concept makes me think of retroreflective signs, related technology?
Not at all. Dye Concentrators.
10:10. Great Scott!!! Red dyes added efficiencies of 1.21 Giga….wait…..sorry….ahem….please continue, Matt.
I think the Solar everywhere approach is by far the one with the most potential.
Even if those individual cells are considerably less efficient, the sheer abundance of them should be a huge boost.
If it can be made into some kind of sticky back film that can cut anywhere and applied to almost any surface, and can be done cheaply, then I think it's pretty much energy problem solved.
If only it were that simple. If they were miraculously half the price of current panels, sure, I can see that take off. But unfortunately for many years it’s probably still going to be more expensive. Hopefully I’m wrong, though!
you could also set up a simple window wiper system that just sprays water on the panel then a car like window wiper swipes across the panel cleaning in and removing dust water snow
Imagine seeing your roof moving to face the sun 😂
Prosket is the most interesting and flexibility added to panels this two combined can open the doors to various future prospects
Pedantic point, but shape memory alloys (SMAs) aren’t moving the solar panels without a motor. SMA is a motor (in the same way cilia in bacteria can be a motor). Just not the type that people are most familiar with.
can you do a video on the most advanced or potentially latest sewage treatments available now or in the future? i.e what can happen instead of just the dilution of sewage into the ocean or our waterways.
It's pretty much a given that if PV cells hit near 80% efficiency you will see them on the roofs of every EV, and on hoods/trunks too. Charging is the Achilles heel of EV's and a panel that can recharge a pack in near real time would render ICE all but obsolete 🔥🔥🔥
And the applications don't end there - large roof vehicles like vans, trucks, buses, portable DC to AC inverters/generators, high-concentration dwelling applications, high-energy demand industries and remote/off-grid installs. Be excited for what is to come!!
Interesting stuff, wouldn't know about any of these developments without you. Can't wait until some of this becomes reality.
the 3D panels could be VERY helpful in space applications allowing portions of panel to bend to make the most of the sunlight hitting them with less mechanical parts to fail
Love the new intro music, btw
I have a tiny Decathlon flexible solar power (it's more like two panels jointed, really xD) that feeds into a USB stick and have used it a few times either hitched to a camping tent or draped over my backpack (I live in Italy, so summer has plenty of sun to go by) to charge my phone or external battery.
If these techs could lead to more of this stuff, I'd love to give it a go ^^
I think that reducing the thickness of the solar cells will be more beneficial if they are placed in layers that are in between each other and transmit light to them.
They say that using masers in various ways helps increase the astrophysics photos become more detailed. So maybe by combining some sort of new technology quantum structures like some sort of nano fibers that trap light and bounce it around that enhances the energy. Also if the substance generates masers that further enhances the solar energy!
Thank you Matt.
What really buggs me about incogni is that how it's advertised. "You don't want others to handle all your privat data right? Then just give us full legal rights over all your private data and the legal rights to mange those so that others don't"
What is the building with solar facade at 13:42 ? The last slide. I want to know what architecture firms are doing that.
Can't wait to paint the town red....😆
The multi-junction tech is looking promising... but it's always looked promising. The mechanical tech and memory materials are a non-starter... no structural strength in inclement conditions (and will never achieve structural strength).
Diffuse light can only generate a small portion of what would be generated in direct sun, though. Its like chasing crumbs. There just isn't much energy there to collect in the first place and no amount of technology can change that.
UV is basically direct sun through a layer of clouds (you don't get UV from diffuse light). This will have significantly greater incident energy verses diffuse light, but it will still be maybe 1/10th what you get with direct unobstructed sunlight.
Diffuse light: 1/30th the energy.
UV light (direct sun through clouds): 1/10th the energy
Direct unobstructed sunlight: Baseline energy for the above
You can easily test this for yourself simply by building a simple thermal collector and seeing how much heat it is able to collect. This is more or less the best-case scenario in terms of energy collection. Something like 90% of the light's energy is collected, it just isn't converted into a useful form outside of thermal (heat).
-Matt
Again, the issue is perovskite's stability and scalability, not efficiency. These two metrics are extremely poor in perovskite materials, which are worse than CdTe and much worse than Silicon. Not to mention the toxicity of perovskite which is much more toxic than elemental lead and CdTe.
This is all very interesting, but regular silicon multi junction cells with quantum filters will likely have enough efficiency to make placement sort of an afterthought.
Plus, they'll still last basically forever & generate enough energy to make 1000's of more panels for each one we make.
Manufacturing techniques just need to be implemented & scaled up. We're already basically there on that technology. Ten years from now Fusion will likely also be an afterthought.
I think Matt wrote a billiards analogy to get Rollie's attention.
Hey Matt I have an unrelated question to this video but I was watching the Net Zero house build and couldn't stop wondering why not build it with ICF? was it because you wanted a prefab process or is it a worse way of building? I'm looking at a lot of options for my future house and your opinion would be very helpful as i wanted to be as air tight nd efficient as it can be.
I'm dying to see these panels move into common use.
How about a bifacial PV with dye on the Less Solar optimised side (if this makes sense) ?
"Pun intended". With the implication that none of the other puns in all the episodes are intended?
My problem with solar are the scummy sales tactics. They know your electric bill and your panels magically cost your electric bill. Then I got look at wholesale prices and just marvel at the markup they put on panels.
As with anything if it’s semi fixed price the efficiency goes up and let’s say the price of the panel stayed the same. These scummy sales people will just lower the panel count and raise the price per panel.
We see this in the EV industry where the price magically falls when tax incentives go away and when renewed the prices went back up. For many the federal incentive is the cost of a mobile charger and a hard wired charger in a home and some left over.
9:35 I have seen too many explainations of electricity as electrons moving as if they were little balls or water moving inside a hose. The analogy of electriicity behaving as a fluid (or a stream of balls) can be useful, but it is necessary to make the distinction. Electrons don't move out of the atom they belong to, otherwise the material would be changed (e.g., into an isotope) and at some point it may run out of electrons. Electricity is not composed by particles (e.g., a stream of a fluid or of little balls) but by a field (and charge, etc.). The former is easy to understand as we see that in our human experience, but we don't experience "fields" (with all their perks like current, charge, orthogonal magnetic field, etc.). We cannot touch or hold a field in our hands as we could do with particles (like little balls) or a fluid like water. It is difficult to explain electromagnetism in a simple relatable way (I remark that I acknowledge that), but that is no excuse to explain it incorrectly. Nonetheless thank you for your videos, they are super interesting and well made despite the mistakes.
With regards to dye concentrators, why not just use Fresnel lenses to concentrate solar gain using standard optics?
Simplicity and space.
FYI: the best solar collectors' efficiency is well above 90%.
Other than the memory material tracking, what’s different about using the folding array there vs. plain classic PV and an array of tiny panels? Why can’t we just put static tiny panels all over everything? A huge problem I can see with the memory wire moving panels in many places is potential for damage - sure, they may not need mechanical maintenance like sun trackers, but those things look *really* frail - I imagine them hanging off the back of a bench and then some kid bangs their bike against it and there go a half dozen of them.
Personally, I think it’s cool and great that we’re exploring these technologies, but I also think we should just throw current PV anywhere convenient - if we covered every parking lot with awnings covered in them, that would probably be a huge amount of power we’re just missing out on… plus keep our cars cooler! And as we get the newest tech we can just upgrade things
1% increase for making them red seems like a win.
If I'm indoors in a room lit by a 25W LED system, I'm not going to get much power out of a solar cell in the room.
Matt: why isn't there more attention to the destruction of solar fields? Are panels so cheap they are expendable every year when a storm rolls in?
Do you think this technology could be combined with quantum dot solar panels' you talked about a while ago?
A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"-- A.C. Clark.
Corollary: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Can perovskites be made stable enough to work over the long term?
Imagine had solar pannels with 100% effitiency
How many acres of parking lots could be covered in solar panels? Shade and electricity together are a good return on investment.
Everybody even people in comments afraid of this change as it can be seen. Change is always scary. Company scare of this technology. If you know a company who invest on this give me the name.
I'm fortunate enough to have enough roof area facing in near optimal orientation so that my solar panels are 100% efficient, meaning that they reduce the total energy bill on my all-electric home to $0.00 per month. I don't need any more efficiency than that.😀
Better future would be to invest more in Solar Panels in the orbit or over the sky 🚀
I know I was subscribed, but when you asked to check if I was subbed, I saw that I wasn't. I resubscribed.
Heat the key
Freeze the key
What about a solar coating on the top half of a globe. It will catch light from all around.
You just made the FLERFERS top 10 hit list.
You just made the FLERFERS top 10 hit list.
@@joeds3775 What is FLERFERS?
Seems to me that the solar concentrator dyes are poorly described. The notion that coating a surface with anything can somehow increase (concentrate) the radiation (light) incident upon it is absurd. The only plausible, functioning similar concept I can envision would be a fluorescent sort of dye that would absorb radiation of higher frequency than what the PV module can absorb and reradiate that at the lower frequency that the PV module can absorb. If that’s what’s going on here, would it be that hard to say so?
Looking forward to when solar will make sense to use for my house.
So today then?
@@davescott7680 Nowhere close to ready! 22% efficiency is garbage, and you'll never get your money back.
@@seanrhone5306you do realise that monetarily speaking if you apy for 2k dollars worth of solar cells you will make it back in savings in like 2 years. That 22 percent efficiency is different. You seem to confuse technology and money
@@seanrhone5306Got quite the deranged fanatic 'ere, 'ent we, lads?
Do you hold on to your car so long it becomes a classic and you "get your money back"? Are you waiting for your computer to become an antique so you can sell it to a museum and "get your money back"?
@@seanrhone5306 just DIY, with hybrid inverter you will get ROI in 5 years
in sted of buying huge lots of land for solar farms why dont they cover paved parkinglots making the parking covered and optimizing room?
Said place that are run over by cars?
Cost and maintenance.
@@2opmataron991 both should be cheaper
Super !!! Si l on couvrir tous les toits des bâtiments nous aurions assez d énergie pour tous nos appareils et voitures !!!
There are a lot of potential problems if you want to cover an electric car with solar panels. The color of such cars may be the least of them. Then again, most people buying a new car like being able to choose between different colors and finishes. If you add a red dye to the panels that makes them more efficient, it might make EVs covered in solar panels even more attractive. Or not. I am guessing that dye isn't going to color the panels cherry apple red.
What do you think of Ambient P😊hotonics ambient light solar cells?
Is there research that combines PV technology with graphene?
3:25 What is "PVs"? (that's how is in the captions, I hear "peevees" as well)
Photovoltaics.
@@jimsvideos7201 thank you
This is just a random thought but what if it was possible to make railway tracks that also collect solar power.
Mankind will only use more and more energy so its best to improve solar panel efficiency
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Sir Arthur C. Clarke. 1962.
If we could just make a roofing material that catches solar energy, we would be winners. See-through panels for windows are another big winner. the vast exterior of our homes, factories, and office blocks become power plants. However, if we had vast paddocks full of panels and no cows for meat and milk, we become losers.
I am positive I was subscribed to this channel, but when I checked, I wasn't. This is the second site in two days that I had to subscribe to again. I just wished I could remember which one I had been unsubscribed from yesterday. I just checked a half-dozen other channels, and I was still subscribed to them. I usually watch RUclips on a PC connected to my TV. In addition to subscribing to channels I like, I bookmark the videos page for the channel. I never "ring the bell" because I don't need a billion notifications, but if I don't see a video from a creator I like, I can check their page to see if they've uploaded anything.
But what's up with people being unsubscribed from Matt's channel? Could it be there is a guy working at RUclips who hates indecisive content creators?
When it sell ?
Why are these solar panel companies getting excited about the possibility of putting solar panels on cars when there are already cars with solar panels on them. OK, Sono failed to go into production but they did have working prototypes, and there is that three wheel vehicle that is suppose to be super efficient, and then wasn't there a Dutch super expensive solar car.
Basically we already have the technology to put solar panels on cars, so why are researchers getting excited about the possibility of doing somethings that has already been done?
We should use the sun ☀️
I believe you had a video demonstrating photovoltaics perpendicular to the sun showed an increase in performance??? If that is the case, 3D doesn't seem as beneficial as it may be sold as.