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 ...)
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
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.
This is a great example of focusing on the right future tech. Anything enabling more efficient solar generation as and where needed means no transmission/transportation and storage is minimized.
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!
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.
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!!
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.
@@supahguy2013 The temperatures in question are not merely those of boil water, but rather those that can melt or warp steel. Additionally, panels lose efficiency as they get hotter, so while materials may be found to withstand higher temperatures, efficiency losses become a challenge. CSIRO has designed an extremely efficient heat sink for their panels, enabling them to achieve an efficiency rating exceeding 40%.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
I have been long retired from the the world of electrical and electronics engineering and there has always been one aspect of solar as a major form of renewable energy that I question. A long time ago I was asked to investigate the untimely death of dozens of small plug packs that were used to supply peripheral scada systems. These systems were critical to the function of a highly specialised fume detection system and as such had to perform flawlessly. As part of the investigation one of the parameters surrounding this was heat, the small plug packs were all burning out. Now each of the the power loops (240 here in Aus) was fed from a pure sine wave inverter which had stand by batteries to keep the output steady. I decided to connect a power analyser to the output and was amazed to find that the output looked exactly like a modified square wave. The steps in the "sine wave" were only small but what has to be understood is that any step is seen by a transformer as DC and as such causes incremental heating of any thing designed to run on AC. There is no such thing as a pure sine wave generator as the heat generated to produce AC is hugh and makes the actual build of such a device incredibly expensive. Every solar setup that purports to put out pure sine wave is only causing massive problems on the transmission, distribution and utilisation networks. Remember the step part of these inverters is noise and noise is additive so by the time the noise reaches the generating stations it is substantial. I was recently dragged out of retirement by a friend to look over the building of compensaters or power factor correctors that were being built and rolled out to be connected to the the distribution system as a means to quell the noise and keep the transformers cool. Does solar have a place yes but as individual systems and not connected to the power network.
Everything you say leads to one conclusion. Distributed power generation and usage. No centralized transmission system is required any more. All those problems become redundant. Produce and use the power where and when it is needed. Transmission infrastructure is highly costly to build and maintain and it is inefficient with all the up and down voltage conversion going on everywhere.
There's a specific IEEE regulatory standard that exists to standardize the frequency spectrum generated by switching power converters that are grid connected. It is an active area of regulation for switching power converters but it is not a very large part of concern with modern technology in the sense of solar inverters. IEEE 1547 and IEEE 2800. It's a valid concern and one that is central to modern implementations, but has already been overcome for the most part.
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.
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 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!
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.
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 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
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.
"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.
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.😀
what we need is to put all three into one prototype Solar Concentrated Perovskite 3D pannel either that or ways to store the energy better, and/or use said energy far more efficiently so we need to generate less
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!
@UndecidedMF06 The system is simple. A combination of a photocell mirror, through one.The origami system, accordion, waves, allows the rays to be reflected on mirrors and enhance the flow to the photocell
Just to clarify, according to wikipedia multi junction cells are only that high efficient, when sunlight is concentrated. So it sounds fantastic to have high efficient solarcells, but those do not work as good for everyone (from the single consumer perspective, as the multi junction cells will be much much expensive then single junction cells (which you can buy with good efficiency now!). So maybe more for industrial or public energy companies interesting, but I doubt it, price is key in almost every part of society
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.
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.
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.
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
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"
40% product loss? How is that even a stable business model? To this day i dont understand how solar is the greener better alternative. The comparison people make between oil and solar is maddening.
Instead of buying land and wasting land space it would be better to just have a push for all building, business and residential, in America to have solar panels on them and be connected to the grid. Add in battery storage into the mix and we would have to worry sourcing for are power needs.
Matt Ferrell, shouldn't the light spectrum be divided into its different frequencies-colors to treat them separately and achieve an efficiency that is impossible today?
Makes me crazy when we just accept that solar farms necessarily need large tracts of unspoiled land. Yes, there's agrovoltaics - but then you have to build the lines from rural areas to carry the power to where it's needed - which is mostly in more urban areas. Your averge WalMart Supercenter parking lot is at least half as big as the solar farm pictured - and I'm sure they would be happy to take whatever passive income they could get from leasing use of the parking lot to a solar power company to install solar panel canopies over parking spaces. Shaded parking for their customers, producing power closer to where it's needed, and helping to offset the urban heat island effect to boot. Ditto for all other large parking lots. How does it make sense to use more land when we already have so much that's not being used efficiently?
Hey Matt, Great videos! Please do a video on an Australian battery company called Altech. They claim their using graphite and silicon anodes coated in aluminum, which boosts the capacity of a lithium ion battery by 55% -if this is accurate it will truly be a game-changer in the world of battery technology! Thanks...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What about the darkest and most light absorbing color (vantablack) and nothing from the solar panel world about it?🤔😳😮😱 Commen sense says this a major breakthrough for industry.
Since land is by far the most expensive part of putting in solar panels, can you please explain why solar panels aren't on every parking lot or flat box store roof? The metal for higher scaffolds can't be that expensive, and same for roofs. I live in the Midwest, and it is shocking to me that it's more cost effective to replace farmland with solar. I suspect the difference is permitting, subsidies, and scale, but I don't know for sure. Please investigate!
A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"-- A.C. Clark. Corollary: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
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. 😡
Video on fabric duct please… 🥲
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
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!
Are you a fanboy? Your post is completely illogical. Dreams are not reality.
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
This is a great example of focusing on the right future tech. Anything enabling more efficient solar generation as and where needed means no transmission/transportation and storage is minimized.
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!
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.
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!!
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.
Or have materials that can withstand that heat.
@@supahguy2013 The temperatures in question are not merely those of boil water, but rather those that can melt or warp steel. Additionally, panels lose efficiency as they get hotter, so while materials may be found to withstand higher temperatures, efficiency losses become a challenge. CSIRO has designed an extremely efficient heat sink for their panels, enabling them to achieve an efficiency rating exceeding 40%.
@@LinuxGalore i see, i thought it was way lower, with that in mind it is quite a bit harder yes.
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.
Prosket is the most interesting and flexibility added to panels this two combined can open the doors to various future prospects
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
Nice technical video! This technology could be a game changer! Solar panels intergated everywhere!
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
Holy sh.... I'm surprising that you're talking about my Alma Mater :D Nice to hear about polish reasearches on Undecided!
I have been long retired from the the world of electrical and electronics engineering and there has always been one aspect of solar as a major form of renewable energy that I question. A long time ago I was asked to investigate the untimely death of dozens of small plug packs that were used to supply peripheral scada systems. These systems were critical to the function of a highly specialised fume detection system and as such had to perform flawlessly. As part of the investigation one of the parameters surrounding this was heat, the small plug packs were all burning out. Now each of the the power loops (240 here in Aus) was fed from a pure sine wave inverter which had stand by batteries to keep the output steady. I decided to connect a power analyser to the output and was amazed to find that the output looked exactly like a modified square wave. The steps in the "sine wave" were only small but what has to be understood is that any step is seen by a transformer as DC and as such causes incremental heating of any thing designed to run on AC. There is no such thing as a pure sine wave generator as the heat generated to produce AC is hugh and makes the actual build of such a device incredibly expensive. Every solar setup that purports to put out pure sine wave is only causing massive problems on the transmission, distribution and utilisation networks. Remember the step part of these inverters is noise and noise is additive so by the time the noise reaches the generating stations it is substantial.
I was recently dragged out of retirement by a friend to look over the building of compensaters or power factor correctors that were being built and rolled out to be connected to the the distribution system as a means to quell the noise and keep the transformers cool. Does solar have a place yes but as individual systems and not connected to the power network.
Everything you say leads to one conclusion. Distributed power generation and usage. No centralized transmission system is required any more. All those problems become redundant. Produce and use the power where and when it is needed. Transmission infrastructure is highly costly to build and maintain and it is inefficient with all the up and down voltage conversion going on everywhere.
There's a specific IEEE regulatory standard that exists to standardize the frequency spectrum generated by switching power converters that are grid connected. It is an active area of regulation for switching power converters but it is not a very large part of concern with modern technology in the sense of solar inverters. IEEE 1547 and IEEE 2800. It's a valid concern and one that is central to modern implementations, but has already been overcome for the most part.
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.
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.
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 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!
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.
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
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.
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.
@@autohmae That's cool. In his voice. Things have changed very much since I almost went down the Computational Linguistics rabbit hole 25 years ago.
@@enuskolada6618 ohh, yeah. lots of that stuff is AI now.
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.
"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).
Great work, alway interesting. :-)
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.
An Irish company us using it as part of a heatpump cycle .
You make learning about agriculture technology so much fun
oh a high quality science channel Subbed and ty
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.😀
"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
waiting for spray paint solar, wil be great on rooftops and quick to repair
what we need is to put all three into one prototype Solar Concentrated Perovskite 3D pannel
either that or ways to store the energy better, and/or use said energy far more efficiently so we need to generate less
Exciting, this was all very cool stuff. Future can be bright
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 and have a great week.
❤❤❤And yes. The accordion system is more effective with the changing position of the luminary
@UndecidedMF06 ruclips.net/video/MUOzHxbul2s/видео.htmlsi=5gxAJPuq6JC3poQZ
@UndecidedMF06 The system is simple. A combination of a photocell mirror, through one.The origami system, accordion, waves, allows the rays to be reflected on mirrors and enhance the flow to the photocell
Love this, the perovskite especially. They also print them in Cardiff University in the UK.
Have a video on the subject 😅
10:10. Great Scott!!! Red dyes added efficiencies of 1.21 Giga….wait…..sorry….ahem….please continue, Matt.
Thank you and good morning!
Good morning
Love the new intro music, btw
I'm dying to see these panels move into common use.
Just to clarify, according to wikipedia multi junction cells are only that high efficient, when sunlight is concentrated. So it sounds fantastic to have high efficient solarcells, but those do not work as good for everyone (from the single consumer perspective, as the multi junction cells will be much much expensive then single junction cells (which you can buy with good efficiency now!). So maybe more for industrial or public energy companies interesting, but I doubt it, price is key in almost every part of society
Nice to hear new innovations in Hindi
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.
This is where the money should be invested into research for better electricity sources and storage not wasted charging stations that never get built
Interesting stuff, wouldn't know about any of these developments without you. Can't wait until some of this becomes reality.
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.
How many acres of parking lots could be covered in solar panels? Shade and electricity together are a good return on investment.
And put battery or even just capacitor banks near them, and then you also can help charge the increasing amount of electric vehicles on the roads.
Check out Teslas new solar charging stations in Cali!
Like the perovskite tech. Thanks. Jim Bell (Australia)
I am imagining forest of these bendy solar panels like leaves on a tree like pole, with a lush understory underneath!
How about a bifacial PV with dye on the Less Solar optimised side (if this makes sense) ?
Fun fact!
The Hooloovoo were created while looking for a dye concentrator.
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.
Please do a video on UHVDC or HVDC power transmission and the current projects.
Better future would be to invest more in Solar Panels in the orbit or over the sky 🚀
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
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"
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?
40% product loss? How is that even a stable business model? To this day i dont understand how solar is the greener better alternative. The comparison people make between oil and solar is maddening.
The Dye Concentrator concept makes me think of retroreflective signs, related technology?
Not at all. Dye Concentrators.
Thank you Matt.
Instead of buying land and wasting land space it would be better to just have a push for all building, business and residential, in America to have solar panels on them and be connected to the grid. Add in battery storage into the mix and we would have to worry sourcing for are power needs.
I think in Australia they use this kind of rooftop solar alot more.
What is the building with solar facade at 13:42 ? The last slide. I want to know what architecture firms are doing that.
Looks problematic, when the strong wind blows, unless there's some shielding that will decrease performance back
Imagine seeing your roof moving to face the sun 😂
Matt Ferrell, shouldn't the light spectrum be divided into its different frequencies-colors to treat them separately and achieve an efficiency that is impossible today?
excelente video!
I'm subscribed but it's usually days before I see your video for some reason.
Makes me crazy when we just accept that solar farms necessarily need large tracts of unspoiled land. Yes, there's agrovoltaics - but then you have to build the lines from rural areas to carry the power to where it's needed - which is mostly in more urban areas. Your averge WalMart Supercenter parking lot is at least half as big as the solar farm pictured - and I'm sure they would be happy to take whatever passive income they could get from leasing use of the parking lot to a solar power company to install solar panel canopies over parking spaces. Shaded parking for their customers, producing power closer to where it's needed, and helping to offset the urban heat island effect to boot. Ditto for all other large parking lots. How does it make sense to use more land when we already have so much that's not being used efficiently?
Don't forget about all the windows could have transparent solar panels. 😮👍🤟✌️ That's not sarcasm, very easily done.
Perovskites still have a big durability issue. I hope they figure it out.
Mankind will only use more and more energy so its best to improve solar panel efficiency
What do you think of Ambient P😊hotonics ambient light solar cells?
Hey Matt, Great videos!
Please do a video on an Australian battery company called Altech. They claim their using graphite and silicon anodes coated in aluminum, which boosts the capacity of a lithium ion battery by 55% -if this is accurate it will truly be a game-changer in the world of battery technology! Thanks...
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Sir Arthur C. Clarke. 1962.
The dye catches my eye.
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.
Red makes the electrons go faster!
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.
Do you think this technology could be combined with quantum dot solar panels' you talked about a while ago?
Can't wait to paint the town red....😆
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.
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.
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.
You can already get roof tiles that are solar panels
What about the darkest and most light absorbing color (vantablack) and nothing from the solar panel world about it?🤔😳😮😱 Commen sense says this a major breakthrough for industry.
Since land is by far the most expensive part of putting in solar panels, can you please explain why solar panels aren't on every parking lot or flat box store roof? The metal for higher scaffolds can't be that expensive, and same for roofs. I live in the Midwest, and it is shocking to me that it's more cost effective to replace farmland with solar. I suspect the difference is permitting, subsidies, and scale, but I don't know for sure. Please investigate!
I think in Australia they use this kind of rooftop solar alot more.
You forgot to cover lenses for solar cells!
With regards to dye concentrators, why not just use Fresnel lenses to concentrate solar gain using standard optics?
Simplicity and space.
And heat.
Matt - any chance you could wear a white lab coat, instead of casual attire when you delve into the technical details? 😅
A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"-- A.C. Clark.
Corollary: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
This is just a random thought but what if it was possible to make railway tracks that also collect solar power.