@CS-uc2oh he does a lot of up to date stuff, but enjoys going back in time and exploring old patents with new potentials with the updated materials we have available today
I’ve made the same comment, and just think that every time I watch him. He’s like the father I’ve always wanted, but never had. Sorry dad,still love you.
Your fluorescent sheet reminds me of a description I read once of a small satellite development, using a commercial photo-flash unit as a tracking beacon. The developers tried to maximize the output by removing a yellow-ish lens covering the flash tube, and were puzzled that this actually _reduced_ the brightness. They soon realized that the lens was converting ultraviolet light from the flash tube into visible light!
Hmmm, I believe a crystal of mono ammonium phosphate converts red laser light to ultraviolet laser light . It's something I remember from one of those educational time/life series books of 1960s . I'd expect it to be in the light and vision title or maybe the energy titled book . I've just missed a few times acquiring a large set . Best educational series evet published.
You used to be able to buy dimpled glass for bathrooms etc and I remember this would form hundreds of small magnifying glasses. This would probably work just as well and be a lot cheaper.
This doesn't really work unless you have a different, smaller cell for each of those dimples. Putting a lens the same size of the cell on it does nothing. You need to collect more light with your lens than the cell already does by itself to be able to increase energy output. So more lens surface area than cell surface area.
@@Rhannmah That's false. The same amount of surface area if it aligns the light correctly will result in the solar cell collecting much more light. This is less impactful on super clear sunny days with a sun pointing panel since most of the light in aligned already. But a lensed surface allows for better collection while cloudy, or perhaps to have a panel that doesn't need to move.
@Rhannma has the physics down.The lens HAS to be bigger than the solar cell to collect more light than the cell can by itself. Otherwise you are creating energy which we can all agree isn't really possible.
@@flyingsodwai1382 It still works though, you can buy this kind of cells. The important part is the focusing itself, the higher energy density raises the efficiency.
A Solar concentrator in the form of a parabolic trough mirror, heating up a sand battery in the general focal point of the reflector, that is wide enough to cater for the 23' variation in the sun's position throughout the year , driving a Sterling engine. This is Occam's razor, down to 0 moving parts with an easy installation and the minimum stuff between the sun's power and the sterling engine. Steam off course will also work, but what I hear is that there are some very efficient Sterling engines out there.
A lot of people are triggered by this for reasons. Also there are many possible improvements related to how you can concentrate the solar light, convert the heat into electricity when needed, ...
Interesting. I always heard that sterling engines are inefficient in general and only useful when there's no other way to use heat. Ill have to read up on em.
@@flyingsodwai1382They aren't the only way to convert heat to mechanical motion or electricity, but the most advanced sterling engines (and heat engines) can outperform other engines, for example the NASA prototypes.
Actually the true test is to measure the power but being aware the power depends on the impedance of the load. Even better still is to measure the Watt-hours energy delivered over a certain number of hours where there is a variation in light level.
@@vitordelimaThe issue isn't so much the directionality of the light source, it is easy to arrange artificial lighting so that the light strikes the panel perpendicularly to the face of the panel; the issues with the indoor lighting are intensity and the particular wavelengths of light that are present, or rather not present which are present in daylight.
@@deang5622 Outdoor lighting is almost omnidirectional, every trick to get more power out of solar concentrators involve this kind of thinking. But the frequency spectrum is also different.
I would like to see you redo that later half and this time add a mirror that is 45 degrees off set to the plastic sheet. Mirror would also be set back and to the side so that it is reflecting original light into the back side of the plastic. (I believe that since my grey and cold days are in the temperature range of -10 celcus this would be a working option to get power when otherwise you would be running the timer on what ideally should be a 3 grey day battery supply.) * System would have to be shut down and converted back to normal operations quickly when the full sun comes out and the temperature rises both ambenant and on the plate surfaces.
Great video. The giant glass ball is ...err...a giant glass ball 🤦♂️.. it'd take a loooong time to generate the energy required to make the... *giant glass ball* 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I actually remember reading the preliminary design paper for this one. In fact I downloaded it because I thought the concept was so darn cool. Glad to see it move forward as a product.
This is the worst invention ever. Costs multiple times more per efficiency improvement than to just buy some more solar cells. Noone who has even a bit of knowledge about solar cells thinks any of these make any sense. Sorry.
I always learn so much from this wonderful channel and superstar a.k.a. Rob. If i had had him as my physics teacher I could have been famous by now. Lovely video. Thank you SO SO SO much for making things easy to understand for me. PS nice haircut
Thanks Rob. Wouldn't the lens would work better outside? If your office has a point source, the lens isn't aggregating much. Isn't re-emission the basis of Samsung's QLED (not OLED) displays? Concentrating the spectrum sounds cheaper than tandem cells and must surely be worth more R&D.
Hi Robert, great video as always! I have a question: That green wave-guide, from how I understand it, makes the light go from a Z-direction to the XY plane. So wouldn't it make sense to have long, narrow mirrors on those edges deflecting that light onto the solar panels, effectively making a huge green panel that redirects all that light onto a small solar panel? That would be a very cheap way of increasing the output of a given number of solar panels, would it not?
Options and alternatives are great for innovation, especially for specific uncommon uses. As you said at the end of the video, maintenance. Also, for example, if you spend 20 million dollars on parts to optimize a $1 solar cell, you aren't saving money. It's like if you had a lens the size of a house for a single solar cell versus having a solar cell the size of a frisbee.
My main problem with this design is how bulky it is for no reason at all. Sure it LOOKS cool, but a fresnel lens the thickness of box cardboard would do the same job at redirecting light to the solar cell for a fraction of the weight and material. You could even exchange the cell position and lens and replace the lens with a curved reflector for an even lower tech solution. There's so many ways to improve this design.
Biggest concern (to me) for solar is not 'peak' performance, but 'winter' performance. Anything which could do condensed solar on a seasonal basis could be interesting. Although giant balls of glass look expensive, big, and heavy.
hehe you're a natural genius teacher Robert. I'm working on a project wich uses mirrors to focus the sun light reflected by the moon, thanks for the insights!
They had these over 20 years ago. Arrays of lenses on small high efficiency (and at the time extremely expensive) Solar cells. Their idea was to limit the need for tracking and get maximum output from the cell. Needless to say they are not on every roof so it wasn't economically viable.
could adding other fluorescent chemicals into the acrylic sheets add to the range of absorbed and remitted light? As in - more ultraviolet wavelength is absorbed and emitted in the visible spectrum so that the solar cell can use that to generate energy. Then those sheets could be used as windows generating power with the parts of the spectrum our eyes can't use
I'd love to get my hands on an old school 9' satellite TV dish and make a reflector with it. I've played around with home brewed solar ovens when I was a young fella and it's something I'd love to try.
Do it :) It doesn't even have to be 9 feet, I have a smaller dish (still large) and I can bake bread or roast a whole chicken just as fast as in my kitchen oven.
Ok, Robert, I got frustrated with this video. lol. I was trying to see the focal point of your lens while you were tossing it around. I think you could lift the lens slightly might be the best focal point for the solar cell. I was interested in its maximum level. but, great video! thank you. I feel and have said for years that this is the way they will be in the future. we just need to get a cell that can handle the high temperatures that would be needed. but with the cost of plastics for this nowadays I might be wrong depending on the cell material and price.
Could you make a small wall of fiberotpic cable lines with a cell on either end? Or a mirror on one end to send the light to the cell? I would think that might be cheaper than lenses, except maybe plastic fresnel lenses. But the fiberoptics would allow you to keep the electronic potions out of the weather.
I personally would first have a focusing lens, into the back of the dome, then the light would spread to the outside and around the dome onto many more cells! Thus the light bam is split, so it focuses where the cells are. Again, compres a light source to a high intensity beam, then the beam goes into the flat of the dome, then the light radiates to the cells spaced around the dome. Simples ❤
It's not just the concentration effect. It's also changing the angle of incidence which is very important. consider how much light is reflected on a wet road blinding you. but if the sun is overhead that light doesn't glance off and you don't notice it because it's absorbed by the road. The whole assembly is tracking the sun anyway because this is so important to fix this effect. The biggest problem is a solar cell is only as good as the worst illuminated part. So if you put a shadow of a thin branch over a car sized panel the whole output of the panel drops as if the whole thing were shaded.
Rob, the thing is a solar cell is a current generator, not a voltage generator. The voltage stays relatively similar even with a large increase in available light energy. A better measure (although not perfect) would be to measure short-circuit current, as that's more directly linked to how much light can be converted to current.
Fresnel worked on the same ideas. Bend light waves to concentrate. I think this is really cute idea and it’s beautiful to look at. I think there’s something there with the idea. I thought about taking fresnel type lenses and put over a small cell. Just to see what they di
Using collectors to get a better average over a day is definitely going to help in the long run, but making it cheap is the hard part I guess? We've got automatic tracking on our panels, but it wasn't cheap and does need more maintenance. Round solar panel attached to a cylinder of fluorescent material with a domed top? That way you could just feed the cylinders through a wall without exposing the electronics and give you better options for cooling, or at least concentrate the heat for other uses. Not sure cylinder costing, but it will get cheap if you're making enough. Bonus is that it'll end up looking like a glow-in-the-dark Dalek.
@RobertMurray-Smith I was hoping that you would do a video on this! The first time that I found this solar culmination sphere, I immediately thought about your videos on edge lighting, etc. Thanks for another great video 🎉
Not to mention that a literal ton a glass costs a pretty penny. Certainly more than a solar panel that covers up enough area to make up for the added efficiency of this particular concentrated setup.
When Solyndra came along, I didn't hear of it for a while (first I knew the name was when I drove by on 880 in Fremont and saw the very impressive sign they were adding and thought "Solyndra"? what is that?) When I found out what it was, I immediately thought of the Whole Earth Catalog from (if memory serves) 1972, and a discussion of cylindrical solar, concluding that they won't deliver the benefits claimed at a cost which makes them worthwhile, it's more of a gimmick. That (remembering 50 year old articles about the "latest thing") happens every now and then, these days, but I have to admit, they've got me on this one. I never heard of it. I am inclined to go with your analysis.
Always pondered over the Apollo 11 retroreflectors left on the moon and if it’s easier to direct the sunlight rather than fit something to the solar cell
Mentioned this a long time ago. It was simple when thinking of the capabilities of a prism and considering that even amazing technologies have been reverse engineered.
Could make a large concaved reflector coated with mylar, and put that underneath a Glass bowl full of water and place on top of it a solar panel facing down... ( making sure it's focused on the bowel). Hmm maybe you perspex sheet might work really good as a collector, and shape and paint with that mirror paint on the edges you don't with to lose the light through... 🤔 Maybe a tear drop shape with a small exit at the tip for the light to be projected through... Hmm 🤔 you could arrange it like flower petals, focusing the in the center
Let me further amend my suggestion for experimentation. Take (2) separate sheets of the plastic and apply a mirror to the back of (1) then another mirror facing downwards and then apply the second sheet of the plastic. Take a third Mirror and place it so that sun light is being bounced into the lowest plastic plate. You should get a true reading of how much energy potential is being picked up by the reflection.
thats really cool! Solar panels usually have a layer of glass over them to protect them right? what if this glass was replaced with quartz? I'm sure there's diminishing returns at different light frequencies but maybe that also offers more light energy to harvest? Couple that with a quartz based concentrator as well, I wonder if anyone's looked into that :)
I think the advantage of the sphere will be that it will broaden out the graph of power generated throughout the day and not an instantaneous measurement of power generation that you were looking at. I could imagine it increasing the power generation throughout the day by 25-50%.
Interesting stuff. The sheet option also seems to be easier to produce. I hope you try some more fluorescent concentrator experiments. Would be very fun to see how much energy could be harvested both from the sides and just through the panel.
35 years ago I had a wall clock made of this flourescent acrylic glass, there were solar panel stripes in the sides. The clock was working fine for 30 years before my mother accidentally wiped it off the wall with a broom :(
Flourescent acrylic secondary (wave guide) glazing or outside shuttering might make a good, cheap way of gathering solar power. Essentially you'd only need about 1cm width of solar panel all around the perimeter. Fixed secondary glazing is realistically probably not what people would want on their homes as a permeant feature but outbuildings, sheds, garages etc should be fine. As shuttering, it'd still be working when open and be serving it's power gathering when not used as shuttering, for use in wind or (partial) sun shading in heatwaves.
My ADHD brain wouldn't let me rest at that... My thoughts were sparked off by...The acrylic you showed looked about 1cm think and the solar cell about 4cm square, yet the large increase in voltage was by only increasing the wave guided light to 1/4 of the area. I don't think a 4cm thick piece of fluorescing acrylic is likely to have a even light distribution across it's depth but I realised I'd fallen into a trap of "accepting what's there, so far, as the way to do it" So I'd propose that an angled cut be made across the acrylic so that the hypotenuse of the wedge cut is ( in this case to match your cell ) 4cm. That gives the whole of the cell under a wave guide and would seem a better comparison in measuring how much the fluorescing acrylic increases the output. Now the question becomes how tall do we have to have the acrylic before the extra light on the cell is essentially wasted. A quick and dirty experiment there would be start with a long piece and slowly roll a cover over it until it showed a significant decrease in output. I'm looking forward to next year when I've ( hopefully )moved out of my very small flat in expensive city and have a bit more space and time to do those sort of tests myself
OK, I got 300 florescent acrylic sheets, splayed them over the solar cell (like spread fingers) so all angles of sun path through the day are soaked up evenly.
See, this is why I prefer mirror arrays. Instead of a gigantic glass lens that will be attacked by bird poop, you can just have the tracking system briefly refocus several thousand inexpensive mirrors on any birds that come near within less than a second.
Great video! I really enjoyed it! Im the guy who asked if a wood stove powered Heat fan can be scaled up. You told me to look up flat panel Sterling engines. That's absolutely not what wood stove heat fans are. They actually have a Thermal electric module embedded in them connected to a small electric motor. So I will ask the same question again can this type of system be scaled up??? 🤔
Indirect lighting would be my main concern here. Sure if you want to light a small spot (on fire?) on a sunny day, a big glass ball is fine... but if it's cloudy then the light will come in from random directions and exit in equally random directions.
a slanted side of the panel would enlarge the area, also an octagon panel could radiate to 8 solarcells, and add the sphere on top, add a mirror on the back of the panel, could help.
Im under the impressiin that you capture the heat also and transfer it into electricity too. I believe that you could use a device called a Pelletier devices to do that. It can get hot or cold by its positive or negative power consumptions, so it can also colledt and transfer heat to electricity too. . I know, no one is ready to do things with undeestanding, its easiest to just rely on the one who was given a piece of paper saying they posess actuall skills because they have a piece of decaying paper that makes the claim that the name on that paper is brilliant, like the host of this video who actuality is. Id like his thouggts on this idea also. Cool video. Peace be on you house.
Considering that a crystal ball can and will set fire to anything flammable near it, and will start burning your hand in seconds if you hold it outside.... yeah I can believe that it would make an efficient solar panel
of course light multiplication - improves "efficiency" - of the bare cell, by altering the area metrics. (cooling by some means becomes absolutely necessary for concentrated silicon cells - in daylight). Improving off-axis performance is most advantageous.
@@EliotTruelove No I am talking specifically about a TEG, a solid state thermal electric generator. A Peltier module used to generate electricity instead of heat or cold.
You can coat it in wax embedded with fluorescent pigment and when its hard to clean, warm it over 150 f and the wax will melt and the mess will slip off and u can rewax it.
I watched a long video of a company, I believe from Japan, they were working on two things. One an ink that you can print and have yourself a solar cell on regular paper, by simply pressing print. And 2, they were using very small solar cells, like hundred if not thousands on something the size of regular paper, but each small cell had a glass or plastic lens on it that focused the light like a magnifying glass. It was said to take over. And it went MIA. That was over 10 years ago. I think the scientists got the idea from bubble rap.
@ 3 minutes, you have the optic the wrong way, as if it's the other way ( curved part down) it will project more concentrated light on the cell. This was shown by green power science with a 4 ft square piece of plastic in a frame. It was also shown by NASA Back in the 70's to increase solar efficiency 8 times. No overheating problems in space. So though this looks great: but it cost money and as always I am the CHEAPEST penny hoarder there is. So the green power science 4ft plastic in a frame is for me. Thank you for the video.
Look into the concept of hot and cold mirrors if you want to make the most of the 70% of sunlight that is usually just turned into waste heat that contributes to urban heat islands when there is a lot of rooftop PV installed.
liquid filled ball may have an advantage in that you could plumb it to a liquid cooler, thusly managing the heat issue. Granted then you have winter issues.. is their a clear as water anti-freeze that would work.... ?
Viktor Schauberger (30 June 1885 - 25 September 1958) was an Austrian forest caretaker, naturalist, philosopher, inventor and pseudoscientist. Schauberger was born in Holzschlag, Upper Austria on 30 June 1885. His parents were Leopold Schauberger and Josefa, née Klimitsch.
Not sure if it would be cost effective, but a bunch of florescent acrylic fanned out over a solar cell (or that Prussian blue solar battery) would definitely be cool to look at as a piece of functional modern art. They could be held in a 3d printed frame like the petals of a flower.
Laying it on top is far different than if you heard it a focal distance from the cell, like starting a fire with a magnifying glass. Even the reference photos you displayed do that.
The use of a parabolic solar collector and a Stirling power generator was pioneered by a company calle Infinia, that went into commercializing the concept. Their problem was they were not selling to the public but wanted this to only be a big corporate only project. They failed and went bankrupt.
Ah a solar concentrator, i thought it was actually rounded panels which i was thinking about doing with these super flexible panels, stick them onto a sphere, and the spin the panels and see what happens? Im not sure ill get anymore but maybe make something interesting to look at, but using a sphere to solar concentrate is pretty cool idea. Tech ingredients channel showed you could make one out of mirrors attached to the side of a flat panel and you just angle them and voila, 4xpower. You have to be careful though this cooks the cells, but 4x power is definatley worth it , even if you have to spend some on cooling.
I wonder if a modified version of this "Spherical Solar Cell" might work a bit better if it were applied using more of a fiber-optic cable setup? One end of a fiber-optic cable would have the dome or spherical contour and, the other end would have the concave shape like the inside of the sphere. It wouldn't have to be a very long fiber-optic cable, but it would have to be of a diameter similar to the diameter of the example of the Spherical Solar Cell you showed in this video or a bundle of fiber-optic cables. Picture a bundle of thinner fiber optic cables all with a spherical shape on one end and the concave shape on the other. By allowing the spherical end of the fiber-optic cable bundle to track the sun, it would allow the full amount of sunlight to be dumped directly onto the photovoltaic cell.
I looked up solar panels for both my dream computer and the possibility of solar powering questionable LCD electronics. Apparently solar panels are tuned to different light levels. Who knew? Those planels on calculators? They're for low light conditions (inside). Very interesting!
Yes, this is a good idea. You can lose some of the energy by the lens, but with decent quality glass, it is not very much. The real issue that I have encountered is the cost of the lens... perhaps you can figure out a low cost easy way to make the "spherical" type lens for a larger panel? Or, maybe a low cost plastic like a wrap could be warped into a bubble... I did try the fluorescent dyes by layering it over a solar cell (not vertically)... but it didn't work for me to boost the total power... hard to say why not but my guess is that the dye is also absorbing the energy from the visible wavelengths as well.
What about the concept of an air dam, such as a valley that is fitted with a funnel, or a series of panels that direct the the air from a large surface area down "funneling" it to a turbine, its interesting to picture the large mass of all the air and how it interacts with mountains, its as if there is "water" everywhere, but the flow is "slow" and could be geared down to increase the rpm, my idea consists of large tube structures with cloth stretch over them like a canvas, that use electric motors to be able to "open" or "close' the "sail" on a massive structure vertical or horizontal, these would be held on with "shear pins" and would allow you to control the speed by lowering the surface area on demand, allowing you to capture more of the air and also allows it to function with less airflow as well as protecting it against excess.
I thought of this possibility a couple of years ago ... sort of. I was wondering if the little hemispheres of rain water on my solar panels would magnify the light and make the panels produce more power. Then I thought of covering the panels with an array of lenses ... but never got around to it. Too broke to buy the lenses. LOL
Always assumed there’d be a horrible loss passing the light through the fish eye lens. Just goes to show that assumption is a dangerous thing. Maybe a lenticular lens would be worth investigating.
As an amateur gadgeteer, I immediately see these problems with this design: First is weight... If this is solid glass it's going to weigh several hundred pounds and will not be easy to move around. Yes, moving the solar cell array will be much easier as the focal point of the concentrated light moves with the sun, but the HEAT produced from this would be hot enough to melt metals! AND could damage the solar cell array. Next is price: A fresnel lens is fairly inexpensive molding but creating a huge glass ball is going to be expensive! This looks good, but really isn't very practical.
Design has been around for 20 years, very interesting hard to sell, doesn't make enough power for many operations and buying multiple units to cover the power requirements of a small facility with wiring makes it inefficient, compared to a standard panel installation.
I enjoy your videos! Not clear if you're using any kind of known load resistance when measuring the output of that solar cell. Without that, the voltage readings seem of questionable meaning, although they clearly correlate somewhat with the amount of light. With a resistance, you could measure the current and thus power, whcih seems like the important consideration here.
Robbie you would be totally astounded if I were to explain to you how you can pull energy from the vacuum. I spent 12 years researching to this day. I could use your assistance in creating an effective and efficient extractor. At the moment I can pull 1.3 volts on material half the size of my PINKY fingernail. Yes Robbie that small. We need to discuss this either chatroom or phone. I assure you it will probably be the biggest finding of your life.
This guy would be an amazing teacher, he oozes enthusiasm and charisma.
But his information is 20 years out of date so... no
@CS-uc2oh he does a lot of up to date stuff, but enjoys going back in time and exploring old patents with new potentials with the updated materials we have available today
I’ve made the same comment, and just think that every time I watch him. He’s like the father I’ve always wanted, but never had. Sorry dad,still love you.
He already is
He is
Your fluorescent sheet reminds me of a description I read once of a small satellite development, using a commercial photo-flash unit as a tracking beacon. The developers tried to maximize the output by removing a yellow-ish lens covering the flash tube, and were puzzled that this actually _reduced_ the brightness. They soon realized that the lens was converting ultraviolet light from the flash tube into visible light!
Hmmm, I believe a crystal of mono ammonium phosphate converts red laser light to ultraviolet laser light . It's something I remember from one of those educational time/life series books of 1960s . I'd expect it to be in the light and vision title or maybe the energy titled book . I've just missed a few times acquiring a large set . Best educational series evet published.
@@Biggles732Yep!
Thanks Rob, now I have to go buy come cheap fluorescent clipboards. You inspire me again and again. Cheers
You used to be able to buy dimpled glass for bathrooms etc and I remember this would form hundreds of small magnifying glasses. This would probably work just as well and be a lot cheaper.
There are solar cells with a lens array just like that.
This doesn't really work unless you have a different, smaller cell for each of those dimples.
Putting a lens the same size of the cell on it does nothing. You need to collect more light with your lens than the cell already does by itself to be able to increase energy output. So more lens surface area than cell surface area.
@@Rhannmah That's false. The same amount of surface area if it aligns the light correctly will result in the solar cell collecting much more light.
This is less impactful on super clear sunny days with a sun pointing panel since most of the light in aligned already. But a lensed surface allows for better collection while cloudy, or perhaps to have a panel that doesn't need to move.
@Rhannma has the physics down.The lens HAS to be bigger than the solar cell to collect more light than the cell can by itself. Otherwise you are creating energy which we can all agree isn't really possible.
@@flyingsodwai1382 It still works though, you can buy this kind of cells. The important part is the focusing itself, the higher energy density raises the efficiency.
That was a kind way of calling it a failure.
- nice garden ornament.
A Solar concentrator in the form of a parabolic trough mirror, heating up a sand battery in the general focal point of the reflector, that is wide enough to cater for the 23' variation in the sun's position throughout the year , driving a Sterling engine. This is Occam's razor, down to 0 moving parts with an easy installation and the minimum stuff between the sun's power and the sterling engine. Steam off course will also work, but what I hear is that there are some very efficient Sterling engines out there.
A lot of people are triggered by this for reasons. Also there are many possible improvements related to how you can concentrate the solar light, convert the heat into electricity when needed, ...
@@vitordelima even àt night with a good sand battery
Interesting. I always heard that sterling engines are inefficient in general and only useful when there's no other way to use heat. Ill have to read up on em.
@@flyingsodwai1382They aren't the only way to convert heat to mechanical motion or electricity, but the most advanced sterling engines (and heat engines) can outperform other engines, for example the NASA prototypes.
add some solar powered gravity batteries to the system for nights and emergencies.
The true test would be to compare current output rather than voltage because the voltage may be already be near saturation.
And expose this to sunlight instead of the low intensity directional indoor lighting.
Actually the true test is to measure the power but being aware the power depends on the impedance of the load.
Even better still is to measure the Watt-hours energy delivered over a certain number of hours where there is a variation in light level.
@@vitordelimaThe issue isn't so much the directionality of the light source, it is easy to arrange artificial lighting so that the light strikes the panel perpendicularly to the face of the panel; the issues with the indoor lighting are intensity and the particular wavelengths of light that are present, or rather not present which are present in daylight.
@@deang5622 Outdoor lighting is almost omnidirectional, every trick to get more power out of solar concentrators involve this kind of thinking. But the frequency spectrum is also different.
@@vitordelima LoL.
Why are you repeating what I said?
I would like to see you redo that later half and this time add a mirror that is 45 degrees off set to the plastic sheet. Mirror would also be set back and to the side so that it is reflecting original light into the back side of the plastic. (I believe that since my grey and cold days are in the temperature range of -10 celcus this would be a working option to get power when otherwise you would be running the timer on what ideally should be a 3 grey day battery supply.) * System would have to be shut down and converted back to normal operations quickly when the full sun comes out and the temperature rises both ambenant and on the plate surfaces.
Great video. The giant glass ball is ...err...a giant glass ball 🤦♂️.. it'd take a loooong time to generate the energy required to make the... *giant glass ball* 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
Exactly what I jumped in here to add. 👍
I actually remember reading the preliminary design paper for this one. In fact I downloaded it because I thought the concept was so darn cool. Glad to see it move forward as a product.
This is the worst invention ever. Costs multiple times more per efficiency improvement than to just buy some more solar cells. Noone who has even a bit of knowledge about solar cells thinks any of these make any sense. Sorry.
If you use a thermoacoustic resonant chamber you can put the cold end on the back of the solar cell to keep it operating at peak efficiency.
Some solar panels use heat cogeneration to cool down the solar cell and this increases the efficiency a lot.
i love those fluorescent acrylic so much!
Fast becoming my favourite channel, love from Australia 😎
Very informative. I saw the sphere cell years ago and wonder why it wasn't becoming more popular but this may explain why.
I always learn so much from this wonderful channel and superstar a.k.a. Rob. If i had had him as my physics teacher I could have been famous by now. Lovely video. Thank you SO SO SO much for making things easy to understand for me. PS nice haircut
Thanks Rob.
Wouldn't the lens would work better outside? If your office has a point source, the lens isn't aggregating much.
Isn't re-emission the basis of Samsung's QLED (not OLED) displays? Concentrating the spectrum sounds cheaper than tandem cells and must surely be worth more R&D.
Or use the solar heat directly which always worked well since more then a century ago.
Hi Robert, great video as always! I have a question: That green wave-guide, from how I understand it, makes the light go from a Z-direction to the XY plane. So wouldn't it make sense to have long, narrow mirrors on those edges deflecting that light onto the solar panels, effectively making a huge green panel that redirects all that light onto a small solar panel? That would be a very cheap way of increasing the output of a given number of solar panels, would it not?
My college professor did his dissertation on 3 photon bandgap absorption. Fascinating stuff.
Options and alternatives are great for innovation, especially for specific uncommon uses.
As you said at the end of the video, maintenance.
Also, for example, if you spend 20 million dollars on parts to optimize a $1 solar cell, you aren't saving money.
It's like if you had a lens the size of a house for a single solar cell versus having a solar cell the size of a frisbee.
What an amazing piece of education. Loved it.
My main problem with this design is how bulky it is for no reason at all. Sure it LOOKS cool, but a fresnel lens the thickness of box cardboard would do the same job at redirecting light to the solar cell for a fraction of the weight and material.
You could even exchange the cell position and lens and replace the lens with a curved reflector for an even lower tech solution. There's so many ways to improve this design.
There's a lot of bunk flying around out there.
Biggest concern (to me) for solar is not 'peak' performance, but 'winter' performance.
Anything which could do condensed solar on a seasonal basis could be interesting. Although giant balls of glass look expensive, big, and heavy.
- yes, the off axis - and cloudy day, or under snow (self melting) - performance is more important. Peak summer sun just overheats everything.
hehe you're a natural genius teacher Robert.
I'm working on a project wich uses mirrors to focus the sun light reflected by the moon, thanks for the insights!
glad i've stumbled upon your channel - thanks for uploading :) the world needs this (anti-nonsense approach)
They had these over 20 years ago. Arrays of lenses on small high efficiency (and at the time extremely expensive) Solar cells. Their idea was to limit the need for tracking and get maximum output from the cell. Needless to say they are not on every roof so it wasn't economically viable.
could adding other fluorescent chemicals into the acrylic sheets add to the range of absorbed and remitted light?
As in - more ultraviolet wavelength is absorbed and emitted in the visible spectrum so that the solar cell can use that to generate energy.
Then those sheets could be used as windows generating power with the parts of the spectrum our eyes can't use
I'd love to get my hands on an old school 9' satellite TV dish and make a reflector with it. I've played around with home brewed solar ovens when I was a young fella and it's something I'd love to try.
Do it :) It doesn't even have to be 9 feet, I have a smaller dish (still large) and I can bake bread or roast a whole chicken just as fast as in my kitchen oven.
Ok, Robert, I got frustrated with this video. lol. I was trying to see the focal point of your lens while you were tossing it around. I think you could lift the lens slightly might be the best focal point for the solar cell. I was interested in its maximum level. but, great video! thank you. I feel and have said for years that this is the way they will be in the future. we just need to get a cell that can handle the high temperatures that would be needed. but with the cost of plastics for this nowadays I might be wrong depending on the cell material and price.
Could you make a small wall of fiberotpic cable lines with a cell on either end? Or a mirror on one end to send the light to the cell? I would think that might be cheaper than lenses, except maybe plastic fresnel lenses. But the fiberoptics would allow you to keep the electronic potions out of the weather.
Yes. Anything that redirects or concentrates light will work.
I typically keep my electronic potions in storage unless I need one.
@@RuvianCSPlays i hate it when i forget to bring an electronic potion and my voltage runs low while i'm out
@@janthran Of course, it never hurts to keep a couple on you just in case. Just make sure to dispose of them properly when finished!
I personally would first have a focusing lens, into the back of the dome, then the light would spread to the outside and around the dome onto many more cells!
Thus the light bam is split, so it focuses where the cells are.
Again, compres a light source to a high intensity beam, then the beam goes into the flat of the dome, then the light radiates to the cells spaced around the dome.
Simples ❤
These usually use nickel metal hydride cells, not lithium
they also get filled up with insects, at least in our garden
The old lithium cells scare me, can't wait for solid state lithium metal cells
It's not just the concentration effect. It's also changing the angle of incidence which is very important. consider how much light is reflected on a wet road blinding you. but if the sun is overhead that light doesn't glance off and you don't notice it because it's absorbed by the road.
The whole assembly is tracking the sun anyway because this is so important to fix this effect. The biggest problem is a solar cell is only as good as the worst illuminated part. So if you put a shadow of a thin branch over a car sized panel the whole output of the panel drops as if the whole thing were shaded.
Rob, the thing is a solar cell is a current generator, not a voltage generator. The voltage stays relatively similar even with a large increase in available light energy. A better measure (although not perfect) would be to measure short-circuit current, as that's more directly linked to how much light can be converted to current.
New layered solar cells designed to utilize infrared might be able to use the red shift caused by these lenses...?
Fresnel worked on the same ideas. Bend light waves to concentrate. I think this is really cute idea and it’s beautiful to look at. I think there’s something there with the idea. I thought about taking fresnel type lenses and put over a small cell. Just to see what they di
Exellent source of info love it. Great job
Using collectors to get a better average over a day is definitely going to help in the long run, but making it cheap is the hard part I guess?
We've got automatic tracking on our panels, but it wasn't cheap and does need more maintenance.
Round solar panel attached to a cylinder of fluorescent material with a domed top? That way you could just feed the cylinders through a wall without exposing the electronics and give you better options for cooling, or at least concentrate the heat for other uses.
Not sure cylinder costing, but it will get cheap if you're making enough.
Bonus is that it'll end up looking like a glow-in-the-dark Dalek.
@RobertMurray-Smith
I was hoping that you would do a video on this! The first time that I found this solar culmination sphere, I immediately thought about your videos on edge lighting, etc. Thanks for another great video 🎉
Not to mention that a literal ton a glass costs a pretty penny. Certainly more than a solar panel that covers up enough area to make up for the added efficiency of this particular concentrated setup.
When Solyndra came along, I didn't hear of it for a while (first I knew the name was when I drove by on 880 in Fremont and saw the very impressive sign they were adding and thought "Solyndra"? what is that?) When I found out what it was, I immediately thought of the Whole Earth Catalog from (if memory serves) 1972, and a discussion of cylindrical solar, concluding that they won't deliver the benefits claimed at a cost which makes them worthwhile, it's more of a gimmick. That (remembering 50 year old articles about the "latest thing") happens every now and then, these days, but I have to admit, they've got me on this one. I never heard of it. I am inclined to go with your analysis.
My colleague created one of these in the 70s at STL Ltd. He used a fresnel lens and a magnetic liquid to effect tracking.
Always pondered over the Apollo 11 retroreflectors left on the moon and if it’s easier to direct the sunlight rather than fit something to the solar cell
Mentioned this a long time ago. It was simple when thinking of the capabilities of a prism and considering that even amazing technologies have been reverse engineered.
Could make a large concaved reflector coated with mylar, and put that underneath a Glass bowl full of water and place on top of it a solar panel facing down...
( making sure it's focused on the bowel).
Hmm maybe you perspex sheet might work really good as a collector, and shape and paint with that mirror paint on the edges you don't with to lose the light through... 🤔 Maybe a tear drop shape with a small exit at the tip for the light to be projected through...
Hmm 🤔 you could arrange it like flower petals, focusing the in the center
Let me further amend my suggestion for experimentation. Take (2) separate sheets of the plastic and apply a mirror to the back of (1) then another mirror facing downwards and then apply the second sheet of the plastic. Take a third Mirror and place it so that sun light is being bounced into the lowest plastic plate. You should get a true reading of how much energy potential is being picked up by the reflection.
thats really cool! Solar panels usually have a layer of glass over them to protect them right? what if this glass was replaced with quartz? I'm sure there's diminishing returns at different light frequencies but maybe that also offers more light energy to harvest? Couple that with a quartz based concentrator as well, I wonder if anyone's looked into that :)
Dude this guy isn't even up to speed. That ball have been out for 20 years already and panels are very efficient now.
It'll get hot if not water-cooled. The jeat lowers efficiency for our everyday PV panels. Spraying water mist on them raises their output.
I think the advantage of the sphere will be that it will broaden out the graph of power generated throughout the day and not an instantaneous measurement of power generation that you were looking at. I could imagine it increasing the power generation throughout the day by 25-50%.
Interesting stuff. The sheet option also seems to be easier to produce. I hope you try some more fluorescent concentrator experiments. Would be very fun to see how much energy could be harvested both from the sides and just through the panel.
35 years ago I had a wall clock made of this flourescent acrylic glass, there were solar panel stripes in the sides. The clock was working fine for 30 years before my mother accidentally wiped it off the wall with a broom :(
I was more interested in your sheets than the glass lens.. very cool...🤔😎🇦🇺👌
Flourescent acrylic secondary (wave guide) glazing or outside shuttering might make a good, cheap way of gathering solar power. Essentially you'd only need about 1cm width of solar panel all around the perimeter.
Fixed secondary glazing is realistically probably not what people would want on their homes as a permeant feature but outbuildings, sheds, garages etc should be fine. As shuttering, it'd still be working when open and be serving it's power gathering when not used as shuttering, for use in wind or (partial) sun shading in heatwaves.
My ADHD brain wouldn't let me rest at that...
My thoughts were sparked off by...The acrylic you showed looked about 1cm think and the solar cell about 4cm square, yet the large increase in voltage was by only increasing the wave guided light to 1/4 of the area.
I don't think a 4cm thick piece of fluorescing acrylic is likely to have a even light distribution across it's depth but I realised I'd fallen into a trap of "accepting what's there, so far, as the way to do it"
So I'd propose that an angled cut be made across the acrylic so that the hypotenuse of the wedge cut is ( in this case to match your cell ) 4cm. That gives the whole of the cell under a wave guide and would seem a better comparison in measuring how much the fluorescing acrylic increases the output.
Now the question becomes how tall do we have to have the acrylic before the extra light on the cell is essentially wasted. A quick and dirty experiment there would be start with a long piece and slowly roll a cover over it until it showed a significant decrease in output.
I'm looking forward to next year when I've ( hopefully )moved out of my very small flat in expensive city and have a bit more space and time to do those sort of tests myself
OK, I got 300 florescent acrylic sheets, splayed them over the solar cell (like spread fingers) so all angles of sun path through the day are soaked up evenly.
See, this is why I prefer mirror arrays. Instead of a gigantic glass lens that will be attacked by bird poop, you can just have the tracking system briefly refocus several thousand inexpensive mirrors on any birds that come near within less than a second.
Great video! I really enjoyed it! Im the guy who asked if a wood stove powered Heat fan can be scaled up. You told me to look up flat panel Sterling engines. That's absolutely not what wood stove heat fans are. They actually have a Thermal electric module embedded in them connected to a small electric motor. So I will ask the same question again can this type of system be scaled up??? 🤔
Indirect lighting would be my main concern here. Sure if you want to light a small spot (on fire?) on a sunny day, a big glass ball is fine... but if it's cloudy then the light will come in from random directions and exit in equally random directions.
a slanted side of the panel would enlarge the area, also an octagon panel could radiate to 8 solarcells, and add the sphere on top, add a mirror on the back of the panel, could help.
Im under the impressiin that you capture the heat also and transfer it into electricity too.
I believe that you could use a device called a Pelletier devices to do that. It can get hot or cold by its positive or negative power consumptions, so it can also colledt and transfer heat to electricity too. . I know, no one is ready to do things with undeestanding, its easiest to just rely on the one who was given a piece of paper saying they posess actuall skills because they have a piece of decaying paper that makes the claim that the name on that paper is brilliant,
like the host of this video who actuality is. Id like his thouggts on this idea also. Cool video. Peace be on you house.
you can paint all the edges of the acrylic white, except for the area exposed to the solar cells, and that will create more internal reflection
Considering that a crystal ball can and will set fire to anything flammable near it, and will start burning your hand in seconds if you hold it outside.... yeah I can believe that it would make an efficient solar panel
With 400+ Wp panels retailing for around 80 Euro, they are cheaper than concentrators. That involve a lot of material and mechanics, and weight.
of course light multiplication - improves "efficiency" - of the bare cell, by altering the area metrics.
(cooling by some means becomes absolutely necessary for concentrated silicon cells - in daylight).
Improving off-axis performance is most advantageous.
This sounds like a perfect argument for balls of liquid filled with bioluminescent algae
My idea is to focus, light onto the solar panels and then use thermal electric generators to collect the heat as extra energy
That's what a sterling engine is, he describes the light being collected by the photovoltaics and the heat operating a sterling engine.
@@EliotTruelove No I am talking specifically about a TEG, a solid state thermal electric generator. A Peltier module used to generate electricity instead of heat or cold.
Your video content is superb you pump out more interesting videos than I can watch
I've been waiting for YEARS for Raw Lemon to get their product out for sale
Its a lovely piece of art.
I always enjoy watching your informative videos
You can coat it in wax embedded with fluorescent pigment and when its hard to clean, warm it over 150 f and the wax will melt and the mess will slip off and u can rewax it.
I watched a long video of a company, I believe from Japan, they were working on two things. One an ink that you can print and have yourself a solar cell on regular paper, by simply pressing print. And 2, they were using very small solar cells, like hundred if not thousands on something the size of regular paper, but each small cell had a glass or plastic lens on it that focused the light like a magnifying glass. It was said to take over. And it went MIA. That was over 10 years ago. I think the scientists got the idea from bubble rap.
@ 3 minutes, you have the optic the wrong way, as if it's the other way ( curved part down) it will project more concentrated light on the cell.
This was shown by green power science with a 4 ft square piece of plastic in a frame.
It was also shown by NASA Back in the 70's to increase solar efficiency 8 times. No overheating problems in space.
So though this looks great: but it cost money and as always I am the CHEAPEST penny hoarder there is. So the green power science 4ft plastic in a frame is for me.
Thank you for the video.
The Glasses on Seinfeld, the sketch from Almost Live with the wearable Magnafier.
I'm glad Robbie Williams found something appropriate for his senior years, singing is going to last only so long.
Look into the concept of hot and cold mirrors if you want to make the most of the 70% of sunlight that is usually just turned into waste heat that contributes to urban heat islands when there is a lot of rooftop PV installed.
It seems that transparent beachball filled with water could be a cheap and effective deployment method.
liquid filled ball may have an advantage in that you could plumb it to a liquid cooler, thusly managing the heat issue. Granted then you have winter issues.. is their a clear as water anti-freeze that would work.... ?
Viktor Schauberger (30 June 1885 - 25 September 1958) was an Austrian forest caretaker, naturalist, philosopher, inventor and pseudoscientist. Schauberger was born in Holzschlag, Upper Austria on 30 June 1885. His parents were Leopold Schauberger and Josefa, née Klimitsch.
Not sure if it would be cost effective, but a bunch of florescent acrylic fanned out over a solar cell (or that Prussian blue solar battery) would definitely be cool to look at as a piece of functional modern art. They could be held in a 3d printed frame like the petals of a flower.
I wonder if it would help to cover all the 'wasted' edges with reflective aluminum tape (except the ones directly facing the central PV cell)
A simple fresnel lens would be more effective than that limp of glass 🧐
Laying it on top is far different than if you heard it a focal distance from the cell, like starting a fire with a magnifying glass. Even the reference photos you displayed do that.
The use of a parabolic solar collector and a Stirling power generator was pioneered by a company calle Infinia, that went into commercializing the concept. Their problem was they were not selling to the public but wanted this to only be a big corporate only project. They failed and went bankrupt.
Ah a solar concentrator, i thought it was actually rounded panels which i was thinking about doing with these super flexible panels, stick them onto a sphere, and the spin the panels and see what happens? Im not sure ill get anymore but maybe make something interesting to look at, but using a sphere to solar concentrate is pretty cool idea. Tech ingredients channel showed you could make one out of mirrors attached to the side of a flat panel and you just angle them and voila, 4xpower. You have to be careful though this cooks the cells, but 4x power is definatley worth it , even if you have to spend some on cooling.
I wonder if a modified version of this "Spherical Solar Cell" might work a bit better if it were applied using more of a fiber-optic cable setup?
One end of a fiber-optic cable would have the dome or spherical contour and, the other end would have the concave shape like the inside of the sphere.
It wouldn't have to be a very long fiber-optic cable, but it would have to be of a diameter similar to the diameter of the example of the Spherical Solar Cell you showed in this video or a bundle of fiber-optic cables.
Picture a bundle of thinner fiber optic cables all with a spherical shape on one end and the concave shape on the other.
By allowing the spherical end of the fiber-optic cable bundle to track the sun, it would allow the full amount of sunlight to be dumped directly onto the photovoltaic cell.
Brilliant! But how can politicians use it to create shortages, crises and further oppression? Let’s be sure to focus on what matters.
I looked up solar panels for both my dream computer and the possibility of solar powering questionable LCD electronics.
Apparently solar panels are tuned to different light levels. Who knew?
Those planels on calculators? They're for low light conditions (inside). Very interesting!
This is the exact same method used by a natural lighting movement to get daylight into a house without the thermal efficiency loss of a skylight
Yes, this is a good idea. You can lose some of the energy by the lens, but with decent quality glass, it is not very much. The real issue that I have encountered is the cost of the lens... perhaps you can figure out a low cost easy way to make the "spherical" type lens for a larger panel? Or, maybe a low cost plastic like a wrap could be warped into a bubble...
I did try the fluorescent dyes by layering it over a solar cell (not vertically)... but it didn't work for me to boost the total power... hard to say why not but my guess is that the dye is also absorbing the energy from the visible wavelengths as well.
What about the concept of an air dam, such as a valley that is fitted with a funnel, or a series of panels that direct the the air from a large surface area down "funneling" it to a turbine, its interesting to picture the large mass of all the air and how it interacts with mountains, its as if there is "water" everywhere, but the flow is "slow" and could be geared down to increase the rpm, my idea consists of large tube structures with cloth stretch over them like a canvas, that use electric motors to be able to "open" or "close' the "sail" on a massive structure vertical or horizontal, these would be held on with "shear pins" and would allow you to control the speed by lowering the surface area on demand, allowing you to capture more of the air and also allows it to function with less airflow as well as protecting it against excess.
Great video.
Apparently 1080p is more like 480p, going by my Mk1 sensors ...
dust in the wind, all we are in dust in the wind
I thought of this possibility a couple of years ago ... sort of. I was wondering if the little hemispheres of rain water on my solar panels would magnify the light and make the panels produce more power. Then I thought of covering the panels with an array of lenses ... but never got around to it. Too broke to buy the lenses. LOL
Always assumed there’d be a horrible loss passing the light through the fish eye lens. Just goes to show that assumption is a dangerous thing.
Maybe a lenticular lens would be worth investigating.
This could be combined with bilateral vertical solar panels. The combination could raise the efficiency of solar energy quite a bit.
As an amateur gadgeteer, I immediately see these problems with this design: First is weight... If this is solid glass it's going to weigh several hundred pounds and will not be easy to move around. Yes, moving the solar cell array will be much easier as the focal point of the concentrated light moves with the sun, but the HEAT produced from this would be hot enough to melt metals! AND could damage the solar cell array.
Next is price: A fresnel lens is fairly inexpensive molding but creating a huge glass ball is going to be expensive!
This looks good, but really isn't very practical.
pv panels get less efficient the hotter they get, the important aspect of this would be how they plan to keep it cool.
I could see these as a fire hazard when the sun hits them a certain way.
Design has been around for 20 years, very interesting hard to sell, doesn't make enough power for many operations and buying multiple units to cover the power requirements of a small facility with wiring makes it inefficient, compared to a standard panel installation.
I enjoy your videos!
Not clear if you're using any kind of known load resistance when measuring the output of that solar cell. Without that, the voltage readings seem of questionable meaning, although they clearly correlate somewhat with the amount of light. With a resistance, you could measure the current and thus power, whcih seems like the important consideration here.
Rob, you really need to start measuring Watt in your experiments. Voltage is completely meaningless without current.
And many other shady details.
Robbie you would be totally astounded if I were to explain to you how you can pull energy from the vacuum. I spent 12 years researching to this day. I could use your assistance in creating an effective and efficient extractor. At the moment I can pull 1.3 volts on material half the size of my PINKY fingernail. Yes Robbie that small. We need to discuss this either chatroom or phone. I assure you it will probably be the biggest finding of your life.