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  • Posted by iroseland 9 years ago
    The longer version of the article mentioned the efficiency of the clear cells. They hope to get up to about 7%. At that rate the glass would need to be about as cheap as regular low e glass, and also would still need the radiant barrier working or you would use up more of the electricity generated just to run air conditioning or the furnace. After that if it works and is really inexpensive it would be handy as with a lot of it installed everywhere the total needed base load during daylight would be lower which would be a good thing. But, it would take a boatload of windows to actually get off the grid with this stuff alone. In the meantime the nice folks at Lockheed would like to remind us that there is not much to worry about..

    http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/product...

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    • Posted by $ 9 years ago
      Yes, and it's one of the reasons I don't put a lot of stock in solar tech - the conversion rates just can't compete with the likes of carbon sources for energy density. And at a certain point that's in the end what really matters.
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  • Posted by XenokRoy 9 years ago
    About 7 or 8 years ago MIT (from funding from Exxon Mobile) prototyped a new type of solar cell that used photosynthesis and produced a byproduct of oxygen and hydrogen and would get a carbon build up on the surface that had to be cleaned.

    The estimated cost was half of current solar panels and had a by product of hydrogen and oxygen. It those by products were captured and burned in a generator for power when the sun was down, producing water.

    Not sure what happened to it, but I am sure some articles still exist about it.

    even older, in 1995 a guy (cant recall name) had a patent on a prototype built on a ford escort that ran on water. HHO gas was what it was called. Fox aired a report on it in 95. It was a car than ran on distilled water with nickle nitrate as a catalyst.

    I built a chamber to handle the reaction. Build it with PVC pipe, a car battery and a transformer (amperage has to be over 30 ams). Run two wires into the water, use some baking soda for the catalist and you can light the water on fire. Be warned the reaction generates some heat and will melt PVC off at the water line. So PVC is really only good to validate the science of it on your own.

    This tech vanished as well.

    Good viable options have been around before but seem to vanish. Those are two I have seen or played with.
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  • Posted by richrobinson 9 years ago
    I have often wondered what would happen if utility companies saw a legitimate threat to their existence? Be interesting to see if this idea ever sees the light of day, so to speak.
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    • Posted by $ Abaco 9 years ago
      Well, that's happening. Distributed generation is starting to happen here in sunny California and some people, almost accidentally, are generating more than they take from the grid. Through net metering they can dump back into the grid. Gov. Schwartzenstreudle demanded that the utility companies start to reimburse such producers. The utility companies got in bed with the PUC and had those payback rates set ridiculously low. So...this kind of thing is starting to happen and the investor-owned utilities are going to fight it.

      But, mark my words - with the developments in solar and electrical storage you will see major changes in our near future.
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