Is Spherical Solar Really The Future of Energy?
Check out the awesome work from my friends at Planet Wild as they restoring our natural world:
Deep sea clean-up: www.planetwild.com/ziroth/2
Resurrection of a dying forest: www.planetwild.com/ziroth/3
I have been fascinated with the idea of solar lenses and their ability to concentrate solar power. When I began my research, it opened up a whole world of engineering genius which I had to share with you all!
Intro card by Johannes Skolaude
johannesskolau.de/
/// Timestamps ///
00:00 Intro
0:45 Concentrating Power
1:30 The Secret Ingredient
2:54 The Problem
5:13 More Energy!
5:53 Micro Solar Cells (Genius!)
6:50 Unlocking More Micro Cells
7:20 Future outlooks
Sources:
Fresnel lens: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel...
Beta.ey: www.backerkit.com/projects/ra...
Fraunhofer ISE: • III-V and Concentrator...
AGILE lens: news.stanford.edu/2022/06/27/...
Future costs: publica-rest.fraunhofer.de/se...
#solar #scam #breakthrough #energy
Hi Guys, Ryan here! Thanks for watching, I enjoyed going down this solar lens rabbit hole and was really surprised at how some of them managed to increase solar energy production! Also, make sure to go check the awesome work from my friends at Planet Wild as they restoring our natural world: Deep sea clean-up: www.planetwild.com/ziroth/2 Resurrection of a dying forest: www.planetwild.com/ziroth/3
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo9ooooooooooo
Mpnr😂😂
you should revisit this with vertical aligned dual-face PV panels and rather than a single point Fresnel lens, use the thin bar orientation so the bar is focused into a line that paths with the sun across the PV cells. This gives you the added benefit of both the Fresnel concentration and the cooling of the upright dual face orientation without any moving parts or tracking needed. As well as a vast reduction in the amount of surface cleaning required. And there's another tier of benefit to this if you can surround the panels with a box of mirror walls that are angled out, and tall enough to prevent line of sight between the PV cells and any radiant surface like trees, or walls, etc. There's an effect with a fancy name that escapes me at the moment, but the result of it is cooling with no energy or moving parts. The reflection of heat off of matter helps equalize the heat energy between everything on the ground, but if you prevent those waves of energy from reaching a surface that is open to the sky, that surface only sends heat out, none returns through sharing radiant heat. Long story short, it's free added cooling. This, as you know, means even more energy throughput for the PV cells. The daily output should exceed 200% as compared to normal horizontally aligned PV cells that lose a large amount of energy to heat. This is before the cost of moving panels to face the sun, cleaning those panels, and maintaining all of those moving parts or supplying that labor is even considered. Vertically aligned PV panels under Fresnel concentrators wrapped with inward facing mirrors allowing radiant heat loss results in a system of energy generation that's vastly cheaper per unit of energy than any commercial option. And it can be done at any scale in all environments where the vast majority of people live and work. Where this doesn't work we have diesel. This is what the individual laymen should be doing. No moving parts, best possible mass produced efficiency, no difficult alignment, simplified cleaning and maintenance. It's as plug and play as a solar harvesting system can be, AND it's 200% more energy for the same solar footprint. But I ain't one to gossip, so you ain't heard that from me.
Would be great if you could revisit this video to adjust the audio levels. Sounds terribly distorted. Probably since it's too loud. Use a compressor rather than pulling up gain/volume?
❤
The problem lenses solve is to reduce the amount of solar cell surface, which is good for the budget if cost of cells is the limiting factor. However as costs keep dropping and efficiencies creep upwards, increasingly the limiting factor is surface area, which lenses do not solve. Lenses also introduce their own problems, such as that efficiency with increasing angle of incidence drops far quicker.
Concentrated ev has overheating issues that counter benefits, so you need cooling system on top of lens/mirror. Back when ev panels in general were expensive and high efficiency monocrystalline panels had even more premium price (and big efficiency advantage) there may have been reason to pay for the whole mirror/lens+cooling package. And there were projects that did that with mirrors as you can have mirror shape that does sun tracking for you without need for that ridiculous giant lens. But what you said about panel price making this pointless is 100% spot on. Except it is not something that will happen in future, it's something that already has happened. Panel price has already dropped to fractions what it used to be and still dropping, they're so cheap right now that many places don't even bother to do sun tracking. They just put more panels at fixed angle instead cause its cheaper and less maintenance. So more panels is cheaper that bargain motor from china to adjust ev panel angle... I'd say that's just another startup scam like solar roads or atomic batteries. It just tries to resell idea that was already tried and did not survive economic reality.
@@sznikersindeed almost half the cool looking tech ideas in general are done by grifters running scam startups
Here is the thing about any type of lense as far as I am aware: the solar panel needs to be smaller than the lens, which means less solar panels per area. Because all a lens does is concentrating light from a wider area to a smaller one. So how much more energy can actually be harvested from a lens + solar panel setup, vs a solar panel alone using the same area that the first setup uses?
Zero % more energy. That's the scam for people who lack the ability to use deductive logic.
I think the point is to rather save money by needing less solar panels (lens should be cheaper than a solar panel). But it will still use a similar amount of space.
@@matthewvanhelsdingen543 No net $ saved as the panels will degrade more quickly under magnified sun + cost of magnifiers, mountings, etc.
@@protonneutron9046 That's why we add a cooling jacket and harvest that heat for domestic hot water. It isn't the light that kills the cells, it's the heat.
@@TimeSurfer206 LMAO!!!!!!!! God, the insanity just keeps pouring out of the brains of the terminally uneducated.
Absolicon had a parabolic trough with a multijunction cell at the bottom and a copper pipe heating water on the back. It was such a clean design that could be easily scaled to any size. The trough had only a single axis and one regulator could work for essentially any length. It was better than anything I've seen since.
3:46 homeboy really knows how yo use those channel locks
As far as I know, and it used to definitely be true some years back, it is impossible to focus diffuse light such as light going through a cloud or heavy haze. So the lens approach can be expected to function very well in dry sunny climates such as Arizona and New Mexico but not well in eastern cloudy and hazy states. A regular solar panel not relying on lenses does function reasonably well through haze and somewhat also through thin clouds. Another technical issue that can be solved is that the focal point of the light going through a lens will change location as the sun moves. This means that maintaining the lens focus on the solar panel increases the complexity of the design and hence likely the cost for the product and its maintenance. One never knows what advances can be made these days so never say never! We do need to address these issues.
With liquid cooling, you could even just have a convection loop instead of something pumped.
Yeah like those little boats that are candle powered:)
Thanks for another great video - loved your demo!
How does the lens use affect the usable lifespan of the panel?
Commonly, the more temperatures in any machine fluctuate, the less life expectancy you can expect. Since those systems would wobble between hundreds of c° by day and ambient temp by night, some trouble is to be expected. Even normal unconcentrated systems need to be fixed to their lattice keeping expansions and contractions in mind. There are gliding mountings in all of those roof-systems because they too have big temp fluctuations and panels shift on any given day.
Keep at it. Always good to see you nosing about in technology
Love seeing the speculation and inquisitiveness. I've been to hundreds of systems, the reality is cost is tantamount, and all these systems are far more expensive, materials, installation and maintenance, solar trackers fail, and sit there, a few more panels makes up the added wattage from tracking. Concentrated is a nonstarter for all the reasons you mention. the peroskovites are possible, if , if if. The real cost holdout is the battery storage, the inverters ( EG4 600xp ) and Panels have come down enormously, its the batteries and regulations / codes governments along with lack of funding is holding up much , much wider application. Theodore
What a great channel to discover ! Thanks
you can make those processor chips on anode ray tube ion mass separation combo system, direct ion crystal growth, nano size 3d printing with ions
When panels were expensive. Many companies tried to get into the solar market, trying to use technology to get an upper hand. A big endevour here focused on fapour deposition solar panels ... but after multicrystaline panels got so cheap, nobody wanted to invest countless millions more when there are square killometers of roof space still available to be plastered. I think the best takeway is to optimize setups and get a few percent out of them. Add cooling and maybe some mirrors to catch more ambient or morning/evening sun, and it will be a nice solution for most.
Well, I always thought about index lens focusing light into light guide made from light fiber. In house, it can help remove windows which make energy savings. And in production it could help make focused energy flow to heat up heat storage, which can be heat source for stirling, for example.
I don't meen to throw shade on this subject, but the reality of the mater truly is HOW the PV cells convert light to power. This is all sort of backwards thinking in a way.. If you take 1 solar cell, and throw a dedicated lens on top of it that (in your case is was about 5 times the size of the cell), it is more beneficial in the long run to use more cells. What I meen is there is only so many photons hitting that square inch, meter, or kilometer of the planets surface period. It's all about efficiency over that given space. Adding any form of lens adds more space used. It's not a game of focusing the light.. It's about what the panels do when the light gets to them. That's the real challenge.
As he said, point of the lens is to make better use, of _expensive and hard to produce_ cells. Specifically the cells he spoke of that get _more_ efficient with more concentrated light. So that you get more power out of a given land area than with traditional cells without a lens. The cell he spoke of claimed to be able to reach 45% efficiency when under a lens. Which is far better than the 15-25% efficiency of the typical solar cells currently on the market. So, out of a given area, you will get 2-3x the energy output.
modern solar pv cells are 22% to 24% efficient and mass produced concentrator pv will likely be less efficient than laboratory cells. in addition concentrator cells do not collect scattered sunlight, thus cpv will be effectively less than double rather than 3x efficient compared to standard solar cells. then the cpv is also much more expensive as you point out, plus much more finnicky due to need for high precision tracking.
Index lenses would probably work well on boats, you can make cooling loop that gets cooled down by the ocean
Weight and pump system (power loss to pumps and maintenance of pumps and filters)
As other have already written: - the solar panel needs to be smaller than the lens, which means less solar panels per area - more expensive solar panels + lens and perhaps more crucial: - solar panels are much easier to clean than the jagged surface of a fernel lens, where dirt and dust will accumulate. Seem like good only in theory. In the real world we need to take into consideration practical things like unit economics, maintenance etc. This is not a great idea imo
Right, maybe a better invention would be mirrors mounted on a motorized stall to send back light on the other side of the house while the sun is on the EAST/WEST side. We have panels placed in an EAST/WEST combination and I can see that the energy moves from one string to the other during a normal day. Having a large mirror in the back of my yard that would send light on the EAST side of the roof while the sun is already on the west side would increase production by at least 60-70% percent as the panels on the EAST no longer get enough light. Same could be applied at sunrise for the panels placed on the WEST side but I don't really want a huge mirror in front of my house lol.
@@alexandruilea915 you can have mirror shape that does sun tracking for you and it has been previously done to focus light on expensive multilayer monocrystal ev cell. All those ideas were abandoned simply because mass manufacturing of simple ev panels dropped the price so low none of that makes sense anymore.
@@sznikers also, focused light means more heat at the same time.
1) there is nothing unusual happening with the climate. 2) there is nothing wrong with burning fossil fuels. Its problems in high-density areas are trivial to fix and already have been fixed. CO2 is not a pollutant. 3) Climate alarmism is a big-lie superstition supported by tax-bribed liars. (See Climate Discussion Nexus for 100s of videos on climate quackery, deception, and realism.) 4) decarbonization is 21st century pyramid building and human sacrifice. 5) there is NO excuse for expensive electricity. Electricity generation is boring. Just burn coal and scrub the smoke in densely populated areas. 6) the only challenge is manufacturing market quantities of cheap gasoline. South Africa has already done this for decades (Sasol), using coal.
compliments for the interesting video... happy to see the Sant' Ilario solar plant of my home city, Genova.. just let me say that Solar concentration from my Uni started some years before, dated 1964 by Professor Francia Fresnel Mirror (LFC) system Best regards, Marco Fossa
I'm far from being an expert on solar energy but I was thinking about how hot the hood of a car can get in the sun. I've watched videos about using black tubing in a sort of box with a clear cover and letting the sun heat water in the tubes for hot water without electricity. So I'm wondering if Fresnel lenses could raise the temperature high enough convert the water to steam to run a turbine. Would need to use metal pipes and enclose the system so it wouldn't loose part of the steam into the air and waste water. Might could use something I read about years ago. Liquid ammonia I think. Vaporizes at a much lower temperature than water so it wouldn't need to get the pipes as hot. Good work on the video.
I think 2023 is a good year for the environment with increased use of solar and other renewable energy sources along with recent breakthroughs in clean energy.
Vertical Solar Panels suspended inside Transparent Towers could rotate and track the sun. This system could be installed in urban areas.
The saying is 'take it with a pinch of salt' because a pinch of salt makes a large difference to the flavour of a dish whereas a grain of salt would not be noticeable. However, a very interesting treatise on possible alternative energy technology. Thank you.
That thumbnail honestly just looks like a weapon to roast nearby invaders. 3:07 Exactly my point.
It needs ultra fast shuttering to allow the panel to cool while receiving high pwered spikes, which as noted leads to higher efficiency in the panel the duty cycle coild split into thirds or fourths, redirecring the concentrated beam to another nearby. The shadow phase of the cycle should be embraced, as it allows the PV's charge to reset to zero, then when reilluminated it must polarize fully, turning a DC PV cell into a high energy impulse PV cell with ceramic capacitor like outputs if it were drawn for a pulse power supply. The benifits will be many, as the cells now naturally cool for 67% or 75% of the wave duty cycle, and the output power is tri-phase or quad-phase impulse current which is literally THE most efficent form of power transmission. More than AC, and more than 'high voltage DC' (signal is square waves arranged in a myan pyramid shape; outpreforms AC -- yet impulse DC is best). Systems of concentrated power behave differently than those not designed for it. An impulse system only transmits energy with very dense flux, compared to AC with much less density of flux over time. A monocystal PV with silvered nano wire or even modified layers of translucent carbon fiber as condutors (to hold the charge beond what the doped monocrystals hold; aka, the something that has to connect to the wire for the grid, its usually normal metal girds on each face)... something like that should contain bursts of intense energy easily if cooled for most of it's duty cycle.
I can't wait for someone to notice the trees and realize that the nature is much smarter than us and copy that model.
Often wondered about the concepts discussed in this video.
Connect the panels with quality Steel hinges along their length to form a concertina which are suspended from a single steel pole embedded in a concrete foundation, A manual winch retracts a steel cable attached to the panels elongating the stack of panels vertically. The angle between the panels is therefor adjustable. One panel receives direct sunlight, the panel above receives reflected light from the lower panel. The panels will operate cooler and therefore efficiency will increase. Ideally, one would take advantage of flexible solar panel tech in this situation and be purpose made; double-sided, concertina and installed vertically to face north-south. There are a long list of reasons for vertically mounting panels, e.g. self-cleaning - dust, leaves, space requirements- foot-print.
The main reasons are service life and efficiency due to them operating much cooler, one could expect up to 4% more power output over a day's production and up to 50% longer service life.
Area of lens is always bigger but if they add more than the area lost still might be worthwhile especially in latitudes that get less Solar??
The best 'normal' single junction PV cells are already at 22+% efficiency. You're using an outdated baseline reference. Yes they were around just 17% efficient ten years or so ago
There's another aspect to lens concentration being ignored here. You can use lenses to concentrate only the wavelengths that are ideal for the PV cell, and reflect those which are not ideal, and that can radically reduce heat in the cell, helping them to operate much more efficiently without dramatic cooling overhead.
I am 100% solar and I love it. I was up one night brainstorming like always and I was trying to figure out hot water from the sun and it dawned on me. I would not even mention this if someone in Europe is already doing it, Dual Solar panels that are more efficient from water cooling and to use the hot water. It makes 100% sense to me.
"While these are still widely used..." Uh, no. They were never "widely used." In fact, most solar mirror systems have been abandoned due to high costs per kW-hr produced. Kudos with respect to solar concentration. Combined with Vertical Bifacial Solar Panels, which significantly reduce electricity-killing temperature, and high ground albedo, we might just see an improvement (reduction) with respect to total life-cycle costs per kW-hr.
Use salt water to cool the panels and at the same time make fresh water
Fraunhofer is not really a company but a research institute. And ISE is simply their solar energy institute
Beta eye is just an art
Gunna need a strong stick to hold up that much mass. 🤣🇦🇺
4m^2 of fresnel lens might make sense on the outside wall of my house, to bring in more winter sunshine through a light pipe for direct heating. Then there's making hot coals in the daytime for the nighttime. If you can get 15kg up to 800 Celsius, might be good. 15*1000*800*1.8 = 6kWh. (1.8J/g latent heat, 3.6MJ per kWh).
What about using a Stirling Engine in conjunction with the Beta Eye? The Stirling Engine already uses heat differences to generate power AND equalizes the temperature between the 2 points over time. While this will not cool a Solar Panel enough, it might be able to use the concentrated solar light from the Beta Eye better since it is already built for more extreme temperatures.
They should try that lens with the slit experiment.
Very interesting. I work with a United States Government Contractor in the early 1980s that built large concentrating solar generators for research. They used your flat lenses with the small PVC at the bottom of a sealed box. The large assembly rotated on perimeter rails. The election of President Reagan caused the research to be canceled and moved to another company that built the single pier rotating solar generators you exhibit. I do not think we had 50% efficient solar cells in the 1980s though we were also researching PVC fabrication. I started building solar generators in the 1980s and have experienced great performance. Today I generate all my power from a single 100W solar panel.
actually it was stopped because solar on the surface of the earth is far more expensive as a base load provider than all other techs.
@@protonneutron9046 I think President Reagan's only other tech was oil from Saudi Arabia and the Petro Dollar Economy that comes with it?
@@josephpiskac2781 "I think". No you don't. It has nothing to do with ANY potUS. IT IS PHYSICS. Now rent a 4th grade education and a couple hundred points of IQ so you are at least at an average IQ level.
@@protonneutron9046 It's only more expensive when you ignore the externalities of other energy sources. Coal is super cheap, until you start looking at how it poisons the air, soil, and water. If we could add to the price the billions of dollars it costs to recover from the harms, it wouldn't be as cheap. System costs matter because nothing works in isolation.
@@JoeNunyabidness wrong!!!!!! Don't spew crap when you don't have an education. In fact, LIST them with primary sources with the cost accounting or admit insanity and being a liar.
Lizard: Do we really "need" energy? lays on a rock and sunbathes...
Which is energy. Heat from the sun.
@@user-hh1yp7yv8b That was the punchline, it was supposed to be a joke. Are you german?
@@user-hh1yp7yv8b the whole universe IS energy. No atom sits around and "does nothing"
What about a sterling engine to use the excess heat created. Could that produce electricity effectively?
I really like this idea. Stirling engines have come a long way. They are a no-maintenance, direct to electricity choice. Done right, solar panels are not even needed.
@@user-hh1yp7yv8b hmmm there is always some cost. Energy is all around us all the time. Its just a matter of collecting and harvesting it in a economic way.. solor panel produce a lot of heat so....
@@johnramirez5032 Yep.
Ivanpah, which you show, is a ghastly contraption that does have a large steam generator and it is absolutely fabulous at catching birds flying through the lens path and making them explode. Not nice. Fresnel lenses are just great, but note you still need the extra area of the lens to capture the extra solar energy, as you say, so if you do this at scale you need massive lenses and fewer solar panels, but the lenses have to be between the panels and the sun so you need a steerable array which costs money so its all a big waste of time. I wrote this while watching your video so I didn't waste more time than needed. Multi layer solar panels will be available from Longi soon, operating at required efficiency and no extra cost. with no tracking needed. Thanks for playing. Nice try. Thank you.
that indiegogo was a scam. reminds me of solar roadways 😅
As a child, my sister and I would use a lens to focus the sunlight on a leaf to watch it catch fire.
Many years ago, I was told about a group of people living on an island. They had A lens, focussed on a heavy, thick chunk of metal, on a large, reinforced water tank. The lens was set up, to track the sun. The intensified heat caused the water to turn to steam, which powered a generator. The water was also plumbed through pipes into the homes, with radiators, for heat and hot water use.
Yeah, that sounds like a story one would need concrete sources for. Possible in theory - but rather improbably as a practical insular engineering solution.
@@user-un8tv1pp8m do you exist simply to deny the possibility of truth? Nils?
@@invisibilianone6288 Ehm...whut? Do you sincerely think _"somebody on the internet told me something happened somewhere sometime"_ is even vaguely equivalent to "the truth"? Because: The first is what you did here. The second is what I tried to archieve by asking you for a public source. "Truth" means you can show what you claim is real. Claiming something and - the upon being asked to give sources getting pissy or going into vague ad-hominem insinuations? Does not raise the probaility of your claim being true. As I said. Technically what you describe is possible. But like airships, fusion plants or monorails - that doesnt mean its a practicable engineering-solution. If such a system did indeed reliably function somewhere? I´d be highly interested to see how. So please : name the island or the technical system or the builder. If your only "proof" is questioning and making assumptions about my person ....when asked for specifics on the supposed tech you claim .... yeah, well.
@@user-un8tv1pp8m I've been looking, for info on this story I was told. The wise old man that told me about the small island was not one to make up stories. This was about 40 years ago, when the story was told to me, so, specific details as to name of island, or any persons residing there are escaping my memory, at this time. Orvin Stanwood, passed on in 2005 If I had paid more attention to his knowledge, when I was young, I would likely be much better off at this point in my life. Gasifier power, was one point of knowledge he and I started discussion on... Who knows how far that may have progressed, if I had kept after the research on it..😶 40years, could have been beneficial, or, it could be still where it's at today. . I'LL KEEP LOOKING for the place Stanwood RIP, was telling me about🎯
1) there is nothing unusual happening with the climate. 2) there is nothing wrong with burning fossil fuels. Its problems in high-density areas are trivial to fix and already have been fixed. CO2 is not a pollutant. 3) Climate alarmism is a big-lie superstition supported by tax-bribed liars. (See Climate Discussion Nexus for 100s of videos on climate quackery, deception, and realism.) 4) decarbonization is 21st century pyramid building and human sacrifice. 5) there is NO excuse for expensive electricity. Electricity generation is boring. Just burn coal and scrub the smoke in densely populated areas. 6) the only challenge is manufacturing market quantities of cheap gasoline. South Africa has already done this for decades (Sasol), using coal.
Try that with semi transparent photovoltaics. They shouldn't heat up as much.
very interesting concept. it seems like itll come down to healthy competition. who will win, traditional solar as it get ever more efficient or novel approaches like this? both are good and it's really a battle of economics and supply chain. fun to think about :)
The main drawback to energy production becomes area/space. However the answers currently put forward are complex and costly requiring maintenance and educated personnel.. a return to high volume low tech is what's needed.
Is the ‘S’ in Fresnel, silent?
Energy is one thing, but energy per unit cost is paramount. And full environmental gross cost, not after government funding and accounting magic.
This might be a dumb question but the solar panel plugged into your bread board obviously doesnt turn a generator. So how does it produce electricity?
The issue is the extra heat applied to the solar panel when using any sort of concentration device.
Is that 45% of the light falling on the solar cell, or 45% of the light falling on the lens, or are those two equal? In other words, how efficient is the lens? It looked like the lens was not sending 100% of the light hitting it, to the solar cell. It looked like there was some loss of light. Also, with those particular solar cells, how efficient are they in the absence of the lens?
Could you make a video about Aureus solar from this Philippine student?
Brilliant new technologies Good video again
Could use that big eyeball thing to create a steam engine that produces electricity.
I wonder if the sphere could be made of a transparent shell that was then filled with water.
How about concentrated sunlight with a sand battery. Especially for a single family application.
Curious thing: Solar panels are reverse LEDs. Lets have a lens, so this is just creating a reverse LED with a Lens.
You could just put a sterling cycle engine on the back of each panel to harvest the heat.
The fisheye lens was invented by young Maxwell, after close examination of a breakfast kipper.
mate, Fraunhofer ISe is not a company, it's a research institute, so these are lab setups, it's never going to make commercial.
Overheating of most solar cells leads them to become less efficient...thus tracking should not be for max sun exposure but max efficiency...always following the sun will work against you in hot climates. Weird idea..put them underground..always cool there...use light pipes(fiber optics) to bring the light to the panels...that way you can still use the ground on top of them.
Why don’t they put the excess heat into the ground and then use it through the winter? Yes, more cost but more applications for the same amount of land.
bruh guy looks just like a real life woody from toy story
3:08 You were a person to be afraid of.
Set up a microwave power transmission satellite that has other satellites focus the light onto the panels to concentrate the light, then use a ground-based rectenna array
Proper use of tools is something missing in our education system, @3:47 Chanel Lock plyers are upside down for the direction of applied torque, in other words, it is evident that the operator has no idea how to operate the tool.
Pliers
@@craigsymington5401 Thanks, some times a mistake slips through.
So this is a 21st century version of Barad-dûr?
Ever heard about the law of headlines?
Still waiting for near 100% efficiency all-wavelength rectenna technology 😥
Yeah doesn't work at night when i want to charge my car because i go to work during the day.
Hmmm... I didn't see a sensible comparison between electricity generation between and area of current solar panels, and the same area of concentrated panels, such as fully utilising, say, one hectare of land. Existing panels run at around 20% efficiency. If if using fresnel lenses and more efficient solar cells can produce 40-45% efficiency, they would need to require only 50% of land area to be comparable in output. They'd need to beat this by quite a margin to be cost comparable, I think. Soooo... where's the advantage?
the point is that you need a smaller cell not thet you get more
PV cells can't take to excess heat.
You can't fix something that is not broken.
Mechanics is expensive and has no cost decline, electronics is cheap and declines in cost. That is why 15 years ago, solar tracking was a thing, but as the modules got cheaper, the industry moved away from it. They also moved away from concentrated solar. The system of lenses, tracking systems, and cooling systems is far more expensive than simply putting more cheap modules up.
This is true, but for individual consumers who don't own lare areas of land, concentrated solartracking might find its niche.
@@xaquko9718 the PV panels on your rooftop will generate far more electricity than your household can consume. On the residential level, simplicity and reliability are particularly important. Tracking systems and concentration might rather play a role in commercial applications. But even there I doubt they would be cost competitive.
My idea for simple sun control A fibre optic cable that goes world wide Focus light (not heat) and give light to the dark side of the earth during the night *TOMORROW'S DAYLIGHT TONIGHT* STREET LIGHTS, NOTIFICATION SIGNS, TURNING SIGNALS, PARKS, WALKWAYS, EVERYONES HOMES, THE SUNS LIGHT TOMORROW, TONIGHT!! No need for solar panels, fibre optics to the lights Have solar nodes, plug in Think about it
I know.... Let's use the most efficient solar energy there is.... Oil. 😎
What about animal agriculture?
Microsoft would like you to pay your solar subscription
You would have much better of a time with a boiler and a bunch of lenses.
Until golf ball sized or even bigger hail, destroys all you mirrors or all your photo voltaic collectors......!!!!
Could the heat issue be solved with a sterling engine? Obviously that would add complexity, but my understanding is that sterling engines work well whenever there's high temperature differences.
Yes. And with a heat storage system a sterling could run day and night 24/7. And, no maintenance required.
Normal solar panels work so well now (20% efficiency is the norm on new panels) that all this is pointless. Tracking solar panels are also pointless in 99% of cases.
At around 0:53 you claim that "the idea of concentrating solar power is nothing new..." Correct. Then "and it's been done since 1968." It's also been done since the third century BCE, when it was weaponized by Archimedes, and the 1860's when it was applied to civilian uses by Augustin Mouchot, who used it, for example, to power a steam engine to run a press in Paris.
out of date ; array out north west America is abandoned . it did not produce enough electricity
It looks impressive until you realise only a few mirrors shine on the tower at any one time.
Stirling Solar was promising. Until California killed it over the desert tortoise and then put up a normal farm after they went out of business.
"Is Spherical Solar Really The Future of Energy?" No (see Betteridge's Law of Headlines)
the long process of history
😅
This is stupid because the cost of effective lensing would balloon the cost of solar panels. You could just instead buy many more panels.
3:08 psychotic behavior
lmfaoo
À
🙈 Promo-SM
I had heard that it is currently illegal to manufacture solar panels with more than about 25% efficiency. True?
Wheres the genius invention? I kept the receipt, can I have have my minutes back please…..
The solar tech w better efficiency
CHP FTW
Eye ball in reverse in I is speck in eye beam out I is in see what I mean see is see is I am the hope for the man of understanding see .