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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday November 27 2018, @04:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the electricity-for-everyone dept.

Submitted via IRC for takyon

All I want for Christmas is a 90% efficient solar panel

The idea of collecting energy from the sky – and using it in our homes to nurture, our schools to educate, our industry to build – is really the stuff of science fiction. As Arthur C Clarke once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

NovaSolix proposes a carbon nanotube based solar module which has the theoretical potential to reach 90% efficiency. The technology is based on a 1960s invention – the rectifying antenna (rectenna) – which is today used in radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. RFID tags capture the radio waves put out by scanners and power themselves. NovaSolix aims to take that ability of converting a different portion (non-visible) of the electromagnetic spectrum, and – using carbon nanotubes tuned to the sun’s full spectrum output – collect a much broader portion of the energy in our environment.

NovaSolix isn’t first to come up with this idea. Dr. Brian Willis, of the University of Connecticut, was pushing toward this technique in 2013 when he was proclaimed for a fabrication process called selective area atomic layer deposition that could allow for the manufacturing of the carbon nanotubes. At the time, commenting on solar rectennas in general, Willis was quoted as saying, "I compare it to the days when televisions relied on rabbit ear antennas for reception. Everything was a static blur until you moved the antenna around and saw the ghost of an image. Then you kept moving it around until the image was clearer. That's what we're looking for, that ghost of an image."

When asked by pv magazine how NovaSolix was growing its carbon nanotubes (still a future idea in this author’s mind), Dr. Jyotsna Iyer first let me know that carbon nanotubes aren’t a future idea anymore They’ve been grown since the 1990s in a ‘serious fashion’. Paraphrasing a thought of hers, was that science fiction had long moved to science speculation, and under her supervision in the NovaSolix labs, into science manufacturing.

The company says they’ve demonstrated a proof of concept, in front of third parties, that has touched 43% efficiency. That’d suggest a 72 cell solar module near 860 watts, with a 90% solar cell pushing 1700 watts.

[...] NovaSolix’s path to market is much like many of the new solar technologies – start in industries that need a high efficiency product and can deal with the higher price while the company scales. Satellites and drones are two regulars on this list, and more recently cars have joined it.

Sono Motors suggests its car charge up just over 18 miles on a 24% efficient solar cell. If NovaSolix can get to that 90% number, that’s 67 miles of sunlight driving. The average daily miles driven in the USA is about 40 miles per person. Elon Musk – are you reading?


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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 27 2018, @07:04PM (1 child)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 27 2018, @07:04PM (#766999)

    A lot of it is about keeping the industry afloat until after oil is economically practically speaking gone, when there's no out of the ground oil, CtL is going to be very popular. Now if we can just keep the capital industry of coal alive for another decade or two when it'll really be needed...

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @08:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 27 2018, @08:31PM (#767030)

    "Now if we can just keep the capital industry of coal alive for another decade or two when it'll really be needed..."

    Care to explain that statement?

    Aside from that, why keep the industry afloat until economically not feasible? You do realize the oil industry is massively polluting our planet right? For the good of humanity we should switch to solar etc. and not pump every last drop of oil we can. That attitude of profits over anything else is THE modern societal problem. So much waste, so much pollution, all because someone could make some easy money externalizing the real costs.