Article.Article: new-nanoparticles-make-solar-panels-more-efficient-and-cheaper Notice no efficiency numbers, no mention of cost, and excuses about how it is moving forward? When something sucks, throwing money at it can only make it better, right? In a researcher-speak-way, they are saying this is interesting but crap. And it takes 17 years to go from a scientific discovery with repeatable results (this) to a product on the shelf at Home Depot. Really it does. So this may matter eventually someday in the future.
In the meantime, some solar company SHOULD MAKE the spiky-faced panels roll printed on mylar like newspapers. They are cheaper and efficient enough (44% is the highest you can get without catching fire). Use Arsenic and Selenium instead of exotic rare earth elements. Stick the PV panels to hybrid cooling so they won't overheat, melt, and shut down. I suggest they stick these to aluminum (inexpensive heat conductor and weather resistant) running coolant tubes on the backside to a hot water sump or pre-heat exchanger, thus keeping the panels cool enough to keep working at 44% efficiency for around $15/ft^2. This is about 1/8 the standard cost of solar panels, btw. And uses domestic elements you can find in the San Joaquin River instead of strip mines in China.
Chinese export "delays" are what destroyed Solyndra and embarrassed the Current President. He personally authorized a bailout of $550 million US dollars, later stolen and the guys fled to Brazil. They don't talk about that anymore because there is no extradition, so the money is just gone. Funny how that is. I used to drive past Solyndra on 880, next door to Tesla in Milpitas. The trouble with pie-in-the-sky technologies is if you keep the price high, you won't get full market penetration. Even if your product is imperfect, if it is cheap enough and good enough, people will buy it and install it. Waiting for perfection while the Russians are slaughtering Ukrainians with bombs and machineguns is foolish in the extreme. The entire European market is desperate for non-Russian energy. They will buy Green Power if it is cheap enough to be everywhere. And they can upgrade once the kinks are worked out later, in a few years. But they need cheap panels now.
If American companies keep bickering over exotic technologies, the Europeans will ignore the existing patents, combine them just like I've described, and make them as fast as they can so they have enough wiggle room to actually defend themselves against the Russian murderers coming for them next. You have to be able to tell the Russians no thank you if you want to arm your border patrols with anti-tank weapons and be willing to shoot down Russian bombers overflying your country, daring you to do just that. Russia is getting ready to go to war, big time, and Ukraine apathy just emboldens them.
This is also the reason I am sure we will be exporting our oil. We will make the excuse, when we drop the export ban, of supporting our European allies who own so many of our T-bills that floats our Dollar just a bit longer. The reality is we'll sell to the highest bidder, and that will probably be China. Europe is our competitor in quality manufacturing. China still just makes junk, but they make enough junk for the developing world to have something. And something is better than nothing. Fracking is coming, oil is going to get exported, and we need the solar panels to keep our lights on so we can use the natural gas for vehicle fuel, for concrete roads, for surge power demand, and to run all the heavy equipment excavating the silt from behind our hydroelectric dams so they will work longer and more efficiently. And we still have to rebuild all those bridges falling apart. Basic transportation infrastructure. After all, water and lights are crucial public utilities that justify us pretending to be a First World culture. If the lights go out, and only stay on in city limits, we stop being a country, and start being a bunch of city-states, who can justify dehumanizing our neighbors and start treating places with stuff we want like the Russians treat Ukraine. And do we want to be that kind of Evil again?
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