Almost Plausible Solar Takeover Plan

[paradisePhysicist]

Like this, perhaps? For a sense of scale, see the cars in the parking lot at lower right.

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That is Solar One in the Mojave Desert (California). It was retired in 1988. This is a Solar Thermal unit. The top of the tower, operating at 1000°F, has molten salt circulating in it as a thermal transfer fluid. Then water is boiled to drive a conventional steam turbine/generator system.

Photovoltaic cells are destroyed at those temperatures.

Solar Two and a bit more info at:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/solar-one-and-solar-two

Also:
https://climatekids.nasa.gov/concentrating-solar/
But they are V-E-R-Y slow to connect, it may take a few tries.

Cheers,
Tom

@paradisePhysicist: With PV this is generally known as concentrator PV. You save some PV area but you increase the complexity of the system, you generally need tracking to follow the Sun, you create heating issues, and it only helps with direct sunshine - on cloudy days your mirrors are not brighter than the sky they obstruct.

Hmm I see the issue, I am going to have to study ambient lighting a little bit more and get back to you.

However the design you mentioned is not my design, I will draw my design here.

basically the sun shoots a cone of light at earth. (Really the sun emits a sphere of light but only a cone of it hits earth.) With normal solar panels the only part of this cone you are getting is the surface area of the solar panels+ambient light. But with this invention you get more than 10x the amount of light you get normally.

The economics are changing so fast. I suspect that we are already at the point where the cost of one square meter of mirrors is about the same as one square meter of PV panels.

Three years ago, the price of panels (not including installation) was $1/watt. Now it is about $0.12.

Mirror-like materials can be cheap, we can use mylar foil as cheap mirrors instead of real and expensive mirrors.

For less than 1 dollar you can get 54x84 inches of material:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M4GRQVJ/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[NTL2009]

... But with this invention you get more than 10x the amount of light you get normally. ...

Have you estimated or calculated how hot the surface of a solar panel will get with a 10x concentration of sunlight?

Have you studied the effect that temperature has on solar panel efficiency?

Do you know the maximum temperature a solar panel can withstand before it is damaged?

... Mirror-like materials can be cheap, we can use mylar foil as cheap mirrors instead of real and expensive mirrors.

Yes, but you need frames to hold them, and you need to protect them from wind, animals, etc. I don't think mylar film will stand up to much wind.

 

[Windadct]

The PV cell efficiency decreases with temperature - it looks like the maximum boost runs about 40% unless the PV is actively cooled.

The elevated temperature will probably not kill the PV outright, however all aging related effects are also accelerated at the higher temps.

There are some more novel PV technologies that would do better with the higher temps - but all of this is driving the price and complexity up.

This has been looked at from all angles.

 

[anorlunda]

@paradisePhysicist ,

It is a bit like Moore's Law with silicon semiconductors. There are always promising non-silicon competitors. But by the time they get perfected in performance and manufacturing, silicon improved so much that the competitors don't look so great after all.

PV performance, and manufacturing cost, and installation cost are all on exponential improvement curves. As I said in #100 of this thread, I expect to see robotic installation of solar farms analogous to agricultural crop handling.

 

[berkeman]

The PV cell efficiency decreases with temperature

Too funny, that phrase gave me vertigo and sent me down a mental rabbit hole for about 30 seconds wondering what I was missing. Then I realized that there was an implied word that was counterintuitive for me (after reading "decreases") -- The PV cell efficiency decreases with increasing temperature

Sometimes my mind gets stuck and tripped up when parsing stuff...

 

[BillTre]

Too funny, that phrase gave me vertigo and sent me down a mental rabbit hole for about 30 seconds wondering what I was missing. Then I realized that there was an implied word that was counterintuitive for me (after reading "decreases") -- The PV cell efficiency decreases with increasing temperature

Sometimes my mind gets stuck and tripped up when parsing stuff...

Been there, done that.

 

[dlgoff]

Sometimes my mind gets stuck and tripped up when parsing stuff...

Could this maybe be a result of an experiment you once mentioned? IIRC it had to do with galvanic skin response.

 

[paradisePhysicist]

Have you estimated or calculated how hot the surface of a solar panel will get with a 10x concentration of sunlight?

Have you studied the effect that temperature has on solar panel efficiency?

Do you know the maximum temperature a solar panel can withstand before it is damaged?

No but it seems important, I should probably look into that.
Just offering another avenue for the r&d to look into, I will appreciate getting a cut of the gains if this invention is ever developed, I understand the hardest part is probably making new PV's that operate well under heat.

Just thought it might be easier for R&D to focus on creating new panels that operate well under heat, instead of focusing development towards 100% effeciency panels.

Yes, but you need frames to hold them, and you need to protect them from wind, animals, etc. I don't think mylar film will stand up to much wind.

The prototype will be a polygonal design, since it will be difficult to print out curved rings. Instead it will be a ring comprised of flat planels with the mylar flatly glued onto the panels. The mylar needs to be as flat as possible so the mylar would have to be bought directly, before the creasing happens when it is folded into mylar blankets.

The PV cell efficiency decreases with temperature - it looks like the maximum boost runs about 40% unless the PV is actively cooled.

The elevated temperature will probably not kill the PV outright, however all aging related effects are also accelerated at the higher temps.

There are some more novel PV technologies that would do better with the higher temps - but all of this is driving the price and complexity up.

This has been looked at from all angles.

This is unfortunate. Also I had another idea concerning my solar invention, but I forgot what it was. I should have posted it sooner when it was on the tip of my tongue.

@paradisePhysicist ,

It is a bit like Moore's Law with silicon semiconductors. There are always promising non-silicon competitors. But by the time they get perfected in performance and manufacturing, silicon improved so much that the competitors don't look so great after all.

PV performance, and manufacturing cost, and installation cost are all on exponential improvement curves. As I said in #100 of this thread, I expect to see robotic installation of solar farms analogous to agricultural crop handling.

Cool. Here is some news about gold and silver semiconductors. Sounds expensive but could be the future:
https://www.advancedsciencenews.com...e-next-big-thing-in-semiconductor-technology/
https://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology-news2/newsid=55301.php
Moore's law no longer applies to computing
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/24/905789/were-not-prepared-for-the-end-of-moores-law/
The CEO of Nvidia said this as well. Silicon has a huge head start but maybe eventually the gold and silver semiconductors will surpass the development speed.

 

[mfb]

Concentrator panels exist. They are being sold commercially and produce some of the electricity in some grids. People have tested various different geometries and kept the designs that work best. They still come with significant downsides.

If you want to propose a new model then you first should figure out why this was discarded before you assume it must be something revolutionary.