elwoodblues

<a href="http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/1987845p-2201460c.html" target="_blank">http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/1987845p-2201460c.html</a>

"Custom-tailored molecules and spray-on plastic could someday create the next generation of solar cells -- more flexible, more efficient and much less expensive than existing sources of solar power.

Hopes for plastic solar cells have been dangling before scientists for decades, since a U.S.-Japanese research team discovered that plastic can be made to conduct electricity.

The plastic cells would be a cheaper way to fuel anything now driven by solar energy, from watches to billboards to homes."

Bingo. Lower the cost, increase the ease of use... That's what clean-air and alternative-power supporters should be excited about. Not gov't grants. Not oil company idiocies. This is what will make it HAPPEN. Make it cheaper. Make it feasible. Make it *gasp!* profitable.

alek0

Sorry, I don't think we are going to see those on market anytime soon. Power conversion efficiency of organic solar cells for AM1 solar radiation is typically 1% or below that.

There are several serious limitations to achieve higher power conversion efficiency 1) high resistivity of organic layers 2) low exciton diffusion length resulting in poor exciton dissociation efficiency 3) field dependent mobilities, resulting in poor fill factor.
Whether solution will be found or not remains to be seen.

Vorkosigan

Bingo. Lower the cost, increase the ease of use... That's what clean-air and alternative-power supporters should be excited about. Not gov't grants. Not oil company idiocies. This is what will make it HAPPEN. Make it cheaper. Make it feasible. Make it *gasp!* profitable.

Elwood, who funded this? BTW, the biggest recipients of government grants are fossil fuels and nuclear power.

Michael

elwoodblues

turtonm-

The point I was trying to make is that THIS is the important stuff. But it's not what the renewable energy activists I know get excited about. At all. And that puzzles the hell out of me.

They get all excited about Congress passing new standards for fuel efficiency (when this would have a negligible effect, and more than a decade in the future). They get all happy when another hydro plant or nuke plant gets blocked. A couple people I know were THRILLED by the California outages because it 'proved that people CAN cut their power consumption, with the right incentive'. You don't even want to know how giddy they are about Enron.

But that's not the important stuff. Compared to the science of solar energy, and advancing THAT, all the rest is small beans. Because until the science catches up, it doesn't matter how many gov't mandates are made or how many power plants get blocked. And once the science catches up, it won't matter WHAT energy companies think or how much power we consume. The science of it trumps all of that.

And, you know, I support gov't funded scientific research. Often, I think it does more harm than good for the gov't to get in it (restriction of information, classification, regulations), but overall it probably does more good than harm. And it's roughly an appropriate role for the gov't to play. I didn't used to think so, necessarily, but I've changed my mind over the last year or two.

And if my activist friends were getting all excited about Congress passing funding for new research in solar cells and other renewable energies, that'd be cool. If more money were being set aside for research institutions, I'd EXPECT them to be down with that.

But, by and large, they're not. And that's what I was trying to high-light here.

They get excited about subsidies for people who want to buy solar cells NOW (when, frankly, they're just not cost-effective). They poo-poo the research institutions ('ivory towers' is a phrase that gets bandied about quite a bit). They say the money could be better used in getting solar cells out there NOW.

And that maddens me. That pisses me off. Because that money could be used a hundred-fold better in research right now, hastening the day when we don't even use 'solar cells', we just paint our damned house with a slightly more expensive paint.

[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: elwoodblues ]</p>

copernicus

Elwood, what about Michael's point that fossil fuels and nuclear energy get more government grants than renewable energy? You replied to Michael's two-sentence post with 8 paragraphs. You can blow all the smoke you want, but his point still stands.

elwoodblues

"Elwood, what about Michael's point that fossil fuels and nuclear energy get more government grants than renewable energy? You replied to Michael's two-sentence post with 8 paragraphs. You can blow all the smoke you want, but his point still stands."

Nuke power is surely worth research, is it not? It's clean, feasible, and has been shown to WORK, notably in Europe and Japan.

And we USE huge amounts of fossil fuels right now, and will continue to do so for years, even if quantum leaps were made in renewable energy tomorrow. Discovering better, cleaner, more efficient ways to burn them is a good investment, because it'll be multiplied across a huge infrastructure of power supply that's already in existence.

As for renewable energy research... I'd like to see more money go in that direction, yes. But I think it's understandable that it's significantly less than either fossil fuel research or nuke research. Renewable energy is still, essentially, in development for broad use. Expecting an essentially non-existent power-source to have the same magnitude of investment as a power-source that supplies a HUGE percentage of our power... That's just damned silly.

I'd like to see more money in that research. But I don't think it's unreasonable for that not to be the case.

And it wasn't smoke I was blowing. I was trying to refine the original point I was trying to make, because I apparently didn't get it across very well.

Mecha_Dude

an efficient fusion reactor would blow solar cells out of the water...

HallaK9

... but not for another fifty years.

Seriously, though, anything is better than increased fossil fuel consumption. It's sad that nuclear power has become such a taboo, it's about the only serious alternative energy source for fossil fuel that we currently have.

Also, I've understood that the problem with solar power isn't that we can't catch it efficiently enough, but the storing of it.

Antti

Corwin

Sure it would.

If we could get it to work.

I'm taking a 'wait and see' attitude with the new solar bit. It's exciting... for the moment it isn't feasible but they're working on that. We'll see if they can get the efficiency up.

I personally would love to see an increase in things like solar/wind/atomic/generators on the small scale. Get rid of the power grid altogether. We don't need huge centralized power generation... it really only provides two things... (three if you count convenience, which in my opinion any small scale power generator would also have to provide in order to be feasible...) it puts money in the pockets of those who own the current energy production/distribution system, and provides a target to people with malicious intent.

Ideally I'd love to see some sort of inexpensive small scale power generation that was simple and convenient. (Say, you have to check it once a month or so being the main inconvienience.) Can solar provide this? Possibly. We'll see what they come up with.

Vorkosigan

Elwood, I understand, but as far as I know, activists are delighted by increased government funding for solar energy, and delighted by scientific advances of this nature.

I think your portrait of solar energy activists is pretty much a caricature:

At Earthvision, the plastic cells are the lead news story: <a href="http://www.earthvision.net/" target="_blank">http://www.earthvision.net/</a>

At solarpower.com, the plastic cells are the lead news story:
<a href="http://www.solarpower.com/" target="_blank">http://www.solarpower.com/</a>

We'll just have to agree to disagree on nuclear power.

There are thousands of such sites....I'm not going to sample them all.

Michael

[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: turtonm ]</p>