DIY Solar Panels

socal70

socal70

Active Member
socal70 said:
Check this out:
"
I am the Senior Device Engineer for Innovalight (my qualification statement). What we have can be called a 'quantum dot' in the true sense of the the individual particle. What we really have is silicon nano particles that can be printed like your home or office printer that we turn into photovoltaic cells (solar cells). This is a tremendously cheaper technology than your standard wafer based solar cell. Yes, we are trying to save the planet in our own way mate :)~! We are talking reducing the cost to purchase a module by 1/3+ which already beats any other technology. When I was contacted by Innovalight I was doing research into obtaining the holy grail of photovoltaic energy production, less than a dollar per watt to purchase, less than a dollar per watt of energy output. We (my former research group in Australia) had achieved this milestone yet had a hard time getting financial backing due to political situations. Yet I was blown away by the potential of this technology! I dropped my research, finished my PhD a year ahead of schedule, gave up teaching at the university level with 3 months of vacation a year and jumped on board as I can see the future; 3 times less cost per watt from what I was researching, and my former research was way ahead of the curve I tell you!!! Yes, we are idealistic, yet realistic. We, Innovalight, are on the path to do our little part to save the world and help everyone to purchase solar modules on the cheap! We have several of the biggest investors there are backing us and on our board of directors with many more trying to get a piece of the pie. We will do our part to mediate what damage we have done to this planet since the industrial revolution. This is what I have dedicated my life and mind towards although all things must be done in moderation :). I must acknowledge my colleagues at Innovalight for their dedication. intelligence and innovativeness as we, as a team will give this to you all.
Mason L. Terry, PhD
Senior Device Engineer
Innovalight
ps - yes, we do keep track of the worlds pulse and thoughts. Let me know what you think to better serve your needs."


You can print this stuff with a friggin' Inkjet printer!


http://www.innovalight.com/PDF/06052009_OTB_Solar_Innovalight_PR.pdf
Click to expand...

I always keep meaning to write some letters to a few of these companies and see if they could send me a few samples of their new (non-NDA) products to test/experiment with. I seriously think that if these tech companies possibly ran a 'beta' test for the interested 'Joe public' much the same way software/gaming companies do, they could get a lot of really good feedback from the likes of people like you guys.

Just imagine the feedback some of guys on this site could provide by trying to implement into a grow cabinet! hehe
 
Boulderheads

Boulderheads

Well-Known Member
I have seen the inkjet printer theory, but that was in the medical field to distribute cells evenly for growing new parts of the body. I am pretty sure I saw it on "brink". Anyway, thanks for that post socal, this thread is getting filled with lots good info and convo, glad people are stopping by, the more heads we have thinking this problem out, the better the solution will be. Wouldn't it be cool if a bunch of RIU guys were leading pioneers in solar tech??? haha its always fun to dream
 
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born2killspam

Well-Known Member
I've come across that too, but Surface adhesion tech is still pretty brutal all things considered to the best of my knowledge, and I would think that for it to be feasible the substrate would need to have virtually identical thermal properties to the quantum dots.. When I read about that I got to thinking about cuprous oxide solar cells.. Kinda umm, a giant pandora's box of issues in my experience with DIY play.. I say keep them in the lab for now, (or sure let the players play), but I wouldn't drop money on them until I watched them live a decent life under normal wear/tear..
And you guys are mistaken about me a bit I think.. I'm less up to date on alot of tech than the vast majority of idiot dreamers (Ppl who get their info primarily from tv etc.. Not you guys:) ).. When I hear something that makes my mind pop I listen closer, but alot of the time I purposely stick my head in the sand to avoid spiraling into a loop on hype.. The space programs are a good example, I know dick all about what they're doing up there right now.. I doubt I'll see anything jaw dropping in my lifetime besides info gleaned from new telescopes etc.. I'm glad they actually sent shit to mars, that was cool, but honestly I was hoping for big snafu's that would send all those tera-formers back to square one.. I just keep hearing ppl talking like burning all this money playing on the space station is going to have them living on mars in 30 years.. Personally though, I'm pretty confident that most of what we learn about basic launching etc will be totally obsolete by the time we're ready to 'really' apply it.. I say lets try to figure out what the fuck gravity really is before we waste today's time/money beating it, yada yada.. Sorry about the rant:)..
 
Boulderheads

Boulderheads

Well-Known Member
Keep the rants coming!!!! That was a good one. I agree about the difficulty of living on another planet. Just think how long the earth has been a planet, and how short of a time it has been suitable for life forms. A human life is not even a blip on the screen when you set it against the earths lifeline. What we do in a single lifetime is totally insignificant form a planetary perspective. I am not huge on the space program either. Let's examine the deep parts of the ocean first...we thought nothing could survive without the sun, and what did we find?? a thriving ecosystem feeding off the earth's core!! Forget deep space... I wanna see the deep blue!
 
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born2killspam

Well-Known Member
Like I said, I'm more interested in the material science itself etc than the current dreams of application for recent discovery.. If you had any idea (and perhaps you do) how far ahead of engineering the physics and theory are you'd punch yourself in the head.. And I'm even talking prototypes in alot of cases.. I guess we've covered some already with TPV's and Tesla too.. Given what you read, when do you think TPV's will be implemented into say cryogenic cooling devices, or car cylinders, or the like?? I know its impossible to do anything more than speculate, but if you were tossing $2 into an office pool....

Edit: And remember it was like a dozen years ago that my prof dropped that hour on TPV's etc..
 
Boulderheads

Boulderheads

Well-Known Member
It really comes down to whether the technology can be mass produced. Great ideas can be grounded the second you can't replicate it fast enough or cheap enough. I'd like to say that Jetson's cartoon may not be more than 100 years away though. Not to get off topic, but magnetism is pretty sweet... and isn't that where your "gravity" comes from?? haha
 
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born2killspam

Well-Known Member
Exactly true, thats what the engineering side is entirely about.. If it could conceivably be put together with current know-how/tech the physics side will have prototypes even though the public may not have a clue..
But sadly it also comes down to surpluses of inferior product after that.. When I was in HS in 1992 iirc, my electronics class went on a trip to 3M.. There they showed us a working floppy drive compatible with 1.44MB disks that also supported 42MB versions.. We were drop-jawed! You gotta remember that most ppl weren't even getting cd-roms until like 2 years later, and burners a few after that, and the average hard drive was maybe 120MB Thats with an M:).. Alot of pc's with 30-40MB hdds were still in action actually..
We wanted to know when we could buy them obviously, but the guy told us likely never, explaining that there were FAR too many 1.44MB versions in warehouses everywhere, and that other tech would surpass this by the time they were gone (Zip-Drives).. He was right.. In 1994 those hit the market running, and since large capacity needs were met elsewhere, the 1.44 was standard for another 10 years (I still use them)..
So if you're ever wondering why don't we have this or that reasonable device, the answer is likely greedy/lazy fucking corporations..
 
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born2killspam

Well-Known Member
I actually saw some old guy who seemed otherwise educated in physics pushing his notion that gravity is actually magnetic repulsion..:)
http://keelynet.com/gravity/wright.htm
The Gravity Is a Push book popped back into my mind so I hunted it down..
Ya know I really hope I eat my foot on this one for the sake of hilarity, but WTF eh??:)
 
Boulderheads

Boulderheads

Well-Known Member
Yeah, I have an udergrad in business and it does suck for some company to lay it all on the line and develop new technology only to have it never meet full scale production. That's why they charge what they do. I still agree that they are lazy and greedy in general though. Free market economy spurs innovation, if we were to all adopt one standard, who would ever try to think outside the box knowing it could never gain any market share. It would beneficial if all these companies didn't claim everything as proprietary, perspective changes everything. You may have the best idea until someone else can add to it, and then someone after that. Open source...is where its at! Look at the Iphone, they opened up source code to let people write programs for it, and they got how many apps now. Ingenious!!!
 
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born2killspam

Well-Known Member
There are some sketchy ways around it.. Hire a team to reverse engineer and write a manual, fire them all, then hire new ppl under litmus test conditions to ensure no prior knowledge, and have them build from the book.. IIRC thats how Compaq robbed IBM legally..
 
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born2killspam

Well-Known Member
You mean like M$ as far as single standards go??:) I admit I buckle and run win2k on my main drive:(..

Edit: And you know, I just realized this thread was in DIY, not exactly the best place now given the direction we've gone.. I wonder if a mod can move it.. If there is one forum I think should remain pretty concise its this one..
 
Boulderheads

Boulderheads

Well-Known Member
Yeah, good call.. I will see if gardenknow or fdd can move this for us...either that or we should get back on track but what fun is that, especially since we both seem to like going off on tangents!!
 
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born2killspam

Well-Known Member
I dunno what could be done with your original ideas, but like I said, I've played with DIY solar, its a go knowwhere except run a calculator thing..
 
socal70

socal70

Active Member
born2killspam said:
I dunno what could be done with your original ideas, but like I said, I've played with DIY solar, its a go knowwhere except run a calculator thing..
Click to expand...
It kills me that solar technology has been around for soooo long yet the advances in it's collection have come painstakingly slow. If we threw money at solar like we threw money at the banks, I bet we could get some better results! The scale today at which you have to deploy is nutz! The two farms in Spain and the one in Lancaster, CA. Granted the land they are taking up were no more than dust bowls for the most part, but with the amount of solar energy that hits the earth (~164W/sq. meter, depending on who you believe). Efficiency really hasn't improved much since my days in college!
 
Boulderheads

Boulderheads

Well-Known Member
Just watching Naked Science, and "it takes the sun just one second to output as much energy as the entire United States consumes in a million years." We need to get this solar tech going and innovate on it. The sun is just too damn powerful. It is one giant nuclear reaction. WE HAVE TO USE IT!! what are we thinking?
 
Boulderheads

Boulderheads

Well-Known Member
well you need the panels, an inverter, some batteries to store the power when you aren't using it, and prob like 600watt worth of panels...so 3 205 watt panels should do it... cost you about 5-6 grand for materials give or take. Then you gotta do the install. If you are gonna do solar, go big or go home seems to be the answer. Think about it this way, would you try growing only 1 plant under 10,000watts worth of light? The sun unlike our light has a pretty even light coverage, so the more panels you have out there the better of you are. Look around, you might be able to piece it together cheaper, especially if you buy your own cells and construct your own panels. Takes quite a bit of work, but maybe you can do it.
 
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