Living Car Free - Woman invents way to make solar cells cheaply in pizza-oven

http://www.smh.com.au/news/energy-smart/thinking-outside-the-square-finds-light-in-oven/2008/08/19/1218911717526.html


FOR her 10th birthday, Nicole Kuepper received an inspirational present from her parents - her first solar-energy kit.

It sparked a fascination with solar technology that last night led to Ms Kuepper, 23, winning two Australian Museum Eureka Prizes for her scientific research.

She has developed a simple, cheap way of producing solar cells in a pizza oven that could eventually bring power and light to the 2 billion people in the world who lack electricity.

Interesting story. Although I would like to hear more about the details. I keep reading every week or so about a new technology for either wind or solar.

This period of history sounds like what was happening around about the time the Wright brothers got getting of wrenching on bikes. You never know when the next basement-type discovery will change the whole universe.

Interesting...

I couldn't find details about Nicole Kuepper's solar cell project, either. However, while googling around I saw that numerous tinkerers (such as Kuepper) are now modifying inkjet printers to do all kinds of precise fabrication of thin, built-up microstructures. I guess you put different substances into the ink reservoirs and squirt them into precise positions. People seem to be doing that with biological substances too, even including living cells.

It's great to see people still tinkering and doing unconventional things with whatever resources are at hand.

I couldn't find details about Nicole Kuepper's solar cell project, either. However, while googling around I saw that numerous tinkerers (such as Kuepper) are now modifying inkjet printers to do all kinds of precise fabrication of thin, built-up microstructures. I guess you put different substances into the ink reservoirs and squirt them into precise positions. People seem to be doing that with biological substances too, even including living cells.

It's great to see people still tinkering and doing unconventional things with whatever resources are at hand.

It is incredible what they're doing with ink-jet printers! And a lot of technologies. I think we're in for a period of amazing new uses of existing technologies by more "average" people than in the past. (See the story about the two high school girls who did DNA analysis of sushi fish)

It would be great if this results in solar panels being far cheaper and easier to make...

but if it hasn't been proven yet that this can eventually be done easily by regular folks, I'll consider it as uncertain - maybe it'll work, maybe it won't.

It would be great if this results in solar panels being far cheaper and easier to make...

but if it hasn't been proven yet that this can eventually be done easily by regular folks, I'll consider it as uncertain - maybe it'll work, maybe it won't.

Yep, I'm with you, and what little I know about regular P/N junctions leads me to doubt it, but......

I'm about to go get another 200 watt panel for $1K, so of course there will be a major breakthrough next week. :)

problem is to get the knowledge out to those who need it! In the late 80-s my friend demonstrated a "solar sun boiler". Much the same as using a magnifying glass to heat something. Make a basket in a "parabol shape" (oruse an old parabol antenna". Cower with cheap alu- foil (for food wraping) and put in the right position for collecting sunbeams. Placed where the beams is sent you place a pot (preferably on a stone or concret) containing what you want to boil. This could be used by all those women who use at least half theyr day to collect firewood, but is not done.

I'm about to go get another 200 watt panel for $1K, so of course there will be a major breakthrough next week. :)

The panels on our roof generated about 21KW today, and it was cloudy this morning in the Pacific Northwest. It was an expensive investment, which is what keeps most people from buying in. If the inkjet/pizza oven breakthrough is true, it's great news for the technology and should dramatically increase market penetration if it brings the price down. I didn't wait for cheap, thinking about it something like the first expensive computer I bought, except my solar panels shouldn't become obsolete as fast and never need rebooting.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html
This is fascinating.
He is using a catalyst.

"Daniel G. Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT, has developed a simple method to split water molecules and produce oxygen gas, a discovery that paves the way for large-scale use of solar power."

I posted this in foo this afternoon. This may make a real difference.

:S Vaporware

People have been announcing similar claims for the last decade or so.

People have been announcing similar claims for the last decade or so.

Yes and no. Nanosolar (http://www.nanosolar.com/)'s cheap (printed) panels do not appear to be vaporwear, they just can't make them fast enough to keep up with demand (they cost ~80% less than traditional panels).

The panels on our roof generated about 21KW today, and it was cloudy this morning in the Pacific Northwest.

21 KW! :eek: What are doing....Arc Welding?


I have a bad case of PVness envy now.

I posted this (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html) in foo this afternoon. This may make a real difference.

Not to be a wet blanket, but storage issues will always plague hydrogen gas as an energy carrier. In the MIT experiment, how is one suppose to store the dozens of KWh of energy collected from solar panels each day? A quick approximately of one mole of gas equating to 22L* of volume at standard atmospheric pressure indicate that we need a gas storage/compression system to be efficiency/effective/practical. Compression current takes a lot of energy and that energy unfortunately is not very recoverable.

* burning that with oxygen will produce 280kJ of energy. Fed by a 1kW solar panel without loss, that's approximately 280L worth of hydrogen gas per hour, uncompressed.

21 KW! :eek: What are doing....Arc Welding?

We're grid-tied, so at this point we're "banking" excess power that we'll get credit for come winter when the sun doesn't shine much. Over the past 15 years we've averaged 17KW per day consumption, with the peak in the winter when the gas furnace fan is running. After installing solar our consumption has gone down, probably because we're more conscious of our usage. The big change has been turning computers off except when they're in use. I run my business from home and my wife and son both have desktop computers so power use can add up. If you're curious, see photos (http://www.turnerphotographics.com/nature/issues/Solar/index.htm) of our system.

-- Mark Turner