TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Shines Light on Solar Panels

not it makes sense. It doesn't make sense for everybody, as it turns out, But let's listen in on this classic episode. You know what, it's been a while since we've done an episode about solar panels. Yeah, since August two thousand eleven, I believe, in fact, back when Chris Paulette was on the show. Yep. So we did an episode back then and we thought we would update it. So here's the update. We're going to start off with a little bit of background on how all those solar

panels actually work. Your basic solar panels tend to be made out of silicon and then dope silicon, dope impure, purposefully impure silicon. Right, that silicon is dope you so, uh, And there's another. Oh, I got the hands over the face this time, guys. Awesome, that's a that's a pure wind. No, okay,

So silicon. The reason why we're using silicon in solar panels is that, you know, if you remember your illustrations of atoms, they have the electron shells on the outside of the atom, and those electron shells can hold a certain number of electrons depending upon what which energy shell you're talking about. Now, silicon has some free electrons in its outermost shell, meaning that not every single space that

can hold an electron has an electron. And when I say space, I just mean the number of electrons that can inhabit at outer shell. Since they're they are free, then silicon can bond with something else, like other silicon atoms. So if you can have it bond with lots of silicon atoms, you then create a silicon crystal. If you then bombard this silicon crystal that has been doped in various ways, either with ions that have a negative charge or ions to have a positive charge, you can then

induce electrons to flow. Now, in our article on how stuff works dot Com about how solar panels work, there's an healthful analogy there, right, it's about uh kind of

talking about hills, right. It's saying that essentially when when you create when you create one of these cells with a with the negative side and a positive side, it's going to create an electron flow that's downhill, right, Meaning that like if you were to have a rock and you pushed it down the hill, it would roll down the hill, but it wouldn't roll back up the hill. There there'd be that blocking mechanism to keep it from

going up the hill. Uh. In the case of silicon based solar cells, the photon is kind of that initial push that gets the rock rolling. So if the photon is strong enough to push the rock and get it moving, everything's cool. You're actually you're gathering energy through solar power. So the photon hits the silicon crystals that are doped so that you're it's not just a pure silicon crystal all the way through. That gives energy to allow electrons to break clear of what is called the band gap.

That allows the electrons to break free of their bonds and flow through a pathway. Now they want to get to the negatively charged electrons, want to get to a more positively charged environment. But if you have a barrier there so that they can't just crossover, they you know, you get this potential energy, but you don't have any

real energy. But if you make a pathway from negative to positive, then the electrons will travel that pathway to get to that positive site because that's really where they want to be. That's that's the awesome place for them. And if you make them do work along the way, you get a benefit from it. So like that work might be lighting a light bulb, or it might be opening the doors on the enterprise. I've been reading a

lot about star Trek recently. Um anyway, the work could be whatever you could imagine an electronic circuit, and the electrons are going to go and do it because it means they get to be on the positive party on the other side. It's just like b if you tell me there's a positive party on the other side, I'm willing to do a lot of work to get there. I'm not on a lot of lists anyway. So this is the basic premise of a solar panel. You have the photons providing the initial energy. Now, not all photons

are created equally. We have lots of different frequencies of light. Right, And so some photons have a really low amount of energy and are only going to be able to excite certain types of electron. Maybe maybe they can excite an electron. If they don't have enough energy to equal what that band gap energy is, then they're not going to have the push needed to get the electron to break free. They might in fact flow right past that electron, which

will come in handy later on. Um. But but high energy, high energy photons can either at a certain point, no matter how much energy it has, you can't. You're you're gonna lose a little bit if if it's got more than it needs, right. Yeah. So for example, the example I used in the old podcast, if you want to go back and listen to that, is that let's say

that I'm capable of lifting a hundred ten pounds. I'm actually able to lift more than that just then, you know, but for the purposes of this example, pounds of my limit. If you if you put a hundred pound weight in front of me, no problem, I can lift it up. You put to one pound weights in front of me, I can lift one or the other, but not both at the same time. However, you know, you sit there, and you look at that from an energy perspective. I'm capable of lifting a hundred ten pounds. I lift a

hundred pound weight. That means ten pounds of my lifting power are going to waste. I can't it's not being utilized. I'm not capturing it in some useful way. And in the case of traditional photovoltaics, if Jonathan were that photon and you put to fifty pound weights in front of him, he wouldn't be able to lift them both, only one. Yeah, so we have to that. This is where we're starting to get into some of the challenges that we face

with solar power. The big one there is efficiency. Maximizing efficiency in solar panels is no easy task, and in

fact it's something that we've seen. If you were to look at it from a big picture perspective, it looks like really minor increases over the last couple of decades, but in fact, every tiny increase means that you get quite a bit of return on your investment, simply because when we're talking about solar panels, were usually talking about big arrays of solar panels, where a little improvement means a lot of output in the in the long run,

and they've been so inefficient. Uh, you know, generally about five of the potential energy of the sun is captured by them. In fact, according to some sources, your typical commercial solar cell will get you about nine return. So of all the potential energy you could be gathered based upon the photons that hit that panel is what you're actually capitalizing on. Right, the theoretical maximum for silicon wave for cells is about fifty percent efficiency, right, we just

don't get there. In fact, the current world world record in a lab is only forty four point seven percent efficiency, reached just this year by German and French researchers with a four junction cell. And more on multijunction cells later on in the podcast. But that's but that's an elaborator lab, which means it's not it's not sunlight that you're doing. You're bombarding that with specific kinds of light to check on its on its efficiency levels when you get into

the field. Sometimes literally in the field, it's much lower. In a field. Well, you know, in my mind, there's there's one field and everything else is just a pathetic copy field of dreams. What's I'm not sure what I built it they came, that's all I'm saying. So then yeah, that so we're talking about really low efficiencies when it comes to how much energy is hitting it versus how much you are actually gathering. On top of that, you

have to talk about the actual financial cost of solar cells. Right. They're traditionally pretty expensive. And I think that you and I both managed to compile completely different figures because there's there's a few different ways that people talk about the cost of solar panels. You've got the pure manufacturing before they go into use, and then you've got the installation costs, and then you've got maintenance costs. Yeah, there's there are

a lot of different costs associated with it. I was going from a report that m I T created about some improvements that people at m I T had made to solar panels, and that report they said that solar panels cost about seventy five cents per what of energy UH and that in order to be UH to be competitive against fossil fuels, it need to be closer to fifty cents per what. Now, that's just one method of

figuring out the expense. And and in fact, the report did not say, like what which factors they took into account, whether that also includes installation in there and maintenance as well, or if that was purely from a manufacturing standpoint, The point being that creating silicon based solar panels is not cheap. It's getting less expensive over time. We're seeing improvements definitely.

So some numbers that I was saying, we're talking about the pure manufacturing is of two thousand nine being over a dollar per what um as maybe fifty cents per what So, then you've got a and moving moving towards to something like thirty six cents per what right, And we're also going to talk about some alternatives that might get that even lower. But we're seeing we're seeing the cost of solar panels drop year over year, and that's

that's because of a lot of different factors. One is that the materials are getting less expensive, We're getting better at making them, We're getting better and making them with cheaper material reels, we're getting better at installing them. I mean, it's become more business as usual, and so more companies

are more used to installing these for people. Therefore, you know, we have people with expertise in the field now that we didn't have five years ago because it was really new, and the manufacturing processes have become more streamlined over time. It's just kind of the same with what we saw with the computer industry and microprocessors initially. When you when a new microprocessor hits the market, it tends to be

really expensive. And part of that is because the manufacturing cost to create something brand new that has a brand new architecture, it's using super sophisticated electronics that you know, to pay off for that, you have to have a pretty high price on your product. But as you get more money, you can invest more in the manufacturing process, make things more streamlined, you increase efficiency on the back end. That means that you have lower costs, so then you

can actually lower the cost of the final product. Same thing we're seeing in the solar panel industry. Yeah, and I did want to put in that those numbers. If you have yourself installed any kind of solar panels, you

are saying a dollar per what I wish um. And that's because for private use installation costs will cost anywhere from like three to six bucks these days, and per per what right, And and that's um, that's a huge improvement over the eight to ten that it was a few years back, but in fact I remember seeing one report and it was based out of the UK, which is already kind of interesting because the UK is not

necessarily the ideal spot to have solar panels. They don't have as much it's a little bit cloudier in general, they can get a lot a lot of cloud cover, just that's the climate in that region of the world. But the report found that after about seven years of use, the first seven years, you would essentially be offsetting that

cost of installation. After the seven years, you would essentially have recaptured those costs, and apart from maintenance fees for whatever purposes you would need, your energy production at that point forward would be free. So you would then you know, be be at a surplus, which is fantastic and the

same thing is generally true throughout the world. Um And as we see these costs go down, both installation manufacturing, both all of the cost installation manufacturing and maintenance going down, then that will mean you don't have to wait as long for this investment to pay off. Part of this

is depending on the market. Currently there is more supply than there is demand for photovote takes and that's only because it has been so expensive, and so I think that as this price comes down, it's going to be interesting to see how the market adjusts and whether we're going to see a flattening a plateau prices or or

what's going to go on. And also, I mean this also has to do with rare and toxic materials, which you know, rare earth metals are a big component and component and China is the chief producer of rare earth metals. We've talked about that in a previous episode of tech Stuff as well about you waste right, Yeah, well e waste yes, that was one of the yeah in particular

was e ways, but rare earth metals. And I think we have a specific episode just about rare earth metals because we we wanted to explain what what they were, why they're important, and why is it that China is the main producer And the main reason that China is the main producer is because it's super cheap to get it from China, because China does not I I'm sure

they have fewer. The problem with rare earth metals is that they all contain certain radioactive elements and also getting them out can can release a lot of toxic stuff and there, and in general, if you're doing that, you tend to incur lots of expenses, except in China where

they don't care as much. Yeah, if you have fewer regulations then it's a lot cheaper, but a lot more dangerous for the people who are doing it and for the environment, because, as it turns out, there are other places on Earth that are rich, relatively speaking, in rare earth metals. But it's the term rare earth metals doesn't mean that there are very few of them in the earth.

That generally means that there are very few of them concentrated in a single area, right, Yeah, So the mining process is very different than you know, striking a vein of say iron, and then being able to mind it. So, and of course that's going to play into the other podcasts that we're going to record next but has already published, I believe. So if you've listened to our Minecraft episode, just know that we haven't recorded it yet. Yeah, you've

actually traveled. I don't even know where you are now. Hey, guys, it's Johnson from just breaking in here to say we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back so we've got efficiency, we've got cost, we have the fact that there's these rare materials toxicity those that's another challenge, h And another one is just the and we talked about this briefly with the UK. It's just

the how how practical is it? Is it practical depending upon where you are in the world, because if you are someplace that does not get a lot of sun exposure, then you're not going to reap the benefits of solar power. However, if you live pretty near to say, the Majabi Desert, you're in a decently good spot right exactly. And you know, I've that we live in Atlanta, and I've seen homes in Atlanta that have solar panels. In fact, there's some that are very close to where I live that have

solar panels installed. Uh. And it's something that I've thought about too. But it's another one of those things where I would really need to have a kind of study done about how much sun does my home really get?

Would I would I be doing? Would I be getting a good return on my investment, meaning that if it's going to be one of those things where I'm only barely offsetting my energy costs, I might be doing more harm than good by adding solar panels, especially you know when you figure in maintenance fees and all that kind of stuff in the in the process. So uh, you know your mileage will vary depending upon how much sun

you get. So those are the basic challenges. Now what's great is about solar panels is that we see lots of different companies and engineers and scientists looking to address these challenges in different ways. So people are coming at this problem from all different directions, not just from solar panels, but from huge collections of solar panels. Yeah, that's speaking of the Majave Desert. Actually, there is a large solar thermal farm being built in California right near the Nevada

border called ivan Pa. I didn't look up the pronunciation. We're going to go with that, um, but so it's like ian hoe. Yes, um, it's on some four thousand acres, which is about sixteen square kilometers, which is something like six square miles for anyone else who doesn't know what on earth an acre is and heck tears, No, I'm

just kidding. Um. And so solar thermal farms as opposed to classic solar farms which are just large collections of these photovolt take plates use mirrors a k. A heliostats if you want to use the technical science term for it, um to concentrate sunlight into a tower, which then boils water to create steam to turn a turbine to create power or not create power, I'm sorry, generate energy. Yeah.

And this, this particular Ivan Power is using some one D seventy thousand mirrors in fact, to concentrate the sunlight onto three large like four a k at seven towers. And yeah, it's it's pretty impressive. They it's set to turn on this year. They first tower just went through a power power cycle test and they green lit it. They said good to go. So that's exciting. As at September, we are recording this on October something something there you go dates numbers only because it was right there on

my screen. N I guess it's online too. That's great. Um. But yeah, but co location this is this is an idea that we see in lots of different power strategies where almost in almost everything we talk about when it

comes to power. In fact, I'll go so far as to say in every form of power, we're talking about heat is one of those factors that if you can harness the heat as well as whatever it is you're doing to generate the power in the first place, then you can end up generating more power that way than you would if you just let that heat dissipate into the atmosphere. Sure, and these these thermal farms are a little bit a little bit tricky in that you have

to have a really good location for them. I mean, it's there aren't that many sixteen square kilometer areas just kind of hanging out where people are willing to let you completely disrupt an ecosystem in order to put down a whole bunch of mirrors and a whole bunch of really hot water towers, um, in order to generate energy.

Deserts are pretty good candidates, although part of the two point two billion dollar cost of building this thing out was a very expensive move of a threatened species of desert tortoise from this area to to a safe place where they wouldn't be boiled. Um. Yeah, yeah, I can see where that would be a concern. I mean, you know, it's we often will think about things like desert environments as being practically like but now it's not like, it's not like tattooing or Mars or Mars. Yeah, now, solar

solar farms on Mars. The solar Mars will not be hurting for that, although they don't know you don't know about the Martians. Well, also I don't know about the storms. So the storms could also really block a lot of the soul. Now that I think about it, you know, maybe I shouldn't make such sweeping statements. But you know there are of course, they're already solar panels on Mars. Yes,

that's thanks thanks to a couple of rovers out there. Um. But yeah, this, this particular one is is set to deliver some three seventy seven net mega watts of power in uh as opposed to the three it's capable of total You're you're always going to lose some in a system like this, and which is about the same as a medium sized also fuel plant. It's kind of sort of and yeah, the two of the towers are going to be selling to pgn E and the third is

going to be selling to Southern California Edison. And supposedly the whole system is going to power some hundred forty homes. Right, So here we're looking at a system that, while it does have a huge initial cost, Uh, they are going to be able to start selling to customers. I don't know how long it will take them to recapture the costs of building that place. I mean that's going to take a while. You're two point two billion dollars. It's

no chump change, right. Yeah, they had their investments from people like Google, and they were working partially on a federal government loan. So some of that some of that is offset, some of it's offset, sure, and then uh, but on top of that, you're looking at a much lower environmental impact in the long run compared to the carbon dioxide emissions you would get from from a fossil

fuel plant. Right, And there has been some research on The brook Haven National Laboratory released a study saying that regardless of the technolog of the specific technology being used in photovoltaics, they generate fewer harmful gas emissions, like some fewer UM than anything fossil fuel related. So well, and

related to this is the concept of solar trackers. This is something else that you can find at solar farms where uh, in this case, I'm talking about your more traditional solar panels that are using photons to convert it to electricity, as opposed to this approach where you're using the solar the solar energy to heat water. But solar trackers are kind of what they sound like. These are devices that can track the movement of the Sun. Although of course we know the Sun's movement is relative to

the Earth and there's spin and all that stuff. At any rate, we're just gonna go with the movement of the Sun across the horizon, across the sky, the pathway across the sky. So you've got these solar panels. Not all the solar panel panels are going to be angled at a way where they're going to capture as much sunlight as possible throughout any particular part of the day.

So what do you do. Well, you could mount the solar panels on some sort of pivoting system that would change throughout the day, or you create solar trackers that are enormous mirrors mounted on some form of of Essentially you're looking at something that can that can tilt so that it will direct sunlight back down to the panels. Right, So the panels are stationary that you don't move throughout

the day. But the trackers, these enormous mirrors that can move in relation to the way the sun's path takes it across the sky, can continuously adjust so that the sunlight is directed back to the solar panels, thus maximizing the number of hours when you can collect sunlight. Because that's another one of those challenges that we didn't really mention. Sometimes the sun's not out, it might be you know, night,

or sometimes it's in a different place. You know, if you if you cover say the west wall of your house with solar panels, which is a terrible plan overall, don't do that, but um, that's the least efficient way of going about anything. Yeah, you're you're only going to get the western facing sun. Yeah, and even then, like at different times of the year, you're not going to

get as coverage exactly. Yeah. The the there will be sometimes the year where you will get more uh or you'll get longer hours, not longer hours, but longer time periods where the hours will stay the same, but you'll get longer period Yeah. Well, you know, back in my day, hours used to be sixty three minutes long. But you know, the kids, Uh no, you get you'll have longer times

when you'll be able to collect sunlight. So these are just little strategies to try and maximize that as much as possible, so that even if the solar panel efficiency is low, if you can maximize the amount of time

that they receive sunlight, you still generate more power. We have more to say about solar panels after this quick break, all right, so let's talk a little bit about improving solar panels um, not just making solar farms more efficient, but the actual panels themselves now, right, because there's a lot of interesting materials science and even quantum science that's going on in this Yeah, you know, we can we can always confuse that confuse things by adding the word

quantum in there. So, uh, one of them is one of the things we can do is look at introducing some sort of film to put upon solar panels so that it reflects less light. That's one of the problems with solar panels is that some some photons when they hit the panel, we'll just bounce right off. Again. Silicon specifically is very shiny, and so so you're going to lose more photons than you really want to in this process of reflection. Right, So one way to increase efficiency

is to make sure those photons don't get away. And there are different ways of doing this, and one of them is to copy a certain insect, the moth, the moth, right, I had heard about this, Yeah, so moth eyes. Now, let's talk a little bit about moth eyes. If you were to get microscope and look at a moth's eye, you know you've borrowed it from the moth. Maybe the moth has flown off a little eye patch and hook

and it's gone to be a piratical moth. Meanwhile, you're looking at the moth's eye, you're gonna see there are these little micro structures, and those micro structures in the eye are they have a specific purpose. They reflect light back to the back of the moth's eye so that the moth can perceive more light. And a lot of animals have this, but moth eyes in particular are extremely

efficient at doing so. Yeah. And if you've ever seen, like like a photograph of a cat and the eyes are glowing at you, that's because of a reflective layer at the back of the eye, which is which is reflecting light back into the right. Now. Yeah, no, in this case, we can really say that there are probably two big reasons for moths to have this particular micro structure in their eyes. One is so that they see

more light. They can perceive more light because they're flying around often at night, and the other is that they reflect less light so that potential predators can't see them and gobble them up. So it's a survival mechanism on

two fronts. How we can take advantage of it is by making a kind of a model of those same micro structures designs in such a way so that when light hits it, more of the light gets reflected down to the surface of the solar panel, the the actual collection surface, and fewer photons bounce off, and we thus increase efficiency. Now there's a fellow named Noboru Yamada who came up with this idea along with a team of scientists. Uh he is a scientist at Nagoako University of Technology

in Japan. And I'm sure I butchered all of that. But but other than that, yes, yes, well, okay, fair enough. Uh So he what he did was he took some molds made out of a notic porous alumina to create the micro structures that were similar to those of you would find in a moth's eyes and uh, put that into a crylic resin. So if you're wondering what that actually means, a notic is another, you know, anode. We're talking about the positively charged electrode in a in a system.

Poorous of course, just means it's got little bit of holes and holes or spaces within it. And alumina is actually a type of aluminum oxide, which is an electrical insulator but also has a high thermal conductivity, so it conducts heat really well, but it insulates electricity. Um They found that this film could boost the efficiency of solar panels by around five percent, so which again sounds really small until you consider that that a five percent efficiency

rate is the that's the average. Let's say, let's say that we have it on close to the high end, so somewhere around, which is pretty high. I mean, especially if you're talking about commercial solar panels, that's really high.

And then if you were to apply this film and get that five percent increase, knowing that it's up to five percent, you're not always going to get a five percent improvement either, But that's a tent of sittiency at that point, and when you multiply that across an entire array of solar panels, Like I said, that equals a lot more electricity. So while it might be tiny in comparison to one solar cell, when you're talking about an array of solar panels, it makes a huge difference. So, uh,

that's one way that we've seen solar panels get some improvements. Now, this is just a film you would put over a solar panel. It doesn't replace the panel itself. We have some other technologies that would actually either improve solar panel silicon or replace it. So for example, University of New South Wales, So New South Wales, it's in Australia. Uh and uh the what now she's shaking her head, have you versus saying Australia that was a that was a

terrible accent. My Australian accent is amazing. It's almost as good as my New Zealand accent, which is the same accent. I can't wait for all of our friends down under to yell at me, but I won't understand them, so it's okay. So the University of New South Whales, some engineers, some scientists decided to take a look at using hydrogen

atoms to try and correct deficiencies in silicon crystals. Now, the deficiencies in silicon would mean that normally it would decrease the efficiency of a solar panel, so not you know, when you're doping silicon, you want it in a very specific way so that you can maximize its efficiency. But occasionally, through manufacturing processes or whatever mistakes happen, you'll get a deficiency and it will decrease that of the efficiency of that particular solar panel, and as a result, you'll get

less energy out of it than you had anticipated. They found that by using hydrogen atoms and inserting them into silicon crystals, the hydrogen atoms would bond with the deficiencies inside the silicon and negate them and essentially help move the photons toward the silk the silicon. That would actually help transfer that into electric electric energy so or electricity

as we sometimes call it. So it was it was one of those improvements that doesn't necessarily mean we're going to have mega, super powerful new silicon based solar panel again, It's going to be a small improvement, right. Instead, what it means is that we could actually use cheaper silicon, so By using cheaper silicon, we bring down the price of the solar panels in general, So yeah, you can.

The problem with using cheaper silicon normally is that you get more defects and less efficiency, But if you have the hydrogen to correct those defects, then you can ignore that effectively and it would be cheaper than using the higher quality silicon exactly, So lower prices that means higher adoption rates and uh better used for solar power all around.

Some researchers have also been using layering of different materials with different band gaps that this is that multi junction solar cell thing that I was talking about earlier to

improve the efficiency of solar cells overall. And the way that these work is the top layers will absorb high energy photons and let low energy photons slip through to be absorbed by lower layers, which interesting and so originally this came out of like NASA and Space Tech, but it's pretty promising simulations is achieved fifty one eight percent efficiency that would be incredible, which even in a laboratory

is amazing. So the interesting thing here is that and we talked about this in our older podcast about how if you go with the the lower energy band gaps, you can cast that net. But the problem with going with low energy band gaps is that you get a very low voltage out of it. So the work you can do with the electricity you generate is not necessarily better than what you would if you were just going

for high energy. But by doing this multi tier approach, you can capture all of it, which is a great idea, or a lot more of a lot more of it efficiency in the simulation. But still right, they're they're working on matching current among the different sub cells because if one sub cell is is lacking, then it's going to throw off the entire device within this multijunction cell. So it's kind of one of those weakest link type Yeah. Yeah,

so so people are people are working on it. Um. The other thing that I'm really excited about is completely out there. This is quantum photovoltaics also called quantum dots our cells quantum dots. This takes me back, yeah, yeah, and so this is this is using matrix of finally tuned nanocrystals instead of the typical silicon crystals that you're

that you're used to. And what's cool about these nano crystals is that they can be tuned to specific segments of the light spectrum um of of of these band gaps that we've been talking about, so that cells can capture more of the available light based on how different bits of it are tuned. And the really exciting part of this is that photons can hypothetically excite as many

as seven electrons per per photon. So so yeah, that's that's where you're getting that crazy boost in efficiency right right in Researchers at the University of Buffalo found that they could reach a efficiency and also because you've got fun quantum physics mucking up this business um, that's how

I call it. Yeah. Recently, an international team discovered that that these quantum dots can self assemble into nano wires that will more efficiently carry that current so into their into their own pathways, like like Jonathan was talking about earlier with when you create a pathway, you're allowing the electron flow to happen, right right, Because if you didn't have that barrier there to block the flow, then the electrons would just flow automatically from the more negative side

towards the more positive side. You have to create a barrier and then you have to create a path, and and all of this takes work on your part, but hypothetically, this quantum stuff can can do it for you know. That's that's pretty cool. I've got one other alternative to silicon based panels, and it may end up not being an alternative but rather an augmentation. But that's for pov skites. I have no idea if that's the right way to say it, but this is a material that apparently the

Earth is just lousy with parov skites. This is incredibly plentiful, incredibly cheap material that may in fact be a valid alternative to silicon. You might have heard about this talked about. I believe these are also called thin film cells. Correct, yes, yes, So this is a it's a material that's very good

at absorbing light, and it's a semiconductor like silicon. It could transport electric charge when a photon hits it, just like silicon um and unlike silicon, which those panels can be as thin as a round a hundred eighty micrometers thick. Hundred micrometer is one millionth of a meter um. That sounds pretty thin, but a but one made of this other material can be less than one micrometer thick, so

the manufacturing process could be much simpler. It ends up being you need less of this material than you would of silicon material. Stuff is already cheaper. The sheets that you wind up with are more applicable to two different objects.

They can be thin and bendy and and right, which means that you're not stuck with that one form factor that you would be with a solar panel, where you have a more rigid, thicker material, uh, which you depending upon what you're trying to coat, could be a big deal. It's sort of this pigmented stuff. And uh, it's, like I said, very cheap and could eventually lead to solar

panels that cost ten to twenty cents per what. And I remember we're talking now around between fifty cents and a dollar per what, depending upon how you define it. So this would be significantly less expensive and in fact more than comparable to fossil fuel on a per what basis. Knowing that this is not really apples to apples, so but anyway, Uh, they right now are only an efficiency

of around fifteen percent. Uh. Scientists think that they might be able to get get it to about twenty or twenty five percent efficiency, so much lower than some of these other ones we're talking about. But if the cost is much lower, then it may make sense. If it's cheaper to to turn these out than silicon ones, even if the silicon ones are better, it may make more financial sense to go with this material it's cheaper in

the long run. Kind of kind of idea. Now, right now, there's an effort to commercialize the product through a company called Oxford Photovoltaics, which is so far raised more than four million dollars in capital. And uh, there's also a chance, because we're still seeing silicon based cellar panels, we're seeing those prices go down over time, there's a chance that

this won't make a big impact. So because if silicon ends up being as cheap or only a little more expensive than this alternative solar panel, people are going to say, well, why would I sacrifice performance for just a tiny savings. Plus you're talking about not just people, but entire companies that would have to create their own manufacturing processes to build these these panels. It would require a big change in infrastructure, and it may not be worth that investment

to change the infrastructure. Although for certain purposes. Again, when you're talking about the rigidity of the final product, you might wind up, yeah, finding finding benefit and using something that's a little bit less some Yeah, if you have around building, for example, and you want to have part of that building like a column where there's not any

windows facing out to be a solar gathering column. Uh, and you don't want to place a million tiny panels on it, right, this might be a way of doing that. It's also been discussed as a way to augment silicon based solar pans, where you would use the pigment to help reduce the reflectivity of the panels, just like we were talking about with the moth eyes. It would mean that more photons would be reflected down into the solar panel, as opposed to bouncing off and going willy nilly to

not do anyone any good, those lazy bums. So those are those are some other alternatives. Do you have any others you want to talk about? Before we talk about some of the crazy fun stuff. That's all I've got. But before we do that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. You've probably tried Hulu dot com. Now with Hulu Plus, you can watch your favorite shows anytime, anywhere.

Hulu Plus lets you watch thousands of hit TV shows in the selection of acclaimed movies on your television or on the go with your smartphone or tablet, and it all streams an HD for the best viewing experience. With Hulu Plus, you can watch your favorite current TV shows like Community, South Park, and Parks and Recreation. You can also check out exclusive content, including Hulu originals like The Awesome starring s N. L. Seth Myers and moon Boy

starring Christ Odald from Bride'smates. Hulu Plus also offers a great selection of acclaimed films for only seven dollars and cents a month. You can stream as many TV shows and movies as you want wherever you want. Right now, you can try who Plus free for two weeks when you go to hul Plus dot com forward slash Tech. That's a special offer for our listeners. Make sure you use Hulu Plus dot com Forward slash Tech so you get the extended free trial and they know we sent you.

Go to Hulu Plus dot com Forward slash tech now and there are a ton of shows on there that are some of my favorites. The I T crowd is way up there. So you'll hear lots of I T crowd references in our episodes if you listen hard enough. But in order to get the references, you need to watch the show first, So go check it out. All right,

this isn't that crazy fun. But I did run across an article about how solar panels are coming to Ikea that if you're in the UK, that that was where I got the UK information right, Lauren just shook her fist for those who are those who were curious, those who are listening in on say the radio. I shook my fist in the other solar panel episode and I announced it too, because so there's some things that just

carry over. It doesn't matter. So Ikea is looking at carrying solar panels to for customers to purchase solar solar panel kits, So flat pack Ikea style solar panel can go in you buy a flat pack of ike I'm sure they'll have some sort of Swedish name that will be hilarious and um, you'll you know, in the UK, you can purchase these and then go and have them

installed at your home. Uh. It sounds like if it's a successful program that it will roll out to other parts of the world, the United States included, and it's you know, they're no stranger to solar power. In fact, they use solar panels and several of their locations forty of their US locations have solar panels energy. Yeah, they essentially are powering their their buildings with solar energy as much as they possibly can. So, uh, you know, now they're looking at instead of just using it on a

corporate level, to actually offer it as a product. So it'll be interesting to see if this ends up being successful because then we'll see it rolled out to other whether whether it's really is you know, in grand Ikea style, cheaper and easier to install. Yeah, because you can as a customer right now. I mean, if if you're a consumer, you can go out and buy solar panels and have them installed in your home. There are hardware stores like

Lows that that sell solar panels. It's not like i Kea is the first business to come out and say we're finally making solar panels available to cut customers, but it's probably the first place that you can get Swedish meatballs and also solar panels. Yeah, at least from a reliable source. There is a guy outside of my local lows who sells what he calls the Swedish meatballs, but I just don't trust them. Uh So, that was one

of the wacky things I want to talk about. But the other one is my favorite, which is the robo raven. Robo raven. Yes, so a pair of University of Maryland professors sk Gupta and Hugh Bruck came up with along with their students, the robo raven, which is a robotic bird. It's a little robot that can fly, and flying takes up a lot of energy. It takes up a lot of energy for birds, and it takes up a lot of energy for robots, as it turns out, And so they were trying to think of ways to extend a

robot's flying life so that it would be useful. Otherwise, you know, your typical robotic flying device is going to have a fairly small range and half batteries are going to run down fuel source of money. So yeah, it's it's roaming range is going to be about half of what you would want just based on the battery life alone. Because if you have it go all the way out to its battery life, then you have to go to

retrieve it. You wanted to be able to come back, right, So they were thinking, well, how could we build something that could recharge its batteries while it's out in the field sometimes literally dom and then make its way back home. And so they decided to use a special material where they were essentially weaving in solar panels along the wings of this robo raven. So the idea is that this little uh, this little device, this can the micro air vehicle can fly out. It would land when its power

would get low, and it would recharge its battery. And now they point out that the solar panels are nowhere near efficient enough to power the bird's flight. Yeah, it would have to land and recharge batteries and then fly because I think it would generate something like gather like three point six watts and it needs thirty wats to fly, and like it just it cannot, you know, it would just it would just crash if you were to try and fly it beyond its battery life. So I thought

that was yes. Now, the robo raven that plays into the podcast, we did not that long ago about drones. Uh, in this case, the robo ravens just it's a robotic bird. It's not designed to be anything specific apart from a robotic bird. But you could easily see this kind of technology being used in things like environmental uh monitors, you know, looking for things like changes in climate, changes in environment, exploration of areas that might be difficult to get to

on foot or otherwise, or you know, surveillance. You know, there's that fun version to whether birds are spying on you and the robots. I don't want that. I don't want bird shaped robots spying on me. I want that even less than I want other robots spying on me. In fact, I'm not sure why I have this strong emotion, but that sounds like i've I mean, I don't know, maybe it's watched too much Alfred Hitchcock or something. I recommend you don't turn around then, I'm just your back

is to the window. Yeah, we have an exciting new window in the podcast, yes, which I can look out of and Lauren cannot because of the way we sit. I refuse to have my back to the window, all right, So anyway, that's that's kind of our our update on solar panel technolog g. You know, it's going to constantly be this quest to eke out as much efficiency as possible to make solar panels a true competitor when it comes to generate electricity. Uh. And you also have to

offset the downsides to solar panels. So, for example, if you were to try and go off the grid and just use solar panels for your home, you would also need some sort of energy storage device for those times when the sun is not out and you would be able to tap into that. So batteries essentially is what I'm talking about. So you could have your own on site generator that runs on something else, but you're talking

about some other fuel. Maybe pair it with a with a wind generator or something like that, or not a wind generator, but a wind harvesting wind driven Yeah, that would if you if you live in a very sunny, windy place, that would work out well for you. If you don't, then uh, you know, that would probably probably be marginally improvement over just solar panels alone. I hope you guys enjoyed that classic episode of tech Stuff. If you have any suggestions for future topics we should cover

on the show, let me know. Send me a message on Twitter. The handle is text stuff HS w and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.