[PhantomPholly]

Batteries are still the big holdup, but this company is working on solar harvesting which could be so cheap that it will be cheaper to make synthetic gas than to pump it out of the ground.


2 minute video on their site explains it.


Nanoantenna Arrays convert sunlight to electricity at 45-90% efficiency for as little as 10% of the cost of current PV technology.


Several patents in the last 3 years.

 

[Karter2]

Great if they can produce supercheap solar cells that are 5 times more efficient,
...then as you say, we just need cheap , available batteries/storage to match.
...But, odd that they should say this..?

...Our solution, manufactured at scale, will enable solar energy to be produced at a cost per kWh less than fossil fuels....

That implies they dont think current solar tech is anywhere near as cheap as fossil fuels !

 

[PhantomPholly]

Great if they can produce supercheap solar cells that are 5 times more efficient,
...then as you say, we just need cheap , available batteries/storage to match.
...But, odd that they should say this..?

That implies they dont think current solar tech is anywhere near as cheap as fossil fuels !

I don't think you are reading that correctly. While I understand them being cautious about predicting final prices (and would fully expect them to charge whatever the market will bear), their Vision statement has more to say on the subject:

The NovaSolix approach places roughly one trillion tiny radio receivers per square inch. Unlike PV cells, the NS cells are compatible with a wide range of frequencies from low infrared through visible light and up into the ultraviolet. Furthermore, the NS cells are able to convert weak light to small amounts of power. The theoretical limit on efficiency of NS cells is roughly 90% or three times the energy of a PV cell. Initial NS cells will be roughly 40% efficient, producing roughly 400 watts/square meter. Finally, due to the different underlying manufacturing process, NS cells are cheaper and lighter weight than PV cells while also being flexible.

And a bit further down in their Conclusions section:

However, NovaSolix’s antenna-based solar cells show promise to drop the cost of cells by a factor of five, increase power output by a factor of two initially and lower weight by another factor of five. These changes are more than enough to cross the magic lines where new solutions and applications become feasible.

The hint about how they intend to do this is in their Manufacturing section:

From the beginning, NovaSolix engineers have developed our products so that they can be manufactured using roll-to-roll advanced manufacturing techniques. At scale, these techniques insure that NovaSolix’s products will be the cheapest form of energy of Earth.

Bold mine. This is key - silicon wafers have to be manufactured, which puts a limit on how cheap they can get. Roll-to-roll printing scales far better and is in general one of the cheapest manufacturing processes humanity has devised.

 

[aeroscott]

Great find, I first heard about the phased array antenna in 1984 or 85 .

Then in 86 reading Mother Earth News there was a short description of a patent and inventor who working on a 4 angstrom wide by 14 or 17 angstrom long antenna with a diode at the base. That would resonate with the light waves yielding 40% eff. solar panel and 70% by adding more spectrum response.

He said this is how plant leaves generate power then convert that to sugars
which is not the efficient part

He sold the Patent to Motorola and said no body wanted to build a long life panel. So he then started working on a plastic short life panel which was not part of the sold patent. never heard anything more.
A few years I Googled something on plants converting sunlight to electric
and found a alga that was funnel shaped ,said to be 99% eff.

 

[aeroscott]

Can you imagine a house covered with 200 meters of solar panels at 99% eff.
that would be over 7 megawatt /week. At about 100 gallons of diesel to generate 1 megawatt , so 700 gallons/week, or 40 weeks X 700 =28000 gallons per yea equivalent.

I have been saying this for 32 years and called a tin hat nut by very well schooled people.

 

[PhantomPholly]

He sold the Patent to Motorola and said no body wanted to build a long life panel.

Oh I don't think it was because nobody WANTED to build it - they simply couldn't do so (or at least not economically). Who would turn down the opportunity to manufacture a revolutionary product which would upset an entire industry? Imagine the profits!

A few years I Googled something on plants converting sunlight to electric and found a alga that was funnel shaped ,said to be 99% eff.

Haven't heard of that one, but I'm pretty sure if they figured out a way to build it cheaply and scale it they'd have done it by now.


Most (if not all) of the alleged "suppressed technology" conspiracy theories are really just because the technology in question simply didn't make economic sense. History tells us that when someone can make a profit doing something, they will do it.

 

[aeroscott]

The patent is expired . just want to get as close to 1kw/meter and cheep.

 

[Duncan]

Great find, I first heard about the phased array antenna in 1984 or 85 .

Then in 86 reading Mother Earth News there was a short description of a patent and inventor who working on a 4 angstrom wide by 14 or 17 angstrom long antenna with a diode at the base. That would resonate with the light waves yielding 40% eff. solar panel and 70% by adding more spectrum response.

He said this is how plant leaves generate power then convert that to sugars
which is not the efficient part

He sold the Patent to Motorola and said no body wanted to build a long life panel. So he then started working on a plastic short life panel which was not part of the sold patent. never heard anything more.
A few years I Googled something on plants converting sunlight to electric
and found a alga that was funnel shaped ,said to be 99% eff.

I'm surprised that he got a patent in the 80's as that technology was described in a SciFi novel in 1979

 

[aeroscott]

Do you know the name of the book ,it would be interesting to read.

 

[Duncan]

Do you know the name of the book ,it would be interesting to read.

Probably my favorite writer but the beggar only wrote a handful of books

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Goddess_and_the_Son

Donald Kingsbury

If you liked Asimov's Foundation series then
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistorical_Crisis
Is well worth a read

A huge amount of concepts stuffed into each one - and the guy really knows his science

My main grumbe is that I can't find them as e-books - I have hard copy - if you find a source as e-books please let me know

 

[kennybobby]

read a book? hell no, what's the patent number--now that would be interesting to read.

 

[PhantomPholly]

What you guys are talking about sounds more like rectennas which were going to be used to receive solar power from orbit.

 

[Duncan]

What you guys are talking about sounds more like rectennas which were going to be used to receive solar power from orbit.

Probably because that is exactly what that company is talking about doing - effectively a rectenna for visual wavelengths

 

[brian_]

Can you imagine a house covered with 200 meters of solar panels at 99% eff.
that would be over 7 megawatt /week.

7 megawatt-hours per week, right?

I have been saying this for 32 years and called a tin hat nut by very well schooled people.

Simply observing that a lot of solar energy hits a roof seems reasonable to me. It's only nutty if you expect to operate anything at 99% collection efficiency, with no demonstrated technology to do that.

 

[aeroscott]

Brian, you missed post #4 in which i said alga converting light to electric power at 99%.
But even if we can't hit what what natures best does , we should be able to hit 70% + which is what all the green grasses and trees are doing.

I didn't deduct the 1% from the 7 megs so that should be 6.93megs or if we go with 70% that's 4.9 megs/week.
The big problem is school is teaching photosynthesis with the conversion to sugars included , a step we don't need or want.

 

[brian_]

Brian, you missed post #4 in which i said alga converting light to electric power at 99%.

No, I saw that.

But even if we can't hit what what natures best does , we should be able to hit 70% + which is what all the green grasses and trees are doing.

You may be right, but I think that's an unfounded and wildly optimistic assumption. There are very many areas in which current technology does not perform as well as biological processes.

If this were easy, it would have been done decades ago.

 

[aeroscott]

We know it's done at low temperature ,no toxics .It's being done as we speak by nature.

. We have a rudimentary understanding of how we can make it work.Know it's time to teach the world what it is and how it can be done industrially, even if it's no ware near as elegant/intelligent as nature has demonstrated.

It baffles me, you could call this not demonstrated ,experiments have been with in this area since the 1980's and 20 years with this company.

 

[PhantomPholly]

Resurrecting this old thread. Flew (in my plane) over to Huntsville on Sunday to visit an old friend who works for NASA, and also to meet the scientist (Steven Novack) who was the original subject of this post. Neat guy, not working on that any more though but rather doing some kind of quality control process work for NASA.



That science work continued, they figured out how to print the rectifiers along with the antennas and the company is targeting the industrial heat recapture market. If they can recoup 50% of waste heat for cheap it will provide amazing savings to those companies. They could not "print" rectennas small enough for visible light even using ultraviolet lithography; maybe someday. Steven was able to confirm several of my assumptions about the original articles.



Meanwhile another company is trying a different approach to ultra-cheap ultra-efficient solar. Hoping they succeed in bringing it to market.