
Cheap, spray-on solar cells developed by Canadian researchers - fraqed
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/cheap-spray-on-solar-cells-developed-by-canadian-researchers-1.1913086?cmp=rss
======
cunninghamd
OK, great, where can I buy a spray-can's worth?

Now, as facetious as that may sound, I'm quite serious. I've been watching
Nano Solar and their promise of $1/watt solar energy for years, and I have yet
to see it in practice. I'd honestly love to be able to drop $50 on solar cells
and know that I can produce 50 watts of power (at peak), but since Nano Solar
is only selling to industry, the end consumer is left in the (coal) dust until
this stuff catches on.

I guess ultimately, I'll be watching this company now, too. Maybe I can become
Walter White, and start "cooking" solar cells at home based on their article.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Nanosolar is bankrupt, and their assets are/were sold off:
[http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Nanosolar-
Thin-F...](http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Nanosolar-Thin-Film-
Solar-Hype-Firm-Officially-Dead)

------
grannyg00se
"The fact that they’re “so cheap to make,” she added, means they will only
have to reach 7.5 per cent efficiency before they will be commercially
competitive with conventional energy sources such as coal-electric
generation."

How does that make sense? If I have to cover my entire yard with this stuff to
get a decent amount of power that doesn't compete well.

~~~
eigenvector
They're clearly referring to commercial energy production (i.e. solar farms)
not DG applications like rooftop solar. People don't commonly have coal-fired
thermal plants in their yards either.

------
contingencies
Space inefficiency is an issue in an era where more and more people live in
apartments and have no yard. While Canadians can revel in spatial wealth,
meanwhile in the realistic future-preview world (over here in Asia) every
square meter of land is in use. Usually at multiple levels in a high vertical
stack.

~~~
mapt
Space inefficiency is an issue that ubiquitous low-efficiency solar power does
not have at all: Land is simply not a particularly scarce commodity somewhere
within a few hundred kilometers of your house. Space inefficiency is only an
issue for the concept of the power infrastructure being 100% distributed as
some kind of local self-sufficiency element. May as well be growing your own
wheat.

Even so, an average-sized residential roof will generate quite a lot of power
relative to what the inhabitants use on all but apartment towers - and those
are usually surrounded by enough parking, on which we can build sunshades with
solar panels, to compensate.

~~~
contingencies
_Land is simply not a particularly scarce commodity somewhere within a few
hundred kilometers of your house_

"Got rice?" Not here in Asia, where most people live.

 _Even so, an average-sized residential roof will generate quite a lot of
power relative to what the inhabitants use on all but apartment towers - and
those are usually surrounded by enough parking, on which we can build
sunshades with solar panels, to compensate._

The developing world is rapidly urbanizing and moving in to - you guessed it -
apartment towers. The world at large is also moving away from cars.

What is your idea of an 'average sized' residential roof, anyway? Perhaps you
are aware that US houses have the largest floorspace per capita of anywhere in
the world, except Australia?

No offence but it looks like you have a very North American (chiefly US)
perspective.

~~~
mapt
The latter part of my argument, about neighborhood and building-scale self-
sufficiency (a concept I believe to be somewhat silly) was indeed premised on
Western living patterns... but not the rest.

Show me a city in Asia, and I will show you land 100-200km (often 25-50km)
away that is barely used, having been given over to scrub or wilderness or
low-value agriculture. Only in the centers of the most dense cities do land
prices even eclipse solar panel prices when considering this power generation
method. This has to be the case, for transportation reasons: a city can only
grow where it has access to significant amounts of land to feed itself. The
amount of land required to feed a person tends to vastly overshadow the amount
of land required to power that person's share of the generation
infrastructure.

200kg of rice staple a year per person (estimate from Burma of strict rice
consumption diet) / 4 tons rice per hectare (world average) = 500 square
meters per person, for a no-protein diet. Replace rice with wheat, and add
some meat + dairy, and you increase that figure by several times.

...

Napkin Math (Guaranteed to one order of magnitude):

China uses about 500 watts per person.

Beijing's region gets about 5kwh/m^2/d of insolation

At 10% efficiency that's 500wh/m^2/d

That means 1 person needs 24m^2 of land given over to solar panels

Beijing has 20M people

That's 480 km^2 (a square plot of land 20km x 24km) that Beijing would have to
find to place solar panels; Compare with, for example, the size of Beijing.

...

The Chinese province of Inner Mongolia has sufficient unused desert scrubland
to power the entire world several times over, if:

A) The solar panel price problem is solved

B) The energy storage problem is solved

C) Electrical distribution infrastructure is approached in a systematic manner

~~~
contingencies
_The latter part of my argument, about neighborhood and building-scale self-
sufficiency (a concept I believe to be somewhat silly) was indeed premised on
Western living patterns... but not the rest._

Thanks for the admission of poor premise. I'm just not clear what "the rest"
was.

You continue to talk about "unused" land near major population centers, then
combine rice-yield statistics from tropical, water-rich environments with an
example of Beijing, an arid climate with relatively extreme temperature
fluctuation making it a very poor yielding area for rice (though it is grown,
you get only one instead of two and often three crops per year in
tropical/subtropical zones).

I admire your optimism with regards to solar and share your concerns around
world energy usage and the need to actively consider alternative energy
generation, but I think the sad reality is that cities are a lot less space-
rich than you assume and that solar yields in places like Beijing are too
space inefficient to give the types of returns you are looking for.

You will have, of course, noticed that right next to Beijing (>21 million) are
also the cities of Chengde (173km; ~4 million), Datong (265km; ~3.5 million),
Tianjian (112km; >13 million), Shijiazhuang (267km; >10 million), Tangshan
(157km; ~8 million), Zhangjiakou (160km; ~4.5 million)?

Despite this density, Chinese are well fed, a fact which derives from very
high efficiency land use with strong government support for agricultural
research and technology. Huge projects such as the Grand Canal[1] have
supported these populations for millenia.

It's great to discuss these things, but the reality on the ground is very
different to napkin-world. In short, I'm sorry but you're probably more than
one magnitude out... "guaranteed".

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_%28China%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_%28China%29)

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zackmorris
A rallying cry for open source if I've ever seen one.

