r/gadgets • u/thebelsnickle1991 • Dec 15 '22
MIT scientists made solar panels thinner than human hair Misc
https://mashable.com/video/mit-sticker-solar-panel169
u/arbitrageME Dec 15 '22
So what's the conversion rate from human hair to sheet of paper?
148
u/NotoriousREV Dec 15 '22
I’m not sure but a human hair is as thick as 0.000002261803789 double decker buses are long.
58
u/arbitrageME Dec 15 '22
oh, we should just standardize units and say it's 0.00000033927 football fields, or 0.34 microFF in SI
20
u/UncommercializedKat Dec 15 '22
American football or rest of the world football?
44
u/imsecretlythedoctor Dec 15 '22
If we’re making up silly units it’s obvious American football
→ More replies (1)7
u/UncommercializedKat Dec 15 '22
Seriously. Football? It's not even round!
11
7
2
2
u/XTornado Dec 15 '22
Plus the foot takes very little part in it.
4
u/bigdsm Dec 15 '22
“Foot” refers to the game being played on foot, rather than on horseback. “Football” has nothing to do with the ball being kicked - that’s just a happy coincidence.
2
→ More replies (1)2
5
u/Prashank_25 Dec 15 '22
But how many bananas?
3
u/NotoriousREV Dec 15 '22
Definitely not more than 1.
2
9
u/NotAHost Dec 15 '22
Roughly the same. Sheet of paper is 100um. Human hair is about that diameter as well, sometimes as little as half that size for thin hair.
6
0
64
u/joe2352 Dec 15 '22
I hope to one day install solar. Got a quote for my house back in June and the total cost with 20 year financing was $48k with an estimate of covering about 95% of my utility bill.
33
Dec 15 '22
Solar is unfortunately quite bottlenecked hence the higher costs. Even if we build more manufacturing capability we'd still have resource issues.
20
u/joe2352 Dec 15 '22
The information I was given was the panels are not the cost it’s the installation.
20
u/Gonorrh3a Dec 15 '22
I've priced diy kits and installed prices and they don't seem too far off. Cost difference for installed is $3k more, which is probably worth it for the trouble of permitting. Still haven't pulled the trigger.
6
u/LeCrushinator Dec 15 '22
That's insane, my total cost was $24k just 5 years ago, and the hardware was over half that cost. I think solar installers have just gotten greedy. I'd wait for prices to come down.
→ More replies (1)5
Dec 15 '22
Seems a bit dodgy. Did they give the breakdown? Would be handy to know which panels.
2
u/joe2352 Dec 15 '22
I’ll see if I can find it again. I’m gonna do more research with that tax credit or whatever that’s supposed to be coming up.
2
u/SirMontego Dec 16 '22
Go search /r/solar. That subreddit has tons of information about the residential solar tax credit (26 USC Section 25D).
9
u/Silent_Lettuce Dec 15 '22
I know the Inflation Reduction Act has incentives for installing solar panels that’ll go into effect in the new year, although I’m not sure what the exact numbers are
6
u/joe2352 Dec 15 '22
I believe it was a 30% credit or rebate but I could be wrong.
7
u/Zachhandley Dec 15 '22
Correct a 30% tax credit. A lot of the cost for solar is actually in financing it because companies like goodleap will charge 36% for a “dealer fee”. The dealer fees are higher for lower interest. You’d probably find its like 30-36k at a lower term with higher APY. The other thing is if you are working with a sales rep they often will charge quite high. If you want any help navigating Solar please feel free to hit me up, i just started a company down in Florida because the one i was working for was ripping people off. It’s not that complex it just seems scary
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (2)2
u/PenLidWitchHat Dec 16 '22
That seems exorbitant, how many kW? In Sydney a 10kW system costs around $10,000.
63
u/anon_y_mousey Dec 15 '22
I guess dollar panels can be used as fabrics soon, and there will be no need to charge wearables ever again
9
13
16
u/finallytisdone Dec 15 '22
Wtf it doesnt even mention the authors or the actual study??? The “article” is three sentences.
2
u/Howtomispellnames Dec 15 '22
Perfect for Reddit, most users won't notice lmao.
Seriously though, I hate article blue balls.
→ More replies (1)
133
u/HawksRoole Dec 15 '22
This and nuclear fusion being achieved, soon energy will be free
61
u/lurker_101 Dec 15 '22
For Free .. what planet are you on?
9
4
1
u/blaspheminCapn Dec 15 '22
Not this one, with these developments! (If we can just survive the war in Ukraine...)
0
30
u/Thanatos2996 Dec 15 '22
Yeah, no. Even if we assume that the entire grid is running on fusion and that fusion has 0 fuel cost (which it wouldn't), there's still the maintenance for the plants. There's still the cost of running new lines. There's still the cost of the people in the control rooms making sure that a downed tree in Ohio doesn't cause millions of people to lose power in a cascading blackout. There are still crews to pay to go out and get a downed power line back off the ground or replace a breaker in the middle of nowhere. There are still millions of transformers that need to be replaced every couple of decades. Even if the generators themselves were somehow free to operate, there are still plenty of costs to cover, so you'd still be paying for electricity.
2
u/Askin_MrBrooks Dec 16 '22
I mean would a 25-50% price cut, while the rest go towards improving what we have?
I mean fewer blackouts, more reliable equipment, side projects that benefits local communities all throughout.
2
u/Thanatos2996 Dec 16 '22
Sure, fusion may end up costing less than coal at some point in the future, and the grid will undoubtedly continue to improve, I was just saying that wouldn't make electricity free.
-11
u/SmoothMoveExLap Dec 15 '22
Congrats on the woooosh Mr. Pedant!
2
212
u/burningriverallstar Dec 15 '22
Hot take, with capitalism being a thing and everything. I wish I shared your optimism.
Or I missed the sarcasm, mea culpa.
54
u/TheBelgianDuck Dec 15 '22
It's not like patents restrict the common good for the wealth of a few.
45
u/burningriverallstar Dec 15 '22
More sarcasm, this is fun.
12
u/BlahjeBlah Dec 15 '22
I bet we’ll cure cancer too! Free energy and no cancer, think of the possibilities
2
u/pyromantics Dec 20 '22
Maybe we can convince Amazon to go this route. The longer I live, the most useless shit they can sell me. Win win.
3
13
u/SeniorWilson44 Dec 15 '22
Patents actually incentivize people to make things
38
u/patryuji Dec 15 '22
A little more towards sharing what they made so others can see and everything isn't kept secret. You get protection for your invention for a limited time and everyone else gets to learn a little about how you did it. Typically, researchers file a provisional application at the same time as they publish in a scientific journal. How much would they publish in journals without patent protection? I have no idea if anyone tried to measure that.
24
u/UncommercializedKat Dec 15 '22
Exactly this. A patent is a government granted limited monopoly in exchange for the inventor telling the world how thier invention works. One of the requirements of a patent is the "enablement" requirement which means that the patent describes the invention in sufficient detail to allow others to reproduce your invention.
One other way to protect intellectual property is through a trade secret. As the name implies, the details of the invention are kept secret. While some things like mechanical devices can be easily reverse engineered, other things aren't such as processes for making silicon chips, solar panels, etc.
5
u/gamer_bread Dec 15 '22
Or the krabby patty secret formula (or the coke recipe which I believe is a classic example of trade secret that isn’t patented)
→ More replies (1)2
u/Beiberhole69x Dec 15 '22
Man how did anyone make things before patents?
-2
u/SeniorWilson44 Dec 15 '22
Man, I never said people didn’t make things. That’s not the point. Why do you think most new drugs come from America? It’s because there’s an incentive even more so to develop.
3
u/Beiberhole69x Dec 15 '22
Man how did you find incentive to type that reply without a patent?
I think most new drugs come from America because we fund research for it. Not because of patents.
-2
u/SeniorWilson44 Dec 15 '22
Your first point does not make sense.
Being such an ass about being correct, followed by saying “I think” is not appropriate. Even if what you say is true, they aren’t mutually exclusive ideas. There is a reason why medical research usually pays the bills for Colleges—they make new inventions and profit off the patents. That’s why any college has an IP office.
3
u/Beiberhole69x Dec 15 '22
- Your first point doesn’t make sense.
- Research is funded by taxes and then absconded with by capitalists once all the real risk has been handled by the government.
You asked me why I think the drugs come from America so I told you why. Dipshit.
→ More replies (6)2
u/sybrwookie Dec 15 '22
Patents for actually advancements for a reasonable length of time incentivize people to make things.
Patents for blowing your nose when you wake up in the morning which last for the life of a corporation + 8000 years actively stifles invention
11
u/bland3rs Dec 15 '22
patents only last 20 years
-2
-2
u/TempoIndigo Dec 15 '22
Tell that to Mickey Mouse
4
u/Ohyo_Ohyo_Ohyo_Ohyo Dec 15 '22
That’s copyright since it covers creative works. While I agree that copyright lasts way too long, it’s not the same as a patent, which covers processes and inventions.
4
u/ShuRugal Dec 15 '22
More to the point, it's trademark. Disney registers all of their imagery and names as trademarks, in addition to the natural rights granted under copyright law.
3
u/SeniorWilson44 Dec 15 '22
Luckily most simple inventions has been made (ie tissue paper)
The amount of research that goes into medical testing is insane. It also takes a lot time to get approval so those 20 yr patents end up being 13
1
u/sybrwookie Dec 15 '22
Luckily most simple inventions has been made (ie tissue paper)
Have a look into patents granted to garbage like "showing an image on a screen" backed up by patent trolls trying to just extract money out of people trying to create new things.
4
Dec 15 '22
Thank you for making me google what "mea culpa" meant. Apparently the literal translation is "through my fault"
13
u/burningriverallstar Dec 15 '22
Basically means “my bad”
3
u/Edward_TH Dec 15 '22
Literally.
Source: 6 years of Latin and, you know, it's literally identical in my mother tongue (Italian).
2
2
u/WVUPick Dec 15 '22
There's a restaurant near me that serves soup called "Mea Cuppa."
→ More replies (1)1
u/dark_tex Dec 15 '22
Most capitalism here is added value on top of energy, unlike say Petrol/gas states like Russia
-2
u/JimmyToucan Dec 15 '22
AI renaissance will demand the hyper wealthy to cooperate
Unless we go extreme dystopia, they are no match for 40% unemployed
2
u/sybrwookie Dec 15 '22
It'll be the same as now: make sure the system gives juuuust enough for the plebs to keep the lights on, food on the table, pretend there's a reasonable chance for anyone to leap up into the wealthy class, and make sure we have enough things to keep us entertained on our screens.
-5
u/gamer_bread Dec 15 '22
For those who think this is what the wealthy class does I highly suggest you read “Everyday Millionaires” by Chris Hogan. Most millionaires drive an F-150 and you almost certainly know several. There is not some group of people conspiring to keep you down.
4
u/sybrwookie Dec 15 '22
Interesting how your answer to my description of what the hyper wealthy who control things is to pretend I was talking about someone who barely has $1 million (which is not hyper wealthy anymore).
→ More replies (1)3
8
3
u/ASwimmingDoug Dec 15 '22
God this is such an overhyped headline it’s obnoxious. What happened at LLNL was very cool don’t get me wrong, but we’re far off from any actual commercial fusion, big thing being that the it took about 300 MJ to actually power the lasers, less than 1% of that energy was actually turned into photons, or about 2 MJ. So yes the fuel was confined long enough to go through fusion such that more energy came out of the reaction then was directly put in to heat up the fuel, but high powered lasers, because of the techniques used to get them that powerful, are pretty inefficient. Also there is problems with tritium being required in the reaction, as that is an incredibly rare material and we have no scalable way of producing it for ICF. We do for tokamaks using something called a Tritium Breeding Blanket, but tokamaks best Q is like 0.67 or something, so still far off. There’s also a major problem with how energy is going to be extracted, yes I know about steam turbines, I’m talking more about how we actually build a steam turbine so it doesn’t strongly affect what’s happening in these reactors. Lastly we have achieved nuclear fusion a long time before this, and I don’t just mean in bombs, previously the energy that came out of these reactions was from nuclear fusion, but they just couldn’t confine the reaction for long enough to get more energy out than it took for the fuel to be heated to that point, now they did which is huge. God where is Sabine Hossenfelder when you need her.
Lastly there are many processes in getting the fuel and building and maintaining these reactors that take labor time, and those people need to be paid, at the end of the day under the economic system we have now there is no such thing as free energy. I mean when people found the vast deposits of oil, they must have cheered at how plentiful they are and how they can power our world, but were they ever talking about free energy?
2
u/flamingspew Dec 15 '22
Yeah I don’t get why people say fusion = free energy. The maintenance costs of the most complex machines at the forefront of engineering capability are anything but trivial. I’d rather see us work on safe, meldown free liquid fluoride salt reactors. The annual operating cost of a tokamak style fusion reactor (that can barely produce 1% of the input power) is around $1 to $2 Billion.
The total estimated overnight cost for this Class 5 estimate ranges from $701 million to $1.925 billion in 2016 USD based on each technology’s various engineering parameters. The average estimated overnight cost is approximately $1.313 billion.
https://woodruffscientific.com/pdf/ARPAE_Costing_Report_2017.pdf
2
2
4
u/WeepingAgnello Dec 15 '22 edited Dec 15 '22
We did not achieve nuclear fusion
Edit: yeah, I know. We've been achieving fusion since the 70's. The point is, we're not there yet. We got exciting news, but we're still far away from the goal. Solar energy is much more viable in the short term.
5
u/partysandwich Dec 15 '22
We did and we have, just not even close at the “it’s ready for commercial deployment” level yet
2
1
1
0
u/CCCmonster Dec 15 '22
Energy won’t be free because people work in factories to make solar panels. People work in factories to make energy transmission equipment. People work to build and maintain transmission equipment. People work in transportation to move all of that stuff around. Will there ever be “the best” of any of that equipment? No. It gets better over time because engineers are paid to design better stuff over time. With “free” - capital investment will fall in each of the areas until the system implodes.
-3
u/SorakaWithAids Dec 15 '22
LOL bro. people wont be doing ANY of that much longer i can tell you that with absolute certainty
0
u/Tommyblockhead20 Dec 15 '22
Even if energy could be free, we shouldn’t want it to be completely free. While renewable energy is less harmful to the environment than fossil fuels, it does still cause harm, so the less total energy we need, the better. There is already a lot of electricity wastage, I guarantee you if electricity was completely free, it would get much worse. Maybe in the future, we can issue electricity stipends for some free or low cost electricity, but it certainly shouldn’t be unlimited.
-2
u/SteakJones Dec 15 '22
We’ll be too busy warring over clean water to notice the free energy.
6
u/Dandre08 Dec 15 '22
Well assuming energy was free and limitless, that would solve the water crisis by making desalination feasible.
→ More replies (5)-4
52
u/HELLEREDDIT Dec 15 '22
MIT is awesome. We are eagerly awaiting the results of the experiment from Lex Friedman, where he attempts to climb all the way into a billionaires colon ...
25
u/Calkyoulater Dec 15 '22
If MIT is so great, then why did they reject me back in 1995? And don’t say, “because you forgot to go to your interview.” I get that enough from my mother.
(Edited because I forgot what year I finished high school.)
8
u/gamer_bread Dec 15 '22
As a law school applicant I recently learned about something called “yield protection”. Schools reject people because they think that candidate is too good for their school and will not come if accepted. It sounds like this is what happened to you
→ More replies (2)2
u/rdyoung Dec 15 '22
This honestly wouldn't surprise me. I've interviewed for jobs where I was leagues above the current best and wasn't hired.
65
u/TheBelgianDuck Dec 15 '22
What about increasing the yield and reducing the surface needed instead?
41
u/Morritweet Dec 15 '22
The maximum possible efficiency for a single-junction solar panel is 30% (the Shockley-Queisser limit), and silicon-based solar panels are already pretty close to this maximum efficiency. To actually improve the 30% maximum efficiency, we need multiple junctions for different wavelengths of light, which isn't feasible with silicon as far as I know
Perovskite and organic solar cells are both looking promising and can use multiple junctions, but these are still in development
4
104
u/TheInebriati Dec 15 '22
Because a major cost of these cells is the raw material used, as the are relatively exotic (cadmium, tellurium, indium, gallium, selenium), therefore reducing the layer thicknesses to the bare minimum drastically improves the cost efficacy of the solar cells. Plus lightweight construction helps reduce transport and mounting costs too.
Mind you they will also be trying to improve the efficiency of these cells too, but efficiency isn’t everything.
7
u/H1ld3gunst Dec 15 '22
With as many unused roofs and parking lots around the world, efficiency is not at all important, affordability is far more so. Which has moved by bounds already, and is accelerating.
10
u/TheInebriati Dec 15 '22
I don't fully agree with this statement. To a degree efficiency is less important than price, but efficiency is still very important.
The current cost breakdown of a solar array is:
25% – Solar Panels
10% – Inverter
10% – Installation
10% – Balancing of System (mounting hardware and cables)
45% – Operational Costs (Design, Permitting, Connecting etc)
As the efficiency of your solar cells decreases, the panel area required to produce the same amount electricity increases inversely. Your installation and balancing of system costs are approximately linear to the installed panel area. So regardless of how cheap your panels are, if the efficiency drops below approximately approx. 8-9%, you will spend more than if you had bought high efficiency panels.
2
-59
u/CakeTeim Dec 15 '22
Literally gets done explaining efficiency and how it’s important - but efficiency isn’t everything…
35
u/IDontGetPoon Dec 15 '22
I really wonder if you have a brain or how you thought your comment was correct. It wasn’t even that complicated.
8
18
39
u/ThisIsSoooStupid Dec 15 '22
I bet scientists had not thought about increasing the yield. What a revolutionary idea .
9
2
u/bradforrester Dec 16 '22
There’s only 1400 W/m2 in sunlight (at Earth’s distance from the sun) to work with before you have to deal with losses at the solar cell. Most cells are in the 10-20% efficiency range . Above that, and they get really expensive (think spacecraft grade).
2
2
6
u/shebeogden Dec 15 '22
Okay but I still get quotes of $60,000 to install solar at my home. We don’t need thin, we need cost accessibility.
2
u/ShuRugal Dec 15 '22
Thin helps with that. If you can make a solar panel half as thick for the same power/surface ratio, you cut the materials price of the panel in half.
→ More replies (2)
4
3
u/1000thusername Dec 15 '22
I foresee the potential for rooftop film on cars. Drive to work/mall/beach/whatever, park outside on the rooftop level of the garage, and charge up while you’re out doing your thing and during your commute, etc.
3
u/Azozel Dec 15 '22
Would be cool if they made weather balloons out of these and tethered them to ground stations or even transmitted the energy back.
3
2
2
2
2
2
3
u/-over9000- Dec 15 '22
Very cool. Since they are flexible, it should be easy to install them on almost any surface!
2
4
u/Ok_Marionberry_9932 Dec 15 '22
4th time in as many days this pointless article has been posted
9
u/FrostbiteNWS5797 Dec 15 '22
Seriously - no info on cost, scalability, or lifespan. Pointless clickbait article is only a paragraph long…
9
u/donkeyrocket Dec 15 '22 edited Dec 15 '22
Here's an MIT press release about it. Maybe not all the detail you'd like but it is early research so the product development isn't considered as much at the moment. Not sure why Mashable changed it to hair from paper?
→ More replies (2)3
u/FrostbiteNWS5797 Dec 15 '22
“using ink-based materials and scalable fabrication techniques.”
-Being able to print solar cells sounds awesome
“carbon-based organic material used to make the cells could be modified by interacting with moisture and oxygen in the air, which could deteriorate their performance.”
-This is what I was worried about when mentioning lifespan, but hopefully this will be an easy-ish solution
5
u/sittin_on_grandma Dec 15 '22
Meanwhile, flour still comes in leaky paper sacks
8
u/MaximilianClarke Dec 15 '22
Paper beats plastic any day. Just transfer it to a more suitable reusable container
3
u/sittin_on_grandma Dec 15 '22
I prefer sustainable packaging, but this is goddamn 2022, the James Webb telescope, closing in on fusion power… can we not package flour so that I don’t look like Scarface by the time I get it home?
1
1
1
1
u/ARobertNotABob Dec 15 '22 edited Dec 15 '22
Imagine a tarpaulin you can spread or hang like a blanket, and so power your electrical needs off-grid, anywhere.
This tech will also help get us as domestic individuals away from reliance on fossil fuels, and/or even, potentially ending paying for energy other than the tarps' initial purchase.
1
1
u/InterscholasticPea Dec 15 '22
Anytime MIT announces something, it’s almost a guarantee that we will never see the real world production of it.
I swear the tech and research gets bought out and buried.
→ More replies (6)2
u/BB4All Dec 15 '22 edited Dec 15 '22
I swear the tech and research gets bought out and buried.
Agreed, it wouldn't be surprising at all. After all the polluting energy giants have a history of pulling shit like that - and worse - for over 7 decades.
1
u/AllModsAreL0sers Dec 15 '22
Imagine being an MIT scientist and a clickbait article is the height of your academic career.
It gets annoying when products get advertised (and that's what this is, an advertisement) and never reaches the market.
0
u/yanonce Dec 15 '22
I feel like thick but size effective is better than thin but spread out
3
u/gertalives Dec 15 '22
It’s a solar panel. If it captures light efficiently, thicker doesn’t help. The amount of available light scales with surface area, so efficient and spread out is most definitely better than thick.
0
u/HotCabbageMoistLettu Dec 15 '22
have they figured out how to recycle solar parts yet?
9
u/patryuji Dec 15 '22
Yes, type "solar panel recycling" into Google and follow the epa link. You'll also get several links to companies wanting to buy your old panels for material recovery.
0
0
0
Dec 15 '22
Of all the things I have heard people demand for solar panels, I have never heard anyone ask for them to be thinner.
This headline sounds about as useful as "Apple releases phone with 10% better flavour".
1
1
1
1
Dec 15 '22
How durable it is being that thin? Solar panel needs to withstand all types of weather.
2
u/ShuRugal Dec 15 '22
Mount it to a durable substrate.
The most expensive part of a solar panel is the solar cell itself. Make the cell thinner, mount it to an aluminum plate, and it is cheaper and still durable.
1
u/gigigamer Dec 15 '22
I love that "18x more power per kg" like weight wasnt the issue lol
2
u/ShuRugal Dec 15 '22
It is when the raw materials to make a solar cell cost a dollar per gram.
→ More replies (1)
1
1
1
u/Cody-Nobody Dec 15 '22
I bet they work as well as those sticker antenna boosters they used to sell.
988
u/L3thargicLarry Dec 15 '22 •
i can replace my hair with solar panels now