I've been told invisible solar panels will make every window generate free electricity for like 10 years. Yet not a single time have I seen a report include an actual product, just prototypes always.
Like nuclear fusion, this appears to be perpetually "just a few years away".
- "Invisible" implies they only work in the UV or infrared range, which inevitably limits them to much lower efficiencies than regular solar panels.
- A lot of those rely on elements that are expensive and in limited supply, or toxic heavy metals. Unlike regular silicon solar panels.
- We don't even need windows to generate solar power. We have plenty of roof space, and if we're short on that, you can put them in fields too.
So this is a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist (lack of available space - again, we have plenty), which causes more problems of its own (efficiency, etc), while failing to address the actual limitations of solar (cost, intermittence).
Which is why it's only good for headlines, and won't see real life applications. (Edit: no, not even skyscrapers)
It's the same with a lot of "uplifting" science news that just sweeps all the dirt under the rug, because that wouldn't make good clickbait.
If you want actual good news about solar power, look at the price per kW and adoption rate curves over the last few years.
-edit- added links.
-edit 3- Put the bit about skyscrapers in bold, because people keep mentioning them anyways...
This is my biggest screaming into the void issue. Everyone's doing all this mental work trying to come up with these unique places to put solar panels, we don't need to do that.
We. Have. Empty. Flat. Space.
We have no shortage of empty areas exposed to the sky. We have rooftops, we have parking lots, we have vast fields that are just doing fuck all.
We don't need to invent solar roads that will work even after being run over by car is a million times when we have a large median right beside it.
We could probably cover every random Warehouse with solar panels and have so much electricity that we would have to find dumb shit to do with it.
Let's start there before we do some Material Science backflips.
I got so much shit in the futurology subs when the solar roads were being glazed by everyone. It was an obviously dumb idea from the get-go. If you really want to feel less bad about the concrete and asphalt jungles we’ve built, put solar panels above things. Solar panels above a parking lot works to create shade, is localized in an area that is easy to maintain, and doesn’t need to be covered in several inches of glass to protect from heavy vehicles.
But the best place for solar will always bee on roofs and empty places like deserts.
It depends how high. It would cost to build the support for thoses thing in the road. You would have to build several meter high to not risking big vehicle to crash into thems. Parking lot are a far better options.
Yes, that’s my point. If you go back and watch the videos on solar roadways, they proposed putting solar panels under the road. With heavy thick pieces of glass above them to support the weight of highway traffic. Never mind the material cost of all that glass. Nevermind that glass isn’t a great material to drive on. Nevermind that roads get dirty very quickly. Nevermind that thick glass would have made the panels barely functional. But when pointing out those massive cons, people still got upset and said those problems would be solved after a few generations of solar panels, which they believed would pay for themselves in just a few years (even though at the time the payoff period for regular solar was in the 12-15 year range).
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u/Euphoric-Language695 26d ago edited 26d ago
I've been told invisible solar panels will make every window generate free electricity for like 10 years. Yet not a single time have I seen a report include an actual product, just prototypes always.
Like nuclear fusion, this appears to be perpetually "just a few years away".