If you want to learn about the low-tech method of solar cells invented and forgotten 40 years ago when Bell Labs announced the first practical silicon solar cell, we cannot guarantee that the low-tech magazine website will be available. Obviously, the web server it is on is solar powered, and the disclaimer mentions that it sometimes goes offline.
[Kris De Decker]’s article tells of George Cove, including a photo of an inventor standing next to suspicious-looking solar panels in 1910 (the picture above is from the 1909 "Technology World" magazine). He first demonstrated this technology in 1905, and there is a picture of another device from 1909 that uses 1.5 square meters of area to generate 45 watts of power with a conversion efficiency of 2.75%. In the same year, a new prototype was 4.5 square meters and used its 240 watt output to charge 5 lead-acid batteries. The efficiency is about 5%.
Of course, today's 5% does not sound that good. But from the context, the efficiency of the original Bell solar cell in 1954 was about 6%. Strangely, Cove did not set out to build solar generators. He is actually trying to build a thermoelectric generator to generate electricity from a wood stove.
His design uses metal plugs in the asphalt substrate. One end of the three-inch plug gets hot, while the other end is to keep it cool. The temperature difference should generate a little electricity, and there are nearly 1,000 plugs on a 1.5 square meter panel, enough to do some useful things.
Or, Cove thinks so. Some early devices produced some power when heated. However, the change in the plug composition causes the device to stop working when heated. However, the sunlight through the violet glass is indeed effective, and the effect is significantly better than before. Cove cannot explain why, but we can see that Cove accidentally discovered a metal semiconductor, which is no different from modern Schottky junctions. The plugs are zinc and antimony—things used in modern semiconductor processing—covered with nickel, copper, and zinc alloys at one end, and copper at the other end.
The article continues to point out that simple metal solar panels may be cheaper to produce and easier to recycle. Of course, you need to work hard to improve efficiency to match modern batteries.
There is a disclaimer. Obviously, Cove is relatively unknown. Although he had a patent in 1906, the patent contained some misleading information. In addition, he is said to have been kidnapped (the police believe it was a scam) and sentenced to one year in jail for manipulating stocks. We don't know how much of Cove's story is true-apparently [Decker] received research from a reader, but all this sounds reasonable enough.
We are constantly hearing news of alternative solar cell materials, but silicon is still the standard to beat. Most do-it-yourself panels start with a battery, but using this low-tech method allows you to produce the whole thing.
interesting. I want to know the cost. Even at an efficiency of 5-10%, it might work on cheap land or shading a parking lot.
Silicon panels are already very cheap; most of the cost of installation is in terms of structure, inverters, interconnection, licensing, maintenance, etc. I don't think it will be more economical to install 5% efficiency panels, even if they can basically be built for free.
The most expensive components in modern solar systems are panels (25¢ -75¢/W), of which the three kissing ends are the huge ground female system and the clamshell end small residential system (single-panel retail price). For the same range of applications, inverters are very cheap, only 2.5 cents to 20 cents per watt. The rack operating system is also very cheap, about 5 cents to 25 cents per watt, the upper limit is the tracker that follows the sun, and the lower end is the "trackless" residential system. The wire is about 5 cents/watt.
The hardware power consumption of a typical 7.6kW residential system is about 99¢/W. The rest of the average installation price of US$2.70/watt in the United States is labor and profit. The license is very cheap.
The cool thing about science is that you don’t have to believe what other people say. With an accurate description of what is built, you can test and verify independently. Or, assuming it should work, even an inaccurate or incomplete description may be a good starting point for replication research.
This was before 1910.
Charles Frittes is also mentioned in the article. And it pointed out, “If it can be proved that relatively *efficient* solar cells were invented 40 years before the development of silicon cells, it would be very exciting.” George Cove’s solar generator has an efficiency of 5%, The efficiency of Frittes is only 1-2%.
Selenium photovoltaic cells can be traced back to William Grylls Adams and Richard Evans Day in 1876.
In my opinion, a time traveler is trapped and needs to charge their mobile phones. :D
Or—more likely—their flux capacitors. Veeeeery slooooowly.....
Well! Although I know selenium, this zinc-antimony alloy is interesting to me because some low-cost (and some natural) metal-organic compounds may now be comparable to the band gap, which is puzzling. Thanks for posting: D
When I see these plugs, I can understand how they are used for the heat generator, but I cannot see how the relevant parts of the connection should be exposed to the sun.
If the copper plate is heated at a high temperature to form a red oxide layer instead of the usual blue-green, and then put it in a tank of water together with a second uncooked plate, and then put it in the sun, it will generate an electric current, If everything is a fairly small one. Simple enough that most people can copy it.
Is this similar to a copper oxide/copper oxide rectifier? Although they are not usually used in electrolysis devices.
In some ways, inefficiency is not a problem. If the panels are cheap enough, you can overcome this problem by placing them on enough surfaces. The solar panel problem that should be solved today is not to improve efficiency, but to reduce costs, so cheap panels can be placed on every roof or other unusable surface area.
And longevity. If you have to replace it within two years, it doesn't matter how cheap the installation is.
This sounds like something from Tom Swift.
Of course, low efficiency is a problem... First, even if you can buy the best battery, you still need to cover a large part of the roof.
If your battery is in the efficiency range of 1-10%, your battery may not have enough roof. Not to mention being able to leave a gap where you can walk on the roof next to them.
At this point, the battery cost is low enough, and the installation hardware is an important factor in the installation cost... Therefore, a more efficient battery can significantly reduce the total system cost only by reducing the installation hardware cost.
Even if you just put the battery on the ground...you can save a lot of money because you don't have to wire 2-3 times the panel...
Double-sided can be used in more places.
https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2018/04/what-are-bifacial-solar-modules/
Lindsay Publications once had a booklet about using some kind of copper oxide to make solar cells (you may remember correctly). Now regret not buying.
Eat it while it's hot...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B33iTmoQM44UVXczaUZoaTQ3LWc/view?usp=drivesdk&resourcekey=0-dEUVa6fy5U8mhsFZEOP1Mg
I didn't write it ;-)
Try to help those who regret it.
A few nanometers of gold or silver is enough to transmit current over a short distance and is still "transparent" in 90% of the transmission. Or, ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) is more commonly used.
I didn't read that article, but the poster did say copper oxide. Many metal oxides are transparent. Sapphire is essentially alumina and is very transparent. It can be said that the camera protective film on the phone is made of Scotty's transparent aluminum.
There is also active research to make it conductive, which means that it can eventually bake the circuit directly into a transparent aluminum oxide "glass" board.
Alternatives to silicon-based photovoltaic technology are interesting. Another alternative, perovskite, is not ready for prime time but it is interesting and an active area of research and development
Unfortunately, the development of this technology is not early, but this is understandable, because the battery is still in its infancy and the profitability of selling coal/oil is higher. We are still trying to solve the problem of people's refusal to pay for pollution, which has hindered the green movement from the beginning.
For many obvious reasons, this is a view, but it is not accurate.
As I mentioned in another article, in the 19th century, running a fairly advanced factory did not require electricity and motors. We can easily continue to use solar tubes as a power source until solar electronic equipment is mature enough to skip the entire age of pollution.
The only "advantage" of coal and oil is that it is much cheaper in the short term *if* you don't let people pay the price of polluting the planet, obviously, our society only cares about the short-term profits of a few people.
And they are available 24/7, easy to carry, can be stored, have higher power density, higher energy density, and they can easily become other chemicals...
Oh, let’s not forget that the manufacture of steel is absolutely dependent on coke from coal.
You must also realize that although there is some evidence that the Victorians knew that the methods were not good at the time, in the decades after Victoria’s death, the true science of these things did not exist, and there was a real understanding from the fossils. The scope of the problem If you are a scientist at the forefront of this type of research, it may last until the 1960s.
Merely using available, effective and reliable options that don’t seem to have any major shortcomings, it’s a long time. It’s a lot of inertia that needs to be overcome... Unfortunately, this inertia also causes a lot of vested interests to ignore reality. , And the great ideas of a large number of companies sitting in the game-confessing to their shareholders, changing their business, etc. is not good...
Therefore, although we could have avoided the fossil fuel-driven industrial revolution to a large extent, there was no reason to do so at the time-it looked like a good thing in hindsight...
Not to mention the energy density of oil and coal is hard to beat by anything other than nuclear energy.
Solar energy can be traced back to before 1910, long before electricity was used.
Think about how many machines in modern factories are mainly driven by electric motors. Before the invention of the electric motor, factories could use water wheels to supply electricity and use belt and gear systems to power the surrounding facilities. These machines look very similar to modern machines, except that it is not a powerful court, but a rotating shaft.
As early as 1869, there was a project to use solar water to turn turbines and drive factory machinery. This is the first reference I can find through a quick and lazy Google search https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/2004. I still remember reading about a project where they will use solar water pumps to irrigate the desert in the 19th century.
This was not given up until oil was discovered and proved to be cheaper and more portable. When huge profits can be made, no one cares about environmental damage or huge political issues, so oil and coal-fired electricity take over.
When society began to use steam power instead of waterwheels, the industrial revolution began because it allowed industry to move from the mountains to the cities. This was the logistics advantage mule in an era when goods and raw materials had to be transported by means of transportation. Supply cannot meet demand until there is a portable power supply that can bring the industry to where consumers are, and the only thing people have is wood.
The demand for wood used to make iron-making charcoal has grown to the point where people cannot build ships due to lack of wood, and they are quickly approaching the point where all the forests in Europe have been razed to the ground due to lack of fuel. The discovery of coal, more importantly, is the discovery that it can be distilled into coke, saving the world from our first energy and environmental crisis.
Water wheels, windmills and "solar turbines" are well invented, but they are simply not up to the task.
One might say that the industrial revolution was kicked off by the need to pump water from deep coal mines, and the coal-powered steam engine seemed to be a perfect tool.
You might say that, but the coal was actually close to the surface at the time. The first use of steam-powered mine pumps was in a mine in southern England, where it was deeper, closer to the sea, and more submerged.
It was not until later that British coal mines went deep underground.
With solar panels, electric cars and Teddy Roosevelt, the 19th century was a hellish time.
I hope that the hackaday community will experiment with solar cells, which can work well in a much higher radiation environment, in a dry, thin atmosphere. And can be made from "discovered objects", such as nickel/iron flakes with the minimum required manufacturing volume. In other words, of course, can robots dispatched to the moon or Mars easily assemble medium-efficiency solar cells from iron/nickel-rich rocks or meteor fragments? Although most projects are more difficult in space, I think photovoltaics may be an exception.
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