Comments on: Solar Energy Breakthrough: Power from Light AND Heat

By: David

David — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:57:00 +0000

very cool stuff. I am hoping for additional breakthroughs in solar power for a variety of reasons..

By: Wally

Wally — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 10:22:12 +0000

This was patented about 14 years ago ??? The patent
number is like almost 4000000 or 4000040 something
like that. It was by two guys in Australia, is what
I remember.

The basic claim in the patent is that any device that concentrates the heat is covered.

If you don’t concentrate the heat, it’s not covered.

By: DMcD

DMcD — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 03:49:44 +0000

I’m sure [ ? ] this Stanford ‘breakthrough’ will change the world and all that but….given the (near complete) absence of details in this story, I don’t really see why they bothered releasing this PR in the first place.

Unlike the missing details in this piece, I’m following another, semi-related, disruptive solar-tech company with a great deal of interest. Quantum Materials Corps’ subsidiary, Solterra Renewable Technologies, appears to really be onto something with their ‘Tetrapod Quantum Dot’ tech.

Solterra’s TQD semi-conductor applications are primarily aimed at ‘solar’ but go well beyond solar alone. If curious, check the (much more complete) ‘details’, at: http://www.solterrasolarcells.com/

By: poningru

poningru — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:26:28 +0000

Can someone give some figures on commercial availability/price of these matierials? On top of that how much cheaper is it to fashion these substances into a solar thermal/pv cell?

silicon is pretty cheap, it’s getting it into a pure form (>99.9% ) and then forming it into pv cells that is expensive.