Funding Friday: A Window Pane Solar Panel

Comments (Archived):

1. Hey Fred.Is there anyone who has made this their thing, like a blog to guide people through the intro to this and a community with answers?

   1. Sorry if I misunderstood you, but if part of you’re looking for is Kickstarter advice, here are three good resources (I have no affiliation with any of them):1. https://stonemaiergames.com…2. https://conversionxl.com/bl…3. https://thecompletecreative…

      1. I was asking if there was a community of tinkerers with solar with a resource like a blog for information exchange,

2. Yup, “solar”, reduce “carbon footprint”, “fight climate change”, ….To me, all that stuff is from uninformed, misinformed, a waste, a scam, and down to seriously harmful, with details in the relatively good documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle https://www.youtube.com/wat…

3. Why are cars not manufactured with solar roof panels?

   1. Available energy (optimally positioned in direct sunlight) around 10 W per square foot. Ideal charging time for car that happens to have roof pointed directly at sun all day about 15 hours for 60 mile journey (if the sun is directly overhead – only at noon) (assuming 30 square feet of solar panel). Sunlight is not available 15 hours per day especially in winter.Your solar powered car is more expensive to build (much) and has scope to be totally useless.TL, DR; The car manufacturers thought of this and rejected it faster than I did.Comment revised :Analysis 2 – look at size of panel to charge a phone – how big a panel do you need to charge a whole car ?

4. Unless I am mistaken this project may do more harm than good.Solar panels need particular resources to be mined; aluminium, cadmium, cobalt, copper gallium, indium, indium, iron, lead, lithium, manganese, nickel, silica, silver, selenium, tellurium, tin, zinc.If we want to dig these up and deploy them sustainably – it wants to be:a) at scale – not for a very temporary novelty phone chargerb) to serve continually as power is generated- not for a few minutes a day – solar is much more efficient if used directly or transmitted to point of use (eg to serve/mitigate less sustainable grid demand) – rather than stored, retrieved and then used.c) to serve a long product lifecycle – not for the life of a window-hanging with a fragile frame and a particular usb connection.So no – I won’t be backing this one, – it at best solves a non-problem with a bigger problem.

   1. Forb) to serve continually – not for a few minutes a day – solar is much more efficient if used directly or transmitted to point of use (eg to serve/mitigate less sustainable grid demand) – rather than stored, retrieved and then used. Nearly all of the US economy needs and depends on 24 x 7, all weather, all season, plentiful, stable electric power, and so far from decades of just excellent electric power engineering we are doing well with that need, are meeting all of it or nearly so.Even if have some intermittent sources to avoid or feed the grid, we still need our RELIABLE power just as described, 24 x 7, all weather, all season, plentiful, …. So, whatever intermittent sources we have, we still need both the capital expense and the operating expense of the reliable power we need.So, for (i) using intermittent power sources instead of the grid or (ii) sending power from intermittent sources to the grid, where are the cost savings? At best the intermittent power will save some coal, natural gas, some fissionable material in nuclear fuel rods, or some head water in hydroelectric with all the other costs continuing. So, each $1 that goes to intermittent instead of reliable power is essentially paying twice for the power. Moreover so far the intermittent costs are higher per KWh and are considered ONLY because of subsidies where the tax payers get ripped off.The whole intermittent power industry — solar and wind — is just Greenie stuff and a flim-flam, scam, fraud ripoff. Good details are in the relatively well done documentaryThe Great Global Warming Swindlehttps://www.youtube.com/wat…As a country, we have some serious problems and important needs; following the Saint Laureate Al Guru’s wack-o scam to sabotage the US economy is not one of them.The whole scam should have stopped right with Guru’s movie with his graph of temperature and CO2 concentrations over the past 600,000 years or so: There, if look just a little closer, see that the CO2 concentrations went up about 800 years AFTER the temperatures went up. So, the higher CO2 concentrations clearly did NOT cause the higher temperatures and instead very likely the higher temperatures, from whatever cause, caused the higher CO2. Moreover, higher CO2 concentration did NOT stop the next fall in temperature.Done. Junk the movie. F’get about CO2.

      1. Will edit “to serve continually” to “to serve continually as power is generated”.I beg to differ – you are not doing well – in fact rather badly. You have an illiberal, poorly maintained, dangerous and dirty set of solutions which in many cities are barely fit for purpose, and are inflexible for reaping benefits of new technologies.I also disagree with your views on Climate change , but will not go into that here. Let History decide.I agree you need for base levels of reliable services. This means geographically distributed heterogeneous generator offerings add robustness to a system – To any market system.If it proves that some sources of supply to a market are undesirable (for whatever reason), a heterogeneous mix serves best.Given these facts – solar energy is desirable – lets face it – all coal and oil is recovered solar energy – it was stored during a time of low demand, by plant-life.Finally BTW – I actually don’t give a fig about the US economy or the effects my writing or views may have on it (though I suppose they will serve). I guess you will assume otherwise – perhaps that I am part of some bizarre conspiracy that does care . – This is not my problem.

         1. > I agree you need for base levels of reliable services. This means geographically distributed heterogeneous generator offerings add robustness to a systemWell, maybe we should not be 100% dependent on nukes.But so far our reliable grid is powered by coal, natural gas, hydroelectric, and nuclear — that should qualify as hetero.Beyond that, you made no good argument, and I couldn’t, why we should add gerbils in cages, solar, wind, horses walking in circles, etc. to the mix. Those sources are just broadly inferior on nearly all relevant criteria.> Given these facts – solar energy is desirable – lets face it – all coal and oil is recovered solar energy – it was stored during a time of low demand, …But now coal and natural gas are not intermittent, and that is HUGE.> You have an illiberal, poorly maintained, dangerous and dirty set of solutions which in many cities are barely fit for purpose, and are inflexible for reaping benefits of new technologies.For “new technologies”, IIRC the grid is an excellent case of system design, simulation, monitoring, problem detection, real-time problem correction via grid re-balancing for grid stability, and is one of the leaders toward IoT, electronics for time of day metering, etc. They stepped up to exploit suddenly cheap, plentiful natural gas quickly.For your “dirty”, you gave no examples, and I don’t know of any.For humans causing climate change, just watch the movie.

5. When it comes to solar, always start with “what’s the angle 🙂 ?On a serious note : it is shameful on how few regulators, cities and homebuilders factored in the angle and arc of the sun in design. From energy consumption to mental health, talk about sub optimization.

6. CONTRIBUTORS:The late George Carlin on “The American Dream”. The obedient worker.https://youtu.be/rsL6mKxtOlQLet's see how long it takes to handle this opinion.Captain Obvious!#UNEQUIVOCALLYUNAPOLOGETICALLYINDEPENDENT

7. I thought something completely different when I saw the headline. Researchers at my alma mater, Michigan State University, have actually mastered solar windows. Windows that look and perform like normal glass windows but they also generate electricity. I am baffled why someone hasn’t licensed them yet.https://msutoday.msu.edu/ne…