DISQUS

GoatGuy · 1 year ago

Hold a moment, folks...

NATURALLY, the inventor of the coating cites all the worst-case issues with alternatives - and suspiciously there aren't comparable numbers for the present coating materials. Current blue multilayer coatings based on fluorites and oxides is on the order of 96% ... when the solar cells are within 5 degrees of perpendicular to the sun rays. The mechanics of keeping them within that 5 degress is called CLOCKWORK, the mechanisms of which can shift huge arrays with almost vanishingly small power, heavy wind loading and all else.

This is not a major advance. A good one, but only a minor one. The actual "chief problem" is that reasonably efficient (20% or more) cells haven't yet been made in attractively ("profitably") high yields at moderate price. With not a shred of doubt, having a solar cell that sports the mythical "75%" efficiency wouldn't get ANY more of them installed, if they are ridiculously expensive or suffer from mechanical or other fragility.

It is also the height of scientific comedy to cite 4 digits of precision for an antireflection coating. There is more variability in the coating itself than its last digit! Come on folks, don't just chew-and-vomit up the same crap given to you... ANALYZE IT. For instance, what's the cost of this stuff? How durable is it compared to the fluorite/oxide methods? What about its longevity, or reactivity with environmental pollutants and dusts? Will it stand up to periodic "dusting"? A gazillion times over the life of a cell? Do the compounds produce toxins as they decompose? Is the chemical-deposition method a large producer of undersirable waste products? What is the inventor expecting to be the "cost per 30 year square meter" of coating?

GoatGuy