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Heliotube concentrators have integrated tracking built into the panel, allowing more sunlight to reach a smaller photovoltaic surface area through the day.
The same size as conventional panels, it doubles efficiency by tracking the sun.

A Pasadena, Calif., company has applied to patent a new solar panel that can produce electricity at half the cost of conventional rooftop panels.

According to the MIT Technology Review, Soliant Energy's new Heliotube panel produces the same amount of energy as traditional solar arrays used in residential electrical systems, however a unique design reduces the amount of expensive photovoltaic material by almost 90 percent. Semiconductor-based photovoltaic (PV) material is needed to perform the actual conversion of solar energy to electricity inside a solar array, but the material is costly to produce.

Commercial solar energy production systems typically use mirrors and lenses to focus sunlight on the PV surfaces, making for more efficient energy production with a smaller PV surface area. In addition, panels are often mounted on posts that can pivot to follow the movements of the sun throughout the day, further concentrating the amount of sunlight reaching the PV material. However, these more efficient designs with moving mechanisms are impractical for smaller residential systems, which usually rely on a limited number of stationary, roof-mounted panels.

The Heliotube design incorporates lenses, mirrors and movable panels that track the sun. However, all of these components are encased in a rectangular acrylic case that is the same size as a conventional rooftop panel. The 50-pound panels are equipped with trough-shaped concentrators that move throughout the day. Aided by inexpensive optics, the mirrored troughs intensify the amount of sunlight reaching smaller PV strips located at the bottom of each trough.

The first-generation Heliotube panels, due to start shipping later this year, pivot only on one axis, limiting their ability to track the sun's movement. The company is designing a new version which will divide the troughs into shorter sections that can move independently to track the sun from side to side and from top to bottom, increasing the efficiency. The panels are self-powered and do not require alignment, according to the company.

Soliant's founder and CTO, Brad Hines, who formerly worked at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the company's goal is to offer consumers a "grid equivalent" cost of $0.06 per kilowatt hour in three years, not including tax incentives. "In industry terms, this means well under $1.50 per watt,” Hines said.

Soliant's technology partners include Boeing Spectrolab, MIT, Sandia National Labs, and SunEdison.

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the rubbiatron, anyone
By nah on 5/14/2007 5:09:35 AM , Rating: 2
from 28-42 cents to just under 6 cents-- masher, where are you ;)




RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 5/14/2007 5:15:29 AM , Rating: 3
He said he was going on vacation this week, but maybe he'll pop in. :)

I wrote something solar related on my blog a few days ago, here it is:

http://kristopher.us/2007/05/solar-carolina.html


RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By phusg on 5/14/2007 5:41:26 AM , Rating: 2
What a pessimistic post that is. Sure solar (especially at current efficiencies) isn't the whole solution; reducing our energy demand/consumption is a much bigger piece of the puzzle.

But let's please not go back to nuclear fision reactors as you are advocating, the waste remains a real problem for a very long time, no matter how safely we think we've disposed of it.


RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 5/14/2007 6:00:33 AM , Rating: 3
I like solar, don't get me wrong. I just don't think anyone has the money to blanket 10% of the US in panels to free our dependency on oil.

Zero emission coal is looking good too, but the cost per MW is much higher than nuclear and solar right now.

As for waste, here is one of my favorite masher posts in his temporary absence:

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6266&...


RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By FITCamaro on 5/14/2007 7:10:19 AM , Rating: 3
Eh.....I don't know if the answer is to pump the CO2 underground instead of into the atmosphere. I just get the feeling that will lead to some kind of problem in a different way.


RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By rtrski on 5/14/2007 8:44:21 AM , Rating: 2
Yeah, I've read (no attribution - sorry, but seems to make 'intuitive' sense) that with increased CO2 the oceans are getting a bit more acidic, with consequences to coral and other sea life. Wonder if somehow any deep injected CO2 might not percolate back up into and affect the water table the same way.


RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By therealnickdanger on 5/14/2007 9:52:25 AM , Rating: 2
Aren't there already MASSIVE volcanic fissures on the ocean floors releasing all manner of toxic gases into the water? I'd suspect (no attribution here either) that we could not possibly beat out nature itself when it comes to pollution...


RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By Chernobyl68 on 5/14/2007 11:53:55 AM , Rating: 2
yep. and the sea life at those depths has adapted to the environment at those depths over the millinea. but the dying coral reefs are a real concern.


RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By therealnickdanger on 5/14/2007 12:17:52 PM , Rating: 2
They adapted to it, eh? What exactly did these magical sea creatures do in the time between suffocating on the gases and not suffocating on the gases? These molten eruptions have been ongoing forever, they didn't wait for these little guys to evolve before getting more intense or something. My point being: reefs will adapt to, right? :P


RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By Whedonic on 5/14/2007 1:40:08 PM , Rating: 2
Evolution takes a long, long time in most cases. So even if coral and others eventually manage to adapt, there could still be massive damage to sea life and the related economies in our lifetime. What good does it do us to say "yeah, they'll eventually adapt in a few millenia" if we're stuck with the problems now?


RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By thatguy39 on 5/14/2007 4:46:12 PM , Rating: 2
To compare the CO2 & other poisonous gases released by volcanoes to spent nuclear fuel is ridiculous! Creatures actually live by those volcanic vents... Ive never seen anything living with radiation poisoning. period.


RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By Ringold on 5/14/2007 5:35:50 PM , Rating: 2
There's bacteria that has been found inside nuclear reactors, and lots of tech sites occasionally mention it just as a weird fact on a slow news day.


RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By FITCamaro on 5/15/2007 6:51:33 AM , Rating: 2
Yeah and we're not dumping our spent nuclear fuel into the ocean either buddy. It's going into sealed containers and buried in a mountain.


RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By phusg on 5/14/2007 8:58:48 AM , Rating: 3
> I like solar, don't get me wrong.

Ok, it's just from your blog post it sounds like you like nuclear and think of solar as useless/impracticle.

> I just don't think anyone has the money to blanket 10% of the US in panels to free our dependency on oil.

Of course they don't, luckily that's not necessary, especially if we reduce our electricity consumption.

As for the masher post, once again it's a skillfully crafted misleading post scattered with a few half truths. The half he's right about is that radioactive material occurs naturally on our planet. The half he left out is that the natural stuff gets less and less readioactive every day, whereas a nuclear fission power plant produces more! Also uranium sounds scary but uranium isn't always uranium. There are different isotopes that vary widely in their radioactivity. Guess which ones are natural and which ones are man made?

Please let's not make any more of the stuff than we have already!!! There are plenty of technologies here or in the pipeline that negate the need to start producing more nuclear waste.


RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By Shadowself on 5/14/2007 11:46:11 AM , Rating: 5
As an ex nuke and the person who first did non destructive assays of very low levels of transuranics and the person who did the first analysis of life shortening due to transuranics and the person who did the first U.S. implementation of gammay ray induced in vivo measurements of lead in people...

I can say your "half truths" are much more misleading than what you are trying to debate against.

>> I just don't think anyone has the money to
>> blanket 10% of the US in panels to free our
>> dependency on oil.

> Of course they don't, luckily that's not
> necessary, especially if we reduce our
> electricity consumption.

Electricity consumption has never decreased since it was introduced to the general public. Even in the days of the heated "war" between DC and AC the consumption steadily increased. Even with a major drive to minimize consumption of electricity the growth will only slow. It will not reverse. Thinking otherwise is pure lunacy.

> As for the masher post, once again it's a
> skillfully crafted misleading post scattered
> with a few half truths. The half he's right
> about is that radioactive material occurs
> naturally on our planet. The half he left
> out is that the natural stuff gets less and
> less readioactive every day, whereas a nuclear
> fission power plant produces more!

Absolutely wrong. The daughter products all decay to a stable form (eventually). If you take the material in a fuel rod of an active reactor, within a few hours it is on a steady decline in total radioactivity.

> Also uranium sounds scary but uranium
> isn't always uranium.

I disagree. Uranium does not sound nearly as scary to 99% of the population as plutonium. That's why there are extremely few fast breeder reactors which actually make more fissile fuel than they consume. And uranium decays to nastier things on its way to lead.

> There are different isotopes that vary widely
> in their radioactivity. Guess which ones are
> natural and which ones are man made?

There are extremely hazardous naturally made isotopes too. Look up Auger electron emitters. If you get those isotopes internal to you they are much more likely to cause cancer than any other form of radioactive isotope -- and many of these isotopes are naturally occurring.

Additionally, different kinds of isotopes decay differently. Alpha emitters are the most benign. You can wrap them in aluminum foil and safely handle large quantities -- such as most isotopes of uranium and plutonium. Conversely the gamma and beta emitters require a great deal more protective material. Gamma and beta emitter occur naturally too.

The decay chain from naturally occuring uranium in the ground in south east Pensyvannia is high enough that no one should live in a "basement apparment" without siginificant, constant ventilation. The natural hazard -- due to probable cancer causing effects -- if you don't is almost as bad as being a pack a day smoker (and as bad as a two pack a day smoker in some limited areas). This is from natural sources.

While there are many, many pieces to the total solution: conservation, solar, hydroelectric, hydrothermal, wind, tides, etc., nuclear, even nuclear fission, is a viable source of electricity. With proper handling and processing -- and reprocessing of spent fuel -- nuclear is not as hazardous as most people have been led to believe.

Personally, I'd love it if the solar industry could get realistic efficiencies of greater than 70%. Being stuck in the 30% range is what's killing it. That and it not being envirionmentally robust. People think a hail storm does significant damage to their roofs. Hail can completely destroy a solar array.


RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By phusg on 5/14/07, Rating: -1
RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By hubajube on 5/14/2007 1:59:04 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
Again lots of facts illustrating that radioactive materials occur naturally. This is not something I deny if you read my previous post. My point is that we shouldn't be making any more of the stuff than we have already!!!
Way to back peddle dude!!!! That was awesome!


RE: the rubbiatron, anyone
By phusg on 5/14/2007 5:28:36 PM , Rating: 2
Eh?!?