Interesting News for PV's, etc...

--- In ssi_list@... "Paul D. Fernhout"
>
> Organic solar cells could be manufactured in a process something
> like printing or spraying the materials onto a roll of plastic,

I don't get it, . . . now Paul is providing supporting evidence to
advance the case for SPS? LOL.

All we need is a thin mylar sheet and we can spray the PV material
onto it. We could just launch all those materials and not worry
about orbital manufacturing. It'll be more robust in orbit than on
Earth because there is no weather to contend with in orbit.

> "We think we have pathway for using this and other tricks to get
> to 10 percent reasonably quickly," Forrest said.
>
> By comparison, conventional silicon chip-based solar cells are
> about 24 percent efficient. "Organic solar cells will be cheaper
> to make, so in the end the cost of a watt of electricity will be
> lower than that of conventional materials," said Peumans.

Again, thanks for providing supporting evidence on behalf of SPS. At
24% efficiency, the solar arrays are already taking too much space
for households to make good use of them. Now, even though this
vaporware is projected to be cheaper, it'll need 2.5x more space.

Hmmm, why don't we just take Criswell's idea of robotic PV
manufacture and pave all of our deserts. That could be cheap too.

The future of solar power is in orbit.

TangoMan