Well, for the time being it'll just supplement current power production, easing the stress on the grid and allowing other plants to power down during sunny days.HMMM how would teh power be stored for subsequent usage?
Just another solar concentrator isn't it? Look near the start of the video and they talk about the "1,000 suns" thing and they later talk about large parabolic dishes so you're not going to have anything 1 square foot in size providing much power, that's for sure. Nothing was said about the efficiency of the solar cell itself either so I expect it was just a standard (and expensive) multijunction silicon photovoltaic cell. The current efficiency record for solar cell is a little over 40% conversion rate for these devices, by the way..
Mariner is right. There's nothing new here.
If you're interested in home units without huge arrays or dishes for concentration, check out SunRGI. (EDIT: I see Mariner already linked to it.) Concentrating the sun still takes a lot of materials, though -- far more than even nuclear. That's the problem with solar right now, and then for really large deployment (i.e. replacing coal) you have storage to worry about.
My confidence in solar was restored, however, with advances in thin-film tech (CIGS). That finally brings material cost into the realm of practicality.
Well, perhaps the benefit of the approach of focusing the sunlight onto a smaller area is that if the reflector is much, much cheaper than the solar panel, then it's an overall cost savings from using panels.Mariner is right. There's nothing new here.
If you're interested in home units without huge arrays or dishes for concentration, check out SunRGI. (EDIT: I see Mariner already linked to it.) Concentrating the sun still takes a lot of materials, though -- far more than even nuclear. That's the problem with solar right now, and then for really large deployment (i.e. replacing coal) you have storage to worry about.
My confidence in solar was restored, however, with advances in thin-film tech (CIGS). That finally brings material cost into the realm of practicality.
It would be great for electric/hybrid cars. A small solar cell which would deliver enough current would be great.
Pumps come to mind. Use excess power during the day to pump up water into dams and use that during the night where energy demands should be lower anyway.
Well, for the time being it'll just supplement current power production, easing the stress on the grid and allowing other plants to power down during sunny days.
Unfortunately, I don't think the large solar concentrators used in conjunction with these solar cells would do much for the car's aerodynamics!