The Sun Cube

[Wombat]

Muddy, Martin and everybody else too!

Have a look at this.....

http://www.greenandgoldenergy.com.au/

Comments please!

Nev

[Martin]

ermmm!
It may"do what it says on the tin" but the website style is not encouraging - far too much waffle, and little fact, and a bit too "fill this in for further details" for my liking. It may well work, but I'd sooner wait for the new pv panels that we should be seeing in the next couple of years - the price is set to fall, and would sooner stick to relatively inconspicuous panels than Tellytubby blobs on the roof (bet they're fun in a high wind!)

[Wombat]

Fair enough, thanks Martin!

I will be interested to get Muddy's take on things.

Nev

[Muddypause]

From what I can make out, this involves a Very Expensive, but High Efficiency PV cell, in conjunction with some fresnel lenses to focus sunlight from a large area onto a small cell, thus saving the need for a larger array of the expensive PV cells.

In some ways, this is addressing the same issues that Shane was encountering with his parabolic Sky dish reflector a few days ago. I don't really know enough about PV cells to comment about the special ones they are using, but they do allude to the overheating problem of concentrated sunlight on a PV cell, and reckon they have this under control. They also have it rigged up to a tracking device, which I would reckon must give better results than a static panel. Maybe these cells would also be suited to Shane's parabola.

I guess, in some degree, there is a slight inefficiency involved in using a lens to focus the light, but the real bottom line is, as ever, that the whole unit will not be able to convert more energy than actually lands on the active area of the unit - in this case, the surface area of the lens. The lens will concentrate that amount of energy, but will not increase it. And from this point, every stage will involve losses.

But that's not to say that the device won't work, just that there has to be a limit to its effectiveness. It would be nice to hear some properly independent assessments of this thing in use before forming too hasty an opinion about it. And it may also be the case that PV technology is about to step up a gear before too long anyway.