Very interesting, especially since they are quoting Martin Green, he used to be the technical director of a solar company I worked for about 10 years age, and it is safe to say that any claims he makes are generally conservative.
I am fascinated to find out how they have done it.
hako said
11:02 PM Dec 8, 2014
Amazing really and they can still do this with virtually no government backing. How many scientists in the CSIRO have lost their jobs? We don't even have a science minister.
GaryKelly said
08:06 AM Dec 9, 2014
Great news. It's about time we made better use of that big ball in the sky. The plants have been doing it since day one.
SnowT said
03:29 PM Dec 9, 2014
I can't remember which uni it was but They built a system that was actually a 2 fold system....
they used a parabolic Mirror and at it Focal point they ran a string of solar cell's....
- in the Project they concentrated the area of light hitting the cells by a large factor..
It did several thing's...
- Increase the Power that the cells generated and heated the cells to temps WAY about 25 deg C...
To negate the heat issue, they mounted the cells on a custom made heat sink that ran a special solution of salts thru it.. which they then cycled thru a heat exchanger to help create Steam..
juergen
Plendo said
04:07 PM Dec 9, 2014
Juergen, your memory serves you well. It was the university of NSW, the work was done by a group working with Martin Green (the undisputed guru of solar in Australia).
They had enormous problems making the silicon solar remain effective, as the temperature at the collector point was rising up to close to a thousand degrees, they then tried cooling it, and then abandoned the photovoltaic completely, replacing it with a granite block which they then used to superheat a liquid (may have been as simple as a salt water), which they used to drive a turbine.
They then sought funds to develop a commercial implementation, which from memory was built somewhere near Moree.
As far as I am aware there was only ever one reasonably sized unit built in Australia, and that was back around the turn of the century.
Interesting article, let's hope they can get the magic 40% conversion.
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/australian-scientists-announce-solar-energy-084810326.html
I am fascinated to find out how they have done it.
they used a parabolic Mirror and at it Focal point they ran a string of solar cell's....
- in the Project they concentrated the area of light hitting the cells by a large factor..
It did several thing's...
- Increase the Power that the cells generated and heated the cells to temps WAY about 25 deg C...
To negate the heat issue, they mounted the cells on a custom made heat sink that ran a special solution of salts thru it.. which they then cycled thru a heat exchanger to help create Steam..
juergen
Juergen, your memory serves you well. It was the university of NSW, the work was done by a group working with Martin Green (the undisputed guru of solar in Australia).
They had enormous problems making the silicon solar remain effective, as the temperature at the collector point was rising up to close to a thousand degrees, they then tried cooling it, and then abandoned the photovoltaic completely, replacing it with a granite block which they then used to superheat a liquid (may have been as simple as a salt water), which they used to drive a turbine.
They then sought funds to develop a commercial implementation, which from memory was built somewhere near Moree.
As far as I am aware there was only ever one reasonably sized unit built in Australia, and that was back around the turn of the century.