Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #01005
To: beam@corp.sgi.com
From: afarley@sas.upenn.edu (Alexander H Farley)
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 18:31:35 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [alt-beam] Re:Solar cell recommendations?
The Panasonic Suncerams will only be the best for the next six
months to a year. In fact silicon based solar cells maybe gon altogether
very soon. Apparently solar cells have been developed using titanium
oxides combined with some type of dye (I forget the specific name) which
outperform silicon cells in efficiency and cost. For now they will be a
little more expensive, but as soon as large scale production begins they
price will plummet close to the cost of the glass that the titanium et
al. is attached to. The cells are also transparent which is good or
bad. They should also be able to act as solar cells/windows for
buildings supplying much of the internal electrical needs (the only
current problem with this is a dye that is truly transparent to visible
light and some materials issues for cells this large). The first cells
will appear this summer as the glass face for either Seiko or Timex
watches. So my suggestion is to buy only what you would want in the
short term.
Alex Farley
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