Holographic Solar Collectors

An anonymous reader writes "The MIT Technology Review is reporting that Prism Solar Technologies has developed a technique to use holograms to concentrate light onto photovoltaic (PV) cells. While the implementation is only about a 10x increase over PV cells without collectors such as mirrors/lenses (mirror/lens approaches can do 100-1000x), it is a great deal simpler, more compact, and cheaper. Also because of the concentration, there is less need for physical PV cell real estate compared to crystalline PV silicon cells of similar output."

A great deal simpler, more compact, and cheaper...

[Anonymous Coward]

..and only 10x to 100x less effective than alternatives! Sign me up.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Hologram, eh?

[LochNess]

Finally, a use for Arnold J. Rimmer.

Re:Sounds like a ST:TNG episode...

[cnettel]

Just when Riker flirts with the inventor's wife.

Re:Solar collecting is good.

[Glonoinha]

If only there was a way to store all that electric power. Maybe massive plates of lead and zinc in a acid solution, in big heavy square things with little plugs on top to add distilled water from time to time (I have no idea why, but I envision that there would be a good reason to do so on my mythical device.) Give it a catchy name like 'Deep Cycle Truck Battery' and sell them at Wal*Mart for ~$50 apiece, letting us fill an entire room with them for under a thousand dollars.

Someone should invent that.

Re:Solar collecting is good.

[Anonymous Coward]

thats a good link, can you read it back for me over the phone ?

Re:Solar collecting is good.

[networkBoy]

"thats a good link, can you read it back for me over the phone ?"
Sure:
ache tee tee pee colon whack whack dub dub dub aw fuckit dot see oh em

Re:Hologram, eh?

[Tumbleweed]

Finally, a use for Arnold J. Rimmer.

Rimmer Directive 271 states clearly, "No chance, you metal bastard."

Re:Hologram, eh?

[Mr. Flibble]

Your comment about Mr. Rimmer makes me very angry, I know what I should do with you, but who would clean up the mess?

-- Mr. Flibble

Re:PV efficiency & moon power generation

[powers_722]

Thats a great idea.

And then when Bush Jr. Jr. Jr. decides that he doesn't like [bad country here], he'll just tell the opperators to point the giant microwave systems at [bad country] country for a while.