Last year, the plate glass windows on Trump tower killed more birds than all the world’s wind turbines combined, according to stats I just made up but seem plausible
Fascinating negotiating occurring in Israeli Election Land.
Oppo supporters rightly point out teaming w/ Bibi's coalition goes against what they voted for and dooms Oppo politicians.
Oppo MAY be able to hold its right flank if they only ally w/ the more moderate Arab party, Ra'am, and leave out Joint List. Joint List may accept this, possibly even accept a "seats for not leadership" role if Oppo block promises elections in 6-12 months.
What? 6-12 months you say?!? Idea is to stabilize country, ram thru anticorruption shit and some prosecutions of settler-terrorists in WB to Send A Message, get Bibi's ass back in court, boot Ben Gvir into the sun, and show Nation Will Not Implode w/non-Jewish bloc in governing coalition. This then improves BOTH Oppo and Arab parties' chances in future elections and maybe starts moving I/P conflict from where it has been since Israel pulled out of Gaza in '05 and Hamas took power.
Meanwhile Gaza is now 20 yrs with no elections and iirc WB is longer.
"“It takes something going wrong to produce a nuclear disaster; whereas a gas-fired power plant operating precisely to spec destroys the earth.”
I've often said this --both gas-fired power plants and nuclear power plants produce waste. The difference is that the nuclear waste is confined (in principle), while the gas waste is spewed out to cover the earth.
(interested in learning moar about "balcony solar" small units which might offset grid use, or possibly be networked, or maybe themselves feed into a grid of some sort, or scalable, etc., etc. and also too battery technology)
I want to do something like that with our Spanish casa. Would like to put the panels of the roof of the building, not sure if the HOA will allow it. Need to call some contractors. Want to keep it all behind the meter, just enough panels and battery to power the house.
One great thing about solar is it’s direct, add sun, get electricity, which is what we really need. Wind gets you mechanical motion, needs to be converted. Most other things, even nuclear reactors, get you heat, which you use to heat water to steam, to turn a turbine, to move a wire through a magnetic field to FINALLY get electricity. If somebody could figure out THAT shortcut…
I thought the point that solar could be a lot like cell phones was very interesting. Communities could by pass the dirty infrastructure all together and build mini solar grids. Much like cell phones connected communities that did not have access to wired communication.
And note that “battery” can take many forms. There are places that use electricity to move some mass higher so that letting it back down at night produces power. Big weights in towers, perhaps elevator shafts in unused buildings, water pumped to a reservoir up the hill, even train cars on a track. Sometimes even something like a big building full of sand that’s heated in daytime and the heat extracted to heat nearby homes at night. Smart people are working on these things all over. But especially US big business focuses on things that they can make a billion of and sell all over. Rich people need to wake up and invest in these niche situations as well.
They're using old mineshafts in England as a sort of battery, raising some kind of heavy load during the day and generating electricity from the kinetic energy of allowing it to fall again slowly at night. Very cool stuff.
There will be sexy descriptions of science below, please be advised.
The real heros here are the quantum mechanics repair men. Hug your nerds because it will help them thrive. Or, at least when applicable, tell them when they're right and their informed opinions matter.
Understanding and efficiently wielding math, mechanics, and physics, are what drive the much needed breakthroughs because those disciplines discretely describe the problems you have to solve and why.
To build a more efficient solar panel using quantum mechanics, you have to break a major rule of standard physics known as the Shockley Queisser limit.
In a standard silicon solar panel, a single incoming photon hits an electron and knocks it loose to create electrical current. However, a standard single junction panel is mathematically capped at a maximum of 33.7% efficiency. The rest of the sunlight is lost because low energy light passes right through the material, and high energy light gets wasted as heat.
Quantum mechanics allows engineers to redesign materials at the atomic level to bypass these limitations through three primary methods:
1. Quantum Confinement (tuning the bandgap)
In bulk material, electrons can only absorb a specific, fixed energy level (called a bandgap). But if you shrink a semiconductor down to a cluster of just a few thousand atoms, you create a quantum dot
Because the particle is so small (2 to 10 nanometers), the electron is physically trapped in a tiny space, a physical concept called quantum confinement. Shrinking the dot changes its available energy levels
. By changing the size of the quantum dot, you change the color of light it absorbs:
• Large dots absorb lower energy, infrared light.
• Small dots absorb higher-energy, blue light.
How this helps build a better panel:
Instead of needing multiple entirely different materials layered on top of each other, you can print a single layer of varying sized quantum dots to capture the entire spectrum of the sun's rainbow.
2. Multiple Exciton Generation (getting the two for one deal)
In classical solar cells, when a high energy blue photon hits an electron, it gives it a massive kick. The electron jumps up, but it immediately loses its excess energy as heat, settling back down into a standard state. You get exactly one electron of electricity per photon.
Quantum mechanics enables a phenomenon called multiple exciton generation (MEG) or singlet fission. When a high energy photon hits a quantum confined material, the single excitation (called an exciton) physically splits into two separate, lower energy excitations.
How this helps build a better panel:
A single particle of light births two electrons of current instead of one, effectively breaking the traditional 100% quantum yield limit.
3. Intermediate Band Solar Cells (creating a stepping stone)
Standard solar panels require a single photon to have enough energy to make a massive leap from the holding zone (valence band) to the conduction zone (electricity band). If the photon is too weak (like infrared light), it passes straight through the panel.
By precision engineering quantum dots inside a host material, physicists can introduce an artificial intermediate band, essentially a mathematical stepping stone right in the middle of the energy gap.
How this helps build a better panel:
A low energy photon that would normally be useless can kick an electron halfway up the stone. A second low energy photon can then kick it the rest of the way into the electricity band. This lets the panel harvest weak, invisible infrared light that standard panels completely waste.
By treating electrons not as hard spheres, but as fluid quantum wavefunctions that can be shaped, confined, and split, cutting edge laboratories are pushing past traditional efficiency limits toward panel thresholds of 43% or more.
I see math, physics, and mechanics, as pretty much necessary for understanding solving the problem of how to manufacture solar cells and complementary tech.
The achievements and could be ideas are just snapshots of where we are now.
China installs over a million solar panels every day. Trump is forcing America into extreme fossil fuel dependency where we literally have to go to war to keep the lights on. And that's with the shale boom, which is about over.
Yes, but even Trump and his fossil fuel sponsors know it's only a delaying action that will squeeze out a couple more decades worth of profits before the industry is left behind.
Which is not to minimize the damage they'll be able to do in that time; it's gonna be bad. But the rest of the world is moving to clean energy. Even China and India, finally. Again, far later than it shoulda happened, but that's all the more reason to accelerate the transition wherever we can!
My dad, who I lost in August, was very committed to leaving me a home that was prepared for the future. We are about 20 minutes in from the coast and have both a generator and solar panels. Once I settle in, I'll buy an electric car and install a charger.
One thing to keep in mind is that solar is not without flaws, especially when we plunge ahead with manufacturing the same way we have been. They use chemicals which are mined in many cases. There are nasty chemicals used in creation of these and the accompanying electronics, they produce nasty waste, and we don’t make things with an eye to recycling. Right now we’re approaching the problem of what to do with all of the old panels that are failing or no longer efficient. We need to get better at all of these processes, not just concentrate on churning out as many as fast as we can to make money, while still investing as little as possible, which is what we’re “good” at.
Yup, there is no free lunch. But as McKibben discusses extensively in the chapters we'll be reading for next week, the amount of resources we'll need to dig up to transition away from fossil energy will be orders of magnitude less than the amount of extraction and pollution from fossil energy.
Here's a hell of a chart comparing material extraction needs for the coming 25 years to the amount of mining/drilling needed for just a single year of fossil fuel production:
You'd like to think that a large market for this stuff would also lead to innovations in how we reclaim and recycle mineral/metal resources. Right now we're operating as if blast mining everything can go on forever, for the cheapest cost.
That's not always going to be true. And how much of this stuff is going to be reburied in a landfill as we speak? Far too much I'd reckon.
The idea that we are "throwing away" *valuable* resources that don't actually get "used up" in their use cases is pretty insane when you think about it.
Last year, the plate glass windows on Trump tower killed more birds than all the world’s wind turbines combined, according to stats I just made up but seem plausible
HOLD ON! THAT"S THE ONE-DAY SUPPLY OF DIESLE I BOUGHT!
Ukraine defies Trump to resume attacks on Russian oil refineries -- The Guardian
SURELY WE CAN 'McCONNELL' HIM?
Connecticut senator Chris Murphy hospitalized after stroke -- The Guardian
Dok, thanks for this discussion. I haven't felt this engaged (energized?) in a while.
Fascinating negotiating occurring in Israeli Election Land.
Oppo supporters rightly point out teaming w/ Bibi's coalition goes against what they voted for and dooms Oppo politicians.
Oppo MAY be able to hold its right flank if they only ally w/ the more moderate Arab party, Ra'am, and leave out Joint List. Joint List may accept this, possibly even accept a "seats for not leadership" role if Oppo block promises elections in 6-12 months.
What? 6-12 months you say?!? Idea is to stabilize country, ram thru anticorruption shit and some prosecutions of settler-terrorists in WB to Send A Message, get Bibi's ass back in court, boot Ben Gvir into the sun, and show Nation Will Not Implode w/non-Jewish bloc in governing coalition. This then improves BOTH Oppo and Arab parties' chances in future elections and maybe starts moving I/P conflict from where it has been since Israel pulled out of Gaza in '05 and Hamas took power.
Meanwhile Gaza is now 20 yrs with no elections and iirc WB is longer.
Something something rather rule in a gravel parking lot something something something . . .
"“It takes something going wrong to produce a nuclear disaster; whereas a gas-fired power plant operating precisely to spec destroys the earth.”
I've often said this --both gas-fired power plants and nuclear power plants produce waste. The difference is that the nuclear waste is confined (in principle), while the gas waste is spewed out to cover the earth.
Karen the dancing goat on the solar panels! I'm ded.
(interested in learning moar about "balcony solar" small units which might offset grid use, or possibly be networked, or maybe themselves feed into a grid of some sort, or scalable, etc., etc. and also too battery technology)
I want to do something like that with our Spanish casa. Would like to put the panels of the roof of the building, not sure if the HOA will allow it. Need to call some contractors. Want to keep it all behind the meter, just enough panels and battery to power the house.
I think our 'balcony bill', for lack of a better term, is stuck in the MA lege, while they figure out how to regulate safety issues and such.
VERY exciting developments there! I have a few links in this recent piece announcing the book club.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/sun-sun-sun-here-it-comes-some-solar
thanks, Dok!
One great thing about solar is it’s direct, add sun, get electricity, which is what we really need. Wind gets you mechanical motion, needs to be converted. Most other things, even nuclear reactors, get you heat, which you use to heat water to steam, to turn a turbine, to move a wire through a magnetic field to FINALLY get electricity. If somebody could figure out THAT shortcut…
Very good point. Direct is always going to be more efficient.
I thought the point that solar could be a lot like cell phones was very interesting. Communities could by pass the dirty infrastructure all together and build mini solar grids. Much like cell phones connected communities that did not have access to wired communication.
As a happy coincidence, so much of the under developed world is also more equitorial... so the one thing they have an abundance of year round is SUN.
It seems like such a no brainer. Except it costs money up front that we are loathe to help provide.
Yes! Absolutely a huge thing in the developing world.
We should, and store power in community batteries.
And note that “battery” can take many forms. There are places that use electricity to move some mass higher so that letting it back down at night produces power. Big weights in towers, perhaps elevator shafts in unused buildings, water pumped to a reservoir up the hill, even train cars on a track. Sometimes even something like a big building full of sand that’s heated in daytime and the heat extracted to heat nearby homes at night. Smart people are working on these things all over. But especially US big business focuses on things that they can make a billion of and sell all over. Rich people need to wake up and invest in these niche situations as well.
Holy Leonardo da Vinci, Batman!
They're using old mineshafts in England as a sort of battery, raising some kind of heavy load during the day and generating electricity from the kinetic energy of allowing it to fall again slowly at night. Very cool stuff.
There will be sexy descriptions of science below, please be advised.
The real heros here are the quantum mechanics repair men. Hug your nerds because it will help them thrive. Or, at least when applicable, tell them when they're right and their informed opinions matter.
Understanding and efficiently wielding math, mechanics, and physics, are what drive the much needed breakthroughs because those disciplines discretely describe the problems you have to solve and why.
To build a more efficient solar panel using quantum mechanics, you have to break a major rule of standard physics known as the Shockley Queisser limit.
In a standard silicon solar panel, a single incoming photon hits an electron and knocks it loose to create electrical current. However, a standard single junction panel is mathematically capped at a maximum of 33.7% efficiency. The rest of the sunlight is lost because low energy light passes right through the material, and high energy light gets wasted as heat.
Quantum mechanics allows engineers to redesign materials at the atomic level to bypass these limitations through three primary methods:
1. Quantum Confinement (tuning the bandgap)
In bulk material, electrons can only absorb a specific, fixed energy level (called a bandgap). But if you shrink a semiconductor down to a cluster of just a few thousand atoms, you create a quantum dot
Because the particle is so small (2 to 10 nanometers), the electron is physically trapped in a tiny space, a physical concept called quantum confinement. Shrinking the dot changes its available energy levels
. By changing the size of the quantum dot, you change the color of light it absorbs:
• Large dots absorb lower energy, infrared light.
• Small dots absorb higher-energy, blue light.
How this helps build a better panel:
Instead of needing multiple entirely different materials layered on top of each other, you can print a single layer of varying sized quantum dots to capture the entire spectrum of the sun's rainbow.
2. Multiple Exciton Generation (getting the two for one deal)
In classical solar cells, when a high energy blue photon hits an electron, it gives it a massive kick. The electron jumps up, but it immediately loses its excess energy as heat, settling back down into a standard state. You get exactly one electron of electricity per photon.
Quantum mechanics enables a phenomenon called multiple exciton generation (MEG) or singlet fission. When a high energy photon hits a quantum confined material, the single excitation (called an exciton) physically splits into two separate, lower energy excitations.
How this helps build a better panel:
A single particle of light births two electrons of current instead of one, effectively breaking the traditional 100% quantum yield limit.
3. Intermediate Band Solar Cells (creating a stepping stone)
Standard solar panels require a single photon to have enough energy to make a massive leap from the holding zone (valence band) to the conduction zone (electricity band). If the photon is too weak (like infrared light), it passes straight through the panel.
By precision engineering quantum dots inside a host material, physicists can introduce an artificial intermediate band, essentially a mathematical stepping stone right in the middle of the energy gap.
How this helps build a better panel:
A low energy photon that would normally be useless can kick an electron halfway up the stone. A second low energy photon can then kick it the rest of the way into the electricity band. This lets the panel harvest weak, invisible infrared light that standard panels completely waste.
By treating electrons not as hard spheres, but as fluid quantum wavefunctions that can be shaped, confined, and split, cutting edge laboratories are pushing past traditional efficiency limits toward panel thresholds of 43% or more.
Cool stuff for sure but as McKibben says, we can generate all the power we need right now using some 2% of the earth's surface.
Nice to have but not necessary to solve the problem.
I see math, physics, and mechanics, as pretty much necessary for understanding solving the problem of how to manufacture solar cells and complementary tech.
The achievements and could be ideas are just snapshots of where we are now.
Fascinating!
China installs over a million solar panels every day. Trump is forcing America into extreme fossil fuel dependency where we literally have to go to war to keep the lights on. And that's with the shale boom, which is about over.
Yes, but even Trump and his fossil fuel sponsors know it's only a delaying action that will squeeze out a couple more decades worth of profits before the industry is left behind.
Which is not to minimize the damage they'll be able to do in that time; it's gonna be bad. But the rest of the world is moving to clean energy. Even China and India, finally. Again, far later than it shoulda happened, but that's all the more reason to accelerate the transition wherever we can!
We are thoroughly fracked by now.
My dad, who I lost in August, was very committed to leaving me a home that was prepared for the future. We are about 20 minutes in from the coast and have both a generator and solar panels. Once I settle in, I'll buy an electric car and install a charger.
Whar donkeys?
space?
Just me up here with Elmo’s car
From this past February, on how "non-passenger work vehicle"s morphed into most family automobiles.
'Climate Town': 'How Your Parents Ruined Driving': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPm4de6-eTg
OMG. I couldn't stop laughing at the goat.
You could teach me a bunch of tricks and commands, farmer guy, but "Get Down!" ain't one.
One thing to keep in mind is that solar is not without flaws, especially when we plunge ahead with manufacturing the same way we have been. They use chemicals which are mined in many cases. There are nasty chemicals used in creation of these and the accompanying electronics, they produce nasty waste, and we don’t make things with an eye to recycling. Right now we’re approaching the problem of what to do with all of the old panels that are failing or no longer efficient. We need to get better at all of these processes, not just concentrate on churning out as many as fast as we can to make money, while still investing as little as possible, which is what we’re “good” at.
Yup, there is no free lunch. But as McKibben discusses extensively in the chapters we'll be reading for next week, the amount of resources we'll need to dig up to transition away from fossil energy will be orders of magnitude less than the amount of extraction and pollution from fossil energy.
Here's a hell of a chart comparing material extraction needs for the coming 25 years to the amount of mining/drilling needed for just a single year of fossil fuel production:
https://substack.com/profile/681982-doktor-zoom/note/c-376046756
Gawdamn, that's some chart!
I'll be sure to reproduce it and a couple others in next week's discussion post!
From this review/"and here's more neat stuff" of McKibben:
https://sammatey.substack.com/p/review-here-comes-the-sun-by-bill
Correct, but even now it's superior to digging up dinosaurs to burn them and having to dig up more tomorrow.
And we'll get better at it.
You'd like to think that a large market for this stuff would also lead to innovations in how we reclaim and recycle mineral/metal resources. Right now we're operating as if blast mining everything can go on forever, for the cheapest cost.
That's not always going to be true. And how much of this stuff is going to be reburied in a landfill as we speak? Far too much I'd reckon.
The idea that we are "throwing away" *valuable* resources that don't actually get "used up" in their use cases is pretty insane when you think about it.
Designers of solar, wind, and battery systems are increasingly keeping recycling in mind — and in some places, that's by law
Agree 100%, we should be recycling whenever possible.
All true, and things to work on. But trading global pollution (what we're doing now) for local pollution is still a trade worth making.
There has been research into panel recycling. I can't find the article, but I was reading this within the last few months.
https://www.epa.gov/hw/solar-panel-recycling
Still not good at recovering the rare earth minerals.
huh. I guess Trump's coverup of green energy wasn't as complete as I'd thought. same page as Biden's EPA.
"Chapter 1: That Burning Sensation"
My early college years.