My clock radio came on very early this morning and there was a short article about woman and technology.
Paraphrasing: "I recently spoke to a professor at a university who has just patented a new indoor solar panel. This means we no longer have to rely on solar panels on the roof but we can get useful power indoors from our LED bulbs"
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nib
I do that! My calculator works very well.
nib
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Andy Bennett
I run all my electric heating from an indoor solar panel illuminated by a 3W LED. Hell I even run the LED off it. Saves a fortune!.
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The Natural Philosopher
This is the image that goes with that one...
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Jeff Gaines
Wow, that sounds like a fantastic idea, any particular make of solar panel more efficient than others :-)
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Tim Streater
Woss this I see in the Times today that Merc are going to put some special paint on their car roofs to generate volts?
T
The Natural Philosopher
Toujours EcoBollox™
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Chris J Dixon
I had a cheap calculator very similar to this
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When it stopped working, I opened it up. The solar panel was merely a slip of paper printed to look like a solar cell. Elsewhere a button cell was hidden.
Chris
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charles
I think he's invented another perpetual motion machine. ;-)
T
The Natural Philosopher
Brilliant!
Like those old '12 transistor' radios where 5 of them were soldered to pads that went nowhere and didn't work when you tested them...
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Jethro_uk
On the "genius of modern life*" with the ever-fragrant Hannah Fry, they did show a Dutch bloke who had developed that and produced a car with it.
It all sounded wonderful. Then you recall the BBC also thought DAB was going to rule the world.
*Yet another 60 minute programme from 10 of content.
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Paul
There was something invented in 2019 like that, only it is a very low power device. Any time a technology article won't tell you the current output, you know it's not for your electric fire or anything. It's a polymer replacement for polycrystalline silicon. And as you would expect from such a device, it's not going to have the same lifespan as the polycrystalline one (it might need stabilizers to make it last longer).
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And it might be enough to power an IOT spy device. With a longer range radio than a Bluetooth. A "mote" patiently waits until it collects enough energy from the local environment, to make a radio transmission. It might be measuring the air temperature every ten minutes for example.
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No, if you put enough polymer panels together, it doesn't run an electric fire.
Next, the boffins will work on an "indoor windmill" with kilowatt output. You know, for those strong sustained winds in the house. Whoosh.
But this sort of thing is more of a "pure" research than an "applied" research. The scientists won't be quitting their day job, to start making those.
Paul
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Jeff Gaines
:-)
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charles
my BiL had, at one time, a house with hot air heating. His young son made a Lego windmill to run from one of the air ducts.
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Max Demian
...or watches with umpteen "jewels"; which included decorative jewels and ones that did nothing at all.
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Jim the Geordie
Bit like having an electric fan to power a sailing ship :)
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Andrew
You mean wolts, surely :-)
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Andrew
Or as my not-the-brightest-of-sparks neighbour suggested, "why not use electricity to drive some offshore turbines around when the wind is not blowing so that they can create wind to drive the other windmills"
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Sam Plusnet
Do we need yet another one? We already have a tremendous backlog to get through.
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The Natural Philosopher
Well one thing is for sure, there wont be any Amps.
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