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From Undecided with Matt Ferrell
Video Description
Solar panels are typically made with silicon as their semiconducting material. Cadmium telluride based photovoltaics (or CdTe for short) are the second-most common kind of panels after silicon PV, but when silicon still makes up the vast majority of the market, that doesn’t mean as much. So what on earth are cadmium telluride solar panels? And if they’re already in use today, why are they the solar panel industry’s best-kept secret?
88 sats \ 1 reply \ @Golu 8 Oct
I believe China is already using them at a large scale. I'm not sure but as China has been exporting caladium based solar panels in excess to anything else. It seems possible that they are used in China
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He did talk about Chinese production ramping up, but didn't say anything about usage. Global usage is very low, though, outside of America.
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And if they’re already in use today, why are they the solar panel industry’s best-kept secret?
Not being able to watch the video now, I don't quite understand this question. I'm not aware of the use of this type of panel, but I don't think it's a well-kept secret. The only thing I know about these panels is that they have a little less performance but a much lower cost.
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I think he's just pointing out that you'd expect people to have heard of them if they're in fairly widespread use. I don't recall having heard of them before, but it seems like you already know the main points about them.
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Ah, okay! It's quite possible that it's not widespread, I know because I had a course on renewable energies in my university studies (electrical engineering).
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Globally, it isn't used much, but about 20% of the US market is CdTe.
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Tl;dr? What efficiency do they reach? And what lifetime is expected?
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I don't remember the precise numbers, but current efficiency is a little lower than silicon panels and lifetime is considered the most significant issue. However, they think the lifetime issue can be fixed, as it's a result of a new innovation that increased efficiency.
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I've been filing a lot of patents for some interesting vertical farming and solar stuff recently.
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There's so much neat solar tech on the horizon. I wish it would hurry up and get here.
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Cadmium Telluride panels are now rapidly replacing the silicon ones in India. They will be replacing Silicon ones everywhere because there's a said environmental advantage with them.
CdTe (Cadmium telluride) technology exhibits some of the least environmental impact among solar cell technologies in India, according to a study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mandi in Himachal Pradesh.
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51 sats \ 0 replies \ @Golu 8 Oct
And most of these are imported from China.
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We will have more in common with people born 2,000 years ago that we will with people born 100 years from now. Think about that!
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That's quite possible, but what made you think of it?
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Wow! That looks good for photovoltaic solar panels. However, there are indications that zero point energy will find its way loose from the USPTO. It appears that there are a lot of classified patents concerning zpt that have been squirreled away so the large bankster interests and Blackrock do not loose money on their electrical generation and transmission investments. If you think they haven’t done this, please change my mind.
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Patents don't require a working prototype, so I'll believe it when I see it. There's no telling how far we are from an economically viable product.
There are less fantastical quantum devices that have been proposed which would capture kinetic energy from Brownian motion in the atmosphere (basically directly transferring heat into useful energy). Those are also not anywhere near hitting the market.
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I don’t think these will come out through anything but open-sourcing the working plans. The plans that have gone through the patent office got quashed, one-way-or-another. Anyone valuing their life, now understands, there will be no money to be made by trying to keep the processes and methods secret.
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A patent only requires a proposed mechanism of action. There's no requirement that it actually work.
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Yes, but a lot of the patents have working models for them. Many inventors actually make videos of working devices. Of course, many have been bogus, too.
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I'm not asserting that none of these things are legit, just that I don't believe they are until I see it on the market.
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The problem is that the inventors are “persuaded” one-way-or-another to not bring their inventions to market. Sometimes it is money and sometimes cessation of life. If THEY don’t want it on the market, it never sees the light of day.
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Because this is the basis of capitalism. Never reveal technologically secret information