Yeah, same for the ‘vertical farms’ that keep getting hyped. The amount of solar energy arriving on the earth has a finite value - if you stack your solar collection vertically, you might save land space, but you’re not making more light arrive from the sun - you’re just shading the things behind you.
Yeah, I get what you mean, but I think there is utility in spectacular failure too. Anyone with a few dozen brain cells to rub together predicted that Solar Roadways could not possibly work, and yet it seems that had to be tangibly proven, and then laughed at. It’s almost as if that was a thing that had to happen, so the general populace can stop hoping for it.
I’m not reading the article about this prize as anything breathless. Simply a potentially useful clever idea that might get developed to help marginally.
UV is light that gets through clouds well and scattered and bounced around lots and that we like to keep out of the insides of our buildings. Solar cells that harvest it have had limited success.
This is recognition of a clever idea to harvest this unexploited portion of the spectrum that is less reliant on being in a direct line since it scatters and bounced so much. Possibly cheaply. Maybe not but a 40K prize to explore it with. Fun.
As for maturity of power. Battery costs, solar panel costs, are a fraction of what they were a decade ago. Rapid changes. By lots of improvements at the margins and economies of scale. Something that has been possible only because it isn’t so mature yet.
I just wanted to know more about fruits & vegetables fluorescing. Never knew they could do that. If I eat enough salad or peach cobbler might I start to glow? Just kidding, but really, what’s up with that?
Most organic compounds fluoresce to some degree. It’s nothing special-- It just means they glow when exposed to ultraviolet light. And most sources of UV are also sources of visible, and usually, the directly-reflected visible light is much brighter than the fluorescence.
Maybe the gap between window panes could be filled with scorpions.
Please stay away from the peach cobbler. We don’t need any more orange personnel
Others are working on similar ideas.
The concept of transparent solar panels includes specific properties to guide the ultraviolet and infrared spectrum of light through reflection and refraction to the edges of the glass which are to shine with this light.
the process of refraction of this light towards the edges greatly reduces the efficiency, as a large part of it is lost due to inefficient refraction and reflection, and part due to scattering.