AuREUS: Aurora Renewable Energy (2020) | Hacker News Reader

AuREUS: Aurora Renewable Energy (2020)

jamesdysonaward.org

30 pointscconstantin6 comments

What is so hard about providing numbers? At least give a meaningful efficiency number. Maybe an attenuation coefficient in the UV band. A cost estimate? There is essentially zero useful information, a lot of talking and pointless demonstrations. This really makes me think that the numbers are left out intentionally because they are absolutely underwhelming.

Agreed, although [1] gives some idea. It would allow large buildings to use their windows as solar panels at about 75 to 80% efficiency if we follow that graph. Anything under 50% compared to conventional solar panel would be misleading given the graph. But because there's a lot of windows in a skyscraper they get a lot of volume. I would assume people owning a skycraper are usually businesses who got the money to burn on a long-term investment.

I wonder if this is patented.

Also, that James Dyson award seems to yield them credibility.

[1] https://www.jamesdysonaward.org/Document/06e5abae-0a5c-4a64-...

I have zero confidence that this illustration is based on even a single actual number. What would a full lot area circle mean? As if there is any standard solar farm size. But even if you just take the mean or average solar farm size in some region at some point in time, shouldn't that then be a full circle? And the typical solar farm covers only the area of three building lots? This has almost certainly been drawn by the marketing department based on nothing.

Also, simply cramming more cells into a certain footprint does not simply scale the yield in the same way - there’s only so much energy coming from the sun per unit area. I understand (?) that the whole concept is to go for ‘rays that are otherwise lost’ but it’s an apple to mole rat comparison at best.

I wonder if uranium glass would work for this as well. I can't find the link now, but I remember reading years ago about someone's DIY UV imager where they used something like that as a fluorescent screen photon converter so a conventional detector or film could capture the image. Maybe the material used here is more efficient, though, and hopefully less radioactive.

I recall somebody promoting this like 40 years ago. Patents will be expired, anyhow.

They didn't have quantum dots back then.

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