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"the fact that it costs alot less than solar pv will make it attractive..."

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Is Cheap Solar Paint Coming Soon?

Written by Megan Treacy on 12/04/10

solar-paint-lab
NextGen Solar has announced that it has raised half of the $1 million it needs to bring its "solar paint" to customers.  The company claims its paint-on solar cells can hit 40 percent efficiency and will cost only a third of traditional solar PV panels.

The NextGen solar paint is a liquid material that forms webs of nanoscale solar cells when it dries and it can be painted onto practically any surface.  Developed by the Argonne National Laboratory, the solar paint beats out thin-film PV cells in efficiency because it captures more wavelengths of light.

The company is working with ambitious clean tech investors, hoping to get the prototype out of the lab and onto roofs, windows and walls soon.  A commerical breakthrough of this type of clean energy technology - one that is cheap and efficient enough to go up against coal - could make a big impact.

via Cleantechnica

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written by ted hesser, April 13, 2010
40% efficiency? I'm very skeptical that solar paint will match the highest solar cell efficiency ever recorded (NREL recorded 40.8%). Think about it, a group of brilliant scientists get together with a very large budget and very fancy equipment and make a multi-junction quantum dot solar cell at 40.8% efficiency (throwing out bad batches left and right along the way) and your telling me that solar paint is just as efficient? when the paint dries the molecular structure of the paint will be in geometric disarray. I would love to hear an explanation for this 40% number. Thanks
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40 %
written by hyperspaced, April 13, 2010
40 percent efficiency ???
Sounds more like 4% to me.
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40%?
written by scott mccart, April 13, 2010
40% is out of line with any current technology.perhaps 40% of current thin film cells.ie 40 % of 10% or 4%.
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yeah right
written by bobbobberson, April 13, 2010
"paint-on solar cells can hit 40 percent efficiency and will cost only a third of traditional solar PV"

yeah and monkeys might fly out of my butt. Why doesn't it allow you to lose weight and keep it off while eating all you want.
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written by Russell Geisthardt, April 13, 2010
I agree with Ted that the 40% number seems dubious. The idea of solar paint in itself seems dubious as well. I admit that I don't know much about this specific technology (and can't find anything about it on the Argonne site), but most solar materials tend to degrade when exposed to outside conditions, especially water. The idea of putting this paint on an exposed surface would seem to lead to opening itself up to all sorts of degradation in very short order.
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written by jm, April 13, 2010
this screams bullsh!t. $1mm is all they need. VC's poop that in the morning. Where is Ecogeek's common sense on this garbage?
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written by bob, April 13, 2010
The article that CleanTechnica references says that "NextGen is aiming for at least 25%, and possibly as much as 40%, efficiency at a third of the cost." So that means that they're even at 25% yet (which would still be damn impressive), much less 40%
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Not BS
written by Carol, April 14, 2010
What the critics have failed to comprehend in their rush to poohoo this paint is feedback. A small proportion of the power output of the paint is used to illuminate an array of LEDs which are focused to shine their output on the paint, thus generating more power.
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yeah right...
written by Esolar, April 14, 2010
This claim smells really bad...
... like scam mixed with bullshit under the sun.

BTW they expect to raise one billion USD out of this!
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written by Adam Nash, July 01, 2010
If it works the markent will buy it and the company will become uber-wealthy, if it doesn't, they will be a laughing stock. Ultimately the market will decide.

-Who is John Galt?
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awesome!
written by kirby, January 19, 2012
i think that this energy source should be more noticed. go solar paint/spray on solar cells! smilies/cheesy.gif
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written by kev, February 02, 2012
the fact that it costs alot less than solar pv will make it attractive to the market, and even if the true figure was 30% its still viable.
people will be attracted by the savings involved even with a loss in efficiency, if this is marketed properly it could kill the solar panel industry faster than any low set government feed in tarrif.

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