Reply To: Site availability is poor

[Joeviocoe]

bcreighton7 wrote:

For future reference my friend CNT is back in the news. It seems when utilized with nanophotonic crystals, they can convert 1000 C heat into light usable by photovoltaic cells. Perhaps covering some of the chamber walls with this material would be another way to use the excess heat to increase efficiency, while keeping critical components of the chamber cooler.
Here is a link: http://phys.org/news/2016-05-solar-usable-cell-efficiency.html

Seems a bit of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

In operation, this approach would use a conventional solar-concentrating system, with lenses or mirrors that focus the sunlight, to maintain the high temperature

You can double the efficiency of the photovoltaic cell, but need to take up probably 10 times more surface area with mirrors to reach those temperatures. It really isn’t more efficient by area of the system. It may be a cost benefit, if the material is so much cheaper than the equivalent area of regular photovoltaics.