This idea is so poorly conceived. Imagine installing and maintaining something like this. How are those panels supposed to stay clean?The panels and the cover should both be built but they should not be the same thing. No current panels are engineered for this application so they would have to be custom made. Just getting the project to the point where the first panel could be installed would cost millions. We could get started now installing commercially available shade covers and ground mounted solar. Ground mounted solar is simple to clean, simple to maintain, and simple to replace.
I agree the idea looks like a great way to reclaim the space, reduce evaporation, and generate power I just think the money would be better spent on a plan the optimized for expenses and longevity instead of optimizing for novelty.
I guess I missed it but how are these panels any different than typical ground based PV panels? Looks like, based on the rendering, they they are on some kind of rigid scaffolding over the canal. Not sure how that is different from typical installs?
For sure cleaning them is a problem, don’t have an answer to that. Hope that that is accounted for in the proposal.
I seriously doubt these could be mass-produced in any meaningful way due to the rarity of the requirements. I’d love to hear a more practical argument for this though.
“2D” fab isn’t new, and correct me if I’m wrong, that is sort of how AMD got its start. It’s just the idea of fixing heat dissipation to solve for Moore’s Law, but requires novel materials that didn’t exist yet. This has cropped up in various forms for metal and silicon dynamic replacements over the decades, and I think the last big news I heard about this was 10 years ago regarding graphene being a cheap and plentiful replacement for silicon, and here we are with no proofs of concept.
It’s a paper I guess, but not anything that has the feasibility of showing up in the real world. If anything, I think these labs are working on shrinking quantum computational units down to be more useful for everyday computing, since they kind of already “work”.
Edit: also some recent news about transistor heat dissipation.
Unfortunately it is very difficult to be good parents when both parents have to stay out over 10 hrs per day to work. This is the part that is always overlooked in these news. Problem is not the smartphones. It’s modern society
Really good point tbh, and really just adds to my point, not just bad parenting through negligence, but also an unfortunate lack of presence from otherwise good parents even being possible due to both needing full time jobs.
I’m not gonna bang the 4dww drum in this thread, but reduced-day-same-pay working weeks need to happen yesterday, so many tangible improvements to society are just hanging there.
Took me a little bit this is the article that’s being referenced. It’s late so I’ll look at this tomorrow. First impression is 2.6uW/cm2 is surprisingly high given that a human body doesn’t produce that much energy at rest.
Meh plasma could in theory be a very good radar absorber. Plasma stealth isn’t just buzzwords necessarily. A myth possibly.
Whether they got it working in practice is dubious though, it’s an extremely hard engineering challenge. Interesting if true, unlikely given it’s being announced.
Light phasing is already concerned with quantum effects so without seeing the actual claim I mean… Anyone could basically claim that lol.
interestingengineering.com
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