Hot Solar Homes

August 4, 2015 Ryan Bradley

Hot Solar Homes

Baked Humans Included:

*Disregarding the blatant hippie-reference, this is really cool design + technology in architecture & construction.

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*Click or Tap pictures & Hover to view caption notes as an overlay.

1. It can be notoriously difficult to get efficiency measures for alternative-housing systems.

2. In the Southern USA, I don't have huge use for heat, but I can certainly commiserate with the opposite: Paying out the nose for A/C to keep from suffocating.

Let's find out what % that 1700 is out of the total households of Germany, Switzerland, & Austria: Wiki Households by Nation

| Nation | Households |
| Germany | 40,076,000 |
| Switzerland | 3,362,073 |
| Austria | 3,566,489 |
| Total | 47,004,562 |

BUT, according to the article, 60% of heat demand is reduced in those 1700 households.

| 1700/47004562 | 3.616670228732266e-5 (...A REALLY small % of households researched) |

3. Ahh, the wonders of government stipulations. It's a good thing they wrote down that all buildings have to be "nearly zero-energy" from 2021 on. Now that it's on-paper, the humans will surely do it! By the way, I wonder just how close to 0 "nearly zero" is.
Relevant Google Images Search: 0=Zero Energy?

4. ONLY 9 Houses Monitored/Measured!? Time for even more math... 9/1700= | 0.005294117647058824 or 0.529% (LESS than 1% of the homes) 30 Homes would have provided a recording of 1.764% of the homes, and would at least fall within Minimum Recommended guidelines for most Scientific/Statistical analysis.

They've named the research the "Heizsolar" Project. "Heiz" is a short-form of "Heizen," which refers to heat/hotness Wiki 'Heiz'. I'll bet you get the "solar" part. What I don't get is if it seems repetitive in native Dutch/German.

Researchers get a little pat-on-the-back & got to work with buddies at a technical school.

I wonder what Mr. Stryi-Hipp's comment "over multiple heating periods" means: Is that several days? Weeks? Months? (I'm guessing days based on what follows...)
€1,500,000 in funding from a super-long-government-bureacracy-name-that-just-keeps-going-and-going-and-going, because... Federal Government YAY! /sarc

5. Oh, ok they built a model/simulation! They must have run a bunch of tests with a light-source to simulate the sun & see how to optimize the heating from... Wait... Reduce the tank? Increase the solar panels?
Increase the most expensive part? Like, the part that the article JUST stated was "expensive"? I guess it WOULD be good for grant money, home price inflation, and keeping those precious-mineral-miners in their miserable places.
*Palm-->Forehead
Hopefully they'll get cheap ones from ebay? ebay solar collector

6. Wow! I believe we may just have to hand out a Physics award. Heat radiates outward? Astounding! AND, you can direct it away from the house using a window?? Again, I gasp at the innovation.
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I'm kind-of sorry for the snarky tone of this piece, but seriously... I got into this article thinking it would be inspiring, full of ideas to optimize housing. Instead, it turned out to be a weak attempt at research and even weaker resulting suggestions. The "Benefit Tomorrow" is to NOT be tricked by lame research. If you would like to see some revolutionary housing & building, I encourage you to take a look at these following links:

* Google "Sustainable Tiny Housing" pond house Landed

You can find the rest of my Analysis Articles in the Notebook
Pictures, Videos, Podcasts, Audio, & other Media can be found in Media

Source Links/Pages:

Social Links for Sources:

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=Stryi-Hipp+social

Have a Great Day, Enjoy the Show, and Keep Improving

Boost Solar Photovoltaic Cells by ~30%+ with Laser-Light (Infrared)

July 28, 2015 Ryan Bradley

Today, we take a look at new technology in the Solar Photovoltaic Industry. Two Chemistry Professors (Bardeen & Tang) have used an innovative mixture of organic & inorganic materials to improve solar cells, equipping them with the ability to absorb infrared light.

*Comment #'s correspond with each paragraph. Click/Tap & Hover mouse to expand & see caption overlay.

1. Why not just "Stack" the solar panels? Instead of "coaxing" them. Or, in addition to using the hybrid panels, you could "stack/layer" them vertically to cut down on land-costs.2. At least it's in Cali., where they have an abundance of sunny-days.… — 1. Why not just "Stack" the solar panels? Instead of "coaxing" them. Or, in addition to using the hybrid panels, you could "stack/layer" them vertically to cut down on land-costs.

2. At least it's in Cali., where they have an abundance of sunny-days.
-Achieved by combining inorganic Nanocrystals with organic molecules (probably from plants) to increase & transform the wavelengths/type of light that is captured.
3. Normally, infrared isn't captured by PV Cells. This new mixed/hybrid solar cell captures 2 infrared photons, combines them, and then allows the PV cell to absorb the energy.
4. Using new infrared spectrum upconversion could yield 30% boost to current absorption of PV cells.
5. Inorganic materials:
. Cadmium Selenide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadmium_selenide)- A highly luminescent crystallized material.
. Lead Selenide - (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/lead_selenide) - Infrared Detector "one of the first materials sensitive to the infrared radiation used for military applications"

Organic Compounds:
. Diphenylanthracene (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphenylanthracene) - Used to produce Blue light in glow-sticks
. Rubrene (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubrene) - A Yellow light source in lightsticks. Also known as tetraphenyltetracene, making it another derivative of the Phenyl Group (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenyl_group)
6. 980-Nanometer Infrared upconverted to 550-Nanometer light (nearly 2x the infrared photon energy). Compared to the 0% that was originally being captured, even though it's not a 1:1 ratio, this is impressive.

7. Quotes about the technical details already covered above. TLDR= "The inorganics in the composite material take light in; the organics get light out." (Bardeen)8. (Didn't highlight this paragraph) Potential applications & uses for the inf… — 7. Quotes about the technical details already covered above.
TLDR= "The inorganics in the composite material take light in; the organics get light out." (Bardeen)
8. (Didn't highlight this paragraph) Potential applications & uses for the infrared-sensitive materials = Medical, Data Storage & LED's.
9. Converting/Transmuting of light to different wavelengths can have an impact on any technology that uses photons as inputs or outputs.
10. Research was partially funded (grant money) by US Army= Night-vision use cases? Or, it could be about using this technology in data storage/transmission/reconnaissance.

Story Source:

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Riverside.
Highlights & analysis written & produced by @bradleysci

Journal Reference:

Zhiyuan Huang, Xin Li, Melika Mahboub, Kerry M. Hanson, Valerie M. Nichols, Hoang Le, Ming L. Tang, Christopher J. Bardeen. Hybrid Molecule–Nanocrystal Photon Upconversion Across the Visible and Near-Infrared. Nano Letters, 2015; 150714103344001 DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b02130

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/...

Battle of the Bots!

July 22, 2015 Ryan Bradley

Battlebots airs on ABC on weekends. Link here: http://abc.go.com/shows/battlebots

Flames shoot forth from the yellow-bodied beast! "Stinger" moves in swiftly, trying to melt the wheels off his opponent. But, the silver "Bronco" has few tricks of his own on-board. Well, ok maybe just one trick, and it's basically to flip opponents into the air. Such as when he did this:

**"Bronco" Flipping "Stinger" OVER the wall, near the audience (while flamethrower was still active)**

"Bronco" wins the match, the crowd goes wild, the owners rush in to perform robo-surgery, and... Commercials time! Yep, I had received the requisite ~5 minutes of quality TV programming, and was now... Getting programmed? We'll leave the commercials alone since, most of the time, they are muted anyway.

Plus, when we get back to the show there will be a lot more action in the next match. I bet they will drop right into the battle. ...Yeah right! Since when would we abandon such a meaty subject as Televised messaging to entrap the minds of viewers... Especially if we can just stare:

**Oops, did you lose your brain back there with our advertisers? Oh, you're fine. Just cast your gaze upon this glowing screen. I mean, just look at those... teeth.**

**Here, we have questions tossed to the MEN, who are clearly the only sex capable of discussing "technical details." So much for supporting more girls/women in STEM...**

So, about that whole "Sex-appeal" dynamic... I have a few questions, but doubt they'll ever be answered:

WHO Chose this dynamic & staging? Was it the Producer who said "2 guys who look like they're serious + 1 ditzy-style blonde bombshell will sell the show!" Or, was it higher-up in ABC that this schema formed?
WHY Do they think you NEED this set-up? Is the idea really just to draw in as many of the masses as possible? "We've already got the nerds with Robots & Flamethrowers. Let's toss in some eye-candy to get the rest of the world!"
WILL YOU be manipulated in this manner? Look around your workspace, house, neighborhood, etc... and you will find tons of similar advertising & messaging.

Have a Great Day, Enjoy the Show, and Keep Aware