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Paul Bostwick
Researcher at Self Employed Product Designer
“We've got to get our national / global energy diet under control... More renewables and less waste!”
bio
A few years ago I began investigating temperature's impact on PV performance and saw that the T-delta for even mild climates like my own are one of the most significant de-ratings in a PV system design. Looked like a place that small improvements could get somewhere. (Also, micro-inverters were already invented, so I could not do that.) I circled the problem and after many interesting and informative dead ends, I arrived at a method of solar collection that harvests high temp heat (far more valuable than the usual "hot water" approaches) yet still provides for a full harvest of the electricity via PV. All the ingredients for this design exist in the industrial marketplace including the high flux silicon cells of the right size. The custom bits are the aluminum castings and the appropriately composed heat pipes. But even these are on a scale that is commonly made so the tooling will be straightforward: well within the capabilities of industry. If we get to the "set" portion of the competition, a prototype is, even without follow-on support, buildable without exhausting the prize money from the first round. The reason getting to the "GO" round is possible (and maybe even likely) is the position of the IP AND the likelihood that this new form-factor could spur a wide variety of other new developments and technical evolution to exploit the advantages of this new form factor: • dual junction concentrator cells • chiller development for the low process heat range • business integration between air conditioning companies and solar firms • optical train improvements (non-imaging optics) • thermal banking schemes to exploit the chiller output in novel contexts • solar hot water resurgence (as a second stage exploit of the high heat resource)
skills
Designer Inventor Researcher Scientist Sustainability expert Technologist Writer/Editor
“We've got to get our national / global energy diet under control... More renewables and less waste!”
bio
A few years ago I began investigating temperature's impact on PV performance and saw that the T-delta for even mild climates like my own are one of the most significant de-ratings in a PV system design. Looked like a place that small improvements could get somewhere. (Also, micro-inverters were already invented, so I could not do that.) I circled the problem and after many interesting and informative dead ends, I arrived at a method of solar collection that harvests high temp heat (far more valuable than the usual "hot water" approaches) yet still provides for a full harvest of the electricity via PV. All the ingredients for this design exist in the industrial marketplace including the high flux silicon cells of the right size. The custom bits are the aluminum castings and the appropriately composed heat pipes. But even these are on a scale that is commonly made so the tooling will be straightforward: well within the capabilities of industry. If we get to the "set" portion of the competition, a prototype is, even without follow-on support, buildable without exhausting the prize money from the first round. The reason getting to the "GO" round is possible (and maybe even likely) is the position of the IP AND the likelihood that this new form-factor could spur a wide variety of other new developments and technical evolution to exploit the advantages of this new form factor: • dual junction concentrator cells • chiller development for the low process heat range • business integration between air conditioning companies and solar firms • optical train improvements (non-imaging optics) • thermal banking schemes to exploit the chiller output in novel contexts • solar hot water resurgence (as a second stage exploit of the high heat resource)
skills
Designer Inventor Researcher Scientist Sustainability expert Technologist Writer/Editor