Make Room for MIT's "Solar Antennas"

by Zachary Shahan · 2010-09-22 12:00:00 UTC
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Surveys consistently show that the large majority of people (more than 90 percent) think solar energy is a great idea and we should be using more of it. That's wonderful in theory, but in practice, solar has still not caught on with anywhere near that same large majority (less than 1 percent of energy consumed in the U.S. is solar).

Why the disconnect?

One common reason is cost. Even though you can get your money back on a solar system in as little as three years in some states (and not much longer in many other states) and can start saving money from then on, the high upfront costs are just too intimidating for some. There are a lot of options to get around this issue (i.e. group discounts, solar leasing, and programs where your local government pays your upfront costs and you pay it back slowly over time)—but those are topics for another day.

One of the other big issues is space. On many roofs, it can be hard to find room for large, flat panels. Luckily, researchers at MIT have a technology in the works that is focused on just this problem. If their technology can by commercially produced at an affordable price, it has the potential to wholly transform the solar energy market.

The technology: solar energy “antennas” made of carbon nanotubes. What are carbon nanotubes? Good question. If this helps, they are "hollow tubes of carbon atoms." That doesn't really enlighten me, but it's been awhile since my last chemistry lesson. Anyway, though, the solar energy antenna part is pretty clear, and MIT chemical engineering professor Michael Strano says these antennas can “concentrate solar energy 100 times more than a regular photovoltaic cell.” Wow!

The idea would be to place these on your roof connected to tiny photovoltaic cells and the antennas would "drive photons into them."

This looks like it could revolutionize the home solar market. That said, I've seen plenty of cool ideas that seem completely viable to me, but for some reason or another, never make it out of the laboratories. Hopefully, this one will break free of the lab bench and someday escape to the shelves of our local home improvement stores.

In the meantime, as I said above, solar energy systems are more affordable than ever in most places. Maybe its time to look into your options. And if you're interested in the nitty gritty details of this new solar antenna technology, check out MIT's news release on this topic.

Photo Credit: Ghutchis via Flickr

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Zachary Shahan has studied society and the environment for years, writes on these issues for a number of blogs, and is now the editor of planetsave.com, ecolocalizer.com, and cleantechnica.com.

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