These aren't so much inventions as ways to reduce costs for people at the bottom. It may be true that the devalued dollar is the problem with the cost of living but I think it's partly due to just too many bills. When the Federal Reserve was first started people didn't have an electric bill, a cable bill, some people maybe heat, a phone bill etc. These things have become more expensive along with everything else forcing most people to have two jobs and still break even. If most of this were free it takes the pressure off. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said "No country was ever drunk when wine was cheap". I interpret this as "When the living's easy so are the people". Reduce everyone's cost of living and things in general will improve.

Why would the oil industry do anything to destroy itself? Organizations can be just like people. Self preservation is a top priority. So, it wouldn't. The oil industry is the most powerful among them all so why wouldn't they suppress anything that challenges it? This is why I think about this. A photo voltaic cell is basically the same as any Intel microprocessor. It's a p-n junction created by an etching process like any transistor. It is light sensitive. It produces electric current when exposed to light. When integrated circuits were first developed someone made the prediction that the size of transistors will shrink every 18 months. I think he actually said the number of transistors will double every 18 months. That was in the 1950's. Today they can pack billions of transistors on a chip 1 inch by 1 inch. Have they applied this technology to photo voltaic cells? Would the oil industry allow it? Would doing this make solar panels more sensitive and produce more current?

This is an idea to increase the usefulness of solar voltaic panels. If it's possible to increase the current by adding to the total number of PN junctions with very large scale integration it might also make the panel too sensitive. Under direct sunlight it might burn up from too much current. To limit the current under direct sunlight you could add an auto darkening glass on top of the panel. The default for the glass is totally dark. It would be controlled by a light sensor. In cloudy conditions the sensor would allow all light to pass. Under total sunlight it would restrict the light so it doesn't burn up. While this doesn't increase the maximum power it would extend it over many more days. At the same time you could add wires inside the glass that would warm it up under snow conditions and melt the snow as it falls like an automobile de-froster.

Photo voltaic cells convert light into electricity. A photo voltaic cell is millions of individual diodes that are exposed to light. Any diode is a PN junction and has a capacitance. Anything with a capacitance has a frequency response. If you add a resistor and inductor in parallel with the capacitor you will have a band pass filter, and the frequency response will be very narrow.

I am not a scientist or an engineer so most of what I come up with are guesses. I am under constant surveillance and have almost no money so I can't build anything to see if it works. Another possibility to making solar voltaics more sensitive and produce more current would be to make the diodes bigger instead of smaller. Components are always bigger. You can buy photo diodes as discreet components. It might be possible to build a PCB based solar panel that would produce more current per square inch.

There are 3 types of solar panels. Amorphous, poly-crystalline and mono-crystalline. Amorphous are the least sensitive and cheapest. Poly-crystalline are in the middle and mono-crystalline are the most sensitive and costly. Amorphous are best used near the equator where there is abundant direct sunlight. They don't work very well near the poles. (north and south) It is best to use the most sensitive where the sunlight is not as direct.

The manufacturing process for creating IC's is very similar to the process that makes PCB's. (printed circuit boards) It is very chemical dependent and requires a number of steps. I wonder if the technology that makes CD's can be used to create IC's. Every computer sold today comes with a CD burner. It uses a LASER to burn 'holes' in the bottom of a blank CD. The 'hole' is microscopic. I think it's possible to make IC's with LASER's this would eliminate chemicals and make them cheaper.

The picture below shows 6 panels. This might be 5000 watts on a very sunny day. To help you understand, a desktop personal computer would be a constant 600 watts. A laptop or notebook less. A microwave oven is typically 1200 watts. You can't use them at night unless you store the energy somehow. There are at least two ways to produce the electricity at a later time. One is batteries and the other is with a fuel cell. (see second picture below) A fuel cell combines hydrogen and oxygen to make electricity and you get water as a by-product. Since solar panels make DC current it can be used to separate hydrogen and oxygen with a process known as electrolysis. The 2 components can be generated during the day and stored in 2 separate containers and then recombined at night. The third picture below is a small desktop separator.

Hydrogen is the smallest atom in the universe. It can be hard to store because it can pass through many other substances. I think you could make an ordinary steel container like those used to store other gases and line it with glass. Glass is very dense. This would make the walls very thick. It might be possible to find a glass that would combine with hydrogen and over time increase it's ability to hold the gas.

Another problem with solar panels is snow. Snow would cover the panel and prevent light from getting through. There are ways to solve this. A car rear window de-fogger uses small amounts of electricity to melt ice on your car. It's something like an electric stove. It has small lines of a resistive substance that heat up when current is passed through. If solar panels are kept very thin they could be put on the bottom so as not to stop sunlight. Panels could be made as small as possible. Instead of 6 panels 3 feet by 6 feet you could make 18 panels 1 foot by 1 foot. Raise the panels up off the roof and separate them by a couple inches to allow water to fall off. Making them smaller can also help if one goes bad. Replacing a 6 by 3 would be more expensive than a 1 by 1.

Solar voltaic panels can be used to heat a home as well. The top picture below is an electric stove top. It glows red when electricity flows through it. The bottom picture is a possible application. The idea is to wrap the element around a piece of pipe and send water through the pipe so it picks up the heat. Two things could be done. One is to preheat an existing fossil fuel heating system (oil, natural gas etc) by placing the pipe in-line with the zones of the house. The furnace would not stay on as long or maybe not come on at all. This would cut down on the amount of fossil fuel used and it could also be an incentive for people to purchase photo voltaic panels while the technology is improved. Another use would be putting a unit right where hot water is needed like the kitchen or bathroom. This would cut down on the amount of piping needed and eliminate the need for a hot water tank.

The picture above is a suggestion for how future houses can be built to use photo voltaic panels. The house would be built with a chase from the roof to the basement. The chase would have duct for a forced hot water system where multiple sources of heat can be used with multiple heat ex-changers for different types of sources. Part of the chase would hold the wires from the panels on the roof. Each floor would have shelves that hold batteries that charge while on the shelf. If someone wanted to run something (laptop, coffee pot etc) they would take a battery off the shelf, use it, then put it back. It really wouldn't be much different from the days when you had to fill a lamp with kerosene. During the day when people are at work the batteries charge. At night they are used. The house can be kept warm during the day with the panels. There would be no need to put wires in the walls except for things like refrigerator, TV, or stove.

Super capacitors could also be used to store energy at night. They are designed to discharge quickly but they don't have to. Current limiting resistors can be placed in series. They're cheaper than batteries and will last longer.

If a house is heated by hot water you could set up an array of alternatives with a bank of heat ex-changers. Heat ex-changers come in different options. Water to water. Electricity to water. Air to water. (I think ??) You could have a traditional fossil fuel furnace along with a wood stove and solar panels and have a computer decide which is best at any given time.

Any light bulb produces a lot of heat. Fluorescent lights are no different. Fluorescent lights are used extensively in large buildings and strip malls. They are used along with suspended ceilings. Many fit into the same space as 1 tile. Suspended ceilings are heat sieves. They provide absolutely no insulation and waste more money for small businesses than anything else. Small businesses in strip malls should build their ceilings out of the same material as the walls and insulate them very heavily. I mean 2 X 6 's and sheet rock with fiberglass insulation. Along with this they could use radiant lights to heat the space. Radiant lights would be built in such a way as to transfer the heat generated by the bulbs to the side then have a fan blow it into the room.