Solar Laser: Possible Energy Source In Future prospect for future energy

[saint 0]

I am an engineering student and this is a project I am working on now. I conceived the idea a couple of years ago and the project is finally getting some headway now. My paper has received some very encouraging responses from international conferences and is pending for publication in IEE. I am happy to share it here, and I will try to give the basic idea in the simplest way possible, keeping out technical overtures.Here we go..With the world exhausting its current reserve of fossil fuels at an astronomical speed at one hand, but growing even more energy hungry at the other hand..we earthlings as a civilisation have to soon look for alternative sources of energy.Nuclear power as we all know is a double edged sword. The If's and Buts's are simply too scary.The best option is to develop natural renewable sources of energy and our safe bet is to tap into the sun.But Solar power technology has its big limitations today in terms of productivity. Two main limiting factors are : 1. Takes a long long time to charge up solar cells. 2. The output power is very low. The amount of power producing capability is still very low. So as you can see these two inter-twined reasons result in low effectiveness and productivity.One magical bullet that can hit the both the targets at a single shot is what I call SOLASER- to convert Solar Rays to LASER beams before feeding into the solar cells. As you may all know - LASER is coherent, monochromatic, and directional..high power LASER beams can 'Zap' you in a puff! Testing by feeding LASER into Solar Cells , productivity improved leaps and bounds...it reaches a new level of capability. It gives us just the power we want!But converting solar rays to LASER is the catch. As you may know LASER doesnot occur naturally. It is not natural light. It is created artificially by stimulated emission. My project tries to achieve just that through an indegenously developed system. Its not perfected yet..I dont get out true LASER..but its as close as we can get. You may be bemused because its embedded in our public consciousness that we can afterall 'concentrate' solar rays quite easliy by using a convex lens and burn up a paper. Well that's exactly what the latest solar cells do..the solar cells have a plate of convex lens attached on its top , to concentrate the rays better. The increase in productivity through this has been considerable - but does not give us the 'power' we seek. Another exciting avenue for future of energy is Fuel Cells. But fuel cells too are plagued by limitations very similar to Solar power. Same goes with Wind power.True LASER from Solar light is a far call off. But SOLASER might just be the future .Pardon me for sounding over ambitious..but i guess one got to be so to make it through.Cheers!

[sccrnlaxdude92 0]

THAT IS AWESOME!!!!!

[dontmaimyourself 0]

No theres nothing wrong with being ambitious, also if I may congratulate you on your idea (which to be honest, is a very simple one I'm surprised no one else has thought of it before). I must also admit that I have a very limited knowledge of how LASER's, but I sincerly hope that you manage to perfect this technique and further refine it so that it can be used to provide a large protion of the power we need.

[saint 0]

many many thanks sccrnlaxdude92 and specially dontmaimyourself..i feel greatly energised and more motivated now! thanks!

[AlanDS 0]

The thing which we use in Lasers are metals which is ready to keep oscillating its electrons i.e. produce photons. But the raw material in SOLASER is mere sunlight. What do you expect from sunlight?It will be great if you make it a bit clear.Thanks

Edited April 24, 2006 by AlanDS (see edit history)

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

So let me get this straight... You want to convert sunlight into a laser beam, and then shine that laser beam onto a solar cell?The problem is that, unless you use a gigantic mirror system to focus more sunlight than would normally hit the solar cell into the laser beam (for example, cover a field with an intricate mirror system that would focus a few acres-worth of sunlight into a single beam that would hit the solar cell), it would make no difference if you convert the sunlight to laser light before shining it on the solar cell, since it is still using the same amount of energy, and according to the First Law of Thermodynamics, energy can be neither created nor destroyed, so you wouldn't get any extra energy simply from converting the energy, and since the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that any conversion of energy will result in a loss of useable energy in the form of heat, you would end up with less energy being converted from light into electricity through to solar cells after converting the sunlight to laserlight than you would if you would simply shine the sunlight onto the solar panel directly.

[bane 0]

Cool...

[silverkaiser 0]

Wow @@" Big project ya . i hope u can do it, then share the knowledge with us. seems like i have the call u professor saint . eh...can solar laser convert to super laser that can destroy even a meteoroid. haha...just wondering can o not mayb i watch too many movie and gets this idea ^ .^

[matto 0]

That is a brilliant idea! I'm glad there are people out there like you trying hard to fix this horrible problem.But, like you said, the hard thing is turning regular light rays to LASER. As far as doing that without using energy, I haven't a clue, but the idea has great merit and i want to commend you for coming up with it. And thank you, for helping to confront Global Warming and partially Dimming.

[silverkaiser 0]

hem.......i think might be gravity is the main point to create a such powerful solar . am i right????

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

Um... no. No, no, and no.This is NOT a superb idea. If someone would read my post, I explained that the conversion process from regular light to a laser would only use up energy, leaving you with less than you had to begin with.

[Thelaw 0]

This theory is a very intriging statement. I think it would be possible to in the near future with us breaking into Laser Eye Surgery and all. Before peopel thought they would never be able to control the eyes, Now we can almost rewrite the eyes. Just think that we will be able to do alot with Solar laser Optics as an energy source. I think its the way of the future. Great job man!

[Alexius 0]

Your idea is interesting but there are much limitations in it as there are in any of those other energy sources you had described.Firstly, to convert solar energy into a concentrate beam would require a tremendous amount of energy, as someone earlier had stated. The ratio between the energy output and energy input might actually be overbalanced towards the input energy side, and thus would mean worthless energy output that would require too much resources and energy to create any worthwhile amount of energy.Secondly, to actually produce any worthwhile amount would require a giant apparatus system. This would require a great amount of resources that would also require a location relatively safe enough for concentrated energy waves that are carrying as much energy as gamma rays, if your thoughts on lasers zapping people are true. The solar cells you'd have to create would have to be strong enough to take this energy in; where will this indestructable material come from?Just some thoughts.-Alex

[arcalypse 0]

No theres nothing wrong with being ambitious, also if I may congratulate you on your idea (which to be honest, is a very simple one I'm surprised no one else has thought of it before). I must also admit that I have a very limited knowledge of how LASER's, but I sincerly hope that you manage to perfect this technique and further refine it so that it can be used to provide a large protion of the power we need.I agree with this. I think it's a good idea.

[Laos 0]

It seems it would workbut the energy required to have an effective laser is a lot, thus will take hours of energy collection just to have the laser run for a few seconds