Solar panels a bit obsolete?

I've been thinking for a while of a way to channel the energy and heat absorbed from sunlight as what solar pannels do.

However, I came up with another idea of a type of solar energy collecting device that actualy could use the sunlight for a bit more potential than what it's used for right now.


Say if you had a dome, with a prism inside that dome that is constantly reflecting light inside of it. Half the dome on the outside however would be used to channel the light into the prism as mirrors are placed throughout the mechanism to reflect light at well. In the prism however could be small nerves made of carbon that could absorb the light and the heat and it could transfere to a energy storing mechanism that can be used for later.

Think of this device like a satelite dish, but instead, it absorbs light and concentrates it onto it and is constantly reflecting onto carbon nerves inside a prism-like device in the center of the dome to absorb more energy overtime than a solar pannel which reflects more light than it absorbs.

Dumb idea, but I like it.

I think there's already something like it... close to it anyway:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power

We need those Solar elevators ala Gundam 00, without the fighting of course..

Your key point seems hazy. Are you proposing a mechanism to internally reflect light in order to maximize the proportion that is absorbed?

I don't really think lack of light is the issue. There's plenty of light. It's just that solar cells are expensive to produce in relation to the amount of power they produce.
Then there's this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_photovoltaics

probably would cost a lot more than what solar panels already cost. Unless it can truly harness the power of all the light energy and heat energy, it would not be cost effective.

Been a while since I checked it out, but from what I can remember, solar only convert 2% of its absorbed energy. Adding silver to the compound increases that threshold, tho, for how much I cant remember.

There is an interesting project calls sea solar power http://www.seasolarpower.com/, which seems to be very promising. It is based on the concept that water absorbs heat, and by using surface water with water deep deep below the sea, you would get a difference in temperature which gets converted to power.

By products are deep water and desalinated water.

This whole project seems to have little negative side effects, which is quite interesting as there're lots of gains.