Spray-On Solar Panels - no, really

Scientists at the university of Texas, Austin have invented nanoparticle inks that can be sprayed on and function as photovoltaic cells. According to Matthew Panthani, a doctoral student working on the project, the team has made "a solution of these nanocrystals...[that can be] sprayed onto a subtrate" such as the sun facing side of a roof. The team developed inks that are made up of copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS), that are 10,000 times thinner than a strand of hair.

The solar cell prototypes they've developed can convert up to 1% of the sunlight that hits the cells into electricity - their end goal is to achieve a 10% conversion rate. Furthermore, the CIGS solution is semi transparent, leading some of the scientists to conclude that the material could even be used in the production of windows so that the windows could double as solar cells.

Doing some preliminary research through the web, I almost literally stumbled upon a few other interesting technologies that are being developed :

New Energy Technologies (Symbol : NENE) announced back in May that they had developed a tinted transparent glass they have named SolarWindow, capable of generating electricity by coating glass with the world's smallest organic solar cells. For those of use geeks out there, New Energy Technologies uses an "organic solar array, which achieves transparency through the creative use of conducting polymers" (link to study here). The biggest breakthrough in this technology is its ability to generate electricity not only from the visible light spectrum (sun produced light), but also through artificial light.

Formula 1 cars have been able to translate the kinetic energy produced when braking into additional energy for some time now. What is new, however, is the application of this technology to roads. In Gloucester, U.K., a Sainsbury store has installed kinetic plates which get pushed down every time a vehicle passes over them, which then moves hydraulic pipes that drive a generated. These plates can generate up to 30kw of energy an hour, which is more than enough to power Sainsbury's checkout registers.

The most interesting aspect of the two latter technologies is their ability to "recycle" energy that's already been expended. I believe the key to technological breakthroughs in the energy space lie in making the use of our energy more efficient while simultaneously being able to recycle the energy that is used. Imagine your laptop charged its battery the more you typed, by absorbing the kinetic energy released when you type. What if the interior of our homes were lined with nanoparticles that enabled them to absorb all of the artificial light emitted once the sun sets? What if the national highways in the United States were able to absorb the kinetic energy released by the millions of cars, trucks and buses going over them every day?

Related / Source Articles :
http://isiria.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/windows-that-can-generate-electric-energy-from-sunlight-and-artificial-lighting/

http://jrse.aip.org/jrsebh/v1/i1/p013101_s1

http://printsho.station193.com/php/wordpress/archives/2009/06/15/shoppers-cars-will-soon-be-able-to-power-supermarkets/

http://www.livescience.com/technology/090824-spray-on-solar-cells.html

Public + Private Transportation Hyrbrid = Priblic?

Image via Wikipedia

Like many people on this planet, I've always thought there'd be an easier way to get to and from the airport. Public transportation is all fine and good, but it doesn't really get you from the airport to where you're going. JFK tried to deal with this transportation issue by building the airtrain - a train that connected Queens and a NYC subway line to all of JFK's terminals. The problem with the airtrain is that if you're coming from the upper east side in Manhattan, you have to switch trains three times before you get to your terminal. If you travel like I do (read: excessive luggage) we're talking a major pain in the neck, shoulders, and biceps.

I always imagined planes could be reconfigured in such a way that they turn pseudo train cars. Take off / fold up the wings, build a tunnel, and have them drop you off under grand central in a special terminal. Even that idea, as eccentric as it is, doesn't solve the problem that the drop off location isn't convenient for everyone.


Turns out that a company based out of California has suggested a new airport shuttle system for the U.K. - http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ariel-schwartz/sustainability/skytrans-personal-magnetic-transporter-physical-version-Internet


Brilliant!

The future of public transportation is a hybrid of public and private transportation - it should enable you to customize a destination while still taking advantage of a public infrastructure.

A similar concept has been proposed with City Car - cars that fold into one another in the same way that shopping carts do and "stack". It would be a membership service, and "stacks" of these cars would be strategically placed in key locations in urban areas. The one way service would enable the driver to take the first car in line, and drive it one way to another "stack" where he would simply park the car and leave it for another driver.


Public Private - that's where it's at.

Some Interesting Links :
http://www.boston.com/cars/news/articles/2007/02/18/the_car_20/?p1=MEWell_Pos5
http://cities.media.mit.edu/projects/citycar.html

What's the future of PE?

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/whats-ahead-for-private-equity/

Interesting article a few days ago in the NYT on the future of Private Equity and what some recent studies are predicting. Through the Lauder Institute at Penn, we had the privilege of sitting down and meeting with some pretty important Private Equity fund managers, and all of them seem to be indicating the same strategy and reasoning:

1) Growth of portfolio companies through acquisitions. They're retrenching, and ensuring that the companies that they've already invested in continue to do well...and they're exploring a lot of M&A through their portfolio companies as the could benefit from growing their exisiting businesses and the synergies of merging them.

2) Cautious with new investments...They're still looking at opportunities that exist, but the bar has been set higher for their entry point. The fact that a company is "cheap" or trading at a good multiple is nowhere near being a sufficient justification for them to get involved.

3) Private Equity as a whole will evolve into adding more value to companies. Whereas the current split is probably 90-10 or 85-15 finance oriented versus strategy oriented, many of the managers have argued that is likely to switch. Strategy is increasingly important as they try to build value within their existing portfolio companies…and that isn’t done just by cutting costs, it’s by ensuring that their companies work more efficiently and better than their rivals. Instead of just hiring Bain to do the strategy piece of a transaction, they are looking to bring people on board within the fund itself that can manage that part of the transaction effectively.

This is good news, and will probably help change the way Private Equity is viewed in the world. If these funds start becoming intimately involved in ameliorating companies, (beyond just reducing their costs and increasing their multiples) I think you’ll find more people looking to work with PE funds. The days of easy credit and flipping companies based on financial ratios/leverage/multiples are long gone, and a new era of adding value and helping companies ameliorate themselves strategically has come.

Air Force 'Universal Translator' - FINALLY

Image by billypalooza via Flickr

The Air Force has finally contracted Northrop Grunman to equip a few jets with a "universal translator" system. This system will be designed to allow all personnel from multiple agencies, departmens of the government, and military forces, to seamlessly communicate with one another. An example of when such technology would be used is if a state department convoy carrying only cell phones and satellite phones were to be attacked in Iraq. This system would enable them to seamlessly call in for help, and communicate directly with the A-10 pilots that come in for close air support....

More importantly, I think this is an important and necessary step towards integrating all of the different networks and ways of communicating that exist in "civilian" life as well. One thing that struck me when I was studying to get my private pilot's license was the ammount of material focused on radio communication. Single engine planes carry two radio's at a minimum, both capable of tuning into two different frequencies. Depending on the airport, it may be necessary for the pilot to manage and manipulate 2 or 3 different frequencies at a time. This is an arduous task, considering the number of things that have to be done simultaneously during taxi, takeoff, approach and landing!

Furthermore frequencies are easy to botch as they're printed in size 3 Arial in a light magenta on maps. If you tune into the wrong frequency in the D.C. Airspace, this could spell for disaster, as you may never properly be authorized into the airspace. WE all know what happens then...F-16's and Blackhawks are mobilized to intercept the aircraft. The biggest irony here is that if the aircraft isn't tuned into the right frequency, the jets can't communicate with them in any way!

I'm a big fan of this system and hope that it rapidly gets adapted and put into use back stateside for us civilians!

Image via Wikipedia

Telemedicine - Where Are We?

Got home last night and had an interesting chat on Telemedicine with a good friend of mine who just finished med school. A team of university students in China developed a stethoscope that could record and transmit via SMS all of the information gathered on specific patients. The problem in China is that the doctors in very remote parts of the country aren't as well trained as those in urban area hospitals - the stethoscope would solve this problem by allowing hospitals to review the information give instructions to the doctors on the ground.

This piqued my curiosity, and thus I started doing some research into this - and it turns out that there are over a dozen universities actively researching how to integrate sensors, data gathering points and transmitters in clothing. This would allow for a doctor to perpetually monitor a patient, without either party wasting time travelling.

The opportunities for "outsourcing" doctors and delivering cheap efficient healthcare to everyone are boundless. A subscription service would be ideal I think -individuals who subsribe to the telemedicine service would be provided with a set of "monitoring" clothes that they could put on whenever they felt sick. The clothes would communicate all the necessary data points to doctors either via SMS, bluetooth, or internet to the doctors and nurses on standby. The medical teams would review the information and speak with the client to determine what is wrong and what they suggest. This service could have significant implications for the elderly who may need constant monitoring...


Pedro (the friend who I was chatting with) had an interesting reflection - this service would probably work best in the United States where there is room for private enterprise in Medicine. In Spain, a system such as this one would have more trouble starting up as universal healthcare has created a free dependency on doctors - there's no real need or demand for patients to save money.... also rules and regulations from country to country may also vary drastically....

Ideally, this service would link into google health, and the patient/client could enable certain people to access his/her data points. Family members looking to keep track of somebody would thus be able to do so better from a distance as well...

The one problem I've noted is that although there have been dozens of universities and private enterprises invested in developing wearable monitoring devices since 1995, few have actually launched any type of service of product that I know of. I wonder what's holding them up? I think the platform to interact with clients will be just as important as the wearability of the garments, maybe nobody's created a viable platform yet?

FIRST BLOG

So the pressure's on like donkey kong...On my quest to build an online identity, replete with "witty" tweets, facebook pictures, and a professional network on linkedin, I have decided to start a blog!

philipcortes.blogspot.com will act as a host and sounding board of what I read through google reader, and learn while getting my MBA....some posts may seem random at times, but I'll try to keep them focused on start ups and venture capital.

With that said, I hope you find some of it interesting, and choose to come back!

Philip