Good news on the tech front

I like to search around for interesting stories that are “under the radar” as they say, especially when they contain new information of a technical nature. I have been preaching a kind of technological optimism for a good while now, and am offering an update on a few new items.
Recently, my son (who is a bigger geek than I am) let me know about two new companies poised to change everything. The first is a top-secret outfit calling itself EESTOR. Nobody knew anything about them directly because they won’t talk to anybody, have made no announcements and shoot to kill when the press comes around. So how do we know anything? Two ways. One; they have suddenly received major funding from some very heavy-hitting adventure capitalist groups, and two; they have filed for a bunch of patents (again without making any announcement). Some enterprising people have reverse-engineered the patents. And a few people are dropping scintillating hints about this new technology.
Apparently they have developed a new energy storage device they are calling a hyper-condenser. Condensers store electricity, similar to batteries. A few of the companies claims follow:
They say the device will be able to store ten times the energy of a lead-acid battery of the same weight, at about an eighth the cost. They device will not degrade like a battery. It will “outlast any commercial device” it powers. They are not corrosive, explosive, or hazardous like chemical batteries (all other types of batteries are chemical) because it is a “solid state battery”.
They recharge in minutes instead of hours, and store a lot more than old tech batteries. This means we could have a battery-powered vehicle that would go 300 miles on a single charge, and recharge in four to six minutes, about the same amount of time it takes to fill your car with gas, go pee and buy a Big Gulp. How’s that for a breakthrough?
The application will make new storage devices possible for laptops and other electronics devices that will double the capacity at again, one-eighth the cost. And it will solve the overheating problem.
Another intriguing company is Nanosolar, out of Palo Alto California. They specialize in photovoltaic technology—converting sunlight directly to electrical energy. Traditional PV panels are made of silicon chips, are heavy, bulky and require a strong supporting frame. The best of them are close to 30 % efficiency. Nanosolar has developed a special “Ink” which is applied to rolling stock of a metal alloy much like a printing press works.
At Nanosolar, we have taken the highest-performance and most durable photovoltaic thin-film semiconductor, called CIGS (for "Copper Indium Gallium Diselenide"), and innovated on all seven critical areas necessary to reach a breakthrough cost reduction in solar cells, panels, and systems.
In other words, they spray on a thin film and the whole thing becomes a semi-conductor. The resulting flexible material can be applied anywhere, attached to virtually anything.
Based on our cell and product design innovations, Nanosolar is capable of delivering high-power solar panels with 5-10 times higher current than other thin-film solar panels on the market today.
This has enabled us to work with our partners and customers to dramatically reduce the balance-of-system cost involved in deploying solar electricity systems.
The amount of current that a panel can support is important because current capacity limitations negatively impact balance-of-system cost and thus power economics.

Photo voltaic technology has traditionally been limited by the cost-to-net energy output. This new film is a major breakthrough. It means they can manufacture the product at pennies on the dollar compared to silicon-based panels, bringing the cost down enough to make the inefficiency of solar collection a moot point. Right now they are 12 months behind on orders, and trying to increase production capacity. Most of their buyers are municipalities or even countries. Germany is buying enough to revolutionize their electrical generation industry.
Imagine the south-facing roof of every house in Las Vegas producing electricity all day long, at a cost-effective price, and making enough power to sell back to the utilities until the sun goes down, then using non-peak prices at night. I’m in. I have known for decades that all this would happen (it’s actually been happening fairly consistently all along if you were willing to look for it) and have been saying forever that when the cost-to-production ratio becomes reasonable, I will buy into the new technology. Smarter people than me told me so, I’m just spreading the good news.