EEVblog #1025 - Minute Physics + Bill Nye Promoting Rayton Solar - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 20, 2017, 01:41:15 pm
content: A response to Minute Physics's latest video promoting the Rayton Solar equity crowd funding campaign.Dave looks at Rayton Solar and it's investment risk and practical viability and asks the question, should Minute Physics have promoted this? And they roped in Bill Nye too!Let me know what you think, did Minute Physics cross a line in doing a paid promotion of a risky commercial equity crowd funding campaign?Analysis on the equity crowd funding campaign:https://rationalexuberancesite.wordpress.com/2017/05/14/rayton-solar-a-story-about-bill-nye-particle-accelerators-and-greed/They spent $330K on marketing in the 6 months! and only $72k on R&D.The original Minute Physics Rayton Solar video:

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 20, 2017, 04:18:57 pm
content: Bill Nye sold out long time ago. His credibility is basically 0 in my eyes. It is actually negative, since I'm cautious and looking for a catch any time he promotes something.I'm not too happy about the way it was disclosed in Minute Physics video either. I'd much rather see a disclosure at the beginning of a video, so I don't have to watch the whole ad, or at least have the right attitude watching it.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 20, 2017, 08:56:20 pm
content: Different question: how to disable bass-boost on Youtube videos? I noticed Youtube adds an enormous amount of bass-boost to the videos making them annoying to listen to.

author: smashIt
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 20, 2017, 09:43:43 pm
content: put a mirror behind the wafer and use both sides of the solar cell...

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 20, 2017, 11:19:02 pm
content: So much for 24% efficiency

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 20, 2017, 11:43:11 pm
content: Quote from: wilfred on September 20, 2017, 11:19:35 pmEvery potential investor needs to read this:https://rationalexuberancesite.wordpress.com/2017/05/14/rayton-solar-a-story-about-bill-nye-particle-accelerators-and-greed/

author: bitwelder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2017, 04:50:52 am
content: Not only while Dave prepared this video the raised fund grew by 1M$ (7272797.20 -> 8275600.48), but the investor number grew only by 7 units (4128 -> 4135).BTW is the published number for the funding calculated after fees and such, or is there some investor that put hundreds of thousands of dollars... and a few cents?

author: Kleinstein
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2017, 03:25:04 pm
content: Of those 7 investors there is at least one with a deep pocket. The odd cents could come from a second smaller investor or from interments in other currency.The up to 24 % Efficiency claim is odd. Conventional SI cells can reach about that level in lab samples - so it is credible this might be possible in the future. Normally for crystalline Si one needs a certain thickness to absorb enough of the IR light - so something around 100 µm is considered about the needed thickness due to the not so good absorption of IR light. With only 3 µm of silicon, I would not expect it to be a challenge to reach 15 %. It might work with light trapping if the modules are sun following (or under the nominal test conditions), but no way if the light comes under a different angle.To me is really smells like American scientists discovered .... type claims: we don't know, but we think not many can prove we are wrong.

author: Tek_TDS220
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2017, 07:46:17 pm
content: Careful regarding the 60% savings, Dave. There are a lot of ways to measure 'manufacturing cost'. The table you showed included depreciation, but this is not always included (even though it should be). Plus they might be talking about a bare panel, not a module.I agree it sounds completely bogus - I'd like to see their calculations.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 22, 2017, 03:35:05 am
content: My view for products that claim to be cheaper for a given spec are quite simple: I believe them when I can buy them for the price they claim and they deliver what they claim to deliver.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 22, 2017, 11:32:17 pm
content: And it looks like another big Youtube channel is going to do a promo video

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 22, 2017, 11:37:26 pm
content: Oh, well. I only watch 1/10 of TIFO videos, so this one would be easy to skip.It is also strange to me that they can't raise the money using a conventional "scam your closest venture investor" scheme. They are not asking a lot, stupid juice press managed to get 10x more. This must be such an obvious fail to professional investors, that they are not biting.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 22, 2017, 11:56:25 pm
content: Quote from: ataradov on September 22, 2017, 11:37:26 pmMaybe they just suck at pitch decks?What they do seem good at is wooing prominent personalities to do promos. Not hard when you throw money at them I guess, and the tech is pretty cool sounding.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 23, 2017, 12:35:04 am
content: Quote from: bitwelder on September 21, 2017, 04:50:52 amNow up to $9,550,988 but investors have dropped to 3,952

author: filssavi
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2017, 01:28:00 am
content: No one ever addressed the elephant in the room...This process will be horribly slow, I mean for every cell you have to first expose the wafer in a ion implantation setup, then you have to move it to an oven, bake and repeatYou might be able to build the oven ina custom implantation machine (and this will cost you much much more than 50M$) but it is still a horrendously complex system and I'm not so sure the silicon saving is enough to ofsett the costsPS the video shows implanted ion just magically appearing where they need to but that is a lie, they are shot there, so the crystalline structure of the silicon they pass through is highly damaged requiring a careful high temperature annealing to get it usable again

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2017, 02:22:57 am
content: Quote from: ataradov on September 22, 2017, 11:37:26 pmOr they simply don't want to work with the usual venture capital types. There is areasonthat people who have actual experience of working with venture capitalists call them vulture capitalists.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 23, 2017, 03:29:19 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on September 23, 2017, 12:35:04 amThere's only one answer .... that "shares" (even though they don't exist yet) are being bought out!!!... or maybe there's some "creative accounting" going on..... or the numbers are a fudge.

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2017, 12:21:49 pm
content: Is there any advantage to cutting the silicon exactly along a molecular shear line (which this process seems to do)? I assume an ordinary saw can't do that.Could you gain a couple of percentage points in efficiency by doing that?

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2017, 12:31:35 pm
content: Not really, they just are making thinner cells, and saving on the cost of the most common element on earth aside from aluminium. The wafers are already sliced on a near atomic layer thickness, so this only makes them thinner in final production, at the expense of making them a little more fragile than before.

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2017, 12:46:56 pm
content: Quote from: SeanB on September 23, 2017, 12:31:35 pmThe raw element may be abundant but growing perfect crystals using it isn't cheap.(and neither is extracting aluminium)

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2017, 03:42:09 pm
content: True, but most of the cost of the material is energy, not the lack of material. IIRC the silicon is not the major cost of a panel, but a fair amount non the less, and the way they are doing it is a little more expensive than simply making more silicon, and recycling the powder from the cutting the raw silicon somewhere in the process to repurify it and use it to grow more crystals is probably already done. Not exactly cheap to build and maintain a large proton beam generator, and likely to require a lot more power in use than the silicon foundry.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 23, 2017, 04:43:21 pm
content: Silicon is basically a component of sand (silicon dioxide) and a very cheap material. The cost is in making it pure enough for electronics use, then drawing it into a monocrystalline ingot. So, wastage of material is not in itself significant, but the more wafers you can get out of an ingot the better you utilise the energy and time expended on making the ingot.If the slicing process uses more energy and takes more time than to make the ingot, then it is a negative gain, though. In that case you would be better just to make more ingots and accept the wastage of sawing them up.Thus, it differs from a situation where you are using an inherently costly material such as gold, where material wastage is the key issue. Here it isn't.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 29, 2017, 03:58:14 am
content: Today I Found Out went through with their promotional video. As good and interesting as the video is, they still got flown to the US by Rayton solar (presumably at Raytons expense) and are linking to their investment page.

author: nano_edd
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 09, 2018, 03:58:11 pm
content: I don't know when this happened but Rayton have changed their approach and are now targeting Gallium Arsenide rather than silicon solar tech. Seems to be a better case for reducing cost and higher efficiencies, but odd after they based their whole funding campaign on silicon!!https://raytonsolar.com/solar-panel-technology/