When you think of solar energy, you probably think of flat plates on rooftops. A company called WAVJA wants you to think of spheres. The little spheres, ranging from one to four inches across, can convert light into electricity, and the company claims they have 7.5 times the output of traditional solar panels and could later produce even more. Unfortunately, the video below doesn’t have a great deal of detail to back up the claims.
Some scenes in the video are clearly forward-looking. However, the so-called photon energy system appears to be powering a variety of real devices. It’s difficult to assess some of the claims. For example, the video claims 60 times the output of a similar-sized panel. But you’d hardly expect much from a tiny 4-inch solar panel.
What do you think? Do they really have layers of exotic material? If we were going to bet, we’d bet these claims are a bit of hyperbole. Then again, who knows? We’ll be watching to see what technical details emerge. We have to admit that quotes like this from their website don’t make us especially hopeful:
…relies on the use of multiple layers of materials and special spheres to introduce sunlight and generate a significant amount of luminosity, which is then transformed into electricity using a silicon conductor module…
There are ways to make solar technology more efficient. But we do see a lot of solar energy claims that are — well — inflated.
Since when does HaD writes articles on clearly scam/fake things? What’s next, free energy generators?
HaD could do with a crowdsourced debunking format, but they’re probably not at liberty to call it that straight away.
Getting weird PIR sensor dome vibes from these spheres, an inferior way to do CPV. Not impressed.
According to a 2021 NYTimes article, the CEO/Founder, then working as a game designer in Beijing, was arrested in 2016 and detained for 3 years for buying toy guns on Taobao to use as game art references.
Pretty remarkable comeback to get out of prison and five years later be running a company developing a revolutionary power generation technology.
/s
Sounds legit…:-)
Makes you wonder what really happened because combining NYTimes with the oddness of the story as well as China being involved means.. well, a certain lack of reliability.
But I think we can agree that we trust this solar thing even less :)
Yep, the B.S. detector is pegged to 11 on this one.
Also his Facebook page says he studied motion picture theory. He has a bunch of companies with no info as to what they even do, and his current Wavja promotes themselves selling services to help other companies which sounds scammy because if they’ve made the breakthroughs they claim they would have zero reason to be trying to get hired to help others
Such things SHOULD be posted on hackaday
Just so that we can rip it to pieces
Agree!
But, flying cars! Take my money now!
B^)
Its garbage like this that made me unsubscribe to IFLS several years back.
The chances of my HOA letting me cover my roof with silly white balls is when lower than the chance of these things actually working.
Also, come on, scammer guys, they’re WHITE. That means light is being actively reflected, not absorbed. At least try to make this remotely believable.
And, while I didn’t look at the YouTube video since I don’t want to raise their view count, from the screenshot, they would appear to be *glowing*?
Just, why?
Why would you mention something like this on this site. I thought we were technical here
Soooo, this means I can get my TIE fighter in a few months?
Yes…,, you can run by my house with $$$ :)
SCAM this is a SCAM
You know this is total BS right. Its a SCAM. WHY is hackaday prompting a SCAM.
SCAM this is a SCAM
So what exactly are you saying?
– Traditional solar cell: ~23% efficiency
– Theoretical physical limit: ~41% efficiency
– This thing: 7.5 x 23% = 172.5%
Wow. That’s > 100%. Wooop wooop wooop, so amazing. Finally free energy!!!!111
I think we should connect it in series with a orgon generator. That way it might even exceed the energy output of cold fusion.
My first thought was that this might be a solar concentrator design – item it focuses light to perhaps 10x intensity, and the (tiny) solar modules getting that intensity produce 7.5x as much power as a normal module of that size would with 1x solar intensity…
Lenses can in theory be significantly cheaper than PV modules (especially more fancy multi junction ones), so concentrator designs could deliver more power per silicon area and per money…
Also, your “physical limit” seems too low – a theoretically optimal heat engine between a radiation field of ~6000K and our environment at ~300K should have an optimal efficiency of ~0.95, and Wikipedia quotes a limit for semiconductor based cells with arbitrarily many junctions of almost 0.87
The theoretical efficiency of a single junction photocell is based on the wavelength corresponding to the output voltage being converted with 100% efficiency, longer wavelengths not being converted at all, and shorter wavelengths having their excess energy wasted.
The coupling between the sun and a photocell is not a heat engine; Carnot’s law doesn’t apply.
Actually it is. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limit .
7.5 times more betterer then regular solar panels which have an efficiency of around 18%? That is an efficiency of 135% That’s very impressive.
Thatโs what I was thinking. Existing panels are chasing efficiency gains of 10-20%. To claim a gain of 750% and yet have to post fluff videos to generate buzz smells like a scam.
Smells definitely like an oily snake slithered into the room.
Chandler Bing: Could this BE any more fake?
“7.5 times more betterer then regular solar panels”
The reason this doesn’t make sense to you is that you’re thinking in the wrong units. You’re assuming these devices produce 7.5 times more energy.
Maybe the real magic here is that, once you get a bunch of green-energy-mandate government bureacrats on board, with government grants, loans, and similar corporate welfare, this technology enables you to grift 7.5 times as much money.
The first word that came to my mind after reading this article was “Solyndra.” The first word that came to my mind after watching the video was “turboencabulator.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag&pp=ygUQVHVyYm9lbmNhYnVsYXRvcg%3D%3D
I was just thinking that. Solyndra all over again lol
That’s not half as effective at synchronizing cardinal grammeters. They’re not even taking advantage of capacitive duractance!
Plus, those spheres are clearly made of plastic, without a trace of prefamulated amulite.
Bah!
Depends on what you are measuring – lensing and light capture methods often do result in a panel that is across a day substantially better in power output as it is performing better while the light is very off axis – something fixed panels don’t handle well at all. Doesn’t mean the cell underneath is any more efficient at turning photon to electrons under the same conditions, just that the lens has created better conditions for that cell on average over the sampling window they used.
That said this claim does sound on the verge of entirely implausible, or at least very selective bias in the setup of the comparisons. You need proper data to draw any conclusions…
The most generous I could be to the company is that they could be saying that you can take a *tiny* panel (way smaller than the spheres), put the globes on top of it, and their power output goes up by 7.5x or whatever on average (dealing with the off-axis issue like you’re saying). In which case if the globes are cheap enough, tiny panel + globes could fit into a cost/power space between a full-sized fixed panel and a full-sized motorized one.
Again, that’s being exceptionally generous, and even *if* that’s the case, it’s probably a narrow win in only a few cases. Light capture with objects like that won’t scale to larger globe sizes because the optical losses grow (square/cube).
Oh I agree entirely. Kind of what I expect their numbers are supposed to be.
Though who knows, its possible those spheres are really really trick optically and do actually allow for much more performance as you are capturing the full spectrum from any angle rather effectively and then efficiently directing each wavelength to an optimised receiver of that wavelength or something. Seems like this is most likely snake oil, but from what is presented all you can really say is very unconvinced.
Do you know how I know they’re not doing that?
Because they’re not black.
Yeah, when I heard that I was like, okay, what bull#$!++ can you do to generate this?
There’s only one thing I can think of: it’s a very tiny, inefficient photodiode inside and the focusing spheres increase *its* power by that much. Obviously a useless number, but hey marketing!
Sad
It’s when they used the PES to power the lights that charged the PES that I though “overunity” and tried not to throw up.
Get a reputable scientist in the field to sign an NDA and bring them onto the board, provided they get to tear the things apart and test the claims to their own satisfaction first.
It you will excuse the bad pun, on the surface, it doesn’t look like the absorb as much light energy as traditional solar panels…
If you do the math they are claiming to produce more energy than the light actually has.
Which is why I challenge them to being in a proper expert. Just one…
The scientist should require the **company** to sign the NDA, so they don’t promote the scientist’s involvement, which could end up giving the company undeserved credibility.
On reflection, I think you’re probably right.
My general point still stands though, if they can’t find reputable people to back their claims after a comprehensive set of tests, then it’s obviously a sham.
They need to add a system where people can flag content. This is clearly a scam.
Next on HaD: How to bag yourself a rich Nigerian prince who will give you lots of money for arranging a small business matter for him.
It seams the commenting system is broken My comments trying to warn people this is a scam are not getting through
Username checks out.
Don’t worry, most Hackaday readers are smart enough to spot charlatans and hucksters. The appearance of an article on Hackaday is not necessarily an endorsement. In this case it is drawing attention to the existence of this thing and inviting informed comment.
I’m pretty skeptical myself.
Most?
Citation needed.
There are some really credulous, number challenged people on here lately.
Laws of physics, laws of shmisics.
I’d qager they basically put a magnifying glass over a small solar panel. The 7,5x “gain” is just from the fact that the small panel sees 20x light or something aimilar.
Iirc I even saw some tech YouTuber (maybw mike) show a panel for basically that purpose. It saves on silicon but the optics are not cost effective (yet?)…
“Itโs difficult to assess some of the claims. For example, the video claims 60 times the output of a similar-sized panel”
is it really? or is it just hard to hear anything while the scam and bullshit alerts or going off simultaniously?
will the next HaD article feature the generosity of a nigerian prince?
does the person at HaD that put this nonsense up realize there is actual physics in converting light to power, and that there are actual limits to efficiency etc? And that while extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, silly claims are just meant to be laughed at?
Next they will have an article, not on april 1, about someone has a FTL car working, and they are just waiting on more details..
This is the wrong audience for that type of stuff, unless you are trying to be funny.
Can I get that FTL car now or do I have to wait until April1?
On April 1st I will drive it and arrive at your doorstep yesterday. It will require some 1.21 jigowatts though. But these things are the perfect way to source all that. Why wait until April 1st? They are on backorder now.
My advice would be to nuke this article, and pass it off as a boo-boo from an editor pulling an all-nighter. Don’t be stubborn, mistakes happen.
Go re-read the article? Every paragraph includes a “this looks like a scam” in Al’s possibly too-subtle tone.
“Unfortunately, the video below doesnโt have a great deal of detail to back up the claims.”
“Itโs difficult to assess some of the claims.”
“What do you think? Do they really have layers of exotic material? If we were going to bet, weโd bet these claims are a bit of hyperbole.”
“We have to admit that quotes like this from their website donโt make us especially hopeful:”…
I’ll absolutely agree that Al was perhaps being too cautious in his desire to not get us sued for libel, but I don’t think there’s any way to read this write-up as an endorsement, rather the opposite.
Al could have at least doing some basic journalistic work, like do a Google search of the founder and find out he was in jail a few years ago, or mention the bullshit in their video more clearly, like that they talk about a “power meter”, which is just a multimeter and they only measured voltages. It is not difficult to assess the claims, it is impossible, because the patent and product is a scam. Here is a debunk video from EEVblog:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K982KPQMksQ
[warning sarcasm below]
I’ve watched the video and all I can think is: use flashlight to charge powerbank, use powerbank to charge phone and flashlight, this is awesome, so the article of perpetual motion posted here on hackaday was wrong after all, it is possible. Wow, what great time to live in, were saved!
[end of sarcasm]
Okay, we have “Report comment” buttons to deal with abuse and spammers in the comments.
Where’s the “Report article” button? Because someone has clearly hijacked Al’s account and is using it to push blatantly obvious scams.
+1
Scam
They are not 7.5X as efficient, they are 6.2X [sarcasm]. Simple math– 1/2 of a sphere has ~6.2X the surface area of a flat square of the same size. (This is assuming that same amount of light hits every bit of that 1/2 sphere as hits the square which of course would not be the case for a directional light source such as the sun.)
Hackaday seems to leave some serious engineering path.
The EEVblog is more profound in investigating fake solar power cells:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1nWAUZVTPw
Given a typical panel is a bit over 20% efficient, these devices are 150% efficient. The downside is this makes the Sun get dimmer over time and eventually go black.
but that could end global warming!
Pretty sure these are relying in part on zero point energy.
I understand from sources that theyโll shortly be powering aerocars and flying-taxi drones all over China.
For those who doubt this, I have also heard that Crown Sterling is planning a major cash infusion.
Ok. Seriously. Please pull down this article.
I went through the website and this isnโt even a slightly convincing fraud.
If this isnโt actually some sort of satirical hoax to draw in media suckers and then laugh at them like some sort of performance art, then itโs one of the most poorly designed attempts at fraud Iโve seen.
Seriously, I get spam notices for free crypto that are more convincing.
Iโm pretty sure the solar โdomesโ are plastic cosmetic jars โ https://www.cosmopacks.com/product-item/ball-shaped-cosmetic-acrylic-cream-jar-container/
The videos are laughable – like high school level stuff and their claims and dialogue are so silly I really wonder if this is all an elaborate stunt.
The thing is, given what people are willing to believe maybe not.
But it is soooooo bad a site.
But when they IPO, I want to be the first to buy shares!
(Of popcorn!)
B^)
I for one, believe this blog post is apropos for Hackaday.
When non-Hackaday people do a web search about this PES (POS?) this blog, including comments, it may serve a greater good by informing them of the hyperbole and shady math the video contains.
This has the credibility of an Indian shitcoin until more info is available
You missed April fools day guys.
STEORN 2.0
Reminds me of the solar spin cell sales pitch but way less info. Solar spins cells were a big scam indeed. Heating these cells would be an issue so I think that’s why there’s s hole at the top. Perhaps a fan is needed to keep the cells cool enough to keep there performance as that dome would I’m guessing trap heat. The use of fans would make it less efficent. I dont buy the numbers there giving, just sounds to good to be true with the weakest demo I’ve scene. Just looks like a bunch of ai pics and maybe ai came up with idea too. Hope I’m wrong
HAD absolutely should run these sorts of articles. I always enjoy the debunking in the comments
Agree!
Why are you all talking about how 7.5x is unrealistic??
Did ya miss the next section talking about 60 times the output, this is clearly a bigger number.
( In fact, it’s easy big enough that if you plug in a bulb and direct it towards the panel, you get free energy!) ( Don’t use a led bulb since you might create a black hole!)
The Shockley-Queisser Limit says nope, it is a fraud.
Looks like A.I. Williams (L.L.M.) is trying to learn about reactions to controversial themes.
HaD is hacking themselves.
Just another controversial theory:)
Why have they not issued a retraction for this clearly dubious fraud?
This article is a complete waste of your readers’ valuable time, and is FAR below what I believe HaD to hold as standards. Please don’t post obvious scams like this again.
If it sounds too good to be true, it most absolutely certainly is. How this utter garbage made it to HaD I have no idea. April 1 was 3 months ago.
You must be new here.
When I saw the numbers my BS detector exploded. Physics just doesn’t support their claims.
This is still published? Was someone paid to plant this story?
Oh watch the video it gets even better. there they claim 7.5 the output and over 200x the efficiency.
Why is this still up?
Do hackaday not care about their reputation at all?
Have fun! Dave Jones (EEVBlog) just created a more efficient one :p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4WQhOVlOyA
Honestly this some shameful shit HaD posting this. EEVBlog just bollocked the project and HaD for publishing such a blatant scam. it’s not Al Williams’ fault either, HaD not paying writers and researchers more than a song for years leads to BS filler articles like this.
I normally hate “this is not a real hack” “HaD is dead” doom and gloom comments on here, but I been visiting near daily HaD for easily over a decade and this is really a new low.