Space-Based Solar Energy – Part 1 & 2
Peter Sage of Space Energy Inc. gives a fascinating and inspiring talk on Space Based Solar Power which shows why harvesting solar energy in space and wirelessly transmitting it back to earth will soon become the energy source of the very near future. More info at www.SpaceEnergy.com
Part 1
Part 2
Will Konarka’s solar plastic finally hit the big time with its new $23.8M?
By Camille Ricketts, Green.Venturebeat.com
Konarka, maker of a unique solar plastic, is an old company. In nine years, it has raised more than $150 million from the likes of Chevron, New Enterprise Associates, and the government. But it’s had little to show for it on the market. That could change with a new round of funding (its seventh) that closed today, totaling $23.8 million, according to a filing with the SEC.
Will the company finally have what it needs to step out of the shadows?
Money isn’t Konarka’s only strength. Its technology is actually pretty special too. Its patented photovoltaic material, called Power Plastic, is more efficient than even the best thin-film systems devised by the likes of First Solar and Solyndra. It is lightweight, portable, and perhaps most importantly, flexible — making it suitable for a host of interesting applications ranging from rooftops to apparel.
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Solar Energy Combats Poverty in Guatemala
A small solar panel lets Rufino Pablo Jeronimo, a Guatemalan farmer, run a tailoring business and keep in touch with his brother in America.
From Time.com
New Affordable Solar Energy eBooks Available Free
Bend, OR (PRWEB) December 31, 2009 — Go-Green-Solar-Energy.com is pleased to announce a new collection of Affordable Solar Energy eBooks and resource library which was designed to assist newcomers to solar energy in finding the information and resources they need to begin to use affordable solar energy in their homes.
“This information is designed to help people who wish to use solar energy at any level, whether it be to solar power their entire home, or by starting out with one of the many new solar appliances or portable solar devices now available. ” said M.S. Rochell, editor of the site.
This information is designed to help people who wish to use solar energy at any level, whether it be to solar power their entire home, or by starting out with one of the many new solar appliances.
“I was amazed to discover some of the new ways that solar energy is being used in solar appliances, solar lighting, solar ovens, and even solar backpacks and solar powered battery chargers! There are a lot of new options now available for anyone who wants to go green and use a cleaner and more renewable form of energy.”
As more people become aware of the advantage of renewable energy, new technologies are being developed that are making solar power more widespread and more affordable.
With today’s new technologies, creating a solar power home can range from a complete installation of solar heating, cooling and lighting systems for the home, to the simple use of solar appliances, solar ovens, hot water heaters, battery chargers and other devices.
The new Affordable Solar Energy Resource Library is being expanded each month with new information that includes:
* Solar Panel Basics
* Building a Passive Solar Water Heater
* Creating Your Own a Homemade Wind Generator
* How to Build an Electric Car
* A free online resource to find solar power grants
* Free and low cost grant writing software
* Additional options for financing your home solar systems
* Energy tax incentives for businesses
* A Free Solar Hot Air Do It Yourself Manual
* Where to meet and share information with other DIY solar energy enthusiasts
* Newest updates on affordable solar energy resources
About Go Green Solar Energy
Go-Green-Solar-Energy.com was founded in 2009 as an online educational resource to inspire and educate people about the benefits of using solar energy, and to assist in discovering affordable options for using solar power at home and in daily life.
“So many people see solar energy as too complicated or too expensive to use in their own lives.” said M.S. Rochell. “Our site hopes to demystify the technical complexities so that anyone who wants to use solar energy can get an idea of the possibilities, and then discover solutions that will work for their situation. ”
Currently the site includes information on a wide range of solar energy options including facts about solar energy, solar power advantages and disadvantages, where to find cheap solar power, solar panels, and the many DIY solar energy options. The editor of Go Green Solar Energy is M.S. Rochell, Ed.M, a writer, educator and avid environmental enthusiast.
SunEdison to Build 50MW of PV Solar for Xcel in New Mexico
SunEdison, a subsidiary of MEMC Electronic Materials (NYSE: WFR), and Xcel Energy’s (NYSE: XEL) regional operating company, Southwestern Public Service Company, announced a deal for five photovoltaic solar installations in New Mexico that will total 50 megawatts (MW) in generation capacity.
The five 10MW sites, to be located in Lea and Eddy counties in southeastern New Mexico, will comprise a utility-scale, ground-mount system that will be fully operational by the end of 2011. In total, the installations will generate enough power for more than 10,000 homes in its first full year of operation.
This total project will enable Xcel Energy to continue meeting New Mexico’s renewable portfolio standard, which requires that regulated electric utilities meet 15% of their electricity needs by 2015, and 20% by 2020, through renewable energy sources.
The five installations will be built, financed and maintained by SunEdison, under a 20-year solar power services agreement (SPSA) with Xcel Energy, which will buy the solar power generated by the plant.
This project eclipses the 8.22MW (DC) solar power system SunEdison activated for Xcel Energy in Alamosa, Colorado in December 2007.
SunEdison finances, installs and operates distributed power plants using proven photovoltaic technologies, delivering fully managed, predictably priced solar energy services for its commercial, government and utility customers.
Solar wafer maker MEMC acquired SunEdison in October 2009.
Taiwan unveils Asia’s biggest solar power plant
From Radio Taiwan International
Taiwan has unveiled what government officials are calling Asia’s biggest solar power plant. Officials say that currently Taiwan imports almost all of its energy and is seeking to tap into more renewable energy sources.
The two-hectare solar power plant began operations on Tuesday. It is located in Kaohsiung County, an area in southern Taiwan that enjoys year-round sunshine. Taiwan’s Atomic Energy Council says the plant is equipped with 141 solar panels, enough to power a thousand homes. Officials say that the plant would cut Taiwan’s carbon emissions by up to 700 tons every year.
Right now about 6 percent of Taiwan’s energy comes from renewable sources. A bill passed in June would boost the amount of energy coming from renewable sources in order to power 6.5 to 10 million homes over the next 20 years.
New York plugs in first electric car solar charging station
Off grid charging station to allow New York firm to recharge electric car using solar power
By Tom Young, BusinessGreen.com
Sustainable energy company Beautiful Earth Group has this week unveiled New York’s first solar-powered electric vehicle (EV) charging station, which will allow the firm to recharge its electric MINI E using zero carbon energy making it one of the few cars in the world to run exclusively on solar power.
The off-grid station features solar photovoltaic panels and has been built using recycled, decommissioned steel shipping containers.
“It never ceases to amaze me, when I get behind the wheel of this 95 mph sports car, that it doesn’t use a single drop of gasoline, and that all of its power comes from the solar energy we collect right here on the Brooklyn waterfront,” said Beautiful Earth’s president and chief executive Lex Heslin.
The company said that the charging station has a capacity of about six kilowatts and will also produce enough energy to power a small home. It added that an integrated battery bank will stores electricity and ensure that the system can provide power 24 hours a day.
The move comes in the same week as London Mayor Boris Johnson announced plans to install 25,000 electric car recharging points across the UK capital, including 22,500 charging points at workplaces.
Bhutan – On the Wings of Light Part 1
The Solar Electric Light Fund brings solar power technology to people in the developing world. Here we see a project that the group took on in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan using micro-credit and solar as a means to electrify rural communities.
For more, see Bhutan – On the Wings of Light Part 2
Glitter-sized solar photovoltaics produce competitive results
From Sandia.gov
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories scientists have developed tiny glitter-sized photovoltaic cells that could revolutionize the way solar energy is collected and used.
The tiny cells could turn a person into a walking solar battery charger if they were fastened to flexible substrates molded around unusual shapes, such as clothing.
The solar particles, fabricated of crystalline silicon, hold the potential for a variety of new applications. They are expected eventually to be less expensive and have greater efficiencies than current photovoltaic collectors that are pieced together with 6-inch- square solar wafers.
The cells are fabricated using microelectronic and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) techniques common to today’s electronic foundries.
Sandia lead investigator Greg Nielson said the research team has identified more than 20 benefits of scale for its microphotovoltaic cells. These include new applications, improved performance, potential for reduced costs and higher efficiencies.
“Eventually units could be mass-produced and wrapped around unusual shapes for building-integrated solar, tents and maybe even clothing,” he said. This would make it possible for hunters, hikers or military personnel in the field to recharge batteries for phones, cameras and other electronic devices as they walk or rest.
Even better, such microengineered panels could have circuits imprinted that would help perform other functions customarily left to large-scale construction with its attendant need for field construction design and permits.
Said Sandia field engineer Vipin Gupta, “Photovoltaic modules made from these microsized cells for the rooftops of homes and warehouses could have intelligent controls, inverters and even storage built in at the chip level. Such an integrated module could greatly simplify the cumbersome design, bid, permit and grid integration process that our solar technical assistance teams see in the field all the time.”
For large-scale power generation, said Sandia researcher Murat Okandan, “One of the biggest scale benefits is a significant reduction in manufacturing and installation costs compared with current PV techniques.”
Part of the potential cost reduction comes about because microcells require relatively little material to form well-controlled and highly efficient devices.
From 14 to 20 micrometers thick (a human hair is approximately 70 micrometers thick), they are 10 times thinner than conventional 6-inch-by-6-inch brick-sized cells, yet perform at about the same efficiency.
100 times less silicon generates same amount of electricity
“So they use 100 times less silicon to generate the same amount of electricity,” said Okandan. “Since they are much smaller and have fewer mechanical deformations for a given environment than the conventional cells, they may also be more reliable over the long term.”
Another manufacturing convenience is that the cells, because they are only hundreds of micrometers in diameter, can be fabricated from commercial wafers of any size, including today’s 300-millimeter (12-inch) diameter wafers and future 450-millimeter (18-inch) wafers. Further, if one cell proves defective in manufacture, the rest still can be harvested, while if a brick-sized unit goes bad, the entire wafer may be unusable. Also, brick-sized units fabricated larger than the conventional 6-inch-by-6-inch cross section to take advantage of larger wafer size would require thicker power lines to harvest the increased power, creating more cost and possibly shading the wafer. That problem does not exist with the small-cell approach and its individualized wiring.
Other unique features are available because the cells are so small. “The shade tolerance of our units to overhead obstructions is better than conventional PV panels,” said Nielson, “because portions of our units not in shade will keep sending out electricity where a partially shaded conventional panel may turn off entirely.”
Because flexible substrates can be easily fabricated, high-efficiency PV for ubiquitous solar power becomes more feasible, said Okandan.
A commercial move to microscale PV cells would be a dramatic change from conventional silicon PV modules composed of arrays of 6-inch-by-6-inch wafers. However, by bringing in techniques normally used in MEMS, electronics and the light-emitting diode (LED) industries (for additional work involving gallium arsenide instead of silicon), the change to small cells should be relatively straightforward, Gupta said.
Each cell is formed on silicon wafers, etched and then released inexpensively in hexagonal shapes, with electrical contacts prefabricated on each piece, by borrowing techniques from integrated circuits and MEMS.
Offering a run for their money to conventional large wafers of crystalline silicon, electricity presently can be harvested from the Sandia-created cells with 14.9 percent efficiency. Off-the-shelf commercial modules range from 13 to 20 percent efficient.
A widely used commercial tool called a pick-and-place machine — the current standard for the mass assembly of electronics — can place up to 130,000 pieces of glitter per hour at electrical contact points preestablished on the substrate; the placement takes place at cooler temperatures. The cost is approximately one-tenth of a cent per piece with the number of cells per module determined by the level of optical concentration and the size of the die, likely to be in the 10,000 to 50,000 cell per square meter range. An alternate technology, still at the lab-bench stage, involves self-assembly of the parts at even lower costs.
Solar concentrators — low-cost, prefabricated, optically efficient microlens arrays — can be placed directly over each glitter-sized cell to increase the number of photons arriving to be converted via the photovoltaic effect into electrons. The small cell size means that cheaper and more efficient short focal length microlens arrays can be fabricated for this purpose.
High-voltage output is possible directly from the modules because of the large number of cells in the array. This should reduce costs associated with wiring, due to reduced resistive losses at higher voltages.
Other possible applications for the technology include satellites and remote sensing.
The project combines expertise from Sandia’s Microsystems Center; Photovoltaics and Grid Integration Group; the Materials, Devices, and Energy Technologies Group; and the National Renewable Energy Lab’s Concentrating Photovoltaics Group.
Involved in the process, in addition to Nielson, Okandan and Gupta, are Jose Luis Cruz-Campa, Paul Resnick, Tammy Pluym, Peggy Clews, Carlos Sanchez, Bill Sweatt, Tony Lentine, Anton Filatov, Mike Sinclair, Mark Overberg, Jeff Nelson, Jennifer Granata, Craig Carmignani, Rick Kemp, Connie Stewart, Jonathan Wierer,
George Wang, Jerry Simmons, Jason Strauch, Judith Lavin and Mark Wanlass (NREL).
The work is supported by DOE’s Solar Energy Technology Program and Sandia’s Laboratory Directed Research & Development program, and has been presented at four technical conferences this year.
The ability of light to produce electrons, and thus electricity, has been known for more than a hundred years.
Sandia National Laboratories is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, an autonomous Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness.
Photo
http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/images/2009/pv_micro.jpg
The Green Rush Is On In China
by Louisa Lim, NPR.org
A new gold rush in China is actually a green rush — an urgent drive to develop green technologies. One group of Western companies, the Cleantech Initiative, suggests China’s market for renewable energy could eventually be worth as much as $500 billion to $1 trillion a year.
Now, Obama administration officials are warning that the U.S. could risk losing the race in green technologies.
“The future of sustainable energy is here.” The words are emblazoned on a wall at the world’s largest nongovernmental solar research center. It was built by an American company, Applied Materials, in the central Chinese city of Xian.
The cost of solar panels has dropped dramatically — 30 percent in the past year alone. One major reason is the “China price,” or the competitive advantages offered by Chinese manufacturing, with its cheap labor and economies of scale. China is now the world’s biggest producer of photovoltaic solar panels, making about 40 percent of all panels, according to the China Daily, mostly for export.
At Applied Materials’ $250 million research center in Xian, Elizabeth Mayo, a process engineer from Santa Clara, Calif., is working with local staff testing solar panels in the Sunfab panel reliability test lab. This simulates extreme weather conditions, and the company boasts that it is the world’s only laboratory capable of testing 61-square-feet solar panels.
Mayo is impressed by the facilities in Xian. “We don’t have facilities like this in the U.S. We don’t have anything of this magnitude,” Mayo says.
Catrina Ren, an enthusiastic English-speaking engineer, beams while showing a visitor another facility at the research center: vast empty hangars waiting for new pilot lines for crystalline silicon, and thin film solar technology to be installed. “I’m very proud I have chance to work here,” she says. “This is most advantaged tech center in world. I graduated from university only two years ago. I’m very proud.”
And Applied Materials is no doubt overjoyed to have Catrina and her former classmates on staff. Costs in China are much cheaper than in the U.S. An engineering graduate in Xian earns one-tenth of her American counterparts.
And the biggest draw is the eternal lure of China’s fabled market. Gang Zhou, general manager of Applied Materials Xian facility, says the company has decided to put its money where its customer base is.
“China is No. 1 producer of solar panels. That’s where our market is. The China new R&D center, that’s where we validate a lot of R&D work that is being carried out in U.S. and in Europe,” he says.
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