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| SOLAR ENERGY AND WORLD PEACE | |||
| To Go Direct To Current Solar Energy News Reports - Click Here | |||
| Solar News Reports
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Those who believe that future wars will be fought over global energy supplies and other natural resources include John Reid (former UK Defence Minister), Paddy Ashdown (former High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina), Bill Clinton (former US President), Joe Lieberman (Senator and former Vice Presidential running mate to Al Gore), and Mike McConnell (US Director of National Intelligence to George W Bush). Improved global energy conservation will need to play a vital role in trying to pre-empt the occurrence of these harrowing scenarios. But large amounts of energy will still be required as the world population expands and develops. Finding new sources of energy in this context is an essential part of establishing and maintaining world peace and stability. Reserves of traditional fossil fuels are depleting, and their are even doubts about the adequacy of global uranium supplies to fuel nuclear reactors. By contrast there are other sources of energy which cannot be depleted as long as the sun continues to shine. Most forms of renewable energy are driven partly or wholly by the sun - wind, wave, hydroelectric, near surface ground source heat, biomass, and even tidal (through gravitational effects, although the influence of the moon is much greater), are all part of the framework of solar energy in one form or another. All of these have a potentially important role to play in moving humanity towards the onset of a new solar based society. This web page, however, focuses on news items related to the development and use of direct solar thermal and solar photovoltaic energy systems. MORE ENERGY INFORMATION |
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| Contact | 'We Need A New Way Of Thinking' - Consciousness-Based Education |
| SOLAR ENERGY NEWS |
| 2012 |
"..... analyst firm Bloomberg
New Energy Finance (BNEF) is now predicting that substantial penetration of energy storage
technologies into national grids is likely to be led by an expected drop in battery prices
over the next few years. According to a new report from the firm, grid-scale lithium-ion
battery projects today cost more than $1,000/kWh, but with battery manufacturing capacity
likely to outstrip supply in the short term, BNEF forecast prices will drop over the next
36 months and reach $600/kWh by 2015. The report
argues that falling prices mean using storage systems to manage energy prices, buying
energy at periods of low demand and then storing it for use during peak periods could make
economic sense for large power consumers within the next year and for smaller consumers by
2016. Significant growth is also expected for pumped hydro and flywheel energy storage
systems, meaning that by 2020 energy storage could be in widespread use in the UK across
the transmission and distribution systems, and even co-located with
wind farms and solar parks. However, BNEF warns that changes in government policy, such as
allowing transmission and distribution utilities to sell stored electricity to National
Grid, will be needed to realise the benefits of bringing more renewable energy online and
allowing commercial users to avoid having to purchase power at the most expensive times of
day." |
"SolarFocus's SolarKindle case
is a charger for Amazon's Kindle e-reader which 'tops up' the gadget with the sun. One
hour's direct sun can provide three days' reading -
so lucky users in warm countries may never have to visit a power socket again. Once the
gadget's topped up, the SolarKindle diverts power to a backup battery - eight hours will
fully charge the backup , which offers roughly three weeks' use. The battery also powers
an LED light." |
"Germany saw solar output rise a
record 60 per cent last year to more than 18 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, according to new figures from the German Solar
Industry Association (BSW-Solar). The trade body said the output was equivalent to the
entire electricity consumption of the state of Thuringia and could theoretically provide
clean power to 5.1 million households for an entire year." |
"Scientists at the University of
Notre Dame are making progress in the creation of solar paint -- paint that acts as a solar power collector to create energy from
light.... One of the challenges for the researchers moving forward is to increase the
efficiency of the paint. Right now, it can only convert 1 percent of the light that hits
its surface to energy. That's not very competitive to solar cells based on silicon that
have 10-15 percent efficiency rates. The solar paint's inefficiencies could be offset by
the lower costs in producing it.... The nanoparticle paste used in the research described
in an article appearing this week in the journal ACS Nano was the first step in obtaining
a photoactive layer..." |
| 2011 |
"Laboratory (NREL) have reported
the first solar cell that produces a photocurrent that has an external quantum efficiency
greater than 100 percent when photoexcited with photons from the high energy region of the
solar spectrum. The external quantum efficiency for photocurrent, usually expressed as a
percentage, is the number of electrons flowing per second in the external circuit of a
solar cell divided by the number of photons per second of a specific energy (or
wavelength) that enter the solar cell. None of the solar cells to date exhibit external
photocurrent quantum efficiencies above 100 percent at any wavelength in the solar
spectrum. The external quantum efficiency reached a
peak value of 114 percent. The newly reported work marks a promising step toward
developing Next Generation Solar Cells for both solar electricity and solar fuels that
will be competitive with, or perhaps less costly than, energy from fossil or nuclear
fuels. The mechanism for producing a quantum efficiency above 100 percent with solar
photons is based on a process called Multiple Exciton Generation (MEG), whereby a single
absorbed photon of appropriately high energy can produce more than one electron-hole pair
per absorbed photon. The researchers achieved the 114 percent external quantum efficiency
with a layered cell consisting of antireflection-coated glass with a thin layer of a
transparent conductor, a nanostructured zinc oxide layer, a quantum dot layer of lead
selenide treated with ethanedithol and hydrazine, and a thin layer of gold for the top
electrode. The new results published in Science by the NREL research team is the first
report of MEG manifested as an external photocurrent quantum yield greater than 100
percent measured in operating quantum dot solar cells at low light intensity; these cells
showed significant power conversion efficiencies (defined as the total power generated
divided by the input power) as high as 4.5 percent with simulated sunlight. While these
solar cells are un-optimized and thus exhibit relatively low power conversion efficiency
(which is a product of the photocurrent and photovoltage), the demonstration of MEG in the
photocurrent of a solar cell has important implications because it opens new and
unexplored approaches to improve solar cell efficiencies." |
"Scientists have finally figured
how a way to solar cells to produce more energy than they absorb, reaching a critical
success point in making solar energy a viable alternative to fossil fuels. However, MIT's Technology Review
highlights a political war between China and the United States that could actually make
the photovoltaic technology too expensive to market. As a result, energy that should be
globally affordable in the near future might just be out of reach. Just this past week, PhysOrg
reported the scientific breakthrough of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL),
stating that the facility's researchers had finally crafted a solar cell with a 'Multiple
Exciton Generation' value of over 100-percent. Basically, MEG measures the amount of
energy flowing from the external circuit of a solar divided by the amount of energy
flowing into it. So far, the biggest problem with solar energy is that solar cells can't
output energy that's equal to the amount of photons (light particles) that they absorb.
But thanks to some inventive applications of zinc oxide, lead selenide, and a touch of
gold, this new type of solar cell achieves roughly '114 percent external quantum
efficiency' from the energy it converts....But even if solar energy becomes cheap enough
for mass production, MIT's
Technology Review notes that trade tariffs could inflate the cost of the technology. In fact, it has already started, as China-based producers of solar cells
and energy-collecting modules are selling their products at "unfairly low
prices." In retaliation, the U.S. Government has started playing political
hardball." |
"By harvesting waste heat,
researchers from the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory
(NREL) have for the first time built a solar cell with an external quantum efficiency over
100 percent. A cell's external quantum efficiency is the number of electrons flowing per
second in its external circuit, divided by the number of photons per second entering it,
and is different at different wavelengths. The best
result for the NREL solar cell was 114 percent. it means, says the team, that solar energy
has a competitive future, making it possibly cheaper than energy from fossil or nuclear
fuels. The team used a process called Multiple Exciton Generation (MEG), whereby a single
absorbed photon of appropriately high energy can produce more than one electron-hole pair
per absorbed photon. Ten years ago, NREL scientist Arthur J Nozik predicted that MEG would
be more efficient in semiconductor quantum dots - tiny crystals of semiconductor - than in
bulk semiconductors. Quantum dots, by confining charge carriers within their tiny volumes,
can harvest excess energy that otherwise would be lost as heat – and therefore
greatly increase the efficiency of converting photons into usable free energy. The
researchers hit the 114 percent external quantum efficiency with a layered cell consisting
of antireflection-coated glass with a thin layer of a transparent conductor, a
nanostructured zinc oxide layer, a quantum dot layer of lead selenide treated with
ethanedithol and hydrazine, and a thin layer of gold for the top electrode. They claim the
fabrication of quantum dot solar cells lends itself to inexpensive, high-throughput
roll-to-roll manufacturing." |
"China has further revised up
its solar power development target for 2015 by 50 percent from its previous plan, state
media reported on Thursday. The government has set a
target for installed solar power generating capacity to reach 15 gigawatts by 2015 and
wind power capacity to hit 100 GW, China National Radio reported, citing an announcement
from the National Energy Administration. The ambitious move may have been encouraged by a
rapid increase in solar power installation in recent months after the government unified
grid feed-in tariffs for solar projects for the first time in July, and offered a higher
price for projects that would be put into operation before the year end. China had doubled its 2015 solar power goal to 10 GW after the
Japanese nuclear power crisis." |
"For the first time, US solar
installations will break through the 1 gigawatt (GW) barrier for the year. The US is expected to get 1.7 GW of solar installed this year, up 89%
from the 887 MW installed in 2010, and 435 MW in 2009." |
| "When
Tino Blaesi joined the solar sector gold rush, he thought his career was made. Seven years
later, he is looking for a job outside the industry after his company slashed more than a
third of its workforce in one day. Workers in
Germany's once booming solar energy industry face a shakeout of major proportions
following declines in the price of solar panels over the past year. Cuts in subsidies for
solar energy, weaker demand for panels and fierce competition from cheaper Asian rivals
are eating into what was once the world's biggest hub for the production of solar cells,
taking the shine off an industry that was effectively born in Germany. A decision by the German government earlier this year to phase out
nuclear energy has done little to reignite the sector. The resulting power gap is likely
to be filled by coal and gas rather than solar and wind energy.... Legislation introduced
a decade ago by a centre-left coalition of Social Democrats and Greens led by
then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder offered generous incentives and turned Germany into the
world's largest market for solar panels, sparking thousands of start-ups, some of which
became global leaders. But the incentives, because they were focused on energy production
rather than panel manufacturing, also benefited cheaper Asian rivals, which elbowed their
way into the market and drove down prices. Companies in China
and Taiwan have dislodged their German peers as the world's biggest suppliers of solar
cells." German solar firms go from boom to bust Reuters, 14 December 2011 |
"Many analysts claim that solar power for the masses is simply not
cost effective, and therefore not a realistic option for most power requirements. However,
a recent study conducted at Queen’s University and published in the December edition
of Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews concludes the public isn't properly informed
about the viability of solar photovoltaic energy. 'Many analysts project a higher cost for
solar photovoltaic energy because they don’t consider recent technological
advancements and price reductions,' says Joshua Pearce, Adjunct Professor, Department of
Mechanical and Materials Engineering. 'Older models for determining solar photovoltaic
energy costs are too conservative.' Pearce believes solar photovoltaic systems are being
innovated to the point where they are practically capable of generating energy at the same
cost as more traditional sources of energy. Obviously, there are multiple factors used to
determine the cost of solar photovoltaic systems for consumers, including installation and
maintenance costs, finance charges, the life expectancy of the system, and the amount of
electricity it generates. The problem, Pearce says, is that some analytical studies
don’t consider the impressive 70% reduction in the cost of solar panels since 2009.
Additionally, research now shows the productivity of the top solar panels only drops
between 0.1 and 0.2 percent annually. This is much less than the one percent used in most
cost analyses. The cost of equipment is determined in
dollars per watt of electricity produced. A study in 2010 estimated the cost at $7.61,
while a 2003 survey weighed in at $4.16. According to Pearce, the real cost in 2011 is
less than $1 per watt for solar panels purchased in bulk on the global market. He says system and installation costs vary widely." |
"Losses
for China’s largest solar manufacturers, including Suntech Power Holdings Co. and JA
Solar Holdings Co. may continue through next year as declining shipments prompt them to
slash prices and liquidate inventory. Shipments at Suntech will fall about 20 percent in
the fourth quarter from the third, the world’s largest panel maker said today in its
third-quarter earnings report. JA Solar, the
country’s biggest cell producer, also said shipments will fall sequentially, and it
wrote off inventory in response to falling prices, driving down gross margins. Cell prices
have fallen 59 percent since Dec. 27, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Seven
Chinese companies reported lower gross margins since yesterday and three said margins have
moved into negative territory, an unsustainable level, said Hari Chandra Polavarapu, an
analyst at Auriga USA in New York. 'Liquidation is leading to suicidal pricing.'
Polavarapu said in an interview today. There are too many solar companies in China, he
said, and they are cutting prices to maintain share. 'China’s strongest manufacturers
are sacrificing profitability because the weakest players still exist.' Chinese solar
manufacturers expanded capacity faster this year while demand growth slowed in Europe, the
top regional market." |
"The world’s biggest solar
panel maker may pull out of the UK, following the Government’s controversial decision
to slash subsidies. Ministers are under intense pressure over their decision to halve the
level of subsidies for solar panels from December 12 under the 'feed-in tariff' (FIT)
scheme. Now Sharp Solar has warned that it is 'reviewing our presence in the UK' in a
private briefing document for the Prime Minister seen by The Daily Telegraph. It has already cut the number of jobs at its Welsh factory from 1,000 to
500, as countries across Europe reduce their support for the green technology." |
"Theoretical research by
scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has led to record-breaking sunlight-to-electricity conversion
efficiencies in solar cells. The researchers showed that, contrary to conventional
scientific wisdom, the key to boosting solar cell efficiency is not absorbing more photons
but emitting more photons.....In their paper, Yablonovitch, Miller and Kurtz describe how
external fluorescence is the key to approaching the theoretical maximum efficiency at
which a solar cell can convert sunlight into electricity. This theoretical efficiency,
called the Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit (SQ Limit), measures approximately
33.5-percent for a single p-n junction solar cell. This means that if a solar cell
collects 1,000 Watts per square meter of solar energy, the most electricity it could
produce would be about 335 Watts per square meter. Calculations
by Miller, who is a member of Yablonovitch’s research group, showed that the
semiconductor gallium arsenide is capable of reaching the SQ Limit. Based on this work, a
private company co-founded by Yablonovitch, Alta Devices Inc., has been able to fabricate
solar cells from gallium arsenide that have achieved a record conversion efficiency of
28.4 percent." |
"These days, mention solar power and you’ll probably hear cries
of 'Solyndra!' Republicans have tried to make the failed solar panel company both a symbol
of government waste — although claims of a major scandal are nonsense — and a
stick with which to beat renewable energy. But Solyndra’s failure was actually caused
by technological success: the price of solar panels is dropping fast, and Solyndra
couldn’t keep up with the competition. In fact, progress in solar panels has been so
dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put
it, 'there’s now frequent talk of a ‘Moore’s law’ in solar
energy,' with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year. This has
already led to rapid growth in solar installations, but even more change may be just
around the corner. If the downward trend continues
— and if anything it seems to be accelerating — we’re just a few years from
the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity
generated by burning coal. And if we priced
coal-fired power right, taking into account the huge health and other costs it imposes,
it’s likely that we would already have passed that tipping point. But will our
political system delay the energy transformation now within reach? Let’s face it: a
large part of our political class, including essentially the entire G.O.P., is deeply
invested in an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels, and actively hostile to
alternatives. This political class will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the
extraction and use of fossil fuels, directly with taxpayers’ money and indirectly by
letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, while ridiculing technologies
like solar. So what you need to know is that nothing you hear from these people is true.
Fracking is not a dream come true; solar is now cost-effective. Here comes the sun, if
we’re willing to let it in." |
"China’s success in
wresting control of the solar industry is erasing an advantage for U.S. suppliers led by
First Solar Inc., which use a rival technology supported with $5.5 billion in government
loan guarantees. First Solar, the largest U.S. solar maker, for 12 years has tinkered with
a process that sandwiches a film of toxic cadmium telluride between panes of glass to
harness the sun’s power. The Chinese in contrast recently started manufacturing the
polysilicon-based cells found in 90 percent of panels sold worldwide and are best known
for powering the common calculator. First Solar prospered as surging costs for polysilicon
prevented the Chinese from dominating a global panel market worth $33 billion last year.
The tables turned as Chinese manufacturers led by GCL-Poly Energy Holdings Ltd. and LDK
Solar Co. ramped up production, pushing the cost of the raw material down 90 percent. That’s gutting margins across the industry and forcing First Solar to
reduce prices." |
"Morocco
has been chosen as the first location for a German-led, €400bn project to build a
vast network of solar and windfarms across North Africa
and the Middle East to provide 15% of Europe's electricity supply by 2050. The Desertec Industrial
Initiative (DII), a coalition of companies including E.ON, Siemens, Munich Re and
Deutsche Bank, announced at its annual conference being held in Cairo on Wednesday that
"all systems are go in Morocco", with construction of the first phase of a 500MW
solar farm scheduled to start next year. The precise location of the €2bn plant is
yet to be finalised, but it is expected to be built near the desert city of Ouarzazate. It
will use parabolic mirrors to generate heat for conventional steam turbines, as opposed to
the photovoltaic cells used in the UK. The 12 square kilometre Moroccan solar farm will,
said Paul van Son, Dii's chief executive, be a "reference project" to prove to
investors and policy makers in both Europe and the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region
that the Desertec vision is not a dream-like mirage, but one that can be a major source of
renewable electricity in the decades ahead." |
"Hundreds of solar companies are
likely to go bust by Christmas after the Department for Energy and Climate Change
confirmed it is looking to halve subsidies for new panels. Greg Barker, minister for climate change, said the 'feed-in tariff'
subsidies are currently too generous, because the cost of installing solar panels has
fallen. The proposed cuts, due to come into force from December, will see the amount
earned from each panel fall from 43.3p per kilowatt hour of solar power to 21p. This will
save energy customers around £23 a year - or £700m in total - because the subsidies are
funded through electricity bills. However, the industry warned that many home owners and
companies may immediately back away from the flagship scheme because it wouldn now take up
to 25 years to earn back their investments. Gaynor Hartnell, chief executive of the
Renewable Energy Association, said: 'The installation rate is likely to fall drastically,
and many of the 25,000 newly-employed in this industry may end up joining the dole
queue.'" |
"Solar heating systems can
provide over half of households' hot water needs, according to the largest ever field
trial of the green energy devices. But the year-long study,
undertaken at 88 homes by the Energy Saving Trust, also reveals that the solar
water heating systems will save most owners just £55 a year despite costing between
£3,000-5,000, prompting calls from green
campaigners for clarity on government subsidies for them." |
"Solar generators may produce
the majority of the world’s power within 50 years, slashing the emissions of greenhouse gases
that harm the environment, according to a projection by the International
Energy Agency. Photovoltaic and solar-thermal plants may meet most of the world’s
demand for electricity by 2060 -- and half of all energy needs -- with wind, hydropower
and biomass plants supplying much of the remaining generation, Cedric Philibert, senior
analyst in the renewable energy division at the Paris-based agency, said in an Aug. 26
phone interview. 'Photovoltaic and concentrated solar power together can become the major
source of electricity,' Philibert said.'You’ll have a lot more electricity than today
but most of it will be produced by solar-electric technologies.' The solar findings, set
to be published in a report later this year, go beyond the IEA’s previous forecast,
which envisaged the two technologies meeting about 21 percent of the world’s power
needs in 2050. The scenario suggests investors able to pick the industry’s winners
may reap significant returns as the global economy shifts away from fossil fuels. The 17
members of the Bloomberg Large Solar Energy Index have a combined market value of about
$27 billion compared with the $2.2 trillion of the MSCI World Energy Index’s 119
member companies. Under the forecasted scenario, which Philibert will set out in more
detail at a conference in Kassel, Germany, on Sept. 1, most heating and transport will switch from
dirtier fossil fuels to cleaner electric power. Carbon dioxide emissions from the energy
sector would fall to about 3 gigatons per year compared with about 30 gigatons this
year." |
"The company behind plans to
build the world's largest solar farm has revealed that it is to switch to solar
photovoltaic (PV) systems in what could mark a significant shift in the balance of power
between competing PV and solar thermal technologies.
Germany-based Solar Millennium AG
said in a statement released last week that it has changed its plans for the proposed 1GW
Blythe solar farm in California, and will install the first 500MW of the facility using PV
panels." |
"A thing of sheer beauty is
berthed in Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong: the Tūranor PlanetSolar, a vessel that is
circumnavigating the globe to prove that solar energy can power water transportation.
Designed in New Zealand, built in Germany and flying a Swiss flag, the 102-foot boat has
completed about two-thirds of a voyage that began in Monaco last September. So far it has sailed nearly 24,000 miles. With its upper deck covered with
over 5,300 square feet of photovoltaic solar panels, the Tūranor PlanetSolar is unlike
any ship you’ve ever seen. Sleek and sexy, it looks more like a spaceship than
something that travels the seven seas. It has journeyed across the Atlantic to Miami and
on to places including the Panama Canal, the Galapagos Islands, eastern Australia and the
Philippines. Next week it leaves Hong Kong for Singapore before heading to Mumbai, Abu
Dhabi and back into the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal. Throughout the journey, the
four-person crew is monitoring the performance of the panels and of lithium batteries that
store solar energy and allow the ship to continue sailing through the night, or when the
sky is overcast, at a speed of up to about 15 miles per hour. So far, said the skipper,
Erwann Le Rouzic, everything has gone smoothly. 'I feel like a mouse in a laboratory which
is being used to test what can be done with solar energy,' Mr. Le Rouzic joked at a media
briefing here in Hong Kong. To be sure, the Tūranor PlanetSolar, financed by various
sponsors, is a scientific experiment rather than something that will be mass-produced for
commercial use. Moreover, its route does not stray far from the equator to ensure that a
maximum amount of sunlight is available — hardly an option for the commercial
shipping industry. Still, the industry has been testing different technologies that could
complement fuel-based propulsion, and solar could well play a role, said Arthur Bowring,
managing director of the Hong Kong Shipowners Association,
one of the largest associations of its kind." |
"It started with such a simple concept: A
solar light bulb that charges up during the day and lights the night when the sun sets. Inventor Steve Katsaros perfected his design in June 2010, and four days
later he had a patent in hand. He knew it was a good product, but he didn't know what to
do with it. 'It wasn't until after we created it that we asked ourselves, 'How do we
market this,'' Katsaros says. 'And we learned that the largest market was the developing
world.' As Katsaros began researching markets in developing countries, he began to realize
that his solar light bulb could potentially make a huge impact on the 1.4 billion people
around the world who don't have access to an electrical grid." |
"China will double its solar
capacity to around 2 gigawatts (GW) by the end of the year as the world's largest
solar-panel maker ramps up domestic installation, a
local paper said on Saturday citing a government-linked think tank." |
"Photovoltaic cells are best known for turning sunlight into
electrical power--and they're big business. But did you know that there's a type of PV
cell that eats heat instead of light to make power? It could replace the Li-ion battery in
your cell phone, and it may also be used to scavenge waste heat from almost anything that
normally dumps it into the environment, from your TV's electronics to your car's engine
(even an electrical one). Thermal PV tech has been around ages, and works the
same way as the solar variation: Incoming radiation excites the atoms in its semiconductor
structure, which then push electrons out--generating current. And much as is the case for
solar PV cells, the advances in the tech have all been about improving their efficiency. Scientists
at MIT have recently
honed this tech, pushing the efficiency up so far that thermal PV cells are now a
viable alternative to all sorts of other tech. MIT's breakthrough was to add a layer of
tungsten to the front of a PV cell, with a surface that's been etched on a nanoscopic
scale so that when heated it emits infrared light (heat) at wavelengths precisely tuned to
the best efficiency of the PV cell behind it." |
"Electric car drivers in the UK
are being offered the chance to break free of the city and hit the open road. Green energy
firm Ecotricity has launched the world's first national motorway charging network for
electric vehicles. It has installed free power
points at 12 Welcome Break service stations, with 17 more promised later in the year.
Until now, a lack of charging points between towns and cities has made longer journeys
impractical. 'There's a bit of the chicken and egg situation going on,' said Ecotricity
founder Dale Vince. 'People are not buying electric cars because they're not sure about
charging, and people aren't putting charging points up because [not many are] buying
electric cars.'. The national network also addresses another common complaint about
electric vehicles - charging time. Welcome Break's power outlets offer two types of
sockets - a three-pin one for 13A current supply and a seven-pin one for a higher 32A
supply. Using the 13A supply can mean waiting around 12 hours and probably spending the
night in one of the service area hotels. Opting for the higher current option will top-up
a car in just 20 minutes - and fully charge it in one hour, said Mr Vince. 'So in the time
it takes you to get a cup of coffee and a sandwich, you can charge your car,' he
added." |
"A concentrated solar power plant in Spain has just supplied its first uninterrupted day of electricity to the network, providing
energy to the grid even after sundown thanks to molten-salt storage. Located in Fuentes de Andalucķa (Seville), the Gemasolar plant is
property of Torresol Energy, a joint venture between Masdar — Abu Dhabi’s
clean-energy initiative — and SENER, a Spanish engineering and construction company.
The plant, barely one month into commercial operation, can store solar energy in molten
salt using a thermal-transfer technology developed by SENER. The system enables the
facility to deliver 15 hours of electricity production without solar radiation, helping to
overcome fluctuations in the energy supply. 'Gemasolar achieved optimal performance in its
systems in the last week of June,' said Diego Ramķrez, director of production at Torresol
Energy. 'The high performance of the installations coincided with several days of
excellent solar radiation, which made it possible for the hot-salt storage tank to reach
full capacity. We’re hoping that in the next few days our supply to the network will
reach an average of 20 hours a day.' The salt storage system allows the plant to stretch
its electrical production hours to beyond sunset, regardless of the cloud cover. With a
19.9-megawatt steam turbine, Gemasolar is able to supply electricity to some 25,000
households. Eventually, the plant is expected to be able to supply 24 hours of
uninterrupted production per day on most summer days, providing a higher annual capacity
factor than most baseload plants such as nuclear power plants." |
"The sheet of paper looks like any other document that might have
just come spitting out of an office printer, with an array of colored rectangles printed
over much of its surface. But then a researcher picks it up, clips a couple of wires to
one end, and shines a light on the paper. Instantly an LCD clock display at the other end
of the wires starts to display the time. Almost as
cheaply and easily as printing a photo on your inkjet, an inexpensive, simple solar cell
has been created on that flimsy sheet, formed from special 'inks' deposited on the paper.
You can even fold it up to slip into a pocket, then unfold it and watch it generating
electricity again in the sunlight. The new technology, developed by a team of researchers
at MIT, is reported in a paper in the journal Advanced Materials, published
online July 8. The paper is co-authored by Karen
Gleason, the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser Professor of Chemical Engineering; Professor
of Electrical Engineering Vladimir Bulovic; graduate student Miles Barr; and six other
students and postdocs. The work was supported by the Eni-MIT Alliance Solar Frontiers
Program and the National Science Foundation. The technique represents a major departure
from the systems used until now to create most solar cells, which require exposing the
substrates to potentially damaging conditions, either in the form of liquids or high
temperatures. The new printing process uses vapors, not liquids, and temperatures less
than 120 degrees Celsius. These “gentle” conditions make it possible to use
ordinary untreated paper, cloth or plastic as the substrate on which the solar cells can
be printed. It is, to be sure, a bit more complex than just printing out a term paper. In
order to create an array of photovoltaic cells on the paper, five layers of material need
to be deposited onto the same sheet of paper in successive passes, using a mask (also made
of paper) to form the patterns of cells on the surface. And the process has to take place
in a vacuum chamber. The basic process is essentially the same as the one used to make the
silvery lining in your bag of potato chips: a vapor-deposition process that can be carried
out inexpensively on a vast commercial scale. The resilient solar cells still function
even when folded up into a paper airplane. In their paper, the MIT researchers also
describe printing a solar cell on a sheet of PET plastic (a thinner version of the
material used for soda bottles) and then folding and unfolding it 1,000 times, with no
significant loss of performance. By contrast, a commercially produced solar cell on the
same material failed after a single folding.... in addition to the folding tests, the MIT
team tried other tests of the device’s robustness. For example, she says, they took a
finished paper solar cell and ran it through a laser printer — printing on top of the photovoltaic
surface, subjecting it to the high temperature of the toner-fusing step — and
demonstrated that it still worked. Test cells the group produced last year still work,
demonstrating their long shelf life. In today’s conventional solar cells, the costs
of the inactive components — the substrate (usually glass) that supports the active
photovoltaic material, the structures to support that substrate, and the installation
costs — are typically greater than the cost of the active films of the cells
themselves, sometimes twice as much. Being able to print solar cells directly onto
inexpensive, easily available materials such as paper or cloth, and then easily fasten
that paper to a wall for support, could ultimately make it possible to drastically reduce
the costs of solar installations. For example, paper solar cells could be made into window
shades or wallpaper — and paper costs one-thousandth as much as glass for a given
area, the researchers say....For outdoor uses, the researchers demonstrated that the paper
could be coated with standard lamination materials, to protect it from the elements.
Others have tried to produce solar cells and other electronic components on paper, but the
big stumbling block has been paper’s rough, fibrous surface at a microscopic scale.
To counter that, past attempts have relied on coating the paper first with some smooth
material. But in this research, ordinary, uncoated paper was used — including printer
paper, tissue, tracing paper and even newsprint with the printing still on it. All of
these worked just fine....The researchers continue to work on improving the devices. At present, the paper-printed solar cells have an efficiency of
about 1 percent, but the team believes this can be increased significantly with further
fine-tuning of the materials." |
"It's moving from an innovation
to a fad, this business of solar-powered charging stations for electric cars. The latest car company to jump on the bandwagon is Mitsubishi, which will
launch the diminutive four-door, four-seat 2012
Mitsubishi 'i' electric minicar in November at a price
of just $27,990 before incentives. The company recently unveiled a unique
solar-powered charging setup at its headquarters in Cypress, California. It's powered by
96 photovoltaic modules from another Mitsubishi company, and can charge up to four
vehicles at once. The unusual wrinkle is that it offers three different kinds of charging:
Level I (110-Volt), Level 2 (220-Volt), and Level 3 CHAdeMO DC quick charging (an option
on both the 2012 'i' and, at
$700, the current 2011 Nissan Leaf). It's the first solar-powered DC quick-charge
station in the U.S., and employs a charging station built by Eaton Corp. that is the first
CHAdeMO Quick Charger certified for U.S. sales. Mitsubishi joins both Nissan, which has
solar charging stations at its assembly
plant in Tennessee, and General Motors, which installed
solar charging stations at the Detroit-Hamtramck plant where it builds the 2011 Chevy
Volt range-extended electric car." |
"Global investment in renewable
energy sources grew by 32% during 2010 to reach a record level of US$211bn (£132bn), a UN
study has reported. The main growth drivers were backing for wind farms in China and
rooftop solar panels in Europe, it said. It also
found that developing nations invested more in green power than rich nations for the first
time last year. The Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2011 report was prepared
for the UN by Bloomberg New Energy Finance." |
"A government-backed research
project has hailed a breakthrough in the efficiency of printed plastic solar cells,
potentially paving the way for the commercialisation of cheaper and more transportable
solar panels. The Science and Technology Facilities
Council, a non-departmental public body of the Department for Business, Innovation and
Skills, today confirmed the results of its research into the layers of materials which
convert sunlight into electricity. Most photovoltaic devices are made with silicon, but
scientists are keen to develop organic or plastic photovoltaic devices, which are believed to be cheaper and
more flexible. Plastic films can be deposited from solution using low cost roll-to-roll
printing techniques. Some products already use this technology but the efficiency needs to
be improved from seven/eight per cent to at least 10 per cent to make it commercially
viable." |
"Solar energy may soon become
easier to capture, say researchers who have developed a novel method to produce solar
cells using inkjet printing. Oregon State University researchers have come up with a
technology similar to that commonly used to print documents and photos. They say their
method is quicker and less expensive than traditional solar cell manufacturing techniques.
It could also reduce raw material waste by 90%, they add. As people move away from conventional combustion-type technologies, more
attention is paid to renewable energy types, and solar energy is one of them. It is known
as a clean and sustainable form of energy, but this is offset by the manufacture of solar
panels which is an expensive and complicated process. Finding a balance between costs of
production and efficiency could become key to future manufacture of solar cells, and many
scientists around the world have been concentrating on developing new materials and
methods to do that. ... The team used chalcopyrite - a material composed of copper,
indium, gallium and selenium and also known as CIGS. It has a much greater solar
efficiency than silicon, currently used to manufacture solar panels. The researchers then
printed chalcopyrite onto the surface of the cell, applying a technique similar to a
common inkjet approach, but with a special type of ink. They managed to produce solar
cells of 5% efficiency - and say that in future, they will aim to increase this figure to
about 12% to make the product commercially viable." |
"Startup Pythagoras Solar has
designed and is selling a double-pane window embedded with solar cells, and this week got
recognition (and $100,000) from GE for its innovation. The idea is that the window lets in
less light, while still being transparent, so buildings get needed shade during hot sunny
hours, reducing their air conditioning use and making the building more energy-efficient.
At the same time, the panels produce solar power, which the building can use for
electricity. The company is currently targeting
architects and commercial building owners. Four-year-old Pythagoras Solar will announce
its first commercial installation in the coming weeks, CEO Gonen Fink told me in an
interview, and the company has been working for several years on smaller pilot projects,
like one on the south-facing side of the Willis Tower in Chicago. The company, which has
its R&D and investors in Israel, is in the process of moving from the project stage
into mass production. The company raised a $10 million series A round from Israel
Cleantech Ventures, Pitango Venture Capital and Evergreen Venture Partners. So when
Pythagoras is churning out these solar windows on a grand scale will they fly off the
shelves? Part of the success will depend on the math. The solar windows cost more than a
standard window, bur will be priced on par with some of the new dynamic tinting windows
that are coming to the market from firms like Soladigm and Sage, said Fink. The windows
are also more expensive per square foot than straight solar PV, but factoring in the
energy efficiency savings and clean power savings of the solar windows, Fink says their return on investment is 3 to 5 years. Solar
panels, on the other hand, take longer, like 7 to 12 years to deliver a return." |
"Ernst & Young analysis
suggests that falling solar and rising fossil fuel prices could make large-scale
installations cost-competitive without government support within a decade. Prices of solar panels are falling so fast that by 2013 they will be half
of what they cost in 2009, according to a
report from Ernst & Young that argues solar electricity could play 'an important
role' in meeting the UK's renewable energy targets.
The average one-off installation cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels has already
dropped from more than $2 (£1.23) per unit of generating capacity in 2009 to about $1.50
in 2011. Based on broker reports and industry analysis, the report forecasts that those
rates of decline will continue, with prices falling close to the $1 mark in 2013. At
present, solar PV is economically viable in the UK for homeowners, businesses and
investors only because of government subsidies given out via feed-in tariffs (Fits).
But the new analysis suggests that falling PV panel prices and rising fossil fuel prices
could together make large-scale solar installations cost-competitive without government
support within a decade – sooner than is usually assumed." |
"Friday the DOE once again hammered home its view that solar’s
promise is real, with a $150 million loan guarantee to 1366 Technologies, a Lexington, Mass.-based solar wafer manufacturing company that has a
great new technology – but no manufacturing plant. Now it will. 'This project is a
game-changer that could dramatically lower the cost of photovoltaic solar cells,' said Energy
Secretary Steven Chu. 'As global demand for solar cells increase, this kind of
technology will help the US increase its market share.' For 1366 Technologies – the
company is named for the amount of energy in watts that strikes the earth’s
atmosphere per square meter – the DOE’s vote of confidence is a big deal. The
company, started in 2007 on the idea of MIT professor Emanuel Sachs,
will now finally be able to demonstrate in production a technology that company officials
say could vault the US to technological leadership in the manufacturing of solar cells.
Using an innovative process, the company plans to cast silicon wafers for solar panels
directly from the molten output of an industrial furnace – rather than cut ingots of
pure silicon with a special saw. That change alone saves fully half of the high-cost
silicon usually wasted in that process. In addition, the company has figured out how to
coat its wafers with materials that boost their efficiency. 'With this loan, 1366 will
realize its goal to make solar energy as cheap as coal while helping the US to reclaim a
key part of the silicon supply chain and restore the nation's dominance in photovoltaics,'
Frank van Mierlo, 1366’s president, said in a statement. Part of the plan is not only to manufacture the photovoltaic cells
more efficiently but also to produce at least a three percentage point gain in the solar
cells’ output. Their goal is to reduce the cost of manufacturing a photovoltaic cell
to less than $1 per watt.... For solar power to
compete without subsidies with coal, the Department of Energy says, the installed cost of
solar energy modules needs to drop another 75 percent. At the current rates of declining
cost, the DOE and others project, solar will be competitive with coal in 2020. At that
point, the DOE website says, there will be 'rapid, large-scale adoption of solar
electricity across the United States.'” |
"Jersey
City, N.J., may be an unlikely place to find a utility-scale solar farm, but Petra Solar
has found a way to generate electricity from the sun even on hard-paved urban streets.
Bolted onto street-light and utility poles across Jersey City and other urban and suburban
areas of the state, a five-foot by two-and-a-half-foot solar panel is attached about 15
feet above the ground, tilted south toward the sun. Each
new solar panel from the privately held South Plainfield, N.J., clean-energy technology
firm generates about 225 watts of power, adding to generation capacity and helping
utilities meet renewable-power requirements. 'It allows you to deploy quickly and cost
effectively because you don’t have to invest in land, you’re not building
substations or transformers,' said Petra Solar Chief Executive Shihab Kuran. Under a
contract with Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. — New
Jersey’s biggest utility — Petra Solar is now about halfway through its $200
million commitment to provide 40 megawatts of solar power in six cities and 300 rural and
suburban communities in the utility’s service area. So
far, it’s put up about 95,000 of the panels with a total generation capacity of 20
megawatts, enough power for 3,250 homes. Petra Solar
says it takes just 30 minutes to install one of its panels, which feeds its electricity
directly into the utility’s power lines. Included in the gear are devices that hook
up to an AT&T communications network to allow utilities to remotely monitor their
electricity lines. The network gear helps old-school copper power wires behave more like
an Internet-based information-technology system." |
"Electric cars could produce
higher emissions over their lifetimes than petrol equivalents because of the energy
consumed in making their batteries, a study has found. An electric car owner would have to drive at least 129,000km before
producing a net saving in CO2. Many electric cars will not travel that far in their
lifetime because they typically have a range of less than 145km on a single charge and are
unsuitable for long trips. Even those driven 160,000km would save only about a tonne of
CO2 over their lifetimes. The British study, which is the first analysis of the full
lifetime emissions of electric cars covering manufacturing, driving and disposal,
undermines the case for tackling climate change by the rapid introduction of electric
cars. The Committee on Climate Change, the UK government watchdog, has called for the
number of electric cars on Britain's roads to increase from a few hundred now to 1.7
million by 2020. Britain's Department for Transport is spending $66 million over the next
year giving up to 8,600 buyers of electric cars a grant of $7700 towards the purchase
price. Ministers are considering extending the scheme. The study was commissioned by the
Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership, which is jointly funded by the British government and the
car industry. It found that a mid-size electric car would produce 23.1 tonnes of CO2 over
its lifetime, compared with 24 tonnes for a similar petrol car. Emissions from
manufacturing electric cars are at least 50 per cent higher because batteries are made
from materials such as lithium, copper and refined silicon, which require much energy to
be processed. Many electric cars are expected to need a replacement battery after a few
years. Once the emissions from producing the second battery are added in, the total CO2
from producing an electric car rises to 12.6 tonnes, compared with 5.6 tonnes for a petrol
car. Disposal also produces double the emissions because of the energy consumed in
recovering and recycling metals in the battery. The study also took into account carbon
emitted to generate the grid electricity consumed. Greg Archer, director of Low CVP, said
the industry should state the full lifecycle emissions of cars rather than just tailpipe
emissions, to avoid misleading consumers. He said that drivers wanting to minimise
emissions could be better off buying a small, efficient petrol or diesel car. 'People have
to match the technology to their particular needs,' he said." |
"No minivan for one family of nine. They get around on a solar bike.
And not only is it fun, it saves them big at the pump. The Hatchs leave home to drive
their son Hunter to school. But on this ride he has to put on a helmet first. Hunter said
when he shows up for the fourth grade everybody notices. 'They are like 'I want to ride it
too,'' said Hunter Hatch. 'And when I go in, everybody talks about it.' The coolest thing
about the [four wheeled] bike is if you are carrying too heavy a load you don't have to
pedal because its solar powered. They are the same solar panels that power a house and are
connected to a battery that propels an extra wheel which is covered in duct tape....It works even on cloudy days and brings happiness in more ways
than one. 'It has cut my gas bill by 80 percent,' said Brent Hatch.... It goes about 10 miles per hour, but it takes the family everywhere
they need nearby. Brent Hatch is a realtor and rides to open houses." |
"French energy major Total SA's (TOTF.PA) landmark
$1.37 billion offer for a majority stake in U.S. company SunPower Corp (SPWRA.O) gave
fresh impetus to hopes of more deals, lifting global solar stocks. Total's move is one of
the biggest ever by an oil and gas giant into the market for renewable energy, which has
seen a resurgence of interest following the nuclear crisis at Japan's Fukushima power
plant caused by last month's earthquake and tsunami. Investors have been waiting for years
for large-scale consolidation in the solar sector. But activity has been muted as the
industry is still in its early stages and dependent on government subsidies to compete
with fossil fuels. Big utilities have so far shunned the sector -- which predominantly
features small roof-installed systems -- in favor of large-scale wind farms that fit
better into their business models." |
"Householders rushing to put
solar panels on their roof in order to take advantage of government subsidies have more
than tripled the amount of solar power in the UK over the
past year, figures
published on Thursday show. The lure of making nearly £1,000 a year has led to a
record 11,314 people, largely homeowners, installing solar panels in the first three
months of this year. The 'solar gold rush' appears to have been driven by the
introduction of feed-in tariffs (Fits) last year, which pay businesses, groups and
individuals for generating green energy. The total amount of
installed solar power in the UK has jumped from 26 megawatts (MW) before the scheme
started on 1 April 2010, to 77.8MW at the end of March this year, according to the
Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc). This takes the number of solar
photovoltaic systems in the UK taking part in the Fits scheme to 28,505, alongside over a
thousand micro wind turbines and just over 200 small hydro sites. But despite the rise in demand, solar power under the Fits scheme
still contributes only a tiny amount of the UK's total electricity generation. At 77.8MW,
it accounts for just 0.104% of the 75GW provided by fossil fuel, nuclear and large scale
renewable power plants. The UK's largest coal fired
power station, Drax in Yorkshire, generates approximately 4,000MW." |
"A dramatic and surprising
magnetic effect of light discovered by University of Michigan researchers could lead to
solar power without traditional semiconductor-based solar cells. The researchers found a way to make an 'optical battery,' said Stephen
Rand, a professor in the departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
Physics and Applied Physics. In the process, they overturned a century-old tenet of
physics. 'You could stare at the equations of motion all day and you will not see this
possibility. We’ve all been taught that this doesn’t happen,' said Rand, an
author of a paper on the work published in the Journal of Applied Physics. 'It’s a
very odd interaction. That’s why it’s been overlooked for more than 100 years.'
Light has electric and magnetic components. Until now, scientists thought the effects of
the magnetic field were so weak that they could be ignored. What Rand and his colleagues
found is that at the right intensity, when light is traveling through a material that does
not conduct electricity, the light field can generate magnetic effects that are 100
million times stronger than previously expected. Under these circumstances, the magnetic
effects develop strength equivalent to a strong electric effect. 'This could lead to a new
kind of solar cell without semiconductors and without absorption to produce charge
separation,' Rand said. 'In solar cells, the light goes
into a material, gets absorbed and creates heat. Here, we expect to have a very low heat
load. Instead of the light being absorbed, energy is stored in the magnetic moment.
Intense magnetization can be induced by intense light and then it is ultimately capable of
providing a capacitive power source.'” |
"A solar-powered plane is slated
to take its first international flight next month in a move that offers an unprecedented
step toward 'green' flying. Switzerland’s Solar
Impulse Team said the airplane, which is the first designed to fly day and night without
requiring fuel or producing carbon emissions, will soar to Brussels around May 2. The
project offers the aviation industry a new look at dealing with the rising cost of oil,
which has continued to creep higher amid unrest in the Middle East,
weighing on some airline profits. American
Airlines (AMR: 5.75,
-0.05, -0.86%), for example, said last week that higher fuel prices crippled its profit,
sending its first-quarter income down $436 million...The single-seat prototype has the
wingspan of a Boeing (BA: 78.55, +2.43, +3.19%) 777
jet. It took its maiden flight in Switzerland in 2009 and has taken many other test
flights, particularly as the crew readies itself for the international voyage." |
"Researchers at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say they have created a new class of
transparent photovoltaic cells that can turn windows into solar panels. Richard Lunt, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT's Research Laboratory of
Electronics, says the new photovoltaic cells have the potential to turn skyscrapers into
enormous solar collectors that could supply much of the electricity needed in modern
office buildings. Previous attempts to make transparent solar cells have either failed to
achieve high efficiency or blocked too much light. But Lunt and his colleagues say the new
transparent cells are built to absorb only the near-infrared spectrum and have the
potential to transform light to electricity at relatively high efficiency. The biggest
challenge, said Lunt, is creating photovoltaic cells that would last as long as the
windows thmselves, since the best way to use the cells would be to package them in the
middle of double-pane windows. But Lunt and his
colleagues said that the solar cell longevity problem is a basic engineering challenge
that can probably be solved within a decade." |
"A new class of transparent
photovoltaic cells has been developed that can turn an ordinary windowpane into a solar
panel without impeding the passage of visible light, scientists said Tuesday. The cells could one day transform skyscrapers into giant solar collectors,
said Richard Lunt, one of the researchers on the project.
'We think there’s a lot of potential to be able to integrate these into tall
buildings,' Dr. Lunt, a postdoctoral researcher at the M.I.T. Research Laboratory of
Electronics, said in an interview. Previous attempts at transparent solar cells have
either failed to achieve high efficiency or blocked too much light to be used in windows.
But the new cells, based on organic molecules similar to dyes and pigments, are tailored
to absorb only the near-infrared spectrum and have the potential to transform that light
into electricity at relatively high efficiency. The
current efficiency of the prototype cells is only about 2 percent, but some basic
modifications, like stacking the cells, could increase efficiency to around 10 percent,
Dr. Lunt said. The largest challenge in developing
commercial applications for the new solar cells will be longevity. The cells could be
packaged in the middle of double-paned windows, which would provide protection from the
elements. But the longevity of the cells would still need to approach the life span of the
windows themselves, which would not be replaced for decades. 'To make this thing truly
useful, you do need to extend the lifetime, and make sure it reaches at least 20 years, or
even longer than that,' said Vladimir Bulovic, a professor of electrical engineering at
M.I.T. who collaborated on the development of the cells. Mr. Bulovic said that previous
work to extend the life span of organic light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, which share
properties with the organic solar cells, indicated that the problem of longevity was not
an extraordinarily difficult one. 'It appears at this point that this is an engineering
problem,' he said. 'I would expect that within a decade those will be solved issues.' If
the cells can be made long-lasting, they could be integrated into windows relatively
cheaply, as much of the cost of conventional photovoltaics is not from the solar cell
itself, but the materials it is mounted on, like aluminum and glass. Coating existing
structures with solar cells would eliminate some of this material cost. If the transparent
cells ultimately prove commercially viable, the power they generate could significantly
offset the energy use of large buildings, said Dr. Lunt, who will begin teaching at
Michigan State University this fall. 'We’re not saying we could power the whole
building, but we are talking about a significant amount of energy, enough for things like
lighting and powering everyday electronics,' he said." |
"Google's product portfolio has
now expanded from search engine power to solar power. The company has
invested $168 million in a Mojave Desert facility that will become the world's largest
solar power tower plant. The site is located on
3,600 acres of land in the Mojave Desert in southeastern California. According to gizmag,
'the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) will boast 173,000 heliostats that
will concentrate the sun's rays onto a solar tower standing approximately 450 feet (137 m)
tall.' Construction on this plant started in October 2010. When finished in 2013, the
facility is expected to generate 392 MW of solar energy. Solar power tower development,
while less advanced than the more common trough systems, may offer higher efficiency and
better energy storage capabilities. Parabolic trough systems consist of parabolic mirrors
that concentrate sunlight onto a Dewar tube running the length of the mirror through which
a heat transfer fluid runs that is then used to heat steam in a standard turbine." |
"Scientists at
the University of Michigan have discovered a new effect from an old property of light,
which they say could lead to an 'optical battery' that converts sunlight to electricity at
a fraction of the cost of today's photovoltaic cells.
Light has electric and magnetic qualities. Scientists had long thought, however, that the
effects of light's magnetic field were so weak as to be irrelevant. No so, says Stephen
Rand, a professor of physics. Along with doctoral student William Fisher, he persisted in
probing the long-ignored weak magnetic field that light produces when traveling through a
nonconductive material, such as glass. The breakthrough – unveiled Friday in a
scientific paper in the Journal of Applied Physics – shows that if light is intense
enough, it can, when traveling through nonconductive material, generate voltage from
magnetic effects 100 million times stronger than earlier expected. Such magnetic effects
produce a strong electric field that can be harnessed for electric power production, Dr.
Rand and Mr. Fisher say..... The breakthrough – unveiled Friday in a scientific paper
in the Journal of Applied Physics – shows that if light is intense enough, it can,
when traveling through nonconductive material, generate voltage from magnetic effects 100
million times stronger than earlier expected. Such magnetic effects produce a strong
electric field that can be harnessed for electric power production, Dr. Rand and Mr.
Fisher say. 'This could lead to a new kind of solar cell without semiconductors and without absorption to produce
charge separation,' Rand said in a statement. 'In solar cells, the light goes into a
material, gets absorbed and creates heat. Here, we expect to have a very low heat load.
Instead of the light being absorbed, energy is stored in the magnetic moment.' He
continues, 'Intense magnetization can be induced by intense light and then it is
ultimately capable of providing a capacitive power source.' Of course with every
scientific breakthrough, there's the challenge of how to make it practical. In this case,
the problem is that the intensity of the light must be about 10 million watts per square
centimeter. Ordinary sunlight is much less than even one watt per square centimeter. But
that doesn't deter Fisher, who says that new materials (transparent ceramics, perhaps),
when combined with focused sunlight, could work at lesser intensities. 'We show that
sunlight is theoretically almost as effective in producing charge separation as laser
light is,' says Fisher in a phone interview. 'It turns out we can in principle develop a
voltage along the direction of the beam of light.' He adds, 'Enough sunlight, focused into
an optical fiber, could generate electricity – that’s is a simple way to think
about it.' In experiments planned for this summer, the two scientists plan to harness this
power using laser light and – after that – sunlight. Fisher says that with improved materials (various kinds of glass,
for example), sunlight could produce electricity at perhaps 10 percent efficiency –
roughly equal to the rate at which commercial solar cells today convert sunlight to
electricity. 'The breakthrough is really on the cost side,' Fisher says. 'All we need are
lenses to focus the light and a fiber to guide it. Glass is made in bulk, and it
doesn’t require much processing, either.'" |
"The Pakistan Engineering
Council (PEC) is all set to establish first on-grid solar electricity generation system in
the country during the current year to overcome energy crisis. 'This solar system and smart grid is becoming a reality in less than a
year,' said PEC Chairperson Senator Rukhsana Zuberi, addressing a press conference
Saturday. She said the smart-grid system could make Pakistan self-sufficient in energy, as
the country was rich in renewable energy resources, especially solar energy." |
"In a move that could shake up
the American solar industry, General
Electric plans to announce on Thursday that it will build the nation’s largest
photovoltaic panel factory, with the goal of
becoming a major player in the market. 'For the past five years, we’ve been investing
extremely heavily in solar,' said Victor Abate, vice president for G.E.’s renewable
energy business. 'Going to scale is the next move.' The plant, whose location has not been
determined, will employ 400 workers and create 600 related jobs, according to G.E. The
factory would annually produce solar panels that would generate 400 megawatts of energy,
the company said, and would begin manufacturing thin-film photovoltaic panels made of a
material called cadmium telluride in 2013. While less efficient than conventional solar
panels, thin-film photovoltaics can be produced at a lower cost and have proven attractive
to developers and utilities building large-scale power plants. G.E. has signed agreements
to supply solar panels to generate 100 megawatts of electric power to customers, including
a deal for panels generating 60 megawatts with NextEra Energy Resources.... Mr. Abate said
G.E. would focus on improving the 12.8 percent efficiency of its panels as well as
lowering costs. 'We see our way to much higher efficiencies than that,' he said. 'We
probably can cut costs 50 percent over the next several years.'" |
"A £6.5 million
project to investigate and produce the next generation of low carbon whole building
solutions has been opened in north Wales. The Sustainable Building Envelope Centre (SBEC)
at Shotton, Deeside, is a partnership between the Low Carbon Research Institute (LCRI),
Tata Steel and the Welsh Assembly Government which over three years will research and
monitor solar thermal and photovoltaic technologies and their use together. Various
combinations of technologies will be evaluated, and the solutions arrived at will be
relevant not only for new-build, but also for retrofit of large public, industrial or
office structures. The SBEC's director, structural engineer Daniel Pillai, says that the
focus on the building envelope (external and internal roofs and walls) is important
because it has the potential to play a far more proactive role during a building’s
life, and provide sources of renewable energy. 'Naturally,' he says, 'since one partner is
Tata Steel, the solution will involve this material, but this focus is far from exclusive.
We are looking at a variety of ways in which the
envelope can capture, store and release energy.' Tata bought Corus Steel in 2010. One of
the products Corus had developed and which the SBEC is researching is a transpired solar
collector (TSC). This involves an equator-facing wall clad with steel that is coated with
special solar absorbing paint. The cladding, mounted
a few inches from the wall, is perforated with thousands of tiny holes. The sun heats up
the metal, and fans at the top of the gap draw up the heated air into a Heating,
Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system with heat recovery. Ducting transmits the
heated air around the building...Air source heat pumps have come under some criticism
lately for not being sufficiently efficient to warrant use. But the SBEC hopes that using
solar pre-heated air will improve their performance, and will be checking this. Later in the project they will be investigating other means of
cooling buildings, perhaps using solar thermal heat engines to drive adsorption
chillers.... The Low Carbon Research Institute,
housed in the building, is a team of 18 people drawn from Tata Steel, LCRI, Welsh School
of Architecture and other industry specialists, partly funded by the Higher Education
Funding Council For Wales (HEFCW) and £34m from the Welsh European Funding Office (WEFO).
Their work involves developing pre-finished steel products that deliver efficient energy
functionality, and turning them into roof and wall components that will work on all
building types. An additional and connected centre, the PV Accelerator Centre, is
developing a photovoltaic pre-finished steel product and its manufacturing process. It is using the next generation of dye-sensitised PV technology,
which works on a principle similar to photosynthesis in plants. This product performs well
in all light conditions and will hopefully make solar electricity much cheaper and easier
to use. This £11 million project has operated
jointly with Australian company Dyesol, funded by £5 million from the Welsh Assembly
Government." |
"Solar panel
installations may surge in the next two years as the cost of generating electricity from
the sun rivals coal-fueled plants, industry executives and analysts said. Large
photovoltaic projects will cost $1.45 a watt to build by 2020, half the current price,
Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimated today. The
London-based research company says solar is viable against fossil fuels on the electric
grid in the most sunny regions such as the Middle East. 'We are already in this phase
change and are very close to grid parity,' Shawn Qu, chief executive officer of Canadian
Solar Inc. (CSIQ), said in an interview. 'In many
markets, solar is already competitive with peak electricity prices, such as in California
and Japan.' Chinese companies such as JA Solar Holdings Ltd., Canadian Solar and
Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. are making panels cheaper, fueled by better cell
technology and more streamlined manufacturing processes. That’s
making solar economical in more places and will put it in competition with coal, without
subsidies, in the coming years, New Energy Finance said. 'The most powerful driver in our industry is the relentless reduction of
cost,' Michael Liebreich, chief executive officer of New Energy Finance, said at the
company’s annual conference in New York yesterday. 'In a decade the cost of solar projects is going to
halve again.'... 'System costs have declined 5
percent to 8 percent (a year), and we will continue to see that,' SolarCity Inc. CEO Lyndon Rive said in an interview." |
"Falling solar-panel prices,
generous government subsidies and rising power costs are creating a new breed of solar
enthusiasts: people who are installing panels on their roof because they see it as a good
investment, not because they are out to save the world..... There is debate, though, about whether it makes sense to subsidize
solar power, as it is more expensive than power generated from coal or natural gas. The Energy Department estimates that solar panels, all in, cost
about $210 for each megawatt hour, more than twice as much as a coal, which runs about
$95, and nearly twice as much as natural gas, which costs about $125. Those who support subsidies say they are necessary to drive demand to
achieve market scale so that prices continue to drop. Opponents say the government
supports only make power more expensive for all users. Right now, the sun contributes only
0.2% of the power on the electric grid. Even if that doubles in the next five years, as
expected, it will remain a teeny portion. Solar has long held great promise. The sun is
cranking exactly when power demand is typically highest and electricity is most
expensive—during daylight hours. And residential installations can feed power
directly into homes and power grids without needing to build giant new transmission lines.
Installing panels is hailed as a green job that can't be outsourced. In 2009, government
support for residential solar systems was about $600 million, according to Larry Sherwood,
a consultant who tracks solar programs for the Interstate Renewable Energy Council. That
is split roughly evenly between federal tax credits and rebates paid for by electricity
customers." |
"New studies conducted by
researchers at the Colorado School of Mines could significantly improve the efficiency of
solar cells. Mark Lusk and his colleagues' latest work describes how the size of
light-absorbing particles-quantum dots-affects the particles' ability to transfer energy
to electrons to generate electricity. The advance
provides evidence to support a controversial idea, called multiple-exciton generation
(MEG), which theorizes that it is possible for an electron that has absorbed light energy,
called an exciton, to transfer that energy to more than one electron, resulting in more
electricity from the same amount of absorbed light. Quantum dots are man-made atoms that
confine electrons to a small space. They have atomic-like behavior that results in unusual
electronic properties on a nanoscale. These unique properties may be particularly valuable
in tailoring the way light interacts with matter....For this study, Lusk and collaborators
used a National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported high performance computer cluster to
quantify the relationship between the rate of MEG and quantum dot size. They found that
each dot has a slice of the solar spectrum for which it is best suited to perform MEG and
that smaller dots carry out MEG for their slice more efficiently than larger dots. This
implies that solar cells made of quantum dots specifically tuned to the solar spectrum
would be much more efficient than solar cells made of material that is not fabricated with
quantum dots. According to Lusk, 'We can now design nanostructured materials that generate
more than one exciton from a single photon of light, putting to good use a large portion
of the energy that would otherwise just heat up a solar cell.' The results are published
in the April issue of the journal ACS Nano." |
"Wind and solar power may
compete with fossil fuels, without aid from government subsidies, within the next decade,
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said. 'It’s
not going to be three decades,' Chu said today at an event in Washington sponsored
by the Pew Charitable Trust. Chu is calling for a national energy policy that
will promote the use of clean-energy technologies. The U.S. should invest in advanced
battery technologies, biofuels and efficient high-voltage transmission systems, Chu said. China and other nations are
promoting policies to support cleaner energy. 'This is a race,' he said. Small, modular
nuclear reactors, less than a third the size of current units, are “much, much
safer” than traditional reactors, which remain safe, Chu said. Chu was speaking about
the role that future generations of nuclear reactors might play in U.S. energy
policy." |
"Electric car buyers said
they're purchasing solar panels to support their new, electricity-intensive driving
habits.The first in the most recent wave of plug-in
electric cars rolled out last year in San Diego County, an all-electric vehicle from
Nissan, followed a month later by Chevy's mostly electric Volt. While there's no hard data
for Volt owners, 40 percent of Leaf owners have solar panels, according to the California
Center for Sustainable Energy, a San Diego nonprofit. Owners reached by the North County
Times said they decided on solar panels at the same time they decided on electric cars,
both to reduce their contributions to global warming and to offset the extra electricity
they'd have to buy for their new vehicles.... 'When a person goes solar and buys an
electric car, they essentially have their own gas station on their roof,' said Daniel
Sullivan, founder of Sullivan Solar Power in San Diego. Many owners also said they'd come
out ahead financially, thanks to the way California utilities bill for power. The price of
electricity in California escalates as customers' consumption passes usage plateaus.
Owning an electric car not only adds to total usage, but it also puts more customers into
the most expensive tiers of electricity. Using solar panels to generate electricity and
pump it back into the grid allows customers to reduce their usage, and to pay a lower rate
for the power they use, lowering their bills. San Diego Gas & Electric Co. would
prefer car owners use an alternate billing system in which the owners pay for power priced
on when it's used. Electricity used in the middle of the day, when it's most needed in
offices and factories, costs the most, while power at night is the cheapest, said
SDG&E spokesman Art Larson." |
"Tesla Motors
Inc. (TSLA), the U.S. electric carmaker backed by Daimler AG (DAI)
and Toyota Motor Corp. (7203),
said its battery-powered sedan that goes on sale next year will be profitable even on the
base model that will sell for $57,400. That price will be the entry point after the first
1,000 'Signature Series' of its all-electric Model S sedan built next year sell for at
least $20,000 more than the base model, the company said March 7. All grades of the car
will make money, said J.B. Straubel, Tesla’s chief technology officer. 'We can’t
sell this car at a loss,' Straubel told reporters today at Tesla’s Palo Alto, California,
headquarters. 'We know what the targets are, what the materials cost. Tesla is enormously
more capable than we were four to five years ago.'...An
element helping hold down costs for the sedan that goes on sale in mid-2012 is cheaper,
higher-powered lithium-ion cells specifically designed for electric vehicles, Straubel
said. There may also be opportunities to get lower
prices for parts and materials from its Toyota and Daimler affiliations, he said.... For
example, the Model S will use an air-conditioning system modified from that in
Toyota’s Prius that’s designed for electric vehicles, Straubel said. ..... The
1,000 'Signature Series' Model S cars will be able to travel as far as 300 miles per
charge. The base-level Model S, which goes 160 miles per charge, is about $57,400, and a
version able to go about 230 miles will be about $67,400, the company said." |
"Solar greenhouses have played a role in China’s agricultural
scene for some time, but new innovations are taking them to the next level in addressing
the global energy crisis and climate change. A
recently published report based on 20 years of systematic studies from the College of
Agronomy and Biotechnology at China Agricultural University proposes that solar
greenhouses can greatly improve current sustainability initiatives and goals worldwide." |
"Thousands of charging
points for electrical cars are to be installed across Britain over the next two years, the
Government will say today. The scheme is part of a new Carbon Plan, launched today by
deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Energy secretary Chris Huhne, which sets deadlines to
help turn Britain into a greener economy. The
Government’s plan says it wants to have developed a 'nationwide strategy to promote
the installation of electric vehicle infrastructure' by June this year. The 83 page plan
commits the Government to overseeing 'up to 8,500 charging points installed across the UK
by 2013', costing up to £30million. It says: 'If we are to see large-scale take-up of
electric vehicles as a major form of road transport, developing charging infrastructure
will be vital'. The money will pay for charging points in 'streets, homes and sites such
as car parks and commercial retail and leisure facilities', the plan says. The commitment
comes despite recent concern about that not enough demand to support more charging
points." |
"The world added about 16
gigawatts of new solar photovoltaic (PV) power in 2010, double the growth seen a year
earlier, the European Photovoltaic Industry Association told Reuters on Monday. Uncertainty about Italian figures made a precise figure difficult, after
an end-of-year rush to qualify for a higher solar power price premium, called a feed-in
tariff. The global increase compared with 7.2 GW of new capacity in 2009, confounding a
financial crisis and reflecting sharp falls in solar panel prices and generous subsidies,
especially in Germany
and Italy. "Solar PV is continuing to develop in countries that put a feed-in tariff
in place," said EPIA economist Gaetan Masson. The added capacity in 2010 brought
cumulative, global solar PV power to nearly 40 GW, up 70 percent from nearly 23 GW in
2009. Europe dominated new solar power installations last year, at about 13 gigawatts
(GW), Masson estimated, with Germany and Italy
accounting for nearly 7 GW and about 3 GW respectively. Estimates for the other major
European players included the Czech Republic (1.3 GW), France (0.5 GW), Spain (0.4),
Belgium (0.25) and Greece
(0.2). Outside Europe, the biggest markets were Japan
(about 1 GW), United States (0.8 GW) and China (0.4 GW). Solar
panel prices have halved since 2007, say analysts, at about $1.8 per watt at the end of
2010 compared with $3.7 three years earlier." |
"Solar companies have warned of
'massive uncertainty' hanging over the market, after the Government said it would review
subsidies for renewable electricity. The subsidies,
called feed-in tarrifs, were intended as a way to pay householders above market rates to
generate electricity from solar panels and small wind turbines on their roofs. However,
large-scale 'photovoltaic farms' have been springing up all over the countryside to take
advantage of the generous offer. It was revealed in The Telegraph that the Government was
ready to act against 'hot money and speculators' soaking up much of the £360m
subsidies." |
"Seizing on what President Obama called this generation's 'Sputnik
moment,' the federal government has begun an effort to slash the cost of solar power by 75
percent and reclaim America's lead in the fast-growing global industry. The effort, called
SunShot, aims to make photovoltaic solar power as inexpensive as electricity from plants
burning fossil fuels by the end of the decade. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Friday the U.S. government
would refocus its existing solar programs, which costs about $200 million a year. He also
announced $27 million in new funding for companies exploring new solar technologies,
including three in the Bay Area.
Chu has repeatedly warned that the United States risks losing its leadership in green
technology to other countries, a theme Obama seized upon
last week in his State of the Union address. In just a few short years, China has become
the world's dominant maker of solar cells, a position the United States held for decades.
Obama likened this moment in history to Sputnik's launch in 1957, which shocked the United
States into realizing that other nations could match or beat American technical prowess.
The 'moon shot' effort that followed Sputnik provided the inspiration for SunShot's name.
'This is an economic opportunity that we can't afford not to participate in, and it will
be a race,' said Chu, discussing the new program Friday. 'It's an internationally
competitive world, and in the end, the best technology is going to win.' The program will try to lower the cost of utility-size solar
installations to about $1 per watt, which translates into an electricity cost of 6 cents
per kilowatt hour. Although the price of solar panels has plunged more than 40 percent in
the past two years, solar remains a relatively expensive way to generate electricity. When
the costs of financing, construction, operations and fuel are included, electricity from a
new natural gas plant costs 12 cents per kilowatt hour, according to the California
Energy Commission. Electricity from a large photovoltaic installation, meanwhile,
costs 26 cents per kilowatt hour. 'As an industry, we can easily see a two (times) cost
reduction over the next decade,' said Richard Swanson, co-founder and president emeritus
of SunPower Corp. in San Jose. 'A four (times) cost
reduction ... would be a huge boost to clean energy and is certainly not possible, in my
view, without the support of the Department of Energy.'" |
"The U.S. Department of Energy
said on Friday it will spend $27 million on a new effort to reduce the costs of solar
power by 75 percent by the end of the decade in a bid to make the renewable power source
as cheap as fossil fuels. Energy Secretary Steven
Chu dubbed the program a 'sun shot' that was patterned on President John F. Kennedy's
'moon shot' goal in the 1960s that called for the United States to land a man on the moon.
Chu said cutting the cost of installed solar power by
75 percent would put the price at about $1 per watt, he said, or about 6 cents per
kilowatt hour. 'That would make solar energy
cost-competitive with other forms of energy without subsidies of any kind,' he told a
conference call. Costs for to install photovoltaic
solar panels, which turn sunlight directly into electricity, currently run above 22 cents
per kilowatt per hour, although federal grants and state incentives can trim that to below
15 cents for large projects. Many U.S. solar
industry advocates have long complained that the Chinese government's support of its solar
companies has enabled its companies to take market share from U.S. manufacturers." |
"The next generation of cheaper,
thinner and better solar cells could come courtesy of a technology found right in our
homes and offices: inkjet printers.
As their name implies, inkjet printers squirt ink
onto a material, such as a paper document or the silicon of a solar
cell. The well-controlled, contactless deposition of inkjetting should make possible
solar cells that are half as thick, yet more efficient at, soaking up the sun's rays than
today's industry standard. 'Inkjet is very good at putting down patterned material –
anything that has a specific layout,' said Maikel van Hest, a senior scientist at the
National Center for Photovoltaics at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in
Golden, Colo. Such precision allows for the placement of thinner metallic grids on silicon
solar cells that serve as collectors of sun-generated
electricity. These silver 'finger' strips crisscrossing solar cells measure in the
100- to 120-micrometer — or micron — range, whereas inkjet-deposited lines can
be as narrow as 50 or even 20 microns, van Hest said. The thinner contacts expose more of
a solar cell's silicon to sunlight, which translates into more electricity generation.
'(These lines) mean less shadows and more light onto the solar cell,' said van Hest." |
"Solar-power arrays have sprouted up on rooftops and parking garages
across Tucson and Arizona. The next big wave of solar
development will be across expanses of desert, as Tucson Electric Power Co. and other
Arizona utilities bring online hundreds of megawatts worth of large, utility-scale
solar-power plants. Last year, state regulators
approved some 150 megawatts of renewable-energy projects to be owned by TEP or developed
under power-purchase contracts with the utility, including more than 130 megawatts of new
solar plants by 2013. Six of those projects are expected to go online by the end of this
year. One megawatt, or 1 million watts, worth of solar capacity is roughly enough to power
about 160 typical TEP homes, the utility estimates. On top of those projects, the Arizona
Corporation Commission has approved TEP's plan to spend up to $28 million annually for
about 7 MW of new company-owned or contracted solar-power capacity each year through 2014.
And the state's biggest power company, Phoenix-based Arizona Public Service Co., plans to
increase its solar output more than sevenfold by 2013, with major utility-scale projects
including an 18-MW photovoltaic plant and a massive, 280-MW concentrating solar thermal
power plant, both in the sun-soaked desert near Gila Bend. The
Big Solar buildout is happening nationwide. Driven by taxpayer subsidies, state
renewable-energy mandates and plunging equipment costs, the U.S. market for utility-scale
solar energy farms is expected to double each year between 2010 and 2015, to $8 billion,
according to a study released in November by GreenTech Media, a Cambridge, Mass.-based
research group. In 2010, 274 MW of utility-scale
solar plants were expected to be connected to the grid - a 370 percent increase from 2009.
GreenTech projects are planned to double in 2011 and reach 5,600 MW by 2015." |
| 2010 |
"According to a new article
published by a team of researchers from CalTech and the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology there may be a new way to harness the energy of solar even when the sun is not
shining. Led by Sossina Haile, she along with her colleagues are looking at ways to
produce hydrogen and syngasses by using solar funnels. In an article, 'High-Flux Solar-Driven
Thermochemical Dissociation of CO2 and H2O Using Nonstoichiometric Ceria,' published
in the December 24, 2010 edition of Science magazine, the research team has developed a
device that is able concentrate solar radiation and heat it up to 1,600 degrees Celsius.
In simple terms, the heat that results from this process is then used to split water or
carbon dioxide into hydrogen. As described in an article in Clean
Energy Authority.com, the device consists of a quartz lens that focuses the solar
radiation on a reaction chamber that is internally reflective and captures most of the
photons that enter and converts them to heat. The device heats up at a rate of 140
degrees Celsius a minute until it reaches about 1,250 degrees Celsius, and stabilizing at
more than 1,400 degrees Celsius. Through a two-step process, the device’s catalyst
ceria (cerium dioxide) converts CO2 or water into its constituent elements....'We
calculated efficiency should be between 15 percent and 19 percent. We’re working with
University of Minnesota on that. Right now it’s limited by the thermal design of the
reactor. We need a better thermal design,' Haile concluded." |
"An interestingly novel way of
comparing solar power with nuclear power finds that solar easily bests nuclear. Ken
Zweibel has an analysis at The Solar Review, that compares the two kinds of electrical energy, in
terms of how much power is packed into each gram of its respective material: cadmium
telluride, versus uranium. He provides data showing that CdTe thin film solar power (using
cadmium telluride) takes ten times less PV material to make 1 kilowatt hour of
electricity, than nuclear uses of uranium, to make an identical 1 kilowatt hour of
electricity. This is even comparing the two as if
solar 'used up' each gram of cadmium telluride the way that nuclear power uses up its
uranium fuel (pretty much – some can be recycled, theoretically). But of course,
solar doesn’t burn up fuel. You can get electricity from the same grams of PV
material for at least thirty years, and then the material can be recycled and still used
again. By contrast, the equivalent grams of nuclear uranium must be replaced with newly
mined uranium once the first has yielded its energy.... So,
compared with nuclear, solar packs a punch: using one-tenth as much material to make the
same power. But check out the comparison to coal. According to his calculations, even
assuming just thirty years use, then tossing the solar, the thin film photovoltaic
material uses just five millionths of the weight of coal needed to make the same kilowatt
hour of electricity. 'Compared to coal, of course,
the numbers are out of this world. These differences in resource needs bear on the
ultimate sustainability of the PV in comparison to other more resource-intense energy
technologies'." |
"It’s a segment one rarely hears about, even in the supercharged
discussions about the country’s solar future and clean energy, but distributed solar
power seems to have left behind its bigger cousin in the race to achieving business-model
sustainability. As big companies fall over one another to convert the Thar desert into a
sea of solar panels with government subsidies, Amit Chugh, the pioneer of distributed
solar sector in the country, says he is happy to stand and watch. Distributed solar refers
to power that’s generated from panels that doesn’t go into a grid, but straight
to the user. 'Please do not subsidise this in an unsustainable manner,' says Chugh, who
was chronicled in 2007 by Time magazine for abandoning a cushy job with a multinational in
Malaysia and starting out on a journey to sell solar panels and lamps to the tens of
millions of Indians still untouched by electricity. Among the hue and cry of industry
demanding higher and higher subsidies to roll out solar projects, Chugh strikes a
diffident pose, calling subsidies a ‘market spoiler’. While it may appear to be
superficial bravado at first, a look at Chugh’s achievements forces one to rethink.
As a founder of Cosmic Ignite along with Stanford University alumni Matt Scott, the
finance-professional turned green energy entrepreneur is responsible for bringing solar
power to more than one lakh families in the most backward of India’s districts. 'Yes,
we manage to make a profit,' he said. The Mighty Light, a solar light that also powers a
radio and can charge a cellphone, sells for just Rs1,000. It includes a small solar panel
that is kept outside the home/hut during the day. Some
nifty innovation and steadily declining solar module prices has meant Mighty Light sells
for half the price it used to three years back. 'Our product costs Rs1,000 and gives 24
hours of light on one charge. It is actually cheaper than kerosene when you spread it over
the full lifetime,' Chugh said. 'The solution,
technologically, is there.. If 700 million people can buy a mobile phone that costs
Rs3,000 or more, they can surely spend Rs1,000 for energy,' he said. What is missing,
Chugh points out, are market ‘enablers’. In other words, while it may indeed be
cheaper than a kerosene in the long run, how does one convince the ‘bottom of the
Indian pyramid’ to save up and shell out Rs1,000 at one go? 'Most of them don’t
even have land to give as collateral,' Chugh said. Having attacked the bottom of the
pyramid for more than three years, he is wary of marketing evangelists. 'The fortune is
not there now, don’t believe it,' he said, having seen some of his earlier products
fail to attract his target customers. 'There’s this big bubble of the so-called
fortune at thebottom of the pyramid,” said Chugh, while attending the TIE
Entrepreneur Summit in New Delhi last week. Chugh is currently attacking the problem by
tying up with microfinance players, instead of trying to take advantage of some of the old
government schemes that provide small subsidies to families that buy solar lanterns....
Unlike coal and hydro, solar lends itself to being produced where it is consumed. As a
result, solar power does not have the handicap of losing 35% in transmission as in the
case of traditional power that is carried from a big plant in one corner of the country to
another where consumers exist. However, under the Centre’s Solar Mission, out of the
1,300 mw of capacity to be built in three years, 1,000 mw is to be in centralised plants
called solar farms. But for the remaining 300 mw, the government is yet to announce any
incentive scheme or programme." |
"Spain's government approved Thursday a
30% cut to solar power subsidies that may result in
savings of around EUR740 million, but is also likely to anger international investors in
the sector." |
"U.S. researchers say they've
developed a new kind of solar cell that can generate energy even at night, promising a new
form of renewable energy. The key is their ability to harvest infrared radiation as well
as visible light, Steven Novack at the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National
Laboratory in Idaho Falls says. Almost half of the available energy in the spectrum of
solar radiation resides in the infrared band, and infrared is re-emitted as heat by the
Earth's surface after the sun has gone down, meaning the cells can even capture some
energy during the night, he says. Novack estimates a
complete system using the new cells would have an overall efficiency of 46 percent,
whereas the most efficient current silicon solar cells top out at about 25 percent. Also,
currently solar cells can only produce their top output in a narrow range of conditions.
For example, if the sun is in the wrong position, sunlight is reflected off a silicone
solar cell instead of being absorbed to create energy. The new cells can absorb radiation
at a variety of angles, the researchers say." |
"The National Renewable Energy Labratory (NREL) recently tested
thin-film solar modules made by MiaSolé, and verified that their energy conversion
efficiency rate hit 15.7 percent, up from 14.3 percent last year. The company boasted about
the number, and several news outlets touted the results. Does it mean the performance
gap between thin-film and crystalline solar modules is closing? Could thin-film take a
bite out of the market for crystalline panels in the U.S., soon? Clean tech analysts and
engineers believe that thin-film solar is not likely to catch up to crystalline in terms
of efficiency any time soon. Neither will thin-film solar modules steal market share from
crystalline in 2011, they predict....Of all thin-film technologies, CIGS modules
demonstrate the greatest energy conversion efficiency, and power output per square meter.
CIGS cells require less energy for production than crystalline cells. Thin film in general requires less expensive semiconductor
material, and fewer process steps than it takes to make crystalline modules, according to
NREL research. Manufacturing costs keep the price of thin-film modules comparatively low,
today." |
| "Iowa State University and Ames
Laboratory researchers have improved the efficiency of polymer solar cells through the use
of a new process that increases light absorption.... Together, these
researchers have created a new process that increases the efficiency of solar cells. To do
this, researchers took flexible, lightweight polymers and added a textured substrate
pattern that provided a uniform and thin light-absorbing layer. Also, this textured
substrate pattern remains uniformly thin when going up and down the flat-topped ridges,
which are less than a millionth of a meter high. The polymer solar cells were indeed much
more efficient with this layer, as they were able to absorb more sunlight within the
ridges. The absorbing layer was also able to maintain its electrical transport properties.
'Our technology efficiently utilizes the light-trapping scheme,' said Chaudhary. 'And so solar cell efficiency improved by 20 percent.'.... Not
only does this light-absorbing layer make the solar cells 20 percent more efficient, but
after testing the polymer solar cells, Chaudhary and fellow researchers found that the
amount of light absorbed at the red/near infrared band edge 'increased by 100 percent over
flat cells.' This study was published in Advanced Materials." New Light-absorbing Layer Makes Polymer Solar Cells More Efficient DailyTech, 3 December 2010 |
"Sharp
Manufacturing UK, part of Japan's Sharp Corp (6753.T), will
spend $56 million to expand its solar manufacturing plant in Wrexham, the Welsh Assembly
Government said on Thursday. The investment will add
several hundred new jobs to the 750 workers already employed, the government said in a
statement." |
"Maryland-based New Energy Technologies, Inc., demonstrated the
technology in Florida back in September with a small-scale working prototype (see this BrighterEnergy.org story). Today the company released
details on how it will accelerate development to bring the technology to market. Over the
next year it will work to improve solar cell efficiency and performance, increase the
transparency of coated glass surfaces and improve the durability of the system to ensure
long-term performance. As it works to scale-up its current prototype system, New Energy
intends to develop low-cost manufacturing methods, although it has already indicated that
the application of the coating to glass can be carried out at room temperatures, with
existing commercially-available equipment. The company will also seek more patents to
protect its intellectual property, secure third-party certification of the SolarWindow
module performance and pursue commercial partnerships. John A. Conklin, President &
CEO of New Energy Technologies, Inc., said: 'In upcoming quarters and the year ahead, we
anticipate undertaking significant efforts to accelerate our SolarWindow towards
commercialization. 'Our priorities include the development of additional patent
protection, improved manufacturability, increased power production, advanced power output
modeling, and attracting management-level talent able to help advance our breakthrough
technology from the research-bench to commercial market,' explained Mr. Conklin. New
Energy Technology’s patent-pending process allows energy to be generated from natural
and artificial light. It uses some of the world’s smallest functional solar cells,
which measure a quarter the size of a grain of rice. The
company suggests its SolarWindow technology would turn otherwise passive window panes into
solar power-generating panels on five million commercial buildings and 80 million detached
homes across America. Claims are that the technology would outperform conventional rooftop
solar installations by more than 300% when applied to facades of commercial towers. Mr Conklin said: 'Our demonstration of SolarWindow’s ability to
generate both current and voltage on glass surfaces, while remaining see-through, is an
incredible technical achievement and marks a pivotal maturation point for New Energy,
where we have transitioned from early research towards product development, and eventual
commercial launch.'" |
"With the Government of India
emphasising on green energy, the use of solar power and other renewable energy sources is
likely to increase in the coming decades, an industry expert said. The electricity
generation from solar photovoltaic is expected to grow at Compounded Average Annual Growth
Rate (CAAGR) of 36.4 per cent by 2035, Martin Daniel, editor of Platts Power in Asia, which is the leading global provider of information on the Asia electric
power industry, said quoting a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
'Alternative sources of energy will play an important role in power generation in India
over the next 15 years, while the production of coal-based power is likely to reduce,'
Daniel said. As per the report, which has considered drafting and implementation of new
policies for use of renewable energy as a base for computing the power generation by 2035,
the share of coal-based power will be 52%, of the total generated power, as compared to
its contribution in 2008, which was nearly 69%. As against this, the share of renewable
energy from sources like wind, biomass and waste, gas, nuclear and solar PV will increase
to 6%, 4 %, 14%, 6% and 3%, respectively, by 2035, he said quoting the report. Of this,
the solar PV and biomass based power had an almost 0% share in the total power generation
in 2008, while the share of nuclear, gas and wind based energy was 2 %, 10% and 2%
respectively, he said." |
"Solar energy and biofuels are on track to become economically
competitive against conventional power sources within a few years to a decade, the Boston
Consulting Group said on Wednesday. Wind power and electric cars face hurdles to massive
adoption, though, analysts at the consulting firm said in a report....Concentrated solar, which uses the sun's heat to run a boiler to
produce power, had a particularly strong outlook because plants can be built to hold heat
for hours, allowing them to overcome problems from cloudy days -- or even nightfall, the
report said.....Biofuels made from non-food sources
such as switchgrass could be competitive with $3/gallon gasoline by 2012 to 2015, as costs
of enzymes and feedstock fuels fall and the benefits of large-scale production kick in.
The projections were based on a combination of forecasts for materials, extrapolation of
previous technological progress, and analysis of potential barriers toward rolling out new
technologies on a large scale. Thus while the cost of photovoltaic solar panels is
expected to fall precipitously, without some form of energy storage they and land-based
wind farms face challenges compared with other technologies, the group said." |
"California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger broke ground Wednesday on
what was touted as the world's largest solar-energy project. The 370-megawatt Ivanpa Solar Electric Generating System is
scheduled to go online in 2013 and produce enough energy to power 140,000 US homes. Situated in southern California's Mojave Desert, the 2-billion- dollar
project covers close to 1,500 hectares and will include 3,600 billboard-sized mirrors,
arranged in concentric circles around a central tower. The mirrors will focus the sun's
rays on the tower to create steam that will run a turbine. 'Some people look out into the
desert and see miles and miles of emptiness,' Schwarzenegger said at the event. 'I see
miles and miles of gold mine. The construction of this renewable energy plant is great
news for our state and further proof that it is possible to both protect the environment
and grow the economy.'" |
"An economically-sound solution to solar power comes from Tata
Steel’s Corus and Swansea University researchers, who developed a technology that
uses steel sheets for more efficient dye-sensitized solar cells. This kind of solar cell would work very well in diffused sunlight,
in countries where the weather is generally cloudy and countries at higher latitudes. Also, the technology could be implemented in automobiles, whose paints
could be actually active dyes that would charge their batteries or electrolyze water and
create pure hydrogen for the fuel cell. Sun Catalytix, a US-based company, already
delivers an integrated solution containing solar cells, low-cost catalysts and fuel cells
that could be placed on just about any electric car. The printing process for these dyes
has also already been mastered by Corus, Tata’s European subsidiary, which is
building a new plant for the production of steel sheets in Europe. The need for solar cells that are also efficient in low light
conditions is pretty big nowadays, since the Sun doesn’t shine as brightly in all
countries. Tata’s efforts to bring this plan to reality may also prove fruitful in
the not-so-distant future." |
"Rather than close the blinds on
a sunny day, perhaps you'll pull down the solar panel. The Massachusetts Institute of
Technology here today presented early results of research projects funded by Italian oil
company Eni, including paper-thin solar cells,
which could be used as window covers, and a
paper-based material to collect oil spilled in water. MIT showed prototypes of paper solar
cells able to generate enough current to light a small LED display. A commercial solar
paper device could be available in five years, said chemical engineering professor Karen Gleason, whose lab is doing the
work." |
"The United States now has more than 35GW of installed wind energy, enough to power close to
10 million homes. Close on the heels of this ongoing renewable energy
revolution is another green technology: By next year tens of thousands of Nissan LEAFs,
Chevy Volts, and other electric vehicles will start rolling off assembly lines. The
electricity generation and transportation sectors may seem like two disparate pieces of a
puzzle, but in fact they may end up being intimately related. The connection comes in the
form of the vehicle-to-grid concept, in which a large electric vehicle (EV) fleet —
essentially a group of rechargeable batteries that spend most of their time sitting in
driveways and garages — might be used to store excess power when demand is low and
feed it back to the grid when demand is high. Utilities and electricity wholesalers would
pay the EV owners for providing that power. Vehicle-to-grid, or V2G, is not a new idea. In
fact, it's been floating around environmental and green tech circles for a decade at
least. But it has always had the tough-to-shed image of a utopian technology. Now, though,
V2G — as well as simpler schemes based on smart-timed charging of the vehicles —
is slowly becoming reality, evolving in quiet synergy with the worldwide push for
renewable energy. The main drawback of wind and solar power has always been
their intermittency: By now it is more than a cliché to say that the wind doesn't always
blow and the sun doesn't always shine. To some
extent, that claim is specious: Existing power supplies also vary by huge amounts, and
flexible generators, such as natural gas power plants, are called on to balance out the
blips. This is called frequency regulation. Those generators can handle only so much
variation, though, says Willett Kempton, director of the Center for Carbon Free Power Integration at the
University of Delaware and one of the pioneers of the V2G concept. 'And also, we'd rather
not be using those generators at all. When you get to 40 percent, 50 percent generation
coming from renewables, you need some kind of storage, and this [V2G] is a way of getting
storage on the system.' That storage takes the form of the lithium-ion battery pack on
board most EVs being produced today. For V2G to work, though, the cars need to be able to
communicate with system operators running the electrical grid — this can be
accomplished with a simple Internet connection that could be built into the car's plug. That communication link and a power converter that lets
electricity flow both in and out of the battery will allow an overtaxed electrical grid to
draw power from a group of cars, and then charge them when there is plenty of electricity
to go around. If renewable energy ever supplies a sizeable portion of a nation's power
needs, using EVs as a diffuse network for storing electricity — and then feeding it
back to the grid on demand — could be an important tool in decarbonizing the economy." |
"In an industry-wide effort to
cut the cost of solar power, panel manufacturers are using electronics to boost efficiency
and get more bang for the solar buck. Suntech, a large Chinese panel maker, is partnering
with three companies to integrate electronics onto its panels to optimize the output and
ease installation. 'Smart' solar panels is likely one of the technology trends to emerge
at the annual Solar
Power International (SPI) conference next week in Los Angeles. Companies developing
these technologies say that making efficiency improvements in panels represents one of the
best ways to improve the economics of solar photovoltaics. Because of higher manufacturing volumes and price competition, the cost
per watt of solar panels themselves continues to decline. But about half of the end cost
to consumers--called the balance of system in industry parlance--is tied up in the wiring,
electronics, and installation. Enphase Energy on Tuesday said that it will collaborate
with Suntech to explore the development of an 'AC module' which uses
Enphase's microinverters. Enphase next week at SPI plans to demonstrate the latest version
of its microinverter technology, which will be available in the first half of next year,
according to the company. Traditionally, arrays of solar photovoltaic panels are wired to
an inverter which converts the aggregated direct current from panels to household
alternating current. In the past few years, companies have developed improved
microinverters which are fitted directly onto the panel. In addition to simplified wiring,
microinverters boost the overall output of an array because shading of one panel won't
affect other panels connected to it, as happens with a centralized inverter." |
"Developing nations in Asia, it seems, are finally seeing the light.
In May, the Asian Development Bank started a major drive to promote solar
power across the region. Last year, the Indian government approved an ambitious
National Solar Mission, which seeks a huge increase in the country’s solar-energy
capabilities. Bangladesh,
with the support of the World
Bank, is aiming to have one million remote rural homes supplied with solar panels by
the end of 2012. And in India,
where nearly 40 percent of households have no access to electricity, companies like Selco
Solar and Orb Energy have helped tens of thousands of families and small entrepreneurs
purchase solar panels. All worthy causes. So worthy and sensible, in fact, that you may
well ask why on earth they did not take off much earlier. The answer, as is so often the
case, is political support — or, until relatively recently, the lack of it —
and, inevitably, cost. 'The upfront costs of installing solar-electricity-generating
farms, plus high borrowing costs and the fact that developing nations struggle to access
long-term capital, have inhibited the growth of solar energy until recently,' said
Seethapathy Chander, chairman of the committee on energy issues at the Asian Development
Bank in Manila. ... Banks were long reluctant to lend to the poor. Increasingly, however,
companies like Selco and Orb Energy have been able to convince some local banks that
low-income earners are creditworthy and that solar-related credits bring in solid business
in much the same way that car financing does... Cheaper panels, combined with lower
interest rates since the financial crisis, have helped put solar energy systems within the
financial reach of poorer nations, said Anil Cabraal, an alternative energy expert who,
until his retirement from the World Bank in April, got many of the bank’s solar
projects in Asia and Africa under way over the past decade. Under
the solar initiative it announced this year, the Asian Development Bank hopes to help put
in place solar power projects with a total capacity of 3,000 megawatts by 2013. The
total operating capacity now is less than 500 megawatts. (One megawatt is enough to cover
the power demand of about 200 homes, or 1,000 people, in developing Asia.) The solar
mission in India aims to have 20,000 megawatts of grid-connected solar energy by 2022, up
from only about 2 megawatts now. It also wants to help increase off-grid solar energy,
currently at about 20 megawatts a year, to 10 times that amount by 2013, and to 2,000
megawatts by 2022." |
"U.S. researchers say flexible,
water-gel-based 'solar leaves' could be less expensive and more environmentally friendly
than silicon-based solar cells. Researchers at North
Carolina State University say the bendable devices are composed of water-based gel infused
with light-sensitive molecules coupled with electrodes coated by carbon materials, a NCSU
release reports. The molecules get 'excited' by the sun's rays to produce electricity,
similar to the way plant molecules get excited to synthesize sugars in order to grow,
Orlin Velev, a professor of chemical and bio-molecular engineering, says. The team hopes
to 'learn how to mimic the materials by which nature harnesses solar energy' Velev says.
Now that they've proven the concept, the researchers will work to fine-tune the
water-based photovoltaic devices, making them even more like real leaves." |
"California regulators approved construction Wednesday of a
370-megawatt solar-thermal power plant, one of nine
facilities that together will more than double U.S. solar power generation capacity. The California Energy Commission approved a plan by privately held
BrightSource Energy to build the facility in the Mojave Desert in three parts." |
"The development of new organic
photovoltaic (PV) technology by Cambridge University could make the installation of solar
cells easier and cheaper and even allow homeowners to generate alternative energy from
their windows. Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory and UK environmental group the
Carbon Trust have jointly formed Eight19, a new company concentrating on the development
of new organic solar PV technology. With organic
solar PV technology, organic photovoltaics (OPV) operate differently from solar conductors
on a principle similar to photosynthesis in plants. The new solar panels will be developed
on flexible transparent material which can easily be unrolled, allowing them to be used
more simply and with more versatility. For example the transparent plastic sheeting could
be fitted to windows in the home, as head of research and development at the Carbon Trust,
Dr. Robert Trezona points out, this "would revolutionize the possible applications
for solar technology." |
"Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have
announced a new development that could have major implications for the solar energy
industry as well as for homeowners hoping to save money and help the environment. According to an announcement from the university, new 'solar
funnels' use carbon nanotubes to concentrate solar energy up to 100 times more than
conventional photovoltaic panels. One
potential application cited by MIT was antennas that can capture energy from the sun,
allowing for the next generation of solar panels to have considerably higher
effectiveness. 'Instead of having your whole roof be a photovoltaic cell, you could have
little spots that were tiny photovoltaic cells, with antennas that would drive photons
into them,' Michael Strano, an associate professor of chemical engineering who led the
research, was quoted as saying in the announcement." |
"Researchers have demonstrated
tiny solar cells just billionths of a metre across that can repair themselves, extending
their useful lifetime. The cells make use of
proteins from the machinery of plants, turning sunlight into electric charges that can do
work. The cells simply assemble themselves from a mixture of the proteins, minute tubes of
carbon and other materials. The self-repairing mechanism, reported in Nature Chemistry,
could lead to much longer-lasting solar cells." |
"A record number of homeowners
had solar panels installed this month, according to energy regulator Ofgem. The devices
have been fitted to 2,257 homes so far during August, up from 1,700 in July and 1,400 in
June. More than 6,688 homes have had solar panels
fitted since April, when the government's scheme to reward people who generate their own
energy altered. The feed-in tariff system now enables homeowners to receive 41.3p for
every unit of energy they generate. This is regardless of whether they use the energy or
sell it back to the National Grid. After the panels are installed, the tariff is paid for
25 years and increased in line with inflation." |
"At long last, Nissan begins
taking actual orders today for the first next-generation fully electric car from a major
automaker, the Leaf. More than 18,000 people who plunked down $99 to stay on the
reservations list will have first crack at turning their interest into an actual order for
the all-electric, five-seat car. Orders will be
taken online and Nissan is still taking reservations on Leaf's website. Even though now you can actually pay for one,
deliveries won't start until December. The car has a range of about 100 miles per charge.
Nissan has been having inspectors make home visits and taking other steps to make sure
customers will be able to recharge at home and likely be happy with the car. The base
level Leaf, the SV, is priced at $33,720, Nissan says. It comes with a list of standard
features, including cruise control and a navigation system." |
"A new federal government report concludes that by 2015 the cost of solar
power will be the same as the cost of power from the electrical grid and could even be
less by 2030. Released this week by Vice President
Joe Biden, the report predicts that the cost of generating power from rooftop solar panels
will drop from the 2009 cost of $0.21 per kWh to $0.10 per kWh in 2015, which is
equivalent to typical household electricity rates. Further, the cost of rooftop solar
power could drop to as low as $0.06 per kWh by 2030. At that cost, solar power will be
significantly cheaper than household electricity rates, allowing an average household to
save more than $400 per year in electricity bills. The study focused on the impact of
technological innovations funded by the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,
established in 2009 in response to the U.S. financial crisis to create new jobs and spur
economic activity. The $787 billion act includes $100 billion for science and technology
projects including a nationwide smart energy grid, electric vehicle manufacturing, and
development of regional high-speed rail systems." |
"When you think of hot climates, images of deserts often pop into
your mind. Indeed, many of the world's sunniest regions (near the equator) are also
home to large deserts. Those deserts would seem to be an ideal place to deploy solar
installations -- they're hit by intense sunlight, they're relatively foliage-free
for easy installation, and they don't have high concentrations of wildlife that would be
impacted. Unfortunately, the soil of deserts poses a critical problem. Sandy dust
clings to panels, dramatically reducing their output. Now a team of researchers led by MIT
professor Malay K. Mazumder, Ph.D has come
up with a solution -- use automated cleaning technology developed for
missions to Mars. The technology involves first using a transparent, electrically
sensitive material deposited on glass or a transparent plastic sheet covering the panels.
Sensors monitor the levels of deposited
dust on the panel. When the dust levels get too high, a charge is applied to the
coating and the dust is physically move across the panel via the charge and dumped off the
edges. The procedure uses a minimal amount of energy, making it a viable cleaning
solution. It removes 90 percent of dust,
greatly improving power output. And best of all, the
technology has already been stress tested by NASA
space probes and rovers under the harsh Martian climate....United States, Spain,
Germany, the Middle East, Australia, and India all are home to large scale solar
installations. Many of these installations are in regions where water is scarce,
making water-based cleaning problematic. Professor Mazumder elaborates, 'A dust
layer of one-seventh of an ounce per square yard decreases solar power conversion by 40
percent. In Arizona, dust is deposited each month at about 4 times that amount.
Deposition rates are even higher in the Middle East, Australia, and India.'" |
| "2010 just might go down as the
year solar energy gained mainstream acceptance. Stores that sell solar products are seeing
major boosts in sales compared with last year, some as much as 40 percent. The sun-powered momentum is fueled by less expensive products that are
made more affordable through federal tax credits and rebates at a time when utility prices
are rising. Another contributing factor to the rising
interest in renewable energy is the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. 'It's made the masses realize the difficulty of getting fossil fuels,'
says Rita Norton, a retired schoolteacher who invested in a solar panel electrical system
several years ago for her Kansas City, Mo., Cape Cod-style home. 'More people are talking
to me about solar, which is simply free energy from the sun.'" Here comes the sun: Solar power within reach McClatchy Newspapers, 8 August 2010 |
"Innovative technology used in a
Chinese ‘electrical highway' could provide the solution to Europe's energy problems
and ensure cheaper electricity for consumers. Sustainable power project DESERTEC aims to
provide the European Union (EU), the Middle East (ME) and North Africa (NA) with
electricity generated from large concentrations of solar panels located in the deserts of
North Africa and the Middle East. The EU, working in
close cooperation, with MENA aims to create a network of long distance power lines
carrying solar power from the deserts of Africa into Europe; because the electricity is
generated by solar power it would be available at a lower cost than power generated by
conventional sources, which are subject to rising prices relating to supply and demand
issues. Currently the technology needed to transport electricity from the desert to
households in Europe is unavailable due to the large amount of power lost in transporting
power over such a distance. Currently about 3 percent of electricity is lost per 1000 km
of cables meaning 15 percent of power generated in the desert would be lost before it
reached Europe..... However electrical company Siemens announced on August 1 the
successful operation of an innovative 'electric highway in China.' The electricity carried
by this highway is generated by hydropower and then transported 1,500 km from Yunnan
province to the industrial heartland of Guangzhou and Shenzhen. This ‘electric highway' uses a new transformer capable of
carrying 800kv, a world first in the field of power generation; this transformer ensures
that less than 2 percent of power is lost in transport and the cost of electricity remains
low for the Chinese consumers. It is estimated that the successful implementation of
technologies similar to those used in China for the DESERTEC project could reduce the cost
of electricity to 3/4 euro cents per kWh (kilowatt hour). European statistic database
Eurostat currently estimates the average cost of electricity for the household consumer at
around 12 euro cents per kWh; electricity is most expensive for householders in Ireland at
18 euro cents per kWh and cheapest for Bulgarians at 6.8 euro cents per kWh. As well as financial benefits, projects such as the one in China and
DESERTEC also have huge environmental bonuses; Siemens estimate that the ‘eclectric
highway' reduces CO2 emissions by 30 million tons per year, and DESERTEC would hugely
reduce Europe's reliance on fossil fuels." |
| "A Stanford University research
group says it found a way to more than double current solar power production
efficiency. The technology uses both light and heat from the sun and is inexpensive enough
that, if it pans out, it might be able to compete with oil. Most current technology can either convert light into electricity at
relatively low temperatures, or convert the sun’s heat at very high temperatures.
Stanford engineers claim they developed a way to do both. The photon enhanced thermionic
emission, or PETE, works best at high temperatures, where current photovoltaics struggle.
Solar panels usually use silicon to convert photons to electricity, but only from a
certain portion of the light spectrum. Unused photons generate heat in the cells, making
them perform poorly and losing up to 50% of the energy reaching the solar panel. Professor
Nick Melosh, who led the research group, says PETE works best at higher temperatures,
making it most effective when used with solar concentrators like parabolic mirrors used in
solar farms, rather than as rooftop solar panel replacements. If installed in solar farms,
PETE could also pass any waste heat it can’t convert to a solar farm’s thermal
conversion system. The team’s vision is to attach PETE devices to existing systems. Solar panels are often expensive because they require a lot of
silicon, but one PETE device needs only about a six-inch wafer of semiconducting material,
reducing the amount of investment capital needed to get it off the ground. According to
the research team’s estimates, the devices could reach 60% efficiency on solar farms.
Falling short of that goal could still have significant effects. The team said if they can
boost efficiency to 30%, it could make the cost of solar power comparable to oil." Stanford Heats Up Solar Power With New Harnessing Technology GreenTech, 2 August 2010 |
"Vodafone Essar Ltd. unveiled a
solar-powered mobile phone Tuesday that it hopes will appeal to India's rural masses who
lack electricity. India has been adding close to 20
million mobile subscribers each month, but many are in rural areas where electricity
supply can be patchy at best. A third of Indians don't have access to electric power, but
they do get plenty of sun. Samsung, which launched a solar-powered handset about a year
ago, and now Vodafone are trying to bridge the infrastructure gap." |
"The UT Administration has
adopted the theme, 'generating electricity from solar power', under the Solar City
initiative, for which a proposal has been made before the Union government for its
approval. According to the draft plan, which proposes to accord Chandigarh a solar city
status, the UT Administration has recommended energy efficiency measures for the
residential and commercial sectors of the city. The
plan was finalised after discussion with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). 'You
install solar panels and generate electricity for your house or commercial establishment.
The surplus energy generated can be transmitted to a common grid, and its value shall be
deducted from the monthly electricity bill of the generating source (electricity
connection holder),' said a senior UT official. Sources said that various government
institutions, nationalised banks and certain private players are also in the process of
generating electricity through solar power, for which talks are on with the UT
Administration." |
"A unmanned solar aircraft has
smashed the world record for continuous flight. The
'Zephyr' plane, developed by UK defense technology company, QinetiQ, took off from the
U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona on Friday July 9. Seven days on, it is still
flying high. Zephyr program director, Jon Saltmarsh told CNN: 'It's extremely
exciting. What we now have is an eternal plane. It has the same amount of fuel at the
start of one day as it does at the start of another.' The aircraft has already doubled its
own unofficial record of over 82 hours and smashed the previous world record for unmanned
flight of 30 hours and 24 minutes, set in 2001 by U.S. aerospace company, Northrop
Grumman's RQ-4A Global I." |
"Sweden leads the European Union
on renewable energy, producing 44.4 percent of its energy from renewable sources but
Malta, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom lag behind. Renewable
energy contributed 10.3 percent of total energy consumption in the EU27 in 2008 according
to a July 13 report by the statistical Office of the European Union Eurostat. The three
countries which had the highest share of renewable energy compared to total energy
consumption were Sweden, Finland and Latvia, with 44.4 percent, 30.5 percent and 29.9
percent of renewable energy sources in total consumption respectively. The countries
with the lowest share of renewable energy compared to total energy consumption in 2008
were Belgium (3.3 percent), the Netherlands (3.2 percent), the United Kingdom (2.2
percent), Luxembourg (2.1 percent) and finally Malta, where only 0.2 percent of
total energy consumption comes from renewable energy. Almost all member states of
the European Union increased their share of renewable energy from 2006-2008. The top three
countries with the largest increases in their share of renewable energy compared to total
energy consumption were, Austria (24.8 percent in 2006 to 28.5 percent in 2008), Estonia
(16.1 percent in 2006 to 19.1 percent in 2008) and Romania (17.5 percent in 2006 to 20.4
percent in 2008)." |
"Spain
has opened the world's largest solar power station, meaning
that it overtakes the US as the biggest solar generator in the world. The nation's total solar power production is now equivalent to the output
of a nuclear power station. Spain is a world leader in renewable energies and has long
been a producer of hydro-electricity (only China and the US have built more dams). It also
has a highly developed wind power sector which, like
solar power, has received generous government subsidies. The new La Florida solar plant
takes Spain's solar output to 432MW, which compares with the US output of 422MW. The
plant, at Alvarado, Badajoz, in the west of the country, is a parabolic trough. With this
method of collecting solar energy, sunlight is reflected off
a parabolic mirror on to a fluid-filled tube. The heated liquid is then used to heat steam
to run the turbines. The mirror rotates during the day to follow the sun's movement. The solar farm covers 550,000 square metres (the size of around 77
football pitches) and produces 50MW of power." |
"With electric vehicles on the
horizon, it's going to take a lot more electricity generation to keep them charged. Sure,
utilities could add more generators. But most are dirty, and they're expensive. Now comes
one of the most obvious of ideas: turn parking lots into urban solar farms. We all want covered parking when we go to the work or the mall
to keep our cars from becoming solar collectors themselves. And all that asphalted space
is essentially wasted. So the answer that seems to be popping up around the world is to
cover the lots with a roof of solar panels, generating electricity from sunlight that can
either go directly into an plug-in electric cars parked in the lot, or fed back into the
grid. Envision Solar in La Jolla, Calif., is one company giving the idea a try. It's
already in demonstration at Dell Computer's facility in sun-baked Texas. A solar parking
lot is also being tested as a prototype oat the National Renewable Energy Laboratory
(NREL) in Golden, Colo. The facility uses its solar for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
Gizmodo says the installations can pack some punch. The solar parking lot at Dell
generates 130 kilowatts of electricity." |
| "Germany could derive all of its
electricity from renewable energy sources
by 2050 and become the world's first major industrial nation to kick the fossil-fuel
habit, the country's Federal Environment Agency said today. The country already gets 16%
of its electricity from wind, solar and other renewable sources – three times' higher
than the level it had achieved 15 years ago. 'A complete conversion to renewable energy by
2050 is possible from a technical and ecological point of view," said Jochen
Flasbarth, president of the Federal Environment Agency. 'It's a very realistic target
based on technology that already exists – it's not a pie-in-the-sky prediction,' he
said....Thanks to its Renewable Energy Act, Germany
is the world leader in photovoltaics: it expects to add more than 5,000 megawatts of photovoltaic
capacity this year to reach a total of 14,000 megawatts. It is also the second-biggest wind-power producer after the United
States. Some 300,000 renewable energy jobs have been created in Germany in the last
decade." Electric cars must be taxed to pay for more power stations 'or National Grid could fail' Guardian, 7 July 2010 |
"President Barack Obama announced Saturday the awarding of nearly 2
billion U.S. dollars to two solar energy companies as an effort to boost employment and
solar power in the United States. 'We're going to keep competing aggressively to make sure
the jobs and industries of the future are taking root right here in America,' Obama said
in his weekly radio and online address. The energy companies, Abengoa Solar and Abound
Solar Manufacturing, will receive the funds from 862 billion dollars in economic stimulus.
Abengoa will build the 'world's largest solar plant' in Arizona, which will create about
1,600 construction jobs. The 280-megawatt Solana generating station will supply electric
power to approximately 70,000 homes while avoiding more than 475,000 tons of greenhouse
gases, Abengoa said. It estimated that the plant could sell 4 billion dollars worth of
energy over 30 years. The power generated will be
purchased by Arizona Public Service. Abound Solar is
to build two new plants in Colorado and Indiana that will create more than 2,000
construction jobs and over 1,500 permanent jobs." |
"It might be sunny but solar panels around Britain are failing to
generate any electricity because of a shortage of parts. The introduction of 'Feed-in
Tariffs', that pay homeowners for electricity fed into the grid, has led to a rise in
demand for solar panels. But householders who have installed the expensive technology are
unable to start generating electricity because of a shortage of inverters'. The microchips
are in short supply because of increased demand in Germany, the US and China. Solar panel manufacturers say the shortage is a 'blip' that will
not stop the massive growth of solar in the UK in the long run." |
"New
technology for 'photosynthesising' fuel could lead to cars running on 'petrol' made from
carbon dioxide and sunlight. Fuels made in this way are sufficiently similar to those
currently used in cars that major redesigns of engines and refuelling stations should not
be necessary. If fuels can be made entirely from atmospheric carbon, running a car on that
fuel would be carbon neutral. One such machine, the Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor
Recuperator (CR5), created by a team of scientists at Sandia National Laboratories in
Albuquerque, New Mexico, captures carbon dioxide from power plant exhaust fumes. In the
future, however, they hope to extract it directly from the air. The system uses a giant parabolic mirror, which
concentrates sunlight on to two chambers separated by spinning rings of cerium oxide. As the rings turn, the cerium oxide is heated to 1500C and
releases oxygen into one of the chambers. The oxygen is then pumped away. As the ring
spins, the now de-oxidised cerium moves into the other chamber. Carbon dioxide is pumped
in, and the deoxidised cerium steals one of the oxygen molecules, creating carbon monoxide
and cerium oxide....Another team, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, uses
a similar system, but with calcium oxide, zinc oxide and steam, which can create a stream
of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Their system can already use atmospheric carbon dioxide.
At the moment the two reactors have problems. The New Mexico team's system currently only
works for a few seconds at a time, while the Swiss model runs at a mere 10 kilowatts. But
both hope to improve reliability and yield." |
"Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin are
hot on the heels of a discovery that could more than double the
efficiency of solar cells. The trick is to use tiny nanoscale crystals called quantum
dots to capture more of the available energy in sunlight, including energy at the high
end of the scale. The researchers estimate that the
use of high energy sunlight could boost efficiency from its present rate of about 31% for
conventional solar cells, up to a whopping 66%. What
this all means is the potential for solar energy to become cost-competitive with fossil
fuels at an increasingly rapid pace. Paired with next-generation flywheels and other new energy storage technologies, intermittent
sources such as solar and wind can provide an energy stream that is every bit as steady
and reliable as oil, coal, or natural gas. High energy sunlight comes in the form of 'hot
electrons.' Until now, that energy has been too hot to convert into electricity, and it
escape as heat. The researchers, headed by chemist Xiaoyang Zhu, found a way
to conduct the hot electrons out by using quantum dots, which have conductive properties
that can be precisely controlled. Their work is built on a foundation recently
established by another team from the University of Chicago, which showed that a specific
type of nanocrystal can be used to control the rate at which hot electrons cool down.
Conventional quantum dots are made of toxic heavy metals, and Zhu’s research was
carried out on quantum dots made of lead selenide, a
crystalline form of lead. However, Zhu notes that other materials could also be used,
opening up the potential to construct a high efficiency solar cell with quantum dots made
of non-toxic materials. Magnolia Solar, for example, is one company that has
developed thin film solar technology based on non-toxic quantum dots.
Quantum dots made of diamond nanocrystals are also in development. The wonder
material graphene and its newly discovered mate graphane could also offer
another non-toxic route." |
"A solar-powered plane is getting ready to hit the skies once again -
this time, at night. It will be the first ever manned night flight on a plane propelled
exclusively by solar energy. Solar Impulse will lift off from an airfield in Switzerland,
on a sunny day sometime at the end of June. It will then fly around, charging the solar
cells on the plane's wings, in a bid to store enough energy for the electric motors to
last until dawn. The aim of the project's founders,
Andre Borschberg and round-the-world balloonist Bertrand Piccard, is to show that a
solar-powered craft is able to fly day and night - and eventually long-distance flights -
without any fuel. 'These night flights in an aircraft propelled uniquely by solar energy
are intended to demonstrate the potential of the renewable energies and the technologies
that will gradually enable us to diminish our dependence on oil', said Dr Piccard..... The pilot said that for him, the most exciting part of the venture is
'being on the plane during the day and seeing the amount of energy increasing instead of
decreasing as on a normal aircraft. That's what you can enjoy with this solar generator'.
If the 24-hour flight is a success, it will be the first important step towards using
renewable solar energy in a continuous manner." |
| "The biggest problem with solar panels is that
they're expensive. Solar
power is actually the most expensive type of renewable energy.
But a Swiss professor has just received the Millennium Technology Prize for developing low-cost solar cells that
can be built into glass windows. So instead of installing solar panels on your roof; you'd
just install them as windows, which you need anyway. Michael Gratzel spent two decades
developing a revolutionary type of dye-sensitized
solar cell called a Gratzel cell (guess where he got the name for it). The group that
presented the award, the Technology Academy
Finland, says this invention is a huge leap forward for solar technology. In a
prepared news release, the group says, "The price/performance ratio of
Grätzel's dye-sensitized solar cells is excellent. [It] is a promising alternative to
standard silicon photovoltaics....This technology was first built into consumer products
in 2009. A company called G24 Innovations developed a backpack
that uses Gratzel cells to charge the batteries in portable electronics." Windows that Work as Solar Cells DiscoveryNews, 13 June 2010 |
"A Hong Kong-based company has
introduced what it bills as the world's only solar-powered light bulb with the hope of
reaching millions of people with little or no access to electricity. The Nokero N100 solar LED light
bulb is meant to replace kerosene lamps as a lighting source in the developing world. The
company says 1.6 billion people still lack sufficient access to electricity, and many burn
fossil fuels for light, which can be dangerous and expensive. The N100 solar bulb is about
the size of a standard incandescent bulb and has four small solar panels in its rainproof
plastic housing. Five LEDs and a replaceable NiMH battery inside provide up to four hours
of light when the device is fully charged. People
hang it outside during the day and then turn it on at night." |
"Unless you follow blogs such as The Wall Street Journal's excellent China Realtime Report, you probably missed the biggest global energy
news in recent weeks (and no, I'm not forgetting about BP): Last week, China announced considerable subsidies for consumers who buy electric or
plug-in hybrid vehicles. Beijing will pay the first $7,800 to $8,800 of the sticker price
for the first 50,000 such vehicles bought in five designated Chinese cities, or roughly 31
percent, for instance, of BYD's $25,000 F3DM. The subsidies put hard
action behind China's stated intentions to become the largest consumer market on the
planet for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles (you
can see a nice slideshow about that by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants here).
Other pieces need to fall into place, such as a cleanup of China's smoke-belching
semi-trucks and the well-on-its-way expansion of its cargo railroad network. But China
appears to be trying on the coat and liking the notion of a wholesale shift of its energy
portfolio. Why should we care? Because of the chain reaction that
will follow. How future Chinese motorists drive -- whether in gasoline-powered cars, or
plug-in hybrids -- will have a consequential impact on global oil demand. China's appetite
for oil is going to grow whatever the case, but if Chinese motorists largely buy hybrids,
the rise in the country's oil demand will not be as steep." |
"A professor who invented
low-cost solar cells that may be incorporated into energy-producing windows has been
awarded the Millennium Technology Prize.Finland's Technology Academy on Wednesday awarded
Swiss professor Michael Gratzel with the prize, which is said to be the biggest award in the field of
technology. The award, which is given as 800,000
Euros, amounts to about $960,000. The groups says 'Gratzel cells' are significant because
they are cheaper than other types of technology that seek to capture energy from the sun.
'Gratzel's innovation is likely to have an important role in low-cost, large-scale
solutions for renewable energy,' Ainomaija Haarla, president of Finland's Technology
Academy, says in a prepared news release on the group's website. The Technology Academy says this
new form of solar cell is still 'still in relatively early stages of development,' but has
made its way into some consumer products. Gratzel
says windows could be made into solar panels. You would be able to see through them, but
they may have a slight tint because of the solar cells....Gratzel says his panels are 'the best in terms of efficiency in ambient
light.' The academy that awarded the prize said, 'the technology, often described as
'artificial photosynthesis,' is a promising alternative to standard silicon
photovoltaics,' which are more expensive to make." |
"First Solar, the world’s
cheapest solar panel maker, is reporting that they cannot meet this years demand for solar
panels, and three more major manufacturers; Suntech, Yingli and Trina are also signaling
that they are sold out, according to Reuters. This is a huge
turnabout. It is only a year ago that solar panels flooded the global market, driving down
the cost of solar installations worldwide, after Spain suddenly eased off on its generous
Feed-in Tariff, leading to a worldwide solar panel glut and a resulting 40% drop in panel
prices. The benefits of that suddenly cheap solar has had a huge impact. California alone installed as much solar in the first three months as
it did in all of last year, at least in part due to cheap panels. But
now it appears that prices might rise again, due to ricocheting demand. First Solar is
having to postpone projects in the United States to meet demand in Europe, supplying
growing markets in France, Spain and Italy, as well as in China and Australia. As we enter
the Peak Oil years and start the very bumpy slide down the other side of Hubbert’s Peak, this
kind of increased competition for all sources of energy is increasingly likely.... Solar
estimators say for every 10,000 miles that you’ll drive annually, you should plan on
including about 250 extra kilowatt-hours a month for charging an electric car. So, if you
drive 5,000 miles annually, you’d need 125 kilowatt-hours a month to power that Volt, LEAF, TH!INK, or whatever,
or about as much as to power a swimming pool pump." |
"For decades the silicon chip
was the beating heart of our electronic lives but now a cheaper, more flexible and durable
plastic chip is taking over.Experts believe the global market for so-called plastic
electronics could exceed £300bn in less than 20 years. The technology in which flexible,
ultra-thin micro-chips can be incorporated into clothing, glass or building frames is
expected to generate a new industrial revolution. Now, it is thought a project aimed at
co-ordinating academic research and industrial interest in advanced low-cost solar cells
using plastic electronics could make the UK a world leader in micro- generation
technology. The project, called Specific (for Sustainable Product Engineering Centre for
Innovative Functional Industrial Coatings) will attempt to come up with new window glass
and steel roofing incorporating special dye-sensitised solar cells. These are a new class
of low-cost, thin film solar cell which produce much more energy than previous cells.
Specific is bidding for up to £12m in financing from sources including the Engineering
and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Technology Strategy Board and the Welsh
Assembly..... According to Professor David Worsley
at Swansea University: 'Using the building envelope so it can generate its own energy is
going to be crucial to meeting future carbon reduction targets, along with other
renewables. All the universities involved in the project have something significant to
contribute to this challenge. But we need to be able to co-ordinate this effectively,
working closely with our industrial partners.' While conventional electronics uses
circuits etched into solid silicon chips,
plastic electronics, on the other hand, uses sheets of PET (polyethylene terephthalate)
plastic – the flexible but tough material used in the production of plastic bottles.
Circuits are then printed on these sheets using ink-jet printers or techniques much like
those used to print magazines and newspapers – resulting in a process that is cheap,
easy to do and faster to produce. And the circuits can be printed on virtually any surface
so, in the near future, breakfast cereal boxes could contain YouTube-like announcements
and films." |
"From electric cars to wind
turbines, environmentally-friendly technology around the world needs rare earth metals.
But China - where over 90% of these minerals are mined - is saying it now wants to keep
more for its own industry. The leafy banks of the
Birmingham and Worcester canal may be an unlikely place to discuss a looming industrial
crisis but it was here that Professor Rex Harris of Birmingham University took me on his
hydrogen-powered electric barge. The super efficient
motor, like most electric vehicle motors, uses rare earth magnets. Rex gave me two matchbox sized neodymium-boron magnets, offering me £50
to push them together. His money was safe, the magnetic field was too strong. Such power
is vital to green technology, so much of which is based on the efficient generation, use
and storage of electricity. So we need to be sure of good supply of rare earth magnets. 'We worry about peak oil,' he says, 'we should worry about peak
magnets as well.'...The Chinese motives are pretty
clear. They want Western users to do their manufacturing in China and they need supplies
for their own ambitious wind energy programme..... The former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping
once remarked 'There is oil in the Middle East, there is rare earth in China.'....However,
Professor Animesh Jha at Leeds University thinks he
may have a cleaner alternative. He has discovered that titanium dioxide ore could be an
important source. The purification of this chemical,
commonly used in paints, leaves a residue of rare earths. He believes this could by-pass
the Chinese and the environmental problems of mining. 'There are very nice deposits of
titanium oxide all over the world... Norway, India, Brazil, US. They all have rare earths
in them.' Combine Professor Jha's technique with the
fruits of new mines and the careful recycling of rare earth metals currently in use in our
laptops and mobile phones and we may be able to provide sufficient supplies in the future.
But new processes take time to perfect and new mines take years to come on-stream. That
still leaves a long gap when the green revolution will rely on the economic and political
judgement of China's exporters." |
| "Solar power could provide up to a quarter of the world's electricity
needs by 2050 if countries put in place long-term policies to support early deployment and
sustained technology innovation, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The
IEA yesterday (11 May) released technology roadmaps for solar photovoltaic (PV), which
generates electricity using solar panels, and concentrating solar power (CSP), which
collects sunlight with giant mirrors and focuses it on a liquid to produce steam that then
drives a turbine. It estimates that each technology has the potential to supply more than
11% of global electricity by mid-century, offering combined savings of nearly 60 billion
tonnes of CO2 per year by 2050. The IEA, however,
assumes lower growth rates than the industry is expecting. Its PV roadmap estimates
that the annual market growth rate will be 17% over the next decade, while the European
Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) said last month it expected global cumulative
capacity to grow by at least 40% in 2010 (EurActiv
01/04/10). Provided that the appropriate political frameworks are put in place, solar
PV could become competitive with fossil fuels on residential and commercial buildings by
2020 in many regions and at utility scale by 2030 in the sunniest regions, the documents
show. CSP could become competitive for peak and mid-peak loads by 2020 in the sunniest
places. But rather than competing with each other,
the IEA argues that the two technologies are complementary. While PV technology employing
solar panels will mainly be used for on-grid distributed generation, CSP will involve
utility-scale production in sunny areas, from where it can be transported to population
centres." Solar to generate 25% of world’s electricity by 2050, IEA predicts EurActiv, 12 May 2010 |
"Scientists at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology have successfully coated paper with a solar cell, part of a suite
of research projects aimed at energy breakthroughs. Susan
Hockfield, MIT's president, and Paolo Scaroni, CEO of Italian oil company Eni, on Tuesday
officially dedicated the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Research Center. Eni invested $5 million
into the center, which is also receiving a $2 million National Science Foundation grant,
said Vladimir Bulovic, the center's director. The printed solar cells, which Bulovic
showed at a press conference Tuesday, are still in the research phase and are years from
being commercialized. However, the technique, in which paper is coated with organic
semiconductor material using a process similar to an inkjet printer, is a promising way to
lower the weight of solar panels. 'If you could use a staple gun to install a solar panel,
there could be a lot of value,' Bulovic said. The materials MIT researchers used are
carbon-based dyes and the cells are about 1.5 percent to 2 percent efficient at converting
sunlight to electricity. But any material could be used if it can be deposited at room
temperature, Bulovic said. 'Absolutely, the trick was coming up with ways to use paper,'
he said. MIT professor Karen Gleason headed the research and has submitted a paper for
scientific review but it has not yet been published. MIT and Eni said this is the first
time a solar cell has been printed on paper.....The paper solar cells are one of many
avenues being pursued around nanoscale materials at the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Center. Layers of these materials could essentially be sprayed using
different manufacturing techniques to make a thin-film solar cell on a plastic, paper, or
metal foils. Silicon, the predominant material for solar cells, is durable and is made
from abundant materials. Many companies sell or are developing thin-film solar cells,
which are less efficient but are cheaper to manufacture." |
"Hydrogen would command a key
role in future renewable energy technologies, experts agree, if a relatively cheap,
efficient and carbon-neutral means of producing it can be developed. An important step
towards this elusive goal has been taken by a team of researchers with the U.S. Department
of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University
of California, Berkeley. The team has discovered an inexpensive metal catalyst that can
effectively generate hydrogen gas from water....a
paper describing this work... appears in the April 29, 2010 issue of the journal Nature,
titled 'A molecular molybdenum-oxo catalyst for generating hydrogen from water.'
Co-authors of this paper were Christopher Chang and Jeffrey Long, who also hold joint
appointments with Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley. Chang, in addition, is also an
investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).....Hydrogen gas, whether
combusted or used in fuel cells to generate electricity, emits only water vapor as an
exhaust product, which is why this nation would already be rolling towards a hydrogen
economy if only there were hydrogen wells to tap. However, hydrogen gas does not occur
naturally and has to be produced. Most of the hydrogen gas in the United States today
comes from natural gas, a fossil fuel. While inexpensive, this technique adds huge volumes
of carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Hydrogen can
also be produced through the electrolysis of water -- using electricity to split molecules
of water into molecules of hydrogen and oxygen. This is an environmentally clean and
sustainable method of production -- especially if the electricity is generated via a
renewable technology such as solar or wind -- but requires a water-splitting catalyst....Nature has developed extremely efficient water-splitting enzymes --
called hydrogenases -- for use by plants during photosynthesis, however, these enzymes are
highly unstable and easily deactivated when removed from their native environment. Human
activities demand a stable metal catalyst that can operate under non-biological settings.
Metal catalysts are commercially available, but they are low valence precious metals whose
high costs make their widespread use prohibitive. For example, platinum, the best of them,
costs some $2,000 an ounce. 'The basic scientific challenge has been to create
earth-abundant molecular systems that produce hydrogen from water with high catalytic
activity and stability,' Chang says. 'We believe our discovery of a molecular
molybdenum-oxo catalyst for generating hydrogen from water without the use of additional
acids or organic co-solvents establishes a new chemical paradigm for creating reduction
catalysts that are highly active and robust in aqueous media.' The molybdenum-oxo complex
that Karunadasa, Chang and Long discovered is a high valence metal with the chemical name
of (PY5Me2)Mo-oxo. In their studies, the research team found that this complex catalyzes
the generation of hydrogen from neutral buffered water or even sea water with a turnover
frequency of 2.4 moles of hydrogen per mole of catalyst per second." |
"Newly designed giant gravel
batteries could be the solution to the on-off nature of wind turbines and solar panels. By storing energy when the wind stops blowing
or the sun stops shining, it is hoped the new technology will boost to renewable energy and
blunt a persistent criticism of the technology - that the power from it is intermittent.
Electricity cannot be stored easily, but a new technique may hold the answer, so that
energy from renewables doesn't switch off when nature stops playing ball. A team of
engineers from Cambridge think they have a potential solution: a giant battery that can
store energy using gravel. 'If you bolt this to a wind farm, you could store the
intermittent and relatively erratic energy and give it back in a reliable and controlled
manner,' says Jonathan Howes, founder of Isentropic
and previously an engineer at the Civil Aviation Authority. The Labour government
committed to cutting the country's carbon emissions by 34%
by 2020 and 80% by 2050, both relative to 1990 levels. To achieve this, ministers outlined
plans to build thousands of wind turbines by 2020. The only economically viable way of
storing large amounts of energy is through pumped hydro – where excess electricity is
used to pump water up a hill. The water is held back by a dam until the energy is needed,
when it is released down the hill, turning turbines and generating electricity on the way.
Isentopic claims its gravel-based battery would be able to store equivalent amounts of
energy but use less space and be cheaper to set up. Its system consists of two silos
filled with a pulverised rock such as gravel. Electricity would be used to heat and
pressurise argon gas that is then fed into one of the silos. By the time the gas leaves
the chamber, it has cooled to ambient temperature but the gravel itself is heated to 500C.
After leaving the silo, the argon is then fed into the second silo, where it expands back
to normal atmospheric pressure. This process acts like a giant refrigerator, causing the
gas (and rock) temperature inside the second chamber to drop to -160C. The electrical
energy generated originally by the wind turbines originally is stored as a temperature
difference between the two rock-filled silos. To release the energy, the cycle is
reversed, and as the energy passes from hot to cold it powers a generator that makes
electricity. Isentropic claims a round-trip energy
efficiency of up to 80% and, because gravel is cheap, the cost of a system per
kilowatt-hour of storage would be between $10 and $55. Howes says that the energy in the
hot silo (which is insulated) can easily be stored for extended periods of time - by his
calculations, a silo that stood 50m tall and was 50m in diameter would lose only half of
its energy through its walls if left alone for three years. To demonstrate how much less
infrastructure his system requires, Howes uses the example of the Bath County Pumped
Storage hydro-electric dam in Virginia, US. This is the biggest energy-storage system in
the world, with two reservoirs covering 820 surface acres can store up to 30 GWh storage
capacity. An Isentropic gravel battery of the same capacity would occupy 1/300th of the
area, according to Howes. John Loughhead, executive
director of the UK Energy
Research Centre, said that the novelty of the Isentropic system lay in using cheap
materials as the heat store, thus making a normally expensive and mechanically complex
process very simple." |
"A battery able to match the output of those used in cellphones from
1/20th of their electrode area may have you dreaming of more talk time. But putting it in
your pocket would be a bad idea - it's full of molten metal. Instead, its inventors hope
it will provide much-needed storage capacity for electricity grids. Grid-scale batteries
would boost efficiency by allowing solar energy to be used at night, for example, or
excess power from a nuclear plant to be stored for later. Engineers led by Donald Sadoway
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were inspired by the way aluminium is smelted
using electricity. They created a similar but reversible process that can either consume
or release energy. Their batteries are simply tanks filled with three separate layers of
liquid at 700 °C that float on top of one another: the top one is molten magnesium, the
bottom antimony and the one in between a salt containing magnesium antimonide, a dissolved
compound of the two metals. When the battery is being charged, magnesium antimonide in the
middle layer breaks down into the pure elements and so the upper and lower layers deepen.
Discharging the battery reverses the process and releases electrons to provide power. Once heated up to its operating temperature, the battery generates
enough heat on its own to keep the liquids molten. A small prototype provided up to 20
times as much current as a lithium-ion battery - the kind used in portable devices and
electric cars - from the same area of electrode, says team member Luis Ortiz. The
materials used are much cheaper than lithium (New
Scientist, 12 December 2009, p 23), making scaling to up to grid scale feasible, he
says." |
"A new technique developed by
engineers for producing power-conducting plastics could slash the cost of making solar
panels, say researchers. With mounting concerns about global warming and energy demand,
plastics could represent a low-cost alternative to indium tin oxide (ITO), an expensive
conducting material currently used in solar panels, according to the researchers. 'Conductive polymers (plastics) have been around for a long time, but
processing them to make something useful degraded their ability to conduct electricity,'
said Yueh-Lin Loo, associate professor of chemical engineering at Princeton University,
who led the research team. 'We have figured out how to avoid this trade-off. We can shape
the plastics into a useful form while maintaining high conductivity,' Yueh-Lin Loo added.
The area of research, known as 'organic electronics' because plastics are carbon-based
like living creatures, holds promise for producing new types of electronic devices and new
ways of manufacturing existing technologies, but has been hampered by the mysterious loss
of conductivity associated with moldable plastics.... By allowing plastic solar cells to
be manufactured using low-cost printing techniques and by replacing ITO as the primary
conducting material, the plastics the team developed hold potential for lowering the cost
of solar panels, said a Princeton release. These findings were published online in the
March issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences." |
"A smart electricity management
system is needed for a successful mass uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) in Britain, by
smoothing out power demand and generation spikes in a future that includes more wind
farms. Britain has committed to smart technology --
which supplies real-time power usage data to consumers with smart meters; and demand and
generation information to network operators in the form of a smart grid -- with plans to
supply all homes with a smart meter by 2020. The British government also offered financial
incentives to support EV development, with Japanese car maker Nissan (7201.T) to build its
Leaf electric compact car in England, and Ford (F.N) receiving a grant to develop low
carbon vehicles in the UK. 'Smart grids will be critical for the mass adoption of EVs,'
Rick Hanks, smart metering practice lead at consultant Accenture, said. 'A slow charging
car consumes as much power as 10 plasma TV screens. But fast charging a car in 15 minutes
would be the equivalent of boiling up to 96 kettles continuously and would place
unsustainable stress on today's grid.' Local distribution network operators (DNO), which
deliver power from large overhead cables to households, are well aware of the potential
strain on the system and see smart technology as a way to mitigate demand and generation
surges. A smart grid could see when wind generation
was high and use this excess power to charge EVs instead of asking coal or gas power plant
to switch off to stop overloading the grid. 'Generation and networks can cope perfectly
well with the anticipated growth in EVs over the next 10 years provided that we are able
to develop the necessary complementary `smart' controls and tariffs on the back of smart
meters,' Cristiano Marantes, engineering projects
manager at DNO EDF Energy Networks (EDF.PA) said." |
"Tougher U.S. fuel economy standards for new cars and trucks should
be completed next week, Gina McCarthy, an assistant
administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, said today. Officials at the EPA,
which has jointly proposed with the U.S. Department
of Transportation to raise the average fuel economy benchmark to 35.5 miles per gallon, expect to establish final standards by April 1, McCarthy said in
testimony prepared for a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The
higher fuel economy standards are aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions and reducing
oil consumption." |
"Police and firefighters will
help to test Britain’s first fleet of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, which is to be
introduced in time for the 2012 Olympics. A network of hydrogen filling stations will be
built across London to refuel about 150 vehicles
— including 50 taxis, eight buses, and 50 cars and vans that will be used by public
bodies such as the Metropolitan Police and the London Fire Brigade. The vehicles will emit
only water instead of exhaust fumes, and represent the first steps towards a long-term aim
to switch all motorists from petrol and diesel to renewable fuels. Unlike battery-powered
electric cars, which take up to eight hours to charge, fuel-cell vehicles can have their
high-pressure tanks filled with hydrogen gas in only three to four minutes. The Greater
London Authority is borrowing the concept of a 'hydrogen highway' developed by Arnold
Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California. This aims to encourage manufacturers to supply
fuel-cell vehicles by providing a cluster of refuelling stations. Previous attempts to
introduce fuel-cell vehicles in Britain have failed because they depended on a single
fuelling point — with drivers forced to return to base every time they needed to fill
up." |
"Hopes that Britain could become
the hub of a global green motoring revolution were boosted yesterday when Vauxhall
indicated that its Ellesmere Port plant could become the home of the new electric Ampera. The Merseyside factory is expected to go to a third shift this year when
production begins — months earlier than expected — of the new Vauxhall Astra
estate. But the standing of the plant would be greatly enhanced it it does become the
European production base of the Ampera, the new extended-range electric vehicle that
General Motors, Vauxhall’s American parent, is promoting as a big rival to the Toyota
Prius hybrid. Whereas most electric cars going into
production will be suitable only as city runarounds with a range of a few dozen miles, the
Ampera will have a range of more than 350 miles on an electric motor fuelled by a
lithium-ion battery and petrol or ethanol." |
"The re-emergence of the British
motor industry is shifting up a gear, with £2.6 billion worth of investment flowing into
the UK, safeguarding or creating thousands of jobs. Nissan is to start mass production of
electric vehicles in Sunderland; Ford plants in
Dagenham, Southampton and Bridgend will build the next generation of cleaner diesel and
petrol engines for its cars around the world; and the Formula One team McLaren is to build
supercars in Woking to rival Ferrari and Lamborghini in the retail market.....Nissan will commit £420 million to building 50,000 electric
vehicles from 2013 at its base in Sunderland. It is
already the country’s single biggest carmaking facility, producing 338,000 vehicles
last year. Nissan has chosen Sunderland to be the third base for its Leaf model after
plants in Japan and the United States....The latest Nissan initiative follows its
commitment to make the lithium-ion batteries for its electric vehicles and those of its
partner Renault. Nissan is now committing to
producing 60,000 of the batteries a year in Sunderland." |
"Dyesol is in a joint venture
with British steelmaker Corus to produce Colorbond-style roofing and fencing, which
doubles as giant solar panels. DSC captures sunlight even in gloomy northern hemisphere
conditions. Corus is planning commercial production from July next year.Earlier this
month, Dyesol announced a tie-up with US glassmaker Pilkington to produce glass flatpanels
with the same energy-producing traits. And there's
another collaboration in the offing, with a German carmaker (hint: there's a new
subsidiary called Dyesol Automotive Bavaria). The
emphasis here will be on a flexible plastic blind to recharge batteries on hybrid cars. Dyesol executive chairman Richard Caldwell says the glass tie-up takes
Dyesol back to its original intention of using glass." |
"US solar energy company
SunEdison has announced final plans to build the largest photovoltaic (PV) power plant in
the world,.. in Italy. SunEdison’s new solar PV
farm will be a 72MW farm in the northern Italian province of Veneto near the town of
Rovigo. It has just received final approval from the Italian government and the farm is
expected to be finished and in use before the end of the year (with power generation
starting in the second half of 2010). The PV farm will pass up 60MW
Olmedilla Photovoltaic Park in Olmedilla, Spain to take the world title. However,
China is close on its heels with a mega-project that would make this 'farm' look like a
small 'potted plant'. SunEdison’s new farm 'is expected to use ground mounted solar
panels that are capable of turning to track the sun’s movement,' Business
Green reports. According
to SunEdison, 'the system will generate sufficient energy
to power 17,150 homes and avoid 41,000 tons of CO2 –the equivalent of removing 8,000
cars from the road' in its first full year of operation." |
"One piece of the American effort to find a way to make solar energy
cheap enough that everyone will want it is unfolding in a modest redbrick building in this
Midwestern city once known as one of the nation's top makers of glass. Xunming Deng, a
physicist, started a solar company in Ohio eight years ago as a spinoff from his research
at the University of Toledo. He's attracted $40 million in venture capital, and designed
and purchased manufacturing equipment. He now thinks that his Xunlight Corp. is on the
brink of profitability and fast growth. It expects certification this spring and is
getting ready to ramp up production. Deng's story reflects one of the innovative
approaches that U.S. thin-film photovoltaic solar companies are taking to bring down the
costs of solar installations for homes, businesses and utilities. All aim for a mass
market with economies of scale that make solar energy comparable in price to energy from
fossil fuels....Deng's work is in thin-film photovoltaic solar, an area in which there's
been a great deal of innovation in recent years. Thin-film is an alternative to the
crystalline silicon solar cells commercialized in the U.S. in the 1950s, the kind
typically seen powering highway signs and the most widely used solar panels today.
Thin-film cells cost less to make. They're essentially a layer of semiconductor material
on a thin base of metal, plastic or glass. Xunlight's thin-film cells are light and
flexible, making them easier to install and ship. The amount of material used in the
active layers of thin-film solar cells is a tiny fraction of what goes into a conventional
solar cell, so the material costs are much lower, said Joe Verrengia, a spokesman for the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is working with companies and doing its own
work on thin-film research and development. Xunlight grew with the help of grants, loans
and business help from Ohio's Department of Development. Ohio has one of the most
ambitious renewable-energy requirements of any state: Twenty-five percent of its
electricity must be produced by renewable sources by 2025. Of that total of 6,000
megawatts, 800 must be solar. The policy will make Ohio one of the top markets for solar,
said Nadeane Howard, the director of the Energy Resources Division of the Ohio Department
of Development... The company is developing utility-scale solar farms in California, New
Mexico and Nevada. It uses cadmium telluride to make its thin-film cells. 'For us, that's
the big factor to lower the costs' compared with first-generation solar, company spokesman
Alan Bernheimer said. Its manufacturing process is another key. The company's cost to produce solar modules was more than $3 per
watt in 2004 and now is 84 cents per watt, Bernheimer said. The company projects that
costs will drop still further in the next few years.
Installation costs also have declined steeply, Bernheimer said. First Solar predicts that
it will match the cost of conventional electricity in four to five years." |
"Coming not so soon and probably not to a house near you is the home
solar hydrogen refueling station -- Honda Motor Co's (7267.T) latest idea in its drive to
make hydrogen the fuel of choice for zero emission cars. The
Japanese auto giant believes hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles offer the best long-term
alternative to fossil fuels and the company showed on Friday a refueling breakthrough that
it says points to a home version down the road. Most
major automakers have spent billions of dollars in researching hydrogen-powered fuel
cells, tempted by the idea of a car that uses no gasoline and emits only water vapor. But
Honda is widely seen as the hydrogen leader, while others like General Motors GM.UL put
more effort into battery-powered electric vehicles like the upcoming Volt. One of the big barriers to hydrogen car deployment is the lack of
refueling infrastructure, leading Honda to bet that the future lies in combining a public
station network with a more modest home option. Honda's home option will comprise a solar-powered hydrogen refueling station
using solar panels. 'Customers can choose how they
interact with both of them based on their annual miles and their habits,' said Stephen
Ellis, fuel cell manager at the Honda's North American headquarters in Torrance,
California. 'The key thing to remember is that with five-minute refueling you are good for
another 240 miles,' Ellis added. That range comes from the 'fast-fill' public station, of
which there are just a handful in Southern California, where Honda leases 15 FCX Clarity
hydrogen-powered vehicles and is set to distribute more in coming months. Eight hours of
home solar refueling would guarantee a smaller range of 30 miles (50 km) or about 10,000
miles (16,000 km per year -- enough for an average commuting car. At the Los Angeles R&D center, engineers refueled the sleek
FCX Clarity sedan with a new single-unit station connected to a solar array that replaces
a two-unit system, cutting costs and improving efficiency by 25 percent. 'This is
wonderful progress, the biggest progress,' said Ikuya Yamashita, the chief engineer of the
station. The station uses a 6-kilowatt solar array, composed of 48 panels and thin film
solar cells developed by a Honda subsidiary. It breaks down the water into hydrogen in
what Honda calls a 'virtually carbon-free energy cycle.' The FCX Clarity's hydrogen
'stack' -- or the electricity generator -- is around the size of an attache case, tucked
between the two front seats, and is a fifth of the stack size developed a decade ago. The
car is likely to be sold commercially around 2018 in the luxury large sedan category,
while the solar hydrogen refueling system could move beyond the research stage and into
the market-ready phase around 2015. 'A lot of this
work is not necessarily for today's economic situation,' said Ellis. 'This is for
tomorrow, when most people feel energy prices will be higher'." |
"Red tape is strangling a scheme designed to encourage millions of
families to generate their own green electricity with home-mounted solar panels, wind
turbines and heat pumps, according to the UK’s biggest manufacturer of central
heating equipment. Starting next month,
Britain’s 26 million households will be able to collect a fixed fee of up to 41p a
kilowatt hour for electricity they generate from roof-mounted solar panels and sell on to
the grid. Up to 34½p a kilowatt hour is available for home-mounted windmills. But
Worcester Bosch says that the scheme, which seeks to kick-start a boom in so-called
microgeneration, is being hobbled by a chronic shortage of certified engineers who must
fit the equipment for consumers to qualify for the payments. 'To qualify as an installer, it’s expensive, onerous and full of red
tape,' said Neil Schofield, head of sustainable development for Worcester Bosch, which
controls 28 per cent of Britain’s boiler market and is a big supplier of solar panels
and air and ground-source heat pumps. Across the UK there are about 500 certified
installers of renewable energy equipment, compared with about 120,000 registered gas
engineers, under the equivalent Gas Safe scheme, formerly known as Corgi." |
"Japanese solar-panel manufacturers are expanding capacity in spite
of concerns about oversupply in the sector, as they eye long-term growth in demand for
renewable energy. Mitsubishi
Electric, Toshiba and Showa
Shell on Monday each unveiled plans to boost their solar panel production,
underscoring a renewed determination by Japanese manufacturers to hold their lead in the
green technology in the face of cheaper competition from China and elsewhere. Shigeaki
Kameda, president of Showa Shell’s solar subsidiary, said the company intended to
become the world’s largest producer of thin-film photovoltaic panels, with the
business eventually rivalling its Y3,000bn ($33.6bn) oil-refining and petrol operations in
scale. The company, in which Royal
Dutch Shell owns a one-third stake, is spending $1bn to convert a former Hitachi
plasma-screen television factory into one of the largest solar-panel plants in the
world, capable of producing 900 megawatts’ worth of thin-film photovoltaic cells a
year. Mr Kameda said Showa Shell hoped to sell 70 per cent of its output outside Japan
under a new global brand launched on Monday called Solar Frontier. The company is opening
two overseas offices, in California and Munich, to market its technology to residential
and commercial buyers. Mr Kameda said the prospect of higher oil prices over the long term
combined with more government-imposed
curbs on greenhouse-gas emissions justified the company’s aggressive
stance." |
"PlanetSolar has unveiled the
world's largest solar boat that will be powered by more than 35,000 high-efficiency solar
cells and which will embark on a round-the-world tour in 2011. The boat, which was unveiled Thursday at the HDW Shipyard in Kiel,
Germany, was designed using 38,000 next-generation solar cells that will operate at an
efficiency of at least 22 percent, matching the best efficiency of any cells on the
market. The cells will be integrated onto the skin of the boat to generate the solar
energy required to power the boat. 'We are excited that the solar-powered boat is
now a reality,' said Raphael Domjan, CEO of PlanetSolar. 'As we embark on the next phase
of this project, we look forward to our around-the-world trip, and are confident that
SunPower's proven technology will get us there.' The catamaran-style boat is also expected
to be the fastest solar boat to ever cross the Atlantic Ocean during its round-the-world
trip that will take place next year. During the trip the boat will be available for public
display in each of its stopover sites, which will include Hamburg, London, Paris, New
York, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi." |
| "The Obama
administration gave preliminary approval Monday for $1.4 billion in federal loan
guarantees to help build what it says will be the world's largest solar power complex --
in California's Mojave Desert. The Department
of Energy is offering to back the loans of California-based BrightSource Energy so it can
build three solar-energy plants capable of powering 140,000 homes. It says
the project could nearly double the amount of solar power generated in the
United States." U.S. backs loans to build world's largest solar power complex USA Today, 23 February 2010 |
"A scientist has come up with a
new method to reconfigure the way solar panels are connected, which could lead to solar
arrays in the future that are more energy efficient and reliable. According to Dr Jonathan Kimball, an assistant professor of electrical and
computer engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology, the conventional
method of connecting solar panels is in a series, one after the other. 'But just as one
bad bulb in a string of Christmas lights can black out the entire set, so can a single
solar panel disrupt the flow of electrical current through the other panels in a series,'
Kimball said. 'If one of the panels is shaded, dirty or damaged, it affects them all,'
Kimball said. 'The conventional approach to solar arrays inherently limits the amount of
power they produce if there's any variation in the panels,' he said. Rather than
connecting solar panels in a series - where the electrical current must flow from one
panel to get to the next - Kimball suggests parallel wiring for the panels. The parallel
approach would connect each panel to its own power converter instead of sending the
electrical current through a series of panels to a single converter." |
| "CEPS AS, the Czech electricity-grid operator, said the pace of
solar-power investment risks overloading the network and driving up prices for consumers. Output from solar panels may overwhelm the grid by 2011 and plants may need to be temporarily disconnected to prevent blackouts,
CEPS Chief Executive Officer Petr Zeman said today. Total solar capacity may reach 3,000
megawatts in 2015, six times last year’s level and about half the country’s
off-peak consumption at summer weekends, the state-run company said." Czech Power Grid Says Solar Boom Risks Blackouts Bloomberg, 15 February 2010 |
| "U.S. researchers have devised a
way to make flexible solar cells with silicon wires that use just 1 percent of the
material needed to make conventional solar cells. The
eventual hope is to make thin, light solar cells that could be incorporated into clothing,
for instance but the immediate benefit is cheaper and easier-to-install solar panels, the
researchers said. The new material, reported on Sunday in Nature Materials, uses
conventional silicon configured into micron-sized wires (a micron is one-millionth of a
meter) instead of brittle wafers and encases them in a flexible polymer that can be rolled
or bent. 'The idea is it would be lower cost and easier to work with by being more
flexible than conventional silicon solar cells,' Michael Kelzenberg of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who worked on the study, said in a telephone
interview. Solar cells, which convert solar energy into electricity, are in high demand
because of higher oil prices and concerns over climate change. Many companies, including
Japanese consumer electronics maker Sharp Corp (6753.T) and
Germany's Q-Cells SE (QCEG.DE),
are making thin-film solar cells using organic materials such as polymers, but they
typically are less efficient at converting solar energy into electricity than conventional
cells using silicon. The study is among the latest to combine the flexibility of the new
organic or carbon-containing films with the high efficiency of silicon, which is heavy and
stiff. Kelzenberg said the material uses about 1/100th as much silicon per cell area as a
silicon wafer. 'It is potentially a route to bypass
many of the costs associated with producing solar cells,' he said. He said a big problem with working with silicon wafers is they
are fragile. More testing is needed but Kelzenberg said the material would be about 15
percent to 20 percent efficient, about the same level as solar cells used on roofs to heat
homes. A similar effort is under way in the lab of John Rogers, a professor of materials
science at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Campaign, who is working on ways to make
inorganic materials more flexible. While many companies are investing in organic solar
cells -- basically materials like plastic that contain carbon -- Rogers said these
materials have relatively low performance, less long-term reliability and an unproven cost
structure. 'We like the inorganics -- trying to adapt them and use them in non-standard
ways,' Rogers said in a telephone interview. Last year, his team reported on a new
manufacturing process that creates thin arrays of solar cells that are flexible enough to
be rolled around a pencil and transparent enough to be used to tint windows on buildings
or cars. 'We can make them stretch like a rubber band or bendable like a sheet of
plastic,' he said." A new wire twist on silicon solar cells Reuters, 14 February 2010 |
"IBM researchers are developing
a solar cell with an eye towards what's in the ground. Researchers on Wednesday published
a technical paper
in the journal Advanced Materials that describes a solar cell made of abundant materials
with relatively high efficiency. The cell can
convert 9.6 percent of solar energy into electrical energy, a 40 percent boost over
current methods. That level of efficiency is already far exceeded in commercial
silicon-based cells and even beat by thin-film solar cells, which are cheaper to make than
silicon cells but are less efficient. But IBM researchers set out to make a cell that uses
materials that are relatively abundant elements--copper, zinc, tin, and sulfur, or
selenium (CZTS). The availability of materials for existing solar technologies limits
their long-term potential, according to IBM. First Solar, which claims to have the lowest
cost per watt, makes its thin-film cells from cadmium and tellurium. GE, too, plans to
sell solar panels with cadmium
telluride cells as early as next year as well. There are also several start-up
companies, including Nanosolar, Miasole, and HelioVolt, which make cells using a
combination of copper, indium, gallium, and selenide, or CIGS. The problem with these
is the scarcity of materials or the environmental impact, according to IBM researchers
Teodor Todorov, Kathleen Reuter, and David Mitz, who authored the paper. That means that
other solar cell materials are needed to meet anticipated renewable energy demands, they
said..... One of the advantages of thin-film technologies is that that not much material
is needed to make a cell, compared to traditional cell manufacturing. CIGS cells can be
made using high-speed fabrication techniques, such as roll-to-roll manufacturing.
The technique developed by IBM uses a similar 'ink-based' method. Matthew Beard, a
researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratories not involved in the work, called
the IBM research a 'breakthrough.' The researchers estimate that if the technology can be taken
beyond its basic state right now and achieve 12 percent efficiency, it could be an
economically viable alternative to current products." |
"Sunlight + water = hydrogen gas, in a
new technique that can convert 60 per cent of sunlight energy absorbed by an
electrode into the inflammable fuel. To generate the
gas Thomas Nann
and colleagues at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, dip a gold electrode with
a special coating into water and expose it to light. clusters of indium phosphide
5 nanometres wide on its surface absorb incoming photons and pass electrons bearing
their energy on to clusters of a sulphurous iron compound. This material combines those
electrons with protons from the water to form gaseous hydrogen. A second electrode –
plain platinum this time – is needed to complete the circuit electrochemically. Organic
molecules have been used before to perform
the same feat. But they are quickly bleached by the sunlight they are collecting,
rendering them inefficient after a few weeks. The inorganic materials used in the
University of East Anglia's system are more resilient. Their
first generation proof of concept is 'a major breakthrough' in the field, they say, thanks
to its efficiency of over 60 per cent and ability to survive sunlight for two weeks
without any degradation of performance. 'In fact the
60 per cent figure is probably a worst-case scenario,' says Nann. 'This is still a
preliminary study.'...He and colleagues now plan to refine the system, including lowering
the cost by making it with less expensive materials. 'There is no major reason for using
gold or platinum,' he says: those materials were used simply because they are common in
the laboratory." |
"When it comes time to refuel
Honda’s FCX Clarity fuel-cell car with hydrogen, the company is letting the sun shine
in. Last week, Honda
announced that it had begun operating a 'next generation' solar hydrogen refueling
station, using Honda’s own solar cells, at its
Torrance research and development headquarters. The
new solar station is small enough to fit into a Clarity owner’s garage, and
that’s its intended home. 'We’ve
eliminated the compressor, which was the largest and most expensive component,' said a
Honda spokesman, Chris Naughton. 'The station pulls
in solar energy during the day and then the customer can slow-fill with hydrogen over an
eight-hour period at night.' Honda claims that its
smaller station is the world’s most compact, as well as the first home unit without a
compressor. The station uses 48 panels of thin-film
Honda-developed cells to produce six kilowatts of electricity. It’s designed to complement the network of public stations that
California has endeavored to create as part of its 'Hydrogen Highway,' but which in practice is
developing slowly. Honda’s Soltec panels are also being used by Dongfeng Honda in
China, the company said, providing lighting and air-conditioning at an administrative
facility. According to Honda, the Chinese panels are
capable of generating 100,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, and can displace 101 tons of carbon dioxide. According to Patrick
Serfass, a spokesman for the National
Hydrogen Association, 'One of the benefits of hydrogen is that it can be made from a
variety of different sources, including both renewable and traditional fuels. We applaud Honda for producing hydrogen renewably.
At this point, fossil fuels are still very cheap, so it takes a commitment to advance the
installation of renewable energy.'" |
"China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the
United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind
turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year. China
has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest
manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is
pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal
power plants. These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect
that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on
solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China. “Most of the energy
equipment will carry a brass plate, ‘Made in China,’ ' said K. K. Chan, the
chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a private
equity fund in Beijing that focuses on renewable energy. President
Obama, in his State of the Union speech last week, sounded an alarm that the United
States was falling behind other countries, especially China, on energy. 'I do not accept a
future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I
know you don’t either,' he told Congress. The United States and other countries are
offering incentives to develop their own renewable energy industries, and Mr. Obama called
for redoubling American efforts. Yet many Western and Chinese executives expect China to
prevail in the energy-technology race. Multinational corporations are responding to the
rapid growth of China’s market by building big, state-of-the-art factories in China.
Vestas of Denmark has just erected the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturing
complex here in northeastern China, and transferred the technology to build the latest
electronic controls and generators." |
"Businesses in the Tees Valley are being urged to get a move on if
they want to secure as much Government cash for electric cars as possible. Teesside has been chosen as a testbed area to trial the low-carbon
vehicle revolution - but first a robust network of chargepoints must be installed.
Stockton Council is among the organisations already signed up. Between 30 and 50 plug-in
points will be installed at key locations, including car parks, community centres and
supermarkets, for both authority and public use. A
council spokesperson said: 'Stockton Council is committed to carbon reduction, both for
its own operations and the wider community.' But time is running out for private
businesses that want to help rev things up. Spending chiefs at regional development agency
One North East have told company bosses if they sign up for a charging point at their
premises before January 31, the Government will meet half the costs, bringing the bill
down to £2,500." |
"Although the commercial solar-cell business dates back almost 50
years, solar panels still cannot compete with fossil fuels when it comes to generating
electricity relatively cheaply. Even during periods of high oil prices, government
subsidies are needed to encourage consumers and companies to install solar power, exposing
the sector to sharp contractions when support is dramatically reduced, as happened in
Spain in 2009 and could happen in Germany later this year. Yet
solar-panel companies are increasingly optimistic that, with technological advances and
improvements in manufacturing efficiency, it won't be too long before 'grid parity' —
the point at which solar power is equal to or cheaper than conventional energy sources
— is reached, especially if oil prices remain high. Manufacturers of the common
crystalline variety of solar cells continuously leap-frog each other with claims of
improving their product's efficiency (measured by the percentage of solar energy put into
a cell that emerges as electricity). Last month,
Norway's REC, together with Dutch research institute ECN, unveiled a 17%-efficient solar
module, trumping Suntech, which a few months earlier had hailed its creation of a
16.5%-efficient module. Other manufacturers, like First Solar, are improving on a type of
solar-cell technology known as 'thin film,' in which an energy-generating substance —
usually a compound called cadmium telluride — is layered onto a glass, plastic or
steel substrate. Thin-film cells are generally less energy-efficient than the crystalline
variety but are potentially much cheaper to manufacture. If
the technology continues to improve, solar power could achieve parity within five to 10
years, says Peter Thiele, executive vice president of Sharp's energy-solutions division in
Europe. Or even sooner, if panel prices continue to fall while oil prices rise. Observers say sales growth is rebounding as buyers respond to
increasingly cost-effective solar power." |
"United Nations climate talks are a bigger threat to top oil exporter
Saudi Arabia than increased oil supplies from rival producers, its lead climate negotiator
said on Sunday. Saudi Arabia's economy depends on oil exports so stands to be one of the
biggest losers in any pact that curbs oil demand by penalizing carbon emissions.....The
possibility that oil demand might peak this decade was a 'serious problem' for Saudi
Arabia, Sabban said. The kingdom had looked at the assumptions behind studies that pointed
to demand peaking in 2016 and saw 'some truth in it,' Sabban said. The kingdom was
watching future demand projections closely and would match any future investment in
capacity expansion with demand, Sabban said. 'We will continue keeping the same spare
capacity but no more,' he said. Saudi had plenty of spare capacity to increase output if
global demand warrants, Sabban said. Demand should grow this year with the economic
recovery, he added. The kingdom completed a program to boost its capacity last year,
coinciding with the global contraction in oil demand due to the economic recession, and
led record OPEC output cuts, leaving it with more than double the spare capacity it
targets. The kingdom has around 4.5 million bpd of spare capacity while having a policy of
holding 1.5 million to 2.0 million bpd to deal with any surprise outage in the global oil
supply system. The kingdom is producing around 8 million bpd. Meanwhile
Saud Arabia plans to invest heavily in solar energy technology, Sabban said, and hopes to
begin exporting power from solar energy by 2020. Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi has said
the kingdom aims to make solar a major contributor to energy supply in the next five to 10
years." |
"India plans to install 20
million solar lights and 20 million square meters of solar thermal panels to generate
20,000 megawatts by 2022 as part of its National Solar Mission, formally launched Monday. 'We propose to provide up to 90 percent support for setting up solar power
plants,' Renewable Energy Minister Farooq Abdullah said at the launch. 'In many other
solar applications, where the initial cost is still very high, we're considering proposals
for providing up to a 30 percent grant in aid,' he said. India, Asia's third-largest
energy consumer, relies on coal for more than half of its power capacity. Just a small
fraction of India's power currently comes from solar energy, which costs about two and a
half times more than power from coal. By installing 20 million solar lights, for
example, the minister said India would save 1 billion liters of kerosene every year. As a
'first benchmark' in the next three years, India also plans to add 1,300 megawatts of
solar power of which 1,100 megawatts will be grid-connected and 200 megawatts will be
off-grid, Abdullah said. 'If we achieve this, achieving the remaining target will not be
impossible.' Noting the high initial cost of solar energy, especially for grid power
generation, Abdullah said he aims to bring down the cost 'as quickly as possible.'
Abdullah said India is working in 'close coordination' with other stakeholders,
particularly the United States, so India can emerge as a global solar power while making
solar energy affordable in the country." |
"A U.S.-based solar power
company has entered into a large-scale agreement with a Chinese power equipment
manufacturer that will lead to the creation of solar thermal power plants across China
that will generate at least 2 gigawatts of power. The
deal, which was signed last week in the Chinese State Council building, will partner U.S.
solar power plant builder eSolar with Penglai Electric to make official what will become
China's largest concentrating solar power project." |
"As it moves rapidly to become the world’s leader in nuclear
power, wind
energy and photovoltaic solar panels, China is taking tentative steps to master
another alternative energy industry: using mirrors to capture sunlight, produce steam and
generate electricity. So-called concentrating solar
power uses hundreds of thousands of mirrors to turn water into steam. The steam turns
a conventional turbine similar to those in coal-fired
power plants. The technology, which is potentially cheaper than most types of renewable
power, has captivated many engineers and financiers in the last two years, with an abrupt
surge in new patents and plans for large power operations in Europe and the United States.
This year may be China’s turn. China is starting
to build its own concentrating solar power plants, a technology more associated with
California deserts than China’s countryside. And Chinese manufacturers are starting
to think about exports, part of China’s effort to become the world’s main
provider of alternative energy power equipment. Yet
concentrating solar power still faces formidable obstacles here, including government
officials who are skeptical that the technology will be useful on a large scale in China.
Much of the country is cloudy or smoggy. Water is scarce. The sunniest places left for
solar power are deserts deep in the interior, far from the energy-hungry coastal provinces
that consume most of China’s electricity. Provinces deep in the interior have few
skilled workers or engineers to maintain the automated gear that keeps mirrors focused on
towers that transfer the heat from sunbeams into fluids." |
"A new study in West Africa
shows how farm irrigation systems powered by the sun can produce more food and money for
villagers. The study in Benin found that
solar-powered pumps are effective in supplying water, especially during the long dry
season. Sub-Saharan Africa is the part of the world with the least food security. The
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that more than one billion of
the world's people faced hunger last year. Around two hundred sixty-five million of them
live south of the Sahara Desert. Lack of rainfall is one of their main causes of food
shortages....The researchers note that only four percent of the cropland in sub-Saharan
Africa is irrigated. Using solar power to pump water has higher costs at first. But the
study says it can be more economical in the long term than using fuels like gasoline,
diesel or kerosene." |
"Massachusetts is planning a new
drive for solar energy in 2010 with a string of programs designed to dramatically increase
the number and size of solar panel arrays in the state. The push comes as Gov. Deval
Patrick, heading into an election year, hopes to make good on his pledge to turn
Massachusetts into one of the nation’s renewable energy hubs. The administration is
already touting what it says are its successes in helping encourage the use of solar
panels — pointing to 'a nearly 15-fold increase in solar installations over Governor
Patrick’s first four-year term.'....The state is also developing regulations for a
third program, a new solar credit market. The program was authorized by the state’s
2008 Green Communities Act to provide predictable market support for the solar industry.
The initiative is also set to begin this month. Secretary
of Energy and Environmental Affairs Ian Bowles said the goal of all the programs is to
make Massachusetts 'a national solar energy powerhouse.'....The administration said the
solar push has also translated into jobs." |
| 2009 |
"Light-emitting wallpaper may
begin to replace light bulbs from 2012, according to a government body that supports
low-carbon technology. A chemical coating on the walls will illuminate all parts of the
room with an even glow, which mimics sunlight and avoids the shadows and glare of
conventional bulbs. Although an electrical current will be used to stimulate the chemicals
to produce light, the voltage will be very low and the walls will be safe to touch. Dimmer
switches will control brightness, as with traditional lighting. The Carbon Trust has awarded a £454,000 grant to Lomox, a Welsh company
that is developing the organic light-emitting diode technology. The trust said it would be
two and a half times more efficient than energysaving bulbs and could make a big
contribution to meeting Britain’s target of cutting carbon emissions by 34 per cent
by 2020. Indoor lighting accounts for a sixth of total electricity use. The chemical
coating, which can be applied in the form of specially treated wallpaper or simply painted
straight on to walls, can also be used for flat-screen televisions, computers and mobile
phone displays. As the system uses only between three and five volts, it can be powered by
solar panels or batteries. Lomox, which will use the grant to prove the durability of the
technology, believes it could be used in the first instance to illuminate road signs or
barriers where there is no mains electricity. Ken Lacey, the chief executive of Lomox,
said that the first products would go on sale in 2012. 'The light is a very natural,
sunlight-type of lighting with the full colour range. It gives you all kinds of potential
for how you do lighting,' he said. Although organic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have been
available for several years, Mr Lacey said that concerns over cost and durability had
prevented further development. He said that Lomox had developed a much cheaper process and
discovered a combination of chemicals that were not vulnerable to the oxidation that
shortened the operating life span of other types of organic LEDs. Mr Lacey said the
technology could be used to make flexible screens that could be rolled up after use, or
carried into a presentation, for example. Mark Williamson, director of innovations at the
Carbon Trust, said: 'Lighting is a major producer of carbon emissions. This technology has
the potential to produce ultra-efficient lighting for a wide range of applications,
tapping into a huge global market...'" |
"While the world's attention was tuned to the recent global climate
conference in Copenhagen,
in an old airplane hangar on a small Swiss airfield, a group of visionaries, dreamers and
engineers was busily assembling a vehicle that is their solution to global climate change
and the future of commercial aviation. This airplane uses no fossil or bio-fuels. It is a
solar-powered airplane, collecting the sun's rays on 12,000 solar cells spread across its
wings to charge the special lithium-polymer batteries that will continue to power the
airplane from sunset till the next sunrise....Solar Impulse president Dr. Bertrand Piccard
reminds those skeptics that when Charles
Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic in 1927, his airplane was only large enough for the
pilot and a whole lot of fuel and it took 33 hours to cross the ocean....Piccard wants to
demonstrate that solar power can be used for most modes of transport. 'If we manage to fly around the world with an airplane that takes
no fuel at all,' says Piccard, 'nobody will be able to say afterwards that it is
impossible for cars.' Looking like an astronaut in
his pilot jump suit, Dr. Piccard conjures another famous Picard: the legendary Jean-Luc
Picard, captain of the USS Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation, as he takes us
where no one has gone before.... The Solar Impulse airplane is not the first solar
airplane to take flight. Numerous other solar airplanes have been successfully tested in
the last few decades, but the Solar Impulse airplane could become the first to fly
continuously day and night, and the first to fly around the world if successful. Over the
past six years, Piccard has assembled a team of 70 engineers and business support staff
and has raised approximately $67 million of the $105 million budgeted for the project.
Major corporations like Deutsche
Bank, Swiss watch maker Omega, and pharmaceutical giant Solvay are underwriting the
Solar Impulse venture. If all goes according to plan, the solar airplane will take off
next summer and climb to an altitude of 27,000 feet. On a 36-hour flight it will fill the
batteries and run the engines all day. 'Then there is only one goal,' says Piccard: 'To
reach the next sunrise before the battery dies.'" |
"A hi-tech company in Cardiff is poised to take advantage of the
global growth in solar power generation with its next generation solar technology.
High-efficiency solar cells are being developed by IQE in Cardiff – including one of the first photo-voltaic (PV) devices of its kind in the
world using semiconductor materials. Project manager
Rob Harper said the development of the world class product will position IQE for strong
growth in the future, securing and creating highly skilled jobs at its Cardiff plants. The technology developed at IQE uses specially engineered layers
known as multi-junctions to convert different parts of the solar spectrum into electrical
energy. A higher percentage of solar radiation can be harvested using this method compared
to other types of solar cells. IQE’s solar
cells are already capable of converting around 40% of solar radiation into electrical
power and further research is being conducted to improve this. By concentrating sunlight
using inexpensive lenses and mirrors, the amount of active solar cell material can be
reduced, further lowering the overall unit cost. Known as concentrating photo-voltaic
(CPV) this approach is suited to large installations of 5MW and above, and works best in
regions with high levels of direct sunlight. Although CPV is a new technology and accounts
for less than 0.5% of currently installed PV power, a number of large CPV installations
are under way in Australia, the US, Spain, Italy and Greece. CPV has substantial market
potential because of its high conversion efficiencies, and industry experts anticipate a
compound annual growth rate of 45% between 2009 and 2015. IQE, whose manufacturing
facility and global headquarters was established in St Mellons, Cardiff in 1988, has
recently produced the world’s first triple junction devices with a new, patented
combination of semi-conductor materials. This is attracting the attention of CPV
manufacturers worldwide because it has the potential to provide improved efficiency at
lower cost." |
"Mayor Boris Johnson has pledged
every Londoner will be no more than one mile from an electric car charge point by 2015. His £60m plan would see 22,500 charge points at workplaces, 500 on the
street and 2,000 in public car parks. Mr Johnson made the announcement at a meeting of
city leaders in Copenhagen. But London Assembly's Green Party said there are doubts about
the environmental gains of charging vehicles using grid electricity. 'A golden era of
clean, green electric motoring is upon us and London is well ahead of cities around the
globe in preparing the right conditions for this,' Mr Johnson said at the
conference." |
"The Japanese Government is working on a 'growth blueprint' that
would exploit the prolonged weakness of the US dollar and mount a state-backed resource
grab for rare technology metals around the world. If the plans, which are in their early
stages, come to fruition, the Government would assist companies in buying the rights to
mine rare earth minerals wherever they are up for grabs. Tokyo
is understood to have placed a high economic priority on securing global rare earth rights
for Japanese companies because of the looming prospect of a resource war with China. The
metals most coveted by Japan are a collection of 14 lanthanides that make hybrid vehicles
possible and will be critical to the future of electric cars because their strong magnetic
properties allow for lighter motors....Over the past
decade, Beijing has reached the point where it enjoys a 90 per cent global monopoly over
the production of rare earth metals. As its high-tech industries have developed, it has
consumed an increasing quantity of those produced domestically and significantly lowered
export quotas to places such as Japan. Even large Japanese manufacturers have resorted to
illegal quota-busting and source about a quarter of their annual supplies from illicit
rare earth mines in China. As China has hardened its stance on exports, Japan has begun a
frantic search for supplies elsewhere." |
"The world’s electricity industry will set out a plan on Tuesday
for rolling out the technologies needed to cut carbon dioxide emissions, showing how
ambitious plans to
tackle global warming could be achieved.Electricity generation accounts for about a
third of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions from energy use, which in turn accounts
for two-thirds of all greenhouse gas emissions. This is one of the sectors in which deep
cuts in emissions are most practicable – the technologies for producing electricity
without emitting carbon dioxide are either in use or close to deployment. Europe’s
electricity industry has already committed to going carbon-free by 2050. Electrification
also offers the prospect of cutting emissions from other sectors. Electric cars look a better bet than biofuels for greening road
transport. Electric heat pumps, which carry heat into the home, are an alternative to
burning coal and gas for warmth. However, low-carbon
power is going to be more expensive, at least initially, and will require a huge
investment in infrastructure as well as a steep improvement in energy efficiency. In
short, there will have to be an entirely new type of electricity grid.... Even so, any
transition to carbon-free generation will take decades. Low-carbon technologies are
generally more expensive than fossil-fuel plants: in the case of some, such as offshore
wind, they are a lot more expensive. At the same time, power generation will not always be
available. The British government, which is backing Europe’s fastest expansion of
wind power, is building into its plans for 2030 a huge margin of spare generation capacity
which can be used when there is no wind. Managing demand will become crucial. Lars
Josefsson, who is chief executive of Sweden’s Vattenfall, one of Europe’s
biggest electricity companies, and president of Eurelectric, the industry association,
says: 'The key to Europe’s low-carbon future will be on the demand side.' If power
supply is inflexible, it is particularly important that demand is flexible to balance the
grid. A higher cost of energy will make consumers more worried about wasting it. The
electricity system will probably have to be based on a “smart grid”, which uses
information technology to manage flows of power around the network. This would include
smart meters – which show consumers how much energy they are using and also allow
flexible pricing – devices in homes that can send information and receive
instructions, and even smart appliances, that would switch off automatically when not
needed." |
| "The Solar Impulse prototype plane, part of a planned solar-powered
circumnavigation of the globe, has left the ground for the first time. The maiden
flight was dubbed a 'flea hop' by project leaders, at 350m in length and a height of just
one metre. The next flight, at the Payerne air force airfield in western Switzerland, will
see the plane reach an altitude of nearly 9,000m, once more using on-board batteries. The final version of the plane will attempt a solar-powered
transatlantic flight in 2012 prior to the round-the-world trip." Record-attempting solar powered plane's first 'hop' BBC Online, 4 December 2009 |
"California regulators on
Thursday approved an ambitious project to beam solar energy from space starting in 2016. Under a power purchase agreement approved by the
California Public Utilities Commission, utility Pacific Gas & Electric will purchase
electricity from technology provider Solaren if it successfully deploys its space-based
solar collectors, which would be the first of its kind. PG&E has contracted to
buy 1,700 gigawatt hours per year for 15 years from Solar for its space-based solar
arrays, which will have a generating capacity of 200 megawatts. That's smaller than a full
scale nuclear or natural gas plant but enough to supply thousands of homes. The anticipated date of operation is June, 2016. Space-based solar, an idea that has been around for decades, is being
pursued by companies and researchers around the world. Its key advantage over land-based
solar or wind power is that can generate renewable energy around the clock. The California
Public Utilities Commission gave the go-ahead to the project in an effort to meet the
state's aggressive renewable energy goals." |
"Mazda, EnerDel, Think Global,
and others are partnering on a test project that will pair all-electric cars with stationary
storage units as charging stations, EnerDel and
Mazda announced this past week. Mazda plans to convert some of its Mazda2
vehicles (known as the Mazda Demios in Japan) to all-electric cars running a
Think drivetrain with EnerDel lithium ion batteries. The cars will be offered to
Japanese customers through a rental car program, called the Tsukuba
Environmental Style Test Project, which should be up and running by March 2010 in
Tsukuba City, Japan, near Tokyo, according to Mazda. U.S. battery manufacturer EnerDel has
described the test project as the Japanese equivalent to Zipcar in the States, a program
in which customers join a car club that offers car rentals on an hourly or daily basis.
Instead of recharging stations tapping directly into a smart grid, those in the Tsukuba
test project will use stationary grid storage units also developed by EnerDel. The
stationary storage units will enable the rapid charging of the all-electric Mazda2 cars,
while avoiding the possibility of having to tap into a smart grid during peak usage hours.
'The unique combination of on-site battery storage with rapid charging allows the use of
direct current throughout the system, sharply reducing the amount of time needed to charge
a vehicle,' according to a statement from EnerDel. The recharging stations, which will
draw from solar panels as well as grid power, will be located at Family Mart convenience stores
in the Tsukuba City area." |
"Egypt, which plans to start its
first solar power unit in 2010, said on Tuesday it wanted to expand solar power production
for export but that costs of the technology would need to fall first to make it feasible. The North African country, a gas and oil producer, aims to generate 20
percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. It already has installed wind
capacity of 430 megawatts and is adding 120 megawatts by mid 2010. Wind farms are expected
to meet 12 percent of Egypt's power needs by 2020 but solar power projects have lagged.
'Solar energy is four times as expensive as energy generated from combined cycles so when
this figure starts going down to three or two times as much, this is when we will see
developing countries go heavily into the business,' Electricity and Energy Minister Hassan
Younes told Reuters. 'Exports are in our plan, but taking into consideration the
development of suitable technology and its spread so that the price goes down,' he added.
Egypt, whose population is concentrated on just 10 percent of its land, has ample desert
areas to set up solar power units. The most populous Arab country is also situated in the
sun belt where sunshine is available all year round for power generation." |
| "The cost of installing and
owning solar panels will fall even faster than expected according to new research. Tests
show that 90% of existing solar panels last for 30 years, instead of the predicted 20
years. According to the independent EU Energy
Institute, this brings down the lifetime cost. The institute says the panels are such a
good long-term investment that banks should offer mortgages on them like they do on homes.
At a conference, the institute forecast that solar panels would be cost-competitive with
energy from the grid for half the homes in Europe by 2020 - without a subsidy....Dr
[Heinz] Ossenbrink says 40-year panels will be on the market soon. A key goal for solar is
what is known as grid parity. That is the point when it is as cheap for someone to
generate power on their homes as it is to buy it from the grid. It varies from country to
country depending on electricity prices, but the institute estimates that Italy - which
has a combination of sunny weather and relatively high electricity prices - should reach
grid parity next year. Half of Europe should be enjoying grid parity by 2020, it
estimates. Cloudy northern countries like the UK could wait further, possibly up to 2030.
But the day would come when solar panels on homes would be cost-competitive without a
subsidy, even in Britain. Dr Ossenbrink says: 'Basically everything (in the industry) is
bound to grow still further. Growing further means less cost. Less cost means grid
parity.' Professor Wim Sinke, from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who leads the
solar umbrella group the European Photovoltaic Technology Platform, says the industry has
even greater ambitions. 'The target of the sector as a whole is to reach grid parity in
almost all of Europe over the next 10 years. So by 2020 we should have grid parity in most
of Europe,' he told BBC News.... It will take much longer for solar to match fossil fuel
power at the point of generation, the institute says, as wholesale electricity prices are
much lower than retail prices." Solar panel costs 'set to fall' BBC Online, 30 November 2009 |
"Sun Catalytix, a company
that's trying to develop a revolutionary clean-energy system, has finished a round of seed
funding and secured a technology license from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Cambridge, Mass.-based company was formed about one year ago to commercialize research from MIT professor
Daniel Nocera in which he attempts to mimic the process of photosynthesis. Polaris
Ventures finalized a $3 million seed round of funding for Sun Catalytix and expects to
raise a series A round next year, said Polaris' Bob Metcalfe, who is also on the board.
The core of the company's technology, which
Nocera has sought to patent, is a low-cost catalyst for an electrolyzer, a device that
splits water to make hydrogen. That hydrogen can be used with a fuel cell to make
electricity. Or the hydrogen could be combined with other materials to store energy in a
liquid fuel, such as methanol or ammonia, Metcalfe said. Nocera
envisions that homes would be equipped with solar panels to produce hydrogen from water
during the day. At night, the stored hydrogen could power a home without releasing carbon
emissions. The key difference with the Sun Catalytix
electrolyzer is that it is being designed to be made with cheap materials and work with
all sorts of water, said Metcalfe. 'Splitting water to make hydrogen is as old as the
hills. The breakthrough here is that it's dirt cheap. They operate in dirty water like
water from the Charles River and they've used salt water from the Boston Harbor,' he said.
The catalyst that splits the water molecules uses cobalt phosphate, which is cheap and
abundant compared to expensive metals such as platinum, Metcalfe added. So far, the
five-person company has built a number of prototypes made from PVC plastic. A fully functioning system would take a number of years to develop
and depend on other components being cheaper, including solar panels and hydrogen storage,
Nocera has said. But Metcalfe said that Polaris believes the company can commercialize the
technology 'in the short attention span of a venture capitalist.' Typically, venture capitalists expect to generate a big return in five to
seven years." |
"A shingle that generates solar energy was named one of the 50 Best
Innovations of 2009 by Time magazine. Dow Chemical, the Powerhouse Solar Shingle's
inventor, will make the shingles commercially available by the middle of next year. Dow's
technology 'will make affordable renewable energy a reality now and for future
generations,' said Dow Solar Solutions managing director Jane Palmieri. The Powerhouse
design includes thin-film cells of copper indium gallium diselenide. Dow notes the cells'
low cost relative to other solar technologies. And, on top of low cost, Dow's new shingle
has other advantages. The company reports that the
installation process is no different than that of traditional shingles, making Powerhouse
shingles attractive to contractors. And in addition
to saving money for homeowners by cutting energy use, the shingles are anticipated to make
a lot of money for Dow - up to $10 billion a year by 2020. The Powerhouse Solar Shingle
was number 13 on Time magazine's list." |
"If every south-facing building
in the UK fitted solar panels, the country would have all the electricity it needs, an
expert has claimed. Tim Bruton, chief technology
officer of the New and Renewable Energy Centre (Narec), in Northumberland,
was speaking ahead of a national conference in County Durham that will highlight the
business opportunities photovoltaics – solar power – could bring. The North-East
is putting foundations in place to become a European centre for renewable energy
expertise, bringing with it scores of jobs and new industries, with photovoltaics (PV),
alongside wind power, electric vehicles and green energy, playing a major part. Mr Bruton,
a fellow of the Institute of Physics who has published over 70 papers in the PV field,
believes the North-East is on the verge of 'something very exciting'. He said: 'The
University of Northumbria carried out a study for the Department of Trade and Industry
looking at the existing south-facing buildings in the UK. All we have to do is take the
things we have already built and put solar panels on them and we can generate all the
electricity we need.' Rather than being the technology of the far future, Mr Bruton
believes it is only two to three years away from being widely used in the UK. He said: 'If
you look at what has happened in Germany, Spain and California where you have the right
subsidy structure from the government, the market has taken off.' Mr Bruton pointed out
that a similar subsidy scheme was due to be introduced by the Government in this country
in April. It is then that the new Renewables Feed In Tariff (FIT) system comes into force,
offering both domestic and business customers using technology such as photovoltaics for
electricity, payback rates of up to 40p per kWh." |
"Every two weeks, the sun pours more energy onto the surface of our
planet than we use from all sources in an entire year. It is an inexhaustible powerhouse
that has remained largely untapped for human energy needs. That may soon change in a big
way. If a consortium of German companies has its way, construction of the biggest solar
project ever devised could soon begin in the Sahara desert. When completed, it would
harvest energy from the sun shining over Africa and transform it into clean, green
electricity for delivery to European homes and businesses. Prospects for the project,
called Desertec, have blossomed over the past year, and this month 20 major German
corporations are expected to announce the formation of a consortium that will provide the
€400 billion needed to build a raft of solar thermal power plants in north Africa.
They include energy utilities giants E.ON and RWE, the engineering firm Siemens, the
finance house Deutsche Bank and the insurance company Munich Re. The current plan,
outlined by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in a report to the federal government,
envisages that the project will meet 15 per cent of Europe's electricity needs by 2050,
with a peak output of 100 gigawatts - roughly equivalent to 100 coal-fired power stations.
Preliminary designs in the German report show electricity reaching Europe via 20
high-voltage direct-current power lines, which will keep transmission losses below 10 per
cent (New Scientist, 14 March, p 42). Trans-Mediterranean links will cross from Morocco to
Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar; from Algeria to France via the Balearic islands;
from Tunisia to Italy; from Libya to Greece; and from Egypt to Turkey via Cyprus....But is
this really the best use of such a colossal amount of money? Critics are lining up to
point out the project's shortcomings. They say it could make Europe's energy supply a
hostage to politically unstable countries; that Europe should not be exploiting Africa in
this way; that it is a poor investment compared to covering Europe's roofs with
photovoltaic (PV) solar panels; and that, while deserts have plenty of sun, they lack
another less obvious but equally indispensable resource for a solar thermal power plant -
water. Is Desertec really the model of future power generation, as its promoters would
have us believe, or is it politically misconceived and a monumental waste of money?....
Solar thermal energy is now coming to the fore, as it proves itself to have several
advantages over PV. Among these is its ability to produce electricity in power-station
quantities, without the complex organisation that distributed generation entails. What's
more, it can feed electricity into the grid at night as well as by day. This is done by
storing the heated fluid in an insulated container and releasing it hours later when the
energy is required. Storing energy from PV panels would require a new generation of
high-capacity batteries - still a research project in its infancy for the scale needed.
The clincher is cost. Building a power-station-scale solar thermal installation costs only
a fraction of PV generators with the same output. As a result, an army of new solar
thermal plants are being planned for the US, China, Australia and Israel....PV cells have one clear advantage, however. Solar thermal requires
direct sunlight, and so a cloudy day will slash power output to near zero, whereas PV
cells will generate at least some power until night descends. But the intensity of
sunshine blasting the Sahara desert more than compensates for this. Every year, each
square metre of the Sahara receives more heat from the sun than would be obtained by
burning two barrels of oil. Desertec reckons that a patch less than 600 kilometres across
could meet the entire world's electricity needs today and that all of Europe's electricity
could be made in an area 250 kilometres across.....Out
in the Sahara, however, another problem has to be solved. Like
a regular coal or oil-fired plant, a solar thermal generating station requires large
amounts of cooling water to condense the steam after it goes through the generator's
turbines, and there are inevitable losses from evaporation. The solar trough plant in the Mojave desert consumes around 3000 litres
of water for every megawatt-hour of electricity it produces, and others are likely to need
similar amounts. That's a lot of water to find in a desert. A typical Saharan solar farm
would be expected to deliver abount 120,000 megawatt-hours of electricity per year per
square kilometre. That equates to some 350 million litres of water,or enough to flood its
area to a depth of 35 centimetres - not much less than would be needed to irrigate a crop
of wheat....Switching to air cooling for thermal solar power stations would cut water
demand by up to 90 per cent, but brings problems of its own. Air cooling is less efficient
than water cooling, so the installations would require more land and more mirrors, adding
to the capital and running costs. David Mills, whose company Ausra in Palo Alto,
California, wants to build an air-cooled solar thermal plant in the Nevada desert, says
air cooling involves about a 10 per cent penalty in terms of cost or performance.....If the argument comes down to cost, how do the numbers stack up?
In terms of capital cost, large-scale solar thermal installations are the clear winner.
Building the plant now operating in Spain has cost €1670 for each megawatt-hour of
electricity it produces each year. Jeremy Leggett, who heads Solar Century, a London-based
company which sells PV technology, says that installing PV panels would eat up more than
double that, at €4000 per megawatt-hour per year. But capital cost is not the end of
the story. While a solar thermal power plant requires a round-the-clock crew, PV
installations pretty much run themselves. What's more, PV power plants can grow piecemeal:
they can start generating power for the grid from the day the first panel is installed,
while solar thermal mirrors are useless until the entire power station is completed. For
Desertec, there is also the small matter of getting Desertec's electricity from Africa to
Europe. With this many variables in the equation it becomes hard to make realistic
comparisons between the available options. To fill the gap, Anthony Patt of the
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, a think tank in Laxenburg, Austria,
is conducting a detailed feasibility study of solar thermal power generation. He reckons
that Desertec is unlikely to be competitive with coal-fired power generation for at least
two decades, during which time it will swallow between €20 and €50 billion,
similar in scale to Germany's expected subsidy for PV cells over the same period. And then
there are the tricky political issues that arise from a plan that will exploit land in
Africa, and possibly Asia too, to generate electricity for Europe. Desertec says that
two-thirds of the potential solar resource in north Africa and the Middle East lies in
Algeria, Libya and Saudi Arabia. Europe, like the US, wants to reduce its reliance on
energy imported from distant lands with an unpredictable political future. Why create a
new hostage to fortune? The stage is set to recreate
an uncomfortable parallel with western dependency on oil from Saudi Arabia, Iran and
Iraq." |
| "Solar incentives seem to be working to both increase the number of
solar installations in the U.S. and bring down the initial cost, according to a report
released Wednesday by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 'Findings...show that, after a three-year plateau, costs decreased
by 3.6 percent from 2007 to 2008, marking a pivotal year for the American solar industry,'
said the report (PDF). Broken down
into real 2008 dollars, the report estimated that the actual cost of installing
photovoltaic solar systems--excluding tax credits or financial incentives--was $10.80 per
watt in 1998 versus $7.50 per watt in 2008. That initial cost to the installer dropped
significantly once incentives and tax credits were
factored in. Last year, the average cost of installation was $2.80 per watt for
residential photovoltaic, when incentives and tax credits are counted, and $4.00 per watt
for commercial...the report did include outside data for comparison of markets. It showed
that the recent growing popularity of solar is not just a U.S. phenomenon. About 5,948
megawatts of photovoltaic were installed globally in 2008 compared to 2,826 megawatts in
2007. Spain was the largest
photovoltaic market in terms of installation in 2008, followed by Germany and then the
U.S., according to the report. Undoubtedly, the global installation figure will increase
even more dramatically in the coming years. China alone has announced plans for
large-scale photovoltaic installations ranging from 500 megawatts in Baotou, Inner
Mongolia to 2,000 megawatts in Ordos City,
Inner Mongolia. In the U.S., First Solar has been given rights to develop a 550-megawatt plant in
California." Solar really is getting cheaper, report says CNet News, 22 October 2009 |
"The U.S. military is tackling a
new mission in the field of alternative energy, moving to power up a 500-megawatt solar
facility at Fort Irwin's sprawling desert complex in California....The project, located at the Army's largest training range in
California's Mojave Desert, could grow as large as 1 gigawatt in the future. The companies
will finance and build the plant in exchange for leasing of the military land. The
project, planned for five sites over 13 years, could cost $2 billion. The solar power
plant is part of the Army's mission to meet a federal mandate that calls for it to cut its
energy use by nearly a third by 2015 and get a quarter of its energy needs from renewable
resources by 2025." |
| "California is heating up its
push for clean energy, as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger approved a new subsidy for solar
power on Monday and joined forces with the federal government to fast-track renewable
energy projects. California has the most aggressive
renewable energy goals in the United States, which Schwarzenegger increased last month
when he ordered that the state get a third of its electricity from renewable resources by
2020. FBR Capital Markets analyst Mehdi Hosseini said the new subsidy for solar generation
could be 'explosive' on top of the existing investment tax credit for installing solar
systems. 'This is above and beyond the subsidies that
are already in place,' Hosseini said. Feed-in tariffs set a higher price for renewables,
and in Germany, such tariffs have pushed the country to be the world's market leader in
solar power. California's new solar program
guarantees that utilities will pay owners of commercial solar systems -- up to 3 megawatts
in size -- a higher price for solar electricity, a subsidy meant to spur development of
solar rooftop systems. Currently, if utilities want to charge more than the retail price
for such systems they have to ask for permission from regulators. Now the California
Public Utilities Commission will set the price. Hosseini estimates the tariff could be
between 15 and 17 cents per kilowatt hour and could help drive as much as 500 MW worth of
new commercial rooftop systems in 2010." California heats up incentives for solar power Reuters, 12 October 2009 |
| "The European Commission is expected to introduce a plan to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions that directs the largest slices of €50 billion available for
research and development to solar power and capturing and burying emissions from coal plants. The plan, to be
released on Wednesday, is partly intended to show that the European Union is taking the
additional steps needed to meet ambitious goals to cut greenhouse gases before a summit
meeting in Copenhagen in December on reaching a new global agreement to curb climate
change. But the plan also signals the need for a reordering of the bloc’s industrial
priorities by requiring governments to spend significantly greater sums of money on clean
energy even as the world emerges from a deep financial crisis. 'Markets and energy companies acting on their own are unlikely to
be able to deliver the needed technological breakthroughs within a sufficiently short time
span to meet the E.U.’s energy and climate policy goals,' the commission said in a draft of the plan obtained by the International
Herald Tribune. Introducing low-carbon technologies also 'represents a major challenge in
the context of the financial crisis, where risk-aversion is higher and investment in new,
riskier technologies is not high in investors’ priorities,' the draft said. European
Union commissioners are expected to seek agreement on the final sums to be allocated to
low-carbon power industries at a meeting on Wednesday. The recommendation is from the
European Commission, the E.U.’s executive arm. The plan is at an early stage of
development, mostly because governments still would need to agree to finance it. The bloc,
with 27 member countries, already operates a costly cap and trade system to regulate
greenhouse gases, and some countries also tax carbon dioxide emissions associated with
heating homes and running cars. Under the plan, the solar sector would receive the largest
amount, €16 billion, or $23.5 billion, over the next decade. By allocating the
second-highest sum, €13 billion, to carbon capture and storage of greenhouse gas
emissions, the commission said it was aiming to make the technology commercially feasible
in all power plants that go into operation after 2020." E.U. Plan to Curb Carbon Dioxide Would Favor Solar Power New York Times, 6 October 2009 |
"Dow Chemical Co (DOW.N) said on
Monday it would begin selling a new rooftop shingle next year that converts sunlight into
electricity -- and could generate $5 billion in
revenue by 2015 for the company. The new solar shingles can be integrated into rooftops
with standard asphalt shingles, Dow said, and will be introduced in 2010 before a wider
roll-out in 2011. 'We're looking at this one product that could generate $5 billion in
revenue by 2015 and $10 billion by 2020,' Jane Palmieri, managing director of Dow Solar
Solutions, told Reuters in an interview. The shingle will use thin-film cells of copper
indium gallium diselenide (CIGS), a photovoltaic material that typically is more efficient
at turning sunlight into electricity than traditional polysilicon cells. Dow is using CIGS
cells that operate at higher than 10 percent efficiency, below the efficiencies for the
top polysilicon cells -- but would cost 10 to 15 percent less on a per watt basis. Dow
Solar Solutions said it expects 'an enthusiastic response' from roofing contractors for
the new shingles, since they require no specialized skills or knowledge of solar systems
to install. The new product is the latest advance in 'Building Integrated Photovoltaic'
(BIPV) systems, in which power-generating systems are built directly into the traditional
materials used to construct buildings. BIPV systems are currently limited mostly to
roofing tiles, which operate at lower efficiencies than solar panels and have so far been
too expensive to gain wide acceptance. Dow's shingle will be about 30 to 40 percent
cheaper than current BIPV systems. The Dow shingles can be installed in about 10 hours,
compared with 22 to 30 hours for traditional solar panels, reducing the installation costs
that make up more than 50 percent of total system prices." |
"China launched on Wednesday the
country's biggest on-grid solar power project with electricity capacity of 10 megawatts in
Shizuishan of Ningxia, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The project, run by the China Energy Conservation Investment Corp, was
only the first phase of a total 50-MW project, Xinhua said. 'After the completion of the
first phase, construction for the second and third phases will be finished by 2011,' it
added." |
"Google Inc is in the early
stages of looking at ways to write software that would fully integrate plug-in hybrid
vehicles to the power grid, minimize strain on the grid and help utilities manage vehicle
charging load. 'We are doing some preliminary work,' said Dan Reicher, Google's director
of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives. 'We have
begun some work on smart charging of electric vehicles and how you would integrate large
number of electric vehicles into the grid successfully. 'We have done a little bit of work
on the software side looking at how you would write a computer code to manage this sort of
charging infrastructure,' he said in an interview on the sidelines of an industry
conference. Google, known for its Internet search engine, in 2007 announced a program to
test Toyota Prius and Ford Escape gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles that were converted to
rechargeable plug-in hybrids that run mostly on electricity. One of the experimental
technologies that was being tested by the Web search giant allowed parked plug-ins to
transfer stored energy back to the electric grid, opening a potential back-up source of
power for the system in peak hours. Google has pushed ahead in addressing climate change
issues as a philanthropic effort through its Google.org arm. Reicher said Google has been
testing its fleet of plug-in hybrids 'pretty intensely' for the last couple of years. 'One
of the great things about plug-ins is this great opportunity for the first time to finally
have a storage technology,' he said. Reicher said the company is trying to figure out how
to manage the impact of having millions of future electric vehicle owners plugging in
their vehicles at the same time. 'We got to be careful how we manage these things,' he
said. 'On a hot day in July when 5 million Californians come home, you don't want them all
plugging in at the same moment.' Reicher laid out a scenario where power utilities, during
a time of high demand, could turn on or off the charging of electric vehicles. The owner
of these vehicles, who have agreed to such an arrangement, would get a credit from the
utility in turn. 'The grid operators may well be indifferent to either putting 500
megawatts of new generation on or taking 500 megawatts off,' he said. 'The beauty of
plug-in vehicles is that with the right software behind them, you could manage their
charging.' Apart from plug-in hybrids, Google also is working on other green technologies
such as developing its own new mirror technology that could reduce the cost of building
solar thermal plants by a quarter or more, and looking at gas turbines that would run on
solar power rather than natural gas. The often-quirky company also said in late 2007 that
it would invest in companies and do research of its own to produce affordable renewable
energy -- at a price less than burning coal -- within a few years, casting the move as a philanthropic effort to
address climate change." |
"Only in California, some observers are saying, but solar enthusiasts
see the solar electric car charging stations as the wave of future. A joint venture between Foster City-based SolarCity
and San Carlos-based Tesla Motors, the solar charging stations will be placed at four
specific Rabobank locations (Salinas, Atascadero, Santa Maria and Goleta) along the 101
route from San Francisco to Los Angeles, one of the most heavily traveled roadways in the
world. Rabobank, another participant in the revolutionary endeavor, is an international
financial services provider located in 16 countries with headquarters in the Netherlands.
Together, the three entities now offer solar charging venues to Tesla drivers. Next year,
according to SolarCity spokesman Jonathan Bass, the company will refit the charging
stations to correspond to standards established by the Society of Automotive Engineers,
making them available to drivers of other electric vehicles as well. The solar charging
stations are part of a marketing strategy, of course, but they also represent the
companies’ focus on reducing the use of fossil fuels and the attendant emissions that
contribute to global warming....Funding for the project came from the California Air
Resources Board, which in 2007 provided a grant to Tesla of $641,000, according to Tesla
spokeswoman Rachel Konrad. Part of that grant went into the cooperative development, with
Auburn-based EV supplier Clipper Creek, of a fast-charging unit that Tesla has named the
'High Power Connector'. This unit delivers up to 70
amps (240 volts) of electricity, which can charge the Tesla Roadster in as few as 3.5
hours....The High Power Connector comes with a price
tag of $3,000, but can be installed in any garage or carport with a 15-amp circuit. Tesla
cars can also be charged with any 110-volt outlet, but this process can take up to 1.5
days." |
"Marc Zakian - I am cruising the outskirts of London
in a vehicle that could turn white van drivers green. Green
with envy, as a tank of diesel costs £100 compared with our £5 fill-up; and environmentally green because the van I am steering is electric. The
curved-nosed box-van can carry up to two tonnes (think Transit, but longer and taller). It
is made by Modec, a Midlands-based company set up in 2004 by the former chairman of
Manganese Bronze – makers of the iconic London taxi. After a £30m development, the
Modec was launched in 2007. Driving the Modec is a contradictory experience. Perched in
its cabin, you command the road, and yet the ride is extraordinarily quiet; with none of
the shake and rattle or the whiff of diesel of a traditional van – only the squeaks
from the chassis and the beehive hum of the electric motor let you know you are driving.
With no noise pollution or tailpipe emissions, the electric van should be the bright green
future for commercial transport. But if the Zev (Zero Emission Vehicle) is to replace
Britain's 3m diesel vans it will have to satisfy two demands: the distance it can travel
on one charge, and its price....It is once the Zevs are on the road that savings are made.
'We spend £25 a week charging an electric van, compared with £200 on a diesel
equivalent,' says Nick Murray, TNT's communications manager. 'After three years an
electric van works out cheaper than diesel.' As well
as costing less in fuel, electric vans don't need an MOT, are zero-rated for road tax and
have no oil or filters to change. And with only four moving parts in the engine –
compared with more than 1,000 on an internal combustion engine – electric vehicles
are cheaper to maintain and suffer fewer breakdowns....Although
electric HGVs are starting to make an appearance – last May the port in Los Angeles started using electric trucks to
move sea containers – they are short-range vehicles. Electric vans recharge on the
move, generating power when the vehicle brakes and returning that power to the battery. So
the stop/start rhythms of a delivery van are well-suited to electric power. Long-distance
trucks drive for hours without stopping, way beyond the current 100- to 150-mile battery
range. One potential solution is already incorporated into the Modec van. The battery is
exchangeable. This future-proofs the vehicle, so that as technology improves, vehicles can
be retrofitted with the latest batteries. Currently this swap takes about 15 minutes. But
if the exchange were speeded up, it would pave the way for a relay of 'battery stations'
around the country, with electric vans or trucks swapping spent batteries for charged
ones, giving them an infinite range. This potential is being exploited by Project Better
Place, who with Renault and Nissan are planning an electric car battery station network
which they plan to deploy by 2011. But Dan Jenkins, from Smiths Electric Vehicles,
believes the eventual solution will be improved battery technology. 'Lithium ion battery technology is only at the beginning of its
performance curve,' he stresses. 'In the next few years we will see the range being
extended to 200 miles and beyond. And in the long term, batteries using ultra-capacitors
should mean you can fast-charge in minutes.' In the
meantime, for the newly greened white van driver the Zev is good news. Goodbye to the
bone-battering rattle of the diesel engine, and hello to the gearless, silent, stress-free
world of the electric van." |
"India wrong-footed the United States and other rich nations
yesterday by agreeing for the first time to set numerical targets for curbing its
greenhouse gas emissions. The move added to pressure on the Obama Administration to
deliver on its own climate change pledges even as senior Democrats warned that US
legislation may face severe delays....The announcement marks a breakthough in
international talks, which have stalled over whether emissions curbs in a new UN climate
treaty should apply to developing nations as well as to the developed countries covered by
the Kyoto Protocol.... India has long refused to commit itself to any cuts on the ground
that its per capita emissions are far lower than developed countries’ and any caps
would hamper its economic development. Mr Ramesh said that in Copenhagen, India would
stick to its long-standing commitment to keep per capita emissions below those of
developed nations – and would not agree to any internationally binding cuts. He
added, however, that India was drafting legislation that would set its own targets for
mitigating carbon emissions through various domestic initiatives, such as a massive plan to promote solar energy. Carbon emissions in India are set to soar as its economy expands rapidly
and industrialisation gathers pace. The new targets would be consistent with an annual
growth rate of 8 to 9 per cent for India’s GDP, Mr Ramesh said. The announcement was
designed to improve India’s image in the West as an obstacle to climate change talks
and to put the onus on the developed world to commit to deeper emissions cuts." |
"BrightSource Energy Inc. today
said it has scrapped a controversial plan to build a major solar thermal power facility in
eastern Mojave Desert wilderness that Sen. Dianne
Feinstein (D.-Calif.) wants to transform into a national monument. The announcement ended
a long-running dispute between backers of renewable energy and environmentalists strongly
opposed to the idea of creating an industrial zone within 600,000 acres of former railroad
lands that had been donated to the Department of Interior for conservation." |
"California is on track to more
than double its power generated by solar panel installations in 2009, going against a
downward global trend, according to research
released on Wednesday. Research house iSuppli Corp
also expects the Golden State's hot-streak to continue in 2010, when California's
photovoltaic installations, in terms of megawatts of power generated, would increase
another 68 percent, while solar panel installations around the world grow 54 percent. The solar power industry has suffered in the credit crisis, which has dried up available financing for new projects and a dramatic
fall in solar panel prices has cut into companies' profits." |
"A solar-powered house built by a group of Texas students offers a
blueprint for recession-hit U.S. families to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions and
their electricity bills without busting their budget. The Zerow House, built by students
at Rice University in Houston, will compete against other solar homes in Washington D.C.
in October as part of the Solar Decathlon sponsored by the U.S. Energy Department. But
unlike some of its competitors, which are integrating high-concept, high-price features
like tricked-out home entertainment systems and moving solar arrays that track the sun, the Rice team's aim is affordability...The house, about the size of a New
York-style efficiency apartment, is a case study in frugality, and could easily be built
in Houston for about $100,000, Sanchez said....Thanks
to strong government incentives, Germany is the world's biggest solar market and is
expected to remain so until 2013, when the United States will become its equal. China will
be slightly behind, according to research firm Lux Research." |
"Since its founding in 2002, Nanosolar has raised a lot of money – half
a billion dollars to date – and made a lot of noise about upending the solar industry, but
the Silicon Valley start-up has been a bit vague on specifics about why it’s the next
big green thing. On Wednesday, Nanosolar pulled back
the curtain on its thin-film photovoltaic cell technology — which it claims is more
efficient and less expensive than that of industry leader First Solar — and announced
that it has secured $4.1 billion in orders for its solar panels. Martin Roscheisen, Nanosolar’s chief executive, said customers
included solar power plant developers like NextLight, AES Solar and Beck Energy of
Germany. The typical Nanosolar farm will be between 2 and 20 megawatts in size, Mr.
Roscheisen said in an e-mail message from Germany, where he was attending the opening of
Nanosolar’s new factory near Berlin. 'This is a sweet spot in terms of ease of
permitting and distributed deployment without having to tax the transmission
infrastructure.' Nanosolar, based in San Jose, Calif., has developed a solar cell made
from copper indium
gallium (di)selenide. The semiconducting materials and nanoparticles are contained
within a proprietary ink that makes it possible to print flexible solar cells on rolls of
cheap aluminum foil." |
"Chinese officials have signed a
deal with America’s First Solar, the world’s largest manufacturer of solar
cells, to convert a remote desert area of inner Mongolia into a giant power station. First
Solar, based in Arizona, said that the plant would be the largest solar station on the
planet and would eventually involve carpeting 25 square miles of the remote Chinese
province — an area roughly the size of Manhattan — with gleaming panels. Once
completed, in 2019, the site will generate 2,000 megawatts of electricity —
equivalent to nearly double the output of the Dungeness nuclear power station and enough
to power three million Chinese homes. Mike Ahearn,
the chief executive of First Solar, said that construction of a pilot project would begin
by June 2010. A further three phases will gradually boost power generation at the site
from 30 to 2,000 megawatts.... He added that a solar plant of this size would cost $5
billion (£3 billion) to $6 billion in the US, but that it would be cheaper to build in
China. While some of the details have not yet been worked out, the plant will be located
within a huge new development zone that is eventually expected to generate nearly 12
gigawatts of renewable energy from wind, solar, biomass and hydroelectric power. Beijing
is eager to position China as a world leader in renewable energy. It plans to generate 15
per cent of its energy from green sources by 2020 and a variety of government incentives
have been introduced. First Solar will provide about 27 million thin-film panels for the
site by 2019 and is considering building a factory to support the project." |
| "A joint US-China
plan to 'take over the world' in low-carbon technology will be revealed tomorrow at a
meeting of Davos's World Economic
Forum in Dalian. The sweeping initiative to secure the opportunities arising from tackling
climate change is based
on top-level business collaboration between the two superpowers, with some deals already
done. One obstacle, however, will be growing trade friction over clean technology. Leading industrialists, entrepreneurs and financiers from the
world's two biggest polluters have marked out the development strategy for a trillion
dollar 'greentech' market for inclusion in a bilateral climate agreement that is expected
to be signed by the two governments when Obama visits China in November. The global clean technology market would get a major boost from any deal
at the global climate summit in Copenhagen in December. Under the plan, cash from the two
nations and private sector acumen would be used to massively expand China's solar, wind, carbon capture
and smart-grid markets in a move that could be as groundbreaking as the commercialisation
of the internet. The authors of the plan, which was six months in the making, sketched out
their proposal at a gathering of business executives in Shanghai today. 'This is a
coming-out party for China's 'greentech' initiatives,' said Ming Sung, of the Clean Air
Task Force. 'China and the US can takeover the world on low-carbon technology.' Executives
from Boeing, General Electric and other major US firms talked to counterparts from China,
including senior figures from Suntech, the solar cell maker, and BYD, a manufacturer of hybrid and electric cars. Rod
Quinn, a regional director of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, was among those
leading the charge for collaboration on 'clean coal' technology. 'I'm very upbeat,' he
said. 'Two great nations. One great plan. That's what we hope for.' Chinese policymakers
noted the government's focus on improving energy efficiency but were
positive about the prospects for shared research in the fields such as gasification of
coal for cleaner burning and the capturing and storing of carbon dioxide emissions. These
two expensive technologies are expected to play a central role in minimising the impact of
coal on global warming – both the US and China are heavily dependent on coal.The
perception that technology development in China relies on western ideas – and a loose
view of patents – is also changing. Progress was made in Shanghai last month on what
has been billed as the world's biggest and most efficient carbon capture and storage
project. The facility is expected to capture carbon at a cost of $40 (£24) a tonne,
compared to $100 a tonne at less-advanced facilities in the US. Its operating utility,
Huaneng has already signed a commercial deal with Duke Energy, one of the biggest oil
companies in the US. Chinese policy advisers said 105 geological sites, mostly saline
aquifers and empty oil shafts, had been identified for possible carbon sequestration.
China is also taking the lead in coal gasification technology, known as Integrated
Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) technology." US and China to unveil joint plan to 'take over' cleantech market Guardian, 9 September 2009 |
"Google Inc is disappointed with the lack of breakthrough investment
ideas in the green technology sector but the company is working to develop its own new
mirror technology that could reduce the cost of building solar thermal plants by a quarter
or more. 'We've been looking at very unusual materials for the mirrors both for the
reflective surface as well as the substrate that the mirror is mounted on,' the company's
green energy czar Bill Weihl told Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit in
San Francisco on Wednesday. Google, known for its Internet search engine, in late 2007
said it would invest in companies and do research of its own to produce affordable
renewable energy within a few years. The company's
engineers have been focused on solar thermal technology, in which the sun's energy is used
to heat up a substance that produces steam to turn a turbine. Mirrors focus the sun's rays on the heated substance. Weihl said Google is
looking to cut the cost of making heliostats, the fields of mirrors that have to track the
sun, by at least a factor of two, 'ideally a factor of three or four.' 'Typically what
we're seeing is $2.50 to $4 a watt (for) capital cost,' Weihl said. 'So a 250 megawatt
installation would be $600 million to a $1 billion. It's a lot of money.' That works out
to 12 to 18 cents a kilowatt hour. Google hopes to have a viable technology to show
internally in a couple of months, Weihl said. It will need to do accelerated testing to
show the impact of decades of wear on the new mirrors in desert conditions." |
| "The rise of the mobile phone has left the streets of Madrid littered
with increasingly redundant telephone booths. But
these underused installations are now set to play a key role in Spain's electric car revolution
under government plans to make them part of a network of electric charging stations for
vehicles. Some 30 telephone boxes have been
earmarked to form part of a test network of 546 state-subsidised recharging points in
Madrid, Barcelona and Seville. Phone boxes are often ideally placed close to the curbs of
pavements and already have their own electricity supply, making them relatively easy to
adapt. The Spanish government will spend €10m (£8.7m) on kick-starting the use of
electric cars over the next two years, with €1.5m going on recharging points. Madrid
city council said that telephone boxes were a possibility, but that it was still in the
process of identifying the recharging spots it planned to build....Electric vehicles would
fit in well with Spain's
extensive network of wind-powered generators. Wind turbines remain operative during
periods of low demand at night, which is when car batteries could be charged up." Madrid reverses the chargers with electric car plan Guardian, 8 September 2009 |
"In a nation known more for its belching smokestacks, solar water
heaters are on nearly every roof in some cities. Manufacturers are eyeing foreign markets,
including Southern California....Before her family bought a solar water heater, Liu Yan
would bathe the way many working-class Chinese have for generations: boil water, dampen a
rag and wipe away the dirt. Today, the 40-year-old mother and her family shower every day
and wash their dishes with hot water. The stainless steel heater affixed to her red-tiled
roof cost about $220. The device has become a symbol of China's rising standard of living
and its leap into the era of clean energy. In the seaside city of 2.8 million where Liu
lives in Shandong province, 99% of households use
solar water heaters. The mattress-sized contraptions
dominate Rizhao's skyline, resting haphazardly on almost every residential rooftop. In the
global race to develop green technology and stem climate change, China has quickly become
a leading producer of solar panels and wind turbines. It also dominates the lesser-known
technology of solar water heaters. Using principles of solar heating more than a century
old, the humble, low-cost devices consist of an angled row of cola-colored glass tubes
that absorb heat from the sun. The most common models fill the tubes with cold water. As
it heats, the water rises into an insulated tank where it can remain hot for days....The
technology's gains here lie in its affordability, the dearth of residential natural gas
service and the modest expectations of consumers, many of whom had never enjoyed hot water
at home before. The starting price for one of the clunky devices is around $220, about the
same as an electric heater in China. In the United States, where labor costs are higher
and systems tend to be larger and more elaborate, solar water heaters can easily cost
$1,500 or more. 'The key to the success in China is that the low price enables people to
have an instantaneous payback,' said John Perlin, a solar energy historian and author of
'From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity.' A thriving, hyper-competitive
industry of 5,000 manufacturers has grown up in the last decade or more, driving costs
down and widening the range of quality. 'The market is huge, but the competition is
fearsome,' said Bi Bangquan, president of Ri- zhao Gold Giant Solar Power, one of 150
manufacturers based in the city." |
"The technological breakthrough that led to digital cameras was the
charge-coupled device, or CCD. The equivalent for electric cars is the lithium-ion
battery, or Li-ion. Just as CCDs were used first in specialist applications, such as
television cameras, so Li-ion batteries have been used in laptop computers and mobile
phones. By 2003, however, their price had dropped to a level where Elon Musk, an
entrepreneur who had helped launch PayPal, an online payments service, thought that they
might be cheap enough to form the basis of an all-electric sports car. The 'killer app' of
this car would be its acceleration. Unlike internal-combustion engines, electric motors
have full torque, as pulling-power is called, from zero revs. They are thus predisposed to
go like a bat out of hell without the aid of a gearbox. Mr Musk’s brainchild is known
as the Tesla Roadster (pictured above). The sports version goes from zero to 100kph
(62mph) in 3.7 seconds—not much slower than a top-line Ferrari. The desire for
acceleration at any price ($121,000, since you ask) is a niche market, but niche markets
are the classic way in for a disruptive technology. Tesla’s next vehicle, the Model
S, is a more mainstream family car. At about $50,000 it will still not be cheap, but it
should be cheap enough to appeal to those who like to think of themselves as early
adopters, but who also have spouses and children to worry about. Another reason for
the high price of Tesla’s cars is their range. According to its maker, the Roadster
can travel almost 400km between charges. The Model S should be able to do even better. But
cheaper electric cars have to make a trade-off between range, price and convenience. Since
batteries can be recharged only slowly (the process takes hours, not minutes), a
car’s effective range is limited by the size of its battery. And batteries are
expensive. A lot of researchers are working on making them cheaper and faster to charge,
of course. In the meantime, though, there are three approaches to the trade-off, each of
which has its champions. One is to accept the range limit and design small, thrifty
vehicles specialised for city use. This has the virtue of simplicity and the vice of
inflexibility. The second is to add a petrol-driven generator known as a 'range extender'.
This complicates the mechanics, but provides the driver with a security blanket, for he
knows he will never be stranded if he can find a petrol station. The third answer is to
keep the car all-battery, but to introduce a network of battery-exchange stations similar
to the existing network of petrol stations, so that someone who is running out of juice
can pull in, swap over and pull out. A leading contender in the first category is
Mitsubishi’s i-MiEV, which should go on sale next year. Its
initial price will be „4.6m ($49,000), although that is expected to be cut in half once
the car goes on sale outside Japan. That halving (and potential quartering) of price
compared with a Tesla Roadster is achievable because the i-MiEV’s battery has only 88
Li-ion cells, rather than the Tesla’s 1,800. It
uses its limited resources well, however. Its quoted range is 160km. Other electric city
cars are expected from firms such as Fiat and Toyota. And in November Daimler (which also
owns 6% of Tesla) plans to start producing a Li-ion-powered version of its Smart Fortwo.
In Germany, a full charge will cost about €2 ($2.80) and keep the vehicle going for
around 115km—although there is room in the car, as the name suggests, for only two
people....The third answer, though, is perhaps the
most radical. Instead of a petrol engine, with its widespread infrastructure of filling
stations providing the security blanket, why not build new infrastructure to refuel cars
with new, fully charged batteries? The leading
proponent of this idea is Better Place. This firm, which is based in California, has been
scouring the world for car markets that are, in its terminology, 'islands' and offering to
fit them with networks of car-charging and battery-swapping stations that will use robots
to exchange exhausted batteries for fully charged ones in seconds. Better Place defines an
island as a place with an edge that motorists rarely cross, and the first to be picked by
Shai Agassi, the firm’s founder, was Israel. Though more of the country’s edge
is land than sea, few cars leave by either route. Israel is now being fitted out with the
Better Place infrastructure. Meanwhile, Nissan is tooling up to start building cars with
batteries of the appropriate dimensions, for sale starting next year, and Tesla plans to
offer swappable batteries on the Model S. Other 'islands' that Better Place has signed
deals with include Denmark, Hawaii and Australia. The firm also has a partnership with
Tokyo’s largest taxi operator, Nihon Kotsu, to provide swappable batteries for a new
fleet of electric taxis which will take to the streets of the Japanese capital. With some
60,000 taxis in Tokyo, this could turn into a huge market. Besides providing drivers with
secure refuelling, the Better Place approach has a second advantage. Separating ownership
of the battery from ownership of the car changes the economics of electric vehicles. If
you rent the battery rather than buying it, that becomes a running cost (like petrol) and
the sticker price of the car drops accordingly. This might not matter to a sophisticated
economist, who would amortise the battery cost over the life of the vehicle. Many people,
though, are swayed by the number they write on the cheque that they give to the dealer.
Better Place, indeed, plans to go further. It will charge for its services (battery and
electricity) by the kilometre travelled. The cost per
kilometre will be lower than for petrol vehicles, and if you sign up for enough kilometres
a month, it will throw in the car for nothing....That is possible in part because electric cars are efficient.
According to Bosch’s calculations, a conventional internal-combustion-engined car can
travel 1.5-2.5km on a kilowatt-hour (kWh) of energy. A hybrid with a combined electric and
diesel engine would go up to 3.2km. But a battery-powered car can travel 6.5km. On top of
that, the energy put into them is cheaper. Owners with garages or driveways can top up at
night using the domestic supply. The long recharge time will thus not be an issue, and the
electricity will be cheap, off-peak power. Even if more expensive daytime power is needed
(some office and supermarket car parks are already being fitted with recharging points, in
anticipation of mounting demand), the cost of such juice is still favourable compared with
petrol. Only for garageless owners does recharging become complicated. They will need street-based electrical infrastructure, and a lack of this
will limit the spread of electric vehicles to start with. That said, the batteries are
expected to get better quite fast. No one is talking of Moore’s Law—a doubling
of capacity every 18 months or so. But an improvement
of about 8% a year into the foreseeable future is on the cards. A doubling in a decade, in
other words. Bosch, for example, calculates that a
car fitted with a 40kW motor capable of speeds of up to 120kph would need a Li-ion battery
with a capacity of 35kWh. Today such a battery might cost around €17,000. With the
technology and economies of scale Bosch expects to be available in 2015, that could drop
to €8,000-12,000. As Ford recently pointed out,
if the industry were to move towards a common standard for battery packs, this would help
boost production volumes and so bring prices down even more. Bosch reckons that for electric cars to become universally popular, a
threefold increase in energy density and a fall of two-thirds in the price of batteries
will be needed. To that end, it has set up a joint venture with Samsung of South Korea to
develop and produce Li-ion batteries for automotive use. Indeed,
battery firms, both old and new, are coming up with innovations that add up to the 8%
annual gains. These involve changes to the lithium
chemistry of batteries, their mechanical properties and the electronics that control them.
Among the newcomers are two American firms, A123 Systems and Boston Power, both of which
are based in Massachusetts. A123 was founded in 2001 and is backed by General Electric. It
uses nanoscale materials to boost the performance of its batteries (making an electrode
out of nanoparticles increases its surface area, which in turn decreases the
battery’s internal resistance and improves its ability to store and deliver energy).
Its batteries are already used in power tools, and the company has formed alliances to
supply Chrysler and SAIC Motor Corporation of Shanghai with car-sized versions. Its
batteries were also being considered for the Volt, but GM eventually picked ones made by
LG Chem, a South Korean firm.... Some carmakers are forming partnerships with
battery-makers to ensure supplies and gain access to technology. Others are building their
own battery factories. And some are doing both: Nissan has formed a joint venture with NEC
to produce advanced Li-ion batteries that use a laminated structure to improve cooling.
The firm is planning to put the batteries in a new five-seater family car called the Leaf
that it intends to launch late next year in Japan and America as part of its alliance with
Renault. The group plans to build 200,000 a year, the most ambitious production target so
far for a pure-battery car. The Leaf will be powered by an 80kW electric motor and will
have a range of at least 160km on a full charge. It
can be charged to 80% capacity in 30 minutes with high-powered quick chargers which Nissan
hopes will be installed in petrol stations and other public places. At least one
battery-maker, though, has loftier ambitions than merely supplying carmakers with its
wherewithal. BYD, a Chinese firm, seems to have Panasonic’s success in the world of
cameras in mind. Earlier this year it launched the first of what it promises will be a
range of electric cars that will undercut those made by American and European producers,
in part by using a novel material in the batteries’ electrodes." |
"The number of cars in the rich world will grow only slowly in the
years ahead, but car ownership elsewhere is about to go into overdrive. Over the next 40 years the global fleet of passenger cars is
expected to quadruple to nearly 3 billion. China, which will soon overtake America as the
world’s biggest car market, could have as many cars on its roads in 2050 as are on
the planet today; India’s fleet may have multiplied 50-fold. Forecasts of this kind led Carlos Ghosn, boss of the Renault-Nissan
alliance, to declare 18 months ago that if the industry did not get on with producing cars
with very low or zero emissions, the world would 'explode'. Cars already contribute around
10% of the man-made greenhouse gases that are responsible for climate change. In big
cities, especially those in fast-developing countries in Asia and Latin America,
gridlocked traffic is responsible for health-threatening levels of local air pollution. To
its credit (and under increasing pressure from legislators), the car industry is heeding
Mr Ghosn’s call. Biofuels have fallen out of favour because of concerns that those
produced in rich countries are not particularly green; but huge efforts are being made to
develop cleaner conventional engines and, at the same time, move beyond them to electric,
battery-powered vehicles, which produce fewer emissions even when the generation of the
electricity needed to charge them is taken into account. By the end of next year, in
addition to the increasing number of petrol-electric hybrids on offer, it will be possible
for the first time to buy proper cars from mainstream manufacturers that are propelled
solely by electric motors (see article).
Among them will be Nissan’s Leaf and Chevrolet’s Volt. The Leaf will rely on
battery power alone and will have a range of about 160km (100 miles) before it needs to be
plugged in for a fresh charge. The Volt will have a small petrol-engine generator to
recharge its batteries on trips of more than 65km. Both are medium-sized cars offering
decent performance, practicality and safety—and neither looks off-puttingly weird.
Electric cars from other mainstream manufacturers are not far behind. Problem solved,
then? Alas, electric cars still face several roadblocks. The Leaf and the Volt will be
expensive, costing around twice as much as comparable petrol-engined cars. That is because
of the high cost of batteries, and because other components must be redesigned for
electric vehicles. In an industry driven by scale, small volumes lead to high costs. A
further problem is that the Volt and the Leaf must be plugged into the mains every
night—fine if you have your own garage or driveway, but a bit tricky otherwise. All
this could limit the appeal of electric cars to affluent greens living in leafy suburbs.
Carmakers cannot overcome these problems on their own. Governments must also do their
part, and not just in order to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. A switch to electric
vehicles, along with better public transport, would also reduce choking air pollution in
the developing world’s megacities. And most
governments would prefer to be less dependent on imported oil: no country has embraced
electric cars with more enthusiasm than Israel." |
"The electric car, so long
promised, may finally be pulling into your driveway. In the U.S., a humbled General Motors
just showed off one of its rare rays of light — the plug-in Volt, which GM says will
get 230 miles per gallon when it hits roads in late 2010. Daimler is trialing an electric
version of its baby Smart car and claims to get the equivalent of 300 m.p.g. In Japan this
month, a confident Carlos Ghosn said that Nissan's upcoming, all-electric Leaf will get
367 m.p.g. Compared with those experienced players,
Chinese manufacturers are like teenagers just getting their car keys. When it comes to
electric, though, that could be an advantage. Beijing knows that promoting electric
vehicles could be a way to stem the country's rising dependence on foreign oil and clear
its polluted air. At the same time, Chinese battery companies like Lishen and
Shenzhen-based BYD are looking to leverage their technology and leap into electric cars.
Foreign automakers may have a century-long head start on conventional cars, but Chinese
companies can compete on new electric technology today — on cost and on performance.
'When it comes to electric and hybrid cars, China is challenging the automotive industries
in the Western industrial countries,' writes Wolfgang Bernhart, a consultant with Roland
Berger who estimates that electrics and plug-ins could account for more than half the auto
market in China by 2020. 'The race for electric mobility is just getting under
way.'....the government in Beijing has made it very clear that it considers electric and
plug-in vehicles a priority for Chinese companies, and it's willing to spend. The Chinese
State Council announced in January that it would spend $1.6 billion over the next three
years to develop alternative fuels, and there's already an $8,800 subsidy for local
governments and taxi companies that buy electrics and hybrids — which is more than
the U.S. government offers. And China already makes more lithium-ion batteries — the
energy-dense technology key to new electric cars — than any other country on the
planet. 'This is a priority for the Chinese government,' says Kelly Sims Gallagher, author
of the book China Shifts Gears: Automakers, Oil, Pollution, and Development. 'They see it
as a pathway to a more energy-secure future.'...'The Chinese customer is just getting off
a bike, so they're not worried about not being able to drive six hours without a
recharge," says Philip Gott, a director for automotive consulting at research firm
IHS Global Insight. 'China has the chance to work out the kinks in its own
backyard.'...Chinese companies don't have a hundred years of auto manufacturing to unlearn
before they tackle electrics. Just as the country skipped ahead on mobile phones, it could
do the same on electric cars. 'Electrics could be a way for Chinese automakers to leapfrog
the rest of the globe,' says Perkowski. If automakers in the U.S. and elsewhere aren't
worried about losing the race for the next great technology to the Chinese, they should
be. On Aug. 5, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a long-awaited $2.4 billion in
government grants to support the manufacture of electric cars and batteries. 'I don't want
to just reduce our dependence on foreign oil and then end up dependent on foreign
innovations,' Obama told an audience in the economically depressed state of Indiana. 'I
want the cars of the future and the technologies that power them to be developed and
deployed right here, in America.' U.S. automakers will need to move fast — China is
already pulling away." |
| "Nearly a century ago, American engineer Frank Shuman
erected five immense, trough-shaped mirrors in Meadi, Egypt. The parabolic reflectors
directed sunlight onto a tube suspended above their 200-foot lengths. Water inside the
tubes boiled and created steam. The steam powered a 65-horsepower engine, which pumped
6,000 gallons of water per minute from the Nile River to nearby cotton fields. It was the world’s first concentrated solar power (CSP)
plant. Now CSP is poised for a second – or
third, depending on when the count begins – renaissance. And this time, say experts,
it’s here to stay. World CSP capacity is forecast to increase nearly 18-fold in the
next five years, from its current 588 megawatt potential to around 10.5 gigawatts. (Very
roughly, 100 megawatts is enough energy to power 80,000 houses.) More than half of that
new CSP capacity will be installed in the United States. Several factors are driving the
CSP boom. Although utility companies have long viewed CSP as an option for generating
electricity from the sun, they’ve hesitated to commit to the technology. That’s
partly because CSP becomes efficient and cost-effective only at the megawatt (MW) scale.
Photovoltaics, by contrast, can be installed piecemeal on the kilowatt scale – a
panel here, another there. And that’s why photovoltaics have so far dominated the
solar market. Now, the specter of carbon regulation has shifted attention back toward CSP.
The prospect of large-scale solar plants is again attractive. The “renewable
portfolio” standard – which requires increased production of energy from
renewable sources – has also encouraged investment in CSP. And the investment tax
credit – a potential 30 percent credit on qualifying solar projects – has made
investors more willing to risk capital in CSP ventures.... For their part, power companies
like CSP for old-fashioned reasons. For one, it uses a technology – steam-driven
turbines – that is familiar after decades of use in coal-fired plants. CSP plants
also have thermal inertia. That means that, if a cloud passes overhead, they can continue
operating for a time with the heat already gathered, and that’s without storage.
Assuming no rechargeable batteries, photovoltaic fields, by contrast, stop producing
electricity when clouds arrive. Technology for storing heat in molten salts, meanwhile,
promises to extend CSP plants’ generating capacity well into the night.... Earth has
a natural 'sun belt,' a swath of relatively empty subtropical deserts including the US
Southwest, the Sahara, the Middle East, and much of Australia. By one estimate, installing
CSP plants in just 1 percent of the world’s deserts – an area slightly larger
than Ireland – could supply all the world’s electricity. The German Aerospace
Center calculates that, assuming high voltage, transmediterranean transmission lines, just
6,023 square miles of CSP in North Africa could keep all of Europe electrified..... The real challenge is making CSP technology competitive with coal.
Currently, CSP costs about 14 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), within striking range of
current combined-cycle natural-gas plants, in which a gas turbine generator generates
electricity and a steam turbine uses the waste heat to generate more. A combined-cycle
natural-gas plant produces electricity for about 12 cents per kWh. Pulverized coal plants,
on the other hand, generate electricity for 6 cents per kWh – less than half
CSP’s cost. But, says Mr. Mehos, if you assume that future coal-fired plants will
require carbon sequestration, then that cost moves up to about 10 cents per kWh. That
means CSP prices still need to drop by nearly one-third to be competitive with future coal
plants. A plethora of CSP companies are racing to
innovate and reduce costs. At this point, CSP technology comes in four general 'flavors,'
each with different perceived strengths and weaknesses....which technology will dominate
and how it will store heat is still very much an open question." Sunrise for solar heat power Christian Science Monitor, 18 August 2009 |
| "If all goes as expected, solar panel sales people across Australia
will at some point this week uncross their fingers and toes and crack open the champagne.
Among the immediate winners when the renewable energy
bill becomes law will be the 100 staff at Solar Shop
Australia, who have been told their jobs depend on it. The solar industry has been without
Government support since the $8000 rebate was axed in June. The replacement, a solar
credit scheme expected to yield between $4000 and $6000, has been in limbo for two months
since the renewable energy bill was deferred to a committee. The result has been the
plummeting sales of rooftop panels. Beyond boosting the solar industry, the renewable
energy target - requiring that 20 per cent of electricity comes from clean sources by 2020
- is expected to increase electricity prices by 4 per cent compared with what would
otherwise have been expected." Sun to shine again on solar The Age (Australia), 17 August 2009 |
| "Sumitomo, the Japanese trading
house, has struck a landmark deal with Kazakhstan's state nuclear power company in a bid
to secure supplies of rare earth metals — the 'green' minerals whose global supply is
dominated by China and which are used to make environmentally friendly products such as
wind turbines. Sumitomo's plan is to establish a
refinery operation at Kazatomprom's nuclear facilities — uranium ore is one source of
rare earth metals, and the Kazakh facility is refining that at its plant to extract the
uranium. The country is also temptingly full of abandoned Soviet-era uranium mines, over
which Japan and China are expected to tussle. The move is expected to spark tit-for-tat
dealmaking by Beijing, which has moved quickly to
crush any assault on its 98 per cent worldwide monopoly on rare earth production. It may also create a 'gold rush' for Kazakhstan's crumbling Soviet-era
uranium mines. A resource war is now inevitable, say
observers in Tokyo. Governments and consumers around the world may be getting excited
about the dawning of the era of the electric car, but the proposition depends on minerals
which, increasingly, China is making sure stay at home. The rare earth metals comprise a
group of 14 'lanthanide' minerals essential to almost all environmental technology: they
are used in products ranging from low-energy light bulbs and solar panels to hybrid motors
and wind turbines. Critically, their powers of magnetism means they are needed to make
electric motors at a weight that makes them commercially viable for electric cars. The two
most important, neodymium and dysprosium, are thought to be abundant in Kazakhstan's ores. Every year during the past decade, just as Toyota, Mitsubishi and others
have boosted production of hybrid cars and worked on the development of fully electric
vehicles, China has cut its export quotas of rare earth metals by about 6 per cent
annually. Japan expected to be allotted only 38,000 tonnes in 2009 — the amount
consumed by Toyota and Honda alone. Mining experts in Australia, where China has been
buying rare earth mines, have predicted a wider supply crunch within three years as global
rare earth demand surges beyond existing refinery and extraction capacity. The Sumitomo deal, said trading house analysts in Tokyo, marked
the first serious Japanese gambit in what was tipped to be a long and fiercely-fought
resource war: initially between China and Japan, but expected to soon embroil other
nations with strong manufacturing industries. Toyota
Tsusho, the resource buying arm of the world's biggest car company, is also poised to join
the fray with a Y40 billion (£255 million) investment in rare earth metal mining ventures
in Indonesia and Mongolia. China's near stranglehold on the world supply of rare earth
metals has already spawned a vast smuggling network as Japan and others cheat Beijing's
draconian export quotas." Sumitomo in deal with Kazakhstan to supply rare earth minerals London Times, 12 August 2009 |
| "Every now and again there comes along a new technology that changes
civilization. Gunpowder, steam engines, electricity, internal combustion, nuclear energy,
transistors, and the integrated computer circuits readily come to mind. Looming just over the horizon is the possibility that another such
disruptive technology may, and I emphasize may, be in the offing. This technology would be
a capacitor with the ability to store large amounts of high-voltage electricity as a
static charge in a relatively small and inexpensive device. No chemical reactions - just
electrons in and electrons out. Should such a technology become available, the
implications would be immense for the worldwide production and use of energy. Starting
with intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar, a cheap and reliable means of
storing the electric power would make such sources far more useful. Electricity storage
devices stationed along smart power distribution networks could lead to major efficiencies
in the distribution of electrical energy; and inexpensive home storage devices could make
rooftop solar and wind efficient, competitive with centralized generation of power. The
most immediate impact, however, could be on transportation. If a car or truck could be
built at modest cost with a 250 mile all electric range, instantly rechargeable, and a
long life, the automobile and petroleum industries would be transformed forever. This of course all sounds too good to be true and skeptics that large
paradigm-changing capacitors can be built abound. Here the matter would rest except for a small firm down in Texas called EEStor that from all indications
has been working diligently on the development of a high-voltage, high energy density
capacitor for several years....One of the more
fascinating aspects of the story is that EEStor has an agreement with a tiny Canadian
manufacturer of low-speed neighborhood electric cars called Zenn Motors that gives the
Canadians an exclusive license to manufacturer small electric cars powered by EEStor's
capacitor technology and a promise that Zenn will be the first to receive working
capacitors. To further confuse skeptics, EEStor has an agreement with Lockheed Martin to
handle government sales of the capacitor. A few weeks ago a lengthy and candid interview
with the founder of EEStor, Dick Weir, made its way onto the internet. During the
interview, Weir discusses many of the steps and details involved in the development of his
new dielectric material, Composition Modified Barium Titanate powder. Weir said EEStor has
completed the development of the material and now has a small production line in place to
produce the dielectric material which is the key to the device. He further says that
pre-production electricity storage devices built to the specifications of Zenn Motors and
other customers currently are being fabricated and will be available for testing and
certification next month....There would seem to be too many reputable people and
organizations involved with and certifying milestones in this project for EEStor to be a
total fraud. Lockheed Martin has had their scientists examine the project in detail and
concluded that 'while we cannot guarantee that the technology will work as intended, we
see no reason why it won't.' It is unlikely that EEStor would be making arrangements to
take the device to Underwriters Laboratories for electrical certification unless there has
been sufficient integration and testing to insure that it actually works. When and if the
EEStor battery works and is publically displayed, the Lithium-ion battery industry and
many recently announced automobiles based on them could be in trouble. Unlike lithium which is in limited supply, barium is plentiful and can be mined domestically. If EEStor's CEO is to be believed, it is
relatively easy and inexpensive to build production lines for his device as compared to
building lithium batteries." Tom Whipple - The Peak Oil Crisis:A Disruptive Technology Falls Church News-Press, 12 August 2009 |
| "Tesla Motors turned profitable for the first time in July, when the
electric car manufacturer shipped a record 109 vehicles, the company said Friday. A surge
in sales and reduced manufacturing costs of Tesla's Roadster 2 sports car helped boost the
company to $1 million in earnings and $20 million in revenue. 'There is strong demand for
a car that is unique in offering high performance with a clean conscience,' said Tesla
Chief Executive Elon Musk, in a prepared statement. 'Customers know that in buying the
Roadster they are helping fund development of our mass market electric cars.' The Roadster has a range of about 244 miles per charge -- the
first production electric vehicle to cross the 200-mile mark, according to the press
release. The Roadster is the only highway-capable electric vehicle for sale in North
America or Europe, and the company says it is faster than a Porsche and twice as
energy-efficient as a Toyota Prius. In June,
privately owned Tesla borrowed $465 million from the Department of Energy to fund
development of an all-electric sedan called the Model S -- slated to sell for $49,900, or
about half the price of the Roadster. Tesla has also partnered with Daimler to
develop an electric version of mini vehicles called Smart cars. The company said it plans
to launch a test fleet of 1,000 electric Smart cars in late 2009." Electric roadster maker making money CNN, 7 August 2009 |
| "Want to know why the Obama administration’s announcement of
$2.4 billion in electric vehicle grants could be very important? It’s simple: The
commitment show that Washington may be getting serious about keeping batteries from
becoming the new oil. Right now, overseas manufacturers, primarily in Asia, are the world
leaders in the mass production of advanced vehicle batteries. Even US-made hybrids such as
the Ford Fusion have a foreign battery at their core. But the White House and many
lawmakers in Congress say they don’t want to swap reliance on Saudi oil for reliance
on South Korean batteries as part of the nation’s green energy future. Thus the
administration has steered $1.5 billion of the $2.4 billion in electric technology
development funds to battery manufacturing projects. 'I don’t want to have to import
a hybrid car,' said President Obama at an appearance in Warakusa, Ind., Wednesday. 'I want
to build a hybrid car here.' If you think the comparison between oil and batteries is
overblown, consider that IHS Global Insight predicts that by
2020 some 47 percent of the vehicles sold in the US will have some kind of battery power at their core, either coupled with small sparked engines in
hybrids, or alone in full electric cars and trucks." The real reason for Obama’s $2.4 billion electric car grants Christian Science Monitor, 5 August 2009 |
| "For centuries Hindus have revered the sun god, Surya, as a source of
health and prosperity, building lavish temples and holding festivals in his honour across
a country with more than 300 days of sunshine a year. Now
India is putting its faith in the sun in a more literal sense by revealing what experts
describe as the world’s most ambitious plan to develop solar energy over the next
three or four decades. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister, will chair a meeting today to
decide whether to approve a National Solar Mission designed to curb India’s carbon
emissions and ease its crippling power shortages. It proposes boosting India’s solar
power generation capacity from almost zero to 20 gigawatts (20 billion watts) by 2020,
100GW by 2030 and 200GW by 2050, according to a draft seen by The Times. The entire world can generate about 14GW of solar power today. India’s plan also proposes reducing the price of solar power
to the same level as that from fossil fuels by 2020,
according to the draft, dated April 29. Solar power in India currently costs about 15
rupees (20p) per kWh, compared with an average 3.5 rupees per kWh for electricity from the
national grid, which is largely produced by coal-fired thermal power plants. Other targets include forcing all government buildings to have
solar panels by 2012 and developing micro-financing to encourage 20 million households to
install solar lighting by 2020. The plan also
outlines a system — similar to Germany’s — of paying households for any
surplus power from solar panels fed back into the grid. To achieve these and other goals,
the mission proposes that the Government invest 920 billion rupees (£11.5 billion) in
developing, manufacturing and installing solar technology over the next 30 years. The mission is primarily designed to improve India’s energy
security as it has abundant supplies of coal — the dirtiest of the fossil fuels
— but has to import 70 per cent of its crude oil and half its natural gas. It is also meant to ease a chronic power shortage that has left 400
million Indians without electricity, causes daily blackouts in cities, and represents one
of the biggest obstacles to economic growth." India looks to the sun for ambitious surge in green power London Times, 3 August 2009 |
| "Without a way to store their power, no number of solar panels will
free a home from the electrical grid. Researchers at
Utah-based Ceramatec have developed a new battery that can be scaled up to store 20
kilowatt-hours—enough to power an average home for most of a day. An easy sell for solar users, but it could also allow the grid-bound to
stockpile energy during less expensive off-peak hours. The new battery runs on
sodium-sulfur—a composition that typically operates at greater than 600 F.
'Sodium-sulfur is more energetic than lead-acid, so if you can somehow get it to a lower
temperature, it would be valuable for residential use, Ralph Brodd, an independent energy
conversion consultant, says. Ceramatec’s new battery runs at less than 200 F. The
secret is a thin ceramic membrane that is sandwiched between the sodium and sulfur. Only
positive sodium ions can pass through, leaving electrons to create a useful electrical
current. Ceramatec says that batteries will be ready
for market testing in 2011, and will sell for about $2000." The Key to the Battery-Powered House Popular Mechanics, July 2009 |
| "It's a simple idea: cure
Europe’s addiction to fossil fuels by connecting its electricity-hungry consumers to
the deserts of north Africa that are rich in solar energy. Simple, but surely this is
straight out of science fiction? There may be plenty of sun power in the Sahara, but the
cost and political problems in creating an infrastructure to harvest it are daunting. Some
serious players, however, have joined together to see if the obstacles can be overcome.
Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance group and a leader among financial
institutions on climate change, brought together 12 finance and energy companies in Munich
a fortnight ago to seek a solution. The reinsurer,
which has had to make high payouts in recent years for damage caused by erratic weather,
believes solar power in north Africa could deliver 15% of Europe’s electricity by
2050. The concept of harnessing solar power from the
deserts has long been promoted by Desertec, a European network of scientists and
engineers, but this is the first time that commercial companies have come together to
discuss how to turn it into reality.Deutsche Bank, Eon, Siemens and ABB attended the
meeting, along with representatives from Desertec, the European Union and the League of
Arab States. Delegates agreed to fund a three-year feasibility study and set up a
consortium, with all 12 members having pledged to contribute to the $2.5m (£1.5m) running
costs for the first year. So what is the likely price
tag for a scheme that would provide the 15% specified by Munich Re? $560 billion. 'We believe that the technology is available but we want to see if the
concept can be realised from a political and economic point of view,' said the reinsurer.
The plan would depend on an enormous expansion of concentrated solar power (CSP) plants in
countries such as Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. CSP plants use mirrors to direct sunlight
into a small area and generate heat. That creates steam, which drives a turbine to
generate electricity (see graphic above). The advantage over photo-voltaic solar panels is
that it does not need expensive silicon to generate power. CSP needs lots of direct
sunlight, making it unsuitable for European countries but ideal for deserts. Power
generation can continue at night, using spare heat that has been held over from the
daytime and stored in tanks filled with melted salts such as sodium nitrate or potassium
nitrate, or in blocks of concrete. This enables generators to offer a constant power
supply and match the peak demand that occurs in the evenings. Desertec
claims that the world’s present electricity needs could be met by covering just 1% of
the world’s deserts with CSP. Cost is a problem.
Electricity generated by CSP costs about €0.15
per kilowatt, compared with €0.06 per kilowatt for electricity generated from coal or
nuclear stations. Supporters of the Desertec plan believe the price of CSP can be brought
down to the same level as fossil fuels if European governments provide subsidies for 10 to
15 years. These would probably take the form of feed-in tariffs, which would give CSP
generators a guaranteed price above market rates for a fixed time. These subsidies would
cost anything between €50 billion (£43 billion) and €250 billion, according to
a study by the Vienna-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, which
presented its findings at the Copenhagen global warming conference in March. At least another €200 billion would be needed to build the CSP plants
and invest in a transmission grid that could bring the power to European countries. The
institute’s Anthony Patt believes that north African countries are cautiously
supportive of the Desertec concept, provided local energy needs are also met. 'I’m
confident that a deal can be struck that is good for north Africa,' he said....The plan is
not without its critics. Hermann Scheer, head of the European Association for Renewable
Energy (Eurosolar), has said the initiative is unviable, claiming its proponents have
underestimated the technical and political challenges and the likely cost." Desert sun power pulls in the big guns London Times, 26 July 2009 |
“Homeowners who install solar
panels and wind turbines will be paid for any electricity that they feed back into the
National Grid, the Government confirmed yesterday.
The payments will be based on a fixed price per unit of electricity and will be set high
enough to encourage hundreds of thousands of homes to invest in renewable sources of
power. Local energy suppliers will adjust the bills that they issue according to the
number of units fed back into the grid. Homeowners with low energy consumption and a solar
panel could receive net payments from their energy company. Ed Miliband, the Energy and
Climate Change Secretary, said that the ‘feed-in tariffs’ would be available from next April.” |
“The world's
most ambitious green energy project is about to take shape. It
is a plan for a chain of mammoth sun-powered energy plants in the deserts of North Africa
to supply power to Europe's homes and factories by the end of the next decade. In a few
days' time a consortium of 20 German firms will meet in Munich to hammer out plans for
funding the giant €400bn (£343bn) project, named Desertec. The scheme is being
backed by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government and several German industry household
names including Siemens, Deutsche Bank, and the energy companies RWE and E.ON. The Munich meeting will also involve Italian and Spanish energy concerns,
as well as representatives from the Arab League and the Club of Rome think-tank. Energy
experts have calculated that Desertec could meet at least 15 per cent of Europe's needs,
and be up and running by 2019. By 2050, they estimate the contribution could be between 20
and 25 per cent. Although no host countries have been named, Desertec envisages a string
of solar-thermal plants across North Africa's desert. The
plants would use mirrors to focus the sun's rays, which would be used to heat water to
power steam turbines. The process is cheaper and more efficient than the usual form of
solar power, which uses photovoltaic cells to convert the sun's rays into electricity. The project also envisages setting up a new super grid of high-voltage
transmission lines from the Mahgreb desert to Europe. Hans Müller-Steinhagen, of German
Aerospace, has researched the project for the German government. He said that although the
idea behind the scheme had been around for several years, investors had been deterred by
the high costs of setting up the infrastructure. .. Germany's
largest solar energy company, SolarWorld, argues that North Africa is too risky a
location. ‘Building solar power plants in
politically unstable countries opens you to the same kind of dependency as the situation
with oil,’ said Frank Asbeck, the firm's managing director. Other critics claim that
by singling out comparatively poor North African countries as a location for a
sophisticated European solar energy project amounts to a form of ‘solar
imperialism’.” |
| "It may take a little bit of color to create cheaper solar energy.
Israeli start-up 3GSolar says it has developed the world's first commercial-size solar
energy system that uses colored dyes to turn sunlight into electricity. The technology
emerged from a relatively new field in solar energy that uses simple organic dyes instead
of rare or costly materials, like silicon, which scare many consumers away from solar
power. Energy companies have been struggling for years to make dye-sensitized solar cells
(DSC) large enough to be used in commercial-size systems. Such
next generation cells could be used in cutting-edge applications, like windows that turn
passing sun rays into electricity. Japanese
electronics conglomerate Sony Corp said last year it had developed dye-sensitized cells
with an energy conversion efficiency of 10 percent, a level seen necessary for commercial
use, but that its technology was still in the research and development stage. A 1.5 square
meter (16 square foot) prototype, boasting red panels, stands on the rooftop of the
3GSolar's Jerusalem laboratories. The company's founder, Jonathan Goldstein, says it is by
far the largest in the world. It transforms just seven percent of the sunlight it absorbs
into electricity, but he said that its efficiency would increase steadily in the coming
years. Scaling up the size of solar panels has been hampered by problems of metal
corrosion in their grids. 3GSolar would not disclose the exact process it used to overcome
the obstacle. 'These cells, each individual one of 225 square centimeters (34 square
inches), we believe are the largest of this type in the world and give a record-breaking
current,' Goldstein said. Dye-sensitized solar cells are also known as Graetzel cells,
after Michael Graetzel, a professor at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in
Switzerland, who discovered them about 20 years ago. He found that sunlight excites the
dye and creates and electronic charge without the need for pricey semiconductors, similar
to the way a plant uses chlorophyll to turn sunlight into energy through photosynthesis. Graetzel told Reuters the dye-based technology has been gaining
momentum in the renewable energy market. He said there were key advantages over other
systems. These included lower costs, its ability to create electricity in cloudy areas or
in non-peak sunlight, and the smaller amount of energy needed to manufacture the panels,
which leaves a smaller carbon footprint. '3GSolar came up with a solution. They report to
have a collector that doesn't corrode,' Graetzel said. He added that the company has shown
promising results from durability tests on their panels carried out over 1,500 hours at 85
degrees Celsius....3GSolar says its first system --
with two solar panels, a charge controller and a battery -- will hit the market in two
years. It will target the off-grid market in developing countries, where many villages
still depend on candlelight. The Brussels-based Alliance for Rural Electrification
estimated the off-grid market at $1.5 billion. 3GSolar said its system will have a
lifespan of about seven years and have an output of 110 watts, enough to power many types
of refrigerators.It will cost $400, less than similar silicon-based systems, when produced
locally. That translates into 30 cents per kWh, which is still much higher than fossil
fuels. The company expects the price will come down as the lifespan increases and
production costs drop." Colored dyes offer cheap solar power: Israeli firm Reuters, 9 July 2009 |
| "On June 26, a prototype of the world's latest solar-powered airplane was
unveiled at an airfield in Dubendorf, Switzerland, by company co-founders and future
pilots Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg. The Solar Impulse HB-SIA is
designed to fly both day and night without the need for fuel and without producing any
pollution. The plane, which is scheduled to make its first flight later this year, was
built to stay airborne for several days operating just on the power emitted by the sun and
captured by its solar panels. The goal and challenge of the craft is to show the viability
of renewable energy. 'If an aircraft is able to fly day and night without fuel, propelled
solely by solar energy,' says Piccard, 'let no one come and claim that is impossible to do
the same thing for motor vehicles, heating and air conditioning systems, and
computers'" Soaring ambition for solar aircraft CNET News, 3 July 2009 |
| "The solar energy industry will grow faster than expected during the
next few years as American utilities invest heavily in large-scale solar farms, analysts
with Barclays Capital said Tuesday in
a research note. Barclays analyst Vishal Shah noted that demand for utility-scale solar projects could eventually make up
half of the U.S. market. Major utilities could install about 5 gigawatts of solar
photovoltaic projects during the next three years, the analyst said. Solar power is still
a tiny player on the American electrical grid, however. The
utility-scale projects currently in operation in the U.S. provide 444 megawatts of energy
to the grid according to the Solar Energy Industries
Association. That's enough to power 2.8 million homes, and it's only a fraction of the power generated by another alternative
energy source, the Palo
Verde Nuclear Generating Station near Phoenix. That amount is expected to jump more
than 12-fold in the next few years, however, with dozens of new solar plants under
development in California, Arizona, Florida and Hawaii." Solar industry to see faster than expected growth Associated Press, 23 June 2009 |
| "Britain could become a booming market for solar power from next year
when the UK introduces a support system used
successfully by dozens of other countries. Last week 240 MPs signed a parliamentary motion
supporting the mass rollout of solar photovoltaic (PV) power. The support was the biggest
of any such motion introduced in this parliament. Colin
Challen MP, who tabled the motion, said: 'There is an enormous opportunity to drive
forward this technology through the forthcoming feed-in tariffs.' Feed-in tariffs (FITs)
work by paying a guaranteed, above-market price for any electricity fed into the grid for
a period of 20-25 years. They have been designed to offer returns close to 10%, thereby
reducing payback times for any household investing in a PV system to 10 years or
less." Sunnier times ahead for solar energy as MPs back tariff boost for photovoltaic power Guardian, 15 June 2009 |
| "The desolate, sun-baked deserts of southwestern Bolivia are poised
to become the energy battleground of the 21st century, with China and Japan staking early
and aggressive claims in the great lithium land-grab. Japan, observers say, may have won
the first round, but, with its mainstream resource ambitions thwarted on the Rio Tinto
deal, China could redouble its efforts to gain a foothold in the salt flats of South
America and the all-important technology metals. The
flurry of ruthlessly competitive diplomatic and corporate overtures to Bolivia from both
Tokyo and Beijing is driven by the same dream: ultimate control of the future global
market for electric vehicles. An ample supply of lithium, at least using current
technology, is the critical weapon in that quest and Bolivia is to lithium what Saudi
Arabia is to oil, say geologists. Masao Kando,
director-general of the metals strategy department of the Japanese Government, told The
Times: 'We all know that China is becoming the world's biggest car producer and we see
them as our biggest rival. Looking at the Rio Tinto case, we see that China is moving to
secure resources by throwing incredibly abundant capital at the effort and it is sometimes
hard to compete with that.'...At present, Chile is the world's biggest annual producer of
lithium, but half the planet's known reserves of the metal are thought to lie under the
Salar De Uyuni in Bolivia. The right relationship with La Paz will hold the key to
everything, according to senior Japanese officials. For the two rival Asian economic
giants, control of lithium supplies - or at least a firm guarantee of stable future flows
- is vital. For Japan, whose export-led economy is dominated by the lithium-hungry auto
and electronics industries, it is a fight for survival of the status quo. With reliable long-term sources of lithium, Japanese companies can
continue producing batteries for the world's laptops, digital cameras and mobile phones.
With the same guarantee, Japanese car companies will be able to convert their
manufacturing prowess to mass production of electric vehicles. Yet for China the
motivation for lithium dominance is even more compelling: the United States, Germany and
Japan led the world in the development of petrol-driven cars in the 20th century and it
would take many years for Chinese carmakers to match that expertise. Electric vehicles, on
the other hand, represent a blank slate: these are pioneering days in the post-combustion
engine era and a potentially huge opportunity for China to lunge for early leadership,
increasingly nervous Japanese automaker executives believe....China, whose lands hold about a tenth of the estimated global reserves
of lithium, is the world's third-largest producer and several of its companies have
rapidly grown to become substantial global players in lithium battery production.
Beijing's efforts to butter-up the authorities in La Paz have included a donation of cash
to help to build a school in the town where President Morales was born and a gift of about
50 military vehicles, including two ships." Japan and China fight it out for right to mine lithium under Bond's battlefield London Times, 15 June 2009 |
| "U.S. demand for residential
solar power installations is surging despite an economic recession, thanks to government financial incentives, some easing in credit
availability, and increasing public recognition of its environmental benefits, industry
executives said on Tuesday. Companies represented at the PV America solar conference in
Philadelphia said the volume of their installations as much as tripled in 2008 and they
see further gains this year as more people recognize that they can cut their electricity
bills by at least 15 percent with an array of solar panels installed on the roof of their
homes....Faced with a cost of about $50,000 for installation of a 7-kilowatt system on a
typical 2,500-square-foot house, a New Jersey homeowner can defray the expense with a
$12,500 rebate from the state and a federal tax credit of $11,000, Naik said. After the
first year, the homeowner can also expect a refund check for about $3,200 from the local
utility in return for installing the solar panels, Naik said. The owner can expect to save
about $1,700 a year in electricity bills, and should recoup the initial investment within
five to eight years, he said. According to industry
trade group the Solar Energy Industries Association, there was an overall 16 percent
increase in solar capacity, including commercial installations, in 2008. Jeffrey Wolfe, chief executive of Vermont-based installer groSolar, said
the market has also been boosted by lower prices for solar panels due in part to an
increase in the supply of the polysilicon, the raw material used for their construction.
Wolfe argued the industry is benefiting from a cultural change that is more accepting of
the need to find alternatives to fossil fuels, in part because of last year's surge in
gasoline prices to more than $4 a gallon. 'People have seen what energy prices can do, and
they have come to the end of their rope in denying climate change,' Wolfe said. Companies
are also getting creative in bringing the upfront costs of solar power down for customers.
groSolar, for one, is providing financing to customers who are unable to front the
$40,000-$50,000 price tag for a typical solar installation. Wolfe's company now operates a
lease program requiring a down payment of $1,000 and then regular monthly payments for use
of the system. In California, Arizona and Oregon, SolarCity installs systems without any
down payment from the customer, who then pays a lease fee which typically ranges from $25
to $60 a month, said David Arfin, vice president of customer financing. The company owns
and maintains the system but the homeowner benefits from the reduced utility bills, he
said." U.S. demand for residential solar rising in '09 Reuters, 9 June 2009 |
| "China said it will introduce a
preferential tariff it will pay energy companies that use solar power for their generating
capacity, as part of the government's push for
greater use of clean technology. The preferential tariff -- the price that China's two
state-owned electricity transmission and distribution companies will pay energy companies
for their solar power -- aims to make solar power competitive against traditional fuels,
such as coal..." China to Encourage Solar Use Wall St Journal, 3 June 2009 |
| "The U.S. solar market is poised
to triple next year as federal stimulus funds become available and access to financing for
renewable energy projects is unfrozen, Suntech Power
Holdings Co Ltd Chief Strategy Officer Steven Chan said on Tuesday. Despite the weak
economy, Chan also said he expects the solar market in the United States to be about flat
in 2009 compared with 2008. At the same time, Suntech expects to double its U.S. market
share to 20 percent this year from 10 percent last year. 'The prospects for 2010 and
beyond are quite significant,' Chan told the Reuters Global Energy Summit
via phone. 'Next year, I wouldn't be surprised if the U.S. market tripled off of this
year.'" Suntech sees U.S. solar tripling in 2010 Reuters, 2 June 2009 |
| "President Barack Obama
Wednesday announced over $467 million from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act to
expand and accelerate the development, deployment, and use of geothermal and solar energy
across the United States. The funding is intended to
help the solar and geothermal industries overcome technical barriers, demonstrate new
technologies, and provide support for clean energy jobs. 'We have a choice,' said the
President, addressing armed services personnel and legislators at Nellis Air Force Base.
We can remain the world’s leading importer of oil, or we can become the world’s
leading exporter of clean energy. We can hand over the jobs of the future to our
competitors, or we can confront what they have already recognized as the great opportunity
of our time: the nation that leads the world in creating new sources of clean energy will
be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy. That’s the nation I want
America to be." Obama Invests $467M in Solar and Geothermal Development Environment News Service, 28 May 2009 |
| "Europe should scrap its support for wind energy as soon as possible
to focus on far more efficient emerging forms of clean power generation including solar
thermal energy, one of the world’s most distinguished scientists said yesterday.
Professor Jack Steinberger, a Nobel prize-winning director of the CERN particle physics
laboratory in Geneva, said that wind represented an illusory technology — a
cul-de-sac that would prove uneconomic and a waste of resources in the battle against
climate change. 'Wind is not the future,' he told the symposium of Nobel laureates at the
Royal Society. Instead, he said, technologies such as solar thermal power — for which
parabolic mirrors reflect the Sun’s rays to generate heat and electricity —
represent a more promising way of supplanting fossil fuels. 'I am certain that the energy
of the future is going to be thermal solar,' he told The Times. 'There is nothing
comparable. The sooner we focus on it the better.' Professor
Steinberger said that all known reserves of fossil fuels would be depleted within 60 years
and that a network of solar energy farms in the Sahara could reliably supply nearly 80 per
cent of Europe’s energy needs by the middle of this century. He called for European governments to fund a big pilot project in North
Africa linked to Europe via high-voltage undersea cables. Solar thermal power was already
economic and on the brink of big advances that would place it way ahead of rival forms of
wind, geothermal, wave and tidal energy, he said. 'Governments need to focus on this area
right now.' A 3-3.5 gigawatt solar thermal project in North Africa, which would generate
enough electricity to supply two million homes, would cost £20 billion to build. 'I am
certain you could make electricity and ship it to Europe at a price equivalent to fossil
fuels.' He said that intermittent energy sources, such as wind, required back-up power
generation, which undermined their contribution to emissions reductions. In contrast,
solar thermal power could generate heat energy that could reliably generate 24-hour
electricity. Britain has made wind energy a priority in reducing carbon emissions by 34
per cent by 2020. The Government plans to build 33 gigawatts of offshore wind power by
2020, which the professional services organisation Ernst & Young estimates will cost
more than £100 billion. Professor Steinberger said that it would cost about £440 billion
and take 30 years for Europe to remove its reliance on fossil fuels, which supply 80 per
cent of its energy needs, but that governments needed to make bold decisions about which
technologies to support. Commercial-scale solar thermal power plants were operating in
Spain, the US and Germany, but further research was needed to refine the technology and
cut costs, he said." Solar power should replace wind energy, says Jack Steinberger London Times, 27 May 2009 |
| "The government intends to make
mandatory the use of solar heating systems in all functional buildings under the first
phase of the proposed National Solar Mission. To be
implemented between 2009 and 2012, the Mission proposes to make it compulsory for all
hospitals, guest houses, hotels and nursing homes to install solar water heaters. This
will be applicable to residential complexes too if a minimum plot area of 500 square
metres is available...The Mission also proposes to further expand the solar lighting
system to provide access to lighting for 3 million households by 2012 in urban and rural
areas. The setting up of solar charging stations are also proposed for solar lanterns
currently being distributed on a large scale in the rural areas. This is estimated to cost
Rs.1,200 crore." Mandatory use of solar heating system The Hindu, 25 May 2009 |
| "Solar power stations that
concentrate sunlight could generate up to one-quarter of the world's electricity needs by
2050, according to a study by environmental and solar industry groups. The technology, best suited to the desert regions of the world, could
also create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and save millions of tonnes of CO2 from
entering the atmosphere. Concentrating solar power (CSP) uses mirrors to focus sunlight
onto water. This produces steam that can then turn turbines and generate electricity. It
differs from photovoltaics, which use solar panels to turn sunlight directly into
electricity and can operate even on overcast days. CSP only works in places where there
are many days with clear skies and is a proven, reliable technology. At the end of 2008
CSP capacity was around 430MW, and worldwide investment in the technology will reach
€2bn (£1.8bn) this year, according to Sven Teske of Greenpeace International
and co-author of the report. He said investment could increase, under a relatively
moderate scenario, to €11.1bn by 2010 and provide 7% of the world's generating
capacity by 2030. By 2050 investment could reach €92.5bn, creating almost 2m jobs by
2050 and saving 2.1bn tonnes of CO2 every year. 'Due to the feed-in tariff in Spain and a
few schemes in the US, this technology is actually taking off and we wanted to highlight
that we have a third big technology to fight climate change — wind, photovoltaics and
now CSP,' said Teske. Spain is leading the field on CSP: more than 50 solar projects in
the country have been approved for construction by the government and, by 2015, it will
generate more than 2GW of power from CSP, comfortably exceeding current national targets.
Spanish companies are also exporting their technology around the world. Environmentalists
argue that many countries in the 'sun-belt' around the equator would benefit from CSP
technology — including desert regions in the southern United States, north Africa,
Mexico, China and India. The new study, carried out by Greenpeace International, the
European Solar Thermal Electricity Association and the International Energy Agency's (IEA)
SolarPACES group, looked at three scenarios of future growth in CSP. The first was
business-as-usual reference scenario that assumed no increases at all in CSP; the second
continued the CSP investments seen in recent years in places such as Spain and the US;
while the advanced scenario was most optimistic, removing all political and investment
barriers to give figures for the true potential of CSP. Under the third, most optimistic,
scenario there could be a giant surge in investments to €21bn a year by 2015 and
€174bn a year by 2050, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. In this case, solar
plants would have installed capacity of 1,500GW by 2050 and provide 25% of the world's
electricity capacity. Even in the second scenario, which sees only modest increases, the
world's combined CSP capacity could reach 830GW by 2050, representing up to 12% of the
world's energy generation needs. Teske acknowledged that these estimates were far higher
than official figures from the IEA. It says that by 2050, CSP would provide only0.2% of
global power generation. But Teske added that the IEA analysis does not assume any
increases in production capacity in the next few decades, hence CSP forms a very small
part of the overall energy mix. The new report also said that CSP technology was improving
rapidly, with many new power plants fitted with storage systems for steam so that they
could continue to operate at night. In addition it said the cost of the electricity
produced , currently at €0.15 to €0.23 a kilowatt, would fall to
€0.10-€0.14 by 2020 if governments continued to support the technology with
incentives such as feed-in tarriffs." Concentrated solar power could generate 'quarter of world's energy' Guardian, 26 May 2009 |
| "Australia plans to build the world's largest
solar power station with an output of 1000 megawatts in a A$1.4 billion (US$1.05 billion)
investment, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Sunday.The plant would have three times the
generating capacity of the current biggest solar-powered electricity plant, which is in
California, Rudd said during a tour of a power station. Tender details will be announced later in the year, and successful
bidders will be named in the first half of 2010. Rudd said the project was aimed at
exploiting the country's ample sunshine, which he called 'Australia's biggest natural
resource'' It was also aimed at helping the country become a leader in renewable, clean
energy, he said....The project should eventually lead to a network of solar-powered
stations across the country, Rudd said, with locations chosen to fit in with the existing
electricity grid and ensure good access to sunshine....Rudd also said Australia would
become a full member of the International Renewable Energy Agency, which will have its
first global meeting in June." Australia to build world's largest solar energy plant: PM Reuters, 17 May 2009 |
| "San Francisco took a major step today toward building California's largest solar photovoltaic system -- a plan that would more than triple the city's solar energy output by
carpeting the rooftop of its biggest reservoir with almost 25,000 panels. Recurrent
Energy, a San Francisco firm, will install and operate the 5 megawatt array atop the
reservoir, an area roughly the size of 12 football fields. Standing atop the Sunset
Reservoir -- so named because it lies in the city's Sunset District -- Newsom signed an
ordinance into law this morning that enables the installation project and a 25-year
contract with the distributed power firm Recurrent Energy to go forward." San Francisco Moves Ahead with Plans to Build 5MW Solar Farm Reuters, 15 May 2009 |
| "New York wants to install up to 100 megawatts of solar photovoltaic
power at public and private facilities to help meet the state's aggressive renewable
mandate, the governor said in a release Friday. Specifically, the state-owned power
generating company, the New York Power Authority (NYPA), will seek parties interested in
entering into public-private partnerships with the state to install the solar arrays. The solar power generated by the arrays would power about 15,000
homes, according to NYPA. Proposals are due by July
7. The state said any proposals it selects would likely start in 2010.The solar power
would help the state meet the governor's 45-by-15 program. By 2015, the governor wants New
York to receive 45 percent of its electricity through energy efficiency and renewable
power. The state has estimated the 45-by-15 program would create about 50,000 new jobs.
Officials at the governor's office were not immediately available for comment. The state
did not estimate how much it would cost to build 100 MW of solar power. Solar photovoltaic
power is one of the most expensive types of generation. A
kilowatt costs an estimated $6,000, according to the U.S. Energy Information
Administration. It could cost about $600 million to build 100 MW of solar photovoltaic
power. Wind power, meanwhile, costs about $1,900 per kilowatt to build onshore and $3,800
per kilowatt offshore, while combined cycle natural gas-fired generation costs about
$1,000 per kilowatt and coal-fired generation costs about $2,000 per kilowatt. Unlike natural gas and coal-fired generation, wind and solar power are
only available about a third of the time." NY wants to install 100 MW of solar power Reuters, 15 May 2009 |
"Declaring it a record total, Pacific Gas & Electric on Wednesday
announced an expansion of solar-power contracts with Oakland's BrightSource Energy for a
total of 1,310 megawatts of electricity — enough
to power 530,000 California homes during peak hours of noon to 7 p.m. The power purchase agreements, which will now include seven power plants,
add to a previous contract the two companies struck in April 2008 for up to 900 megawatts
of solar thermal power. BrightSource called it the largest solar deal ever. The company
now has 2,610 megawatts under contract, which it said is more than any other solar thermal
company and represents more than 40 percent of all large-scale solar thermal contracts in
the United States." |
| "The Mohave Sun Power company is
planning a project in Mohave County that could begin construction in the fourth quarter of
2010. It will use 4,000 acres of land and employ concentrating solar power. Molten salt will be the storage medium. Mitchell Dong, the company's CEO
explained the technology, 'It's a parabolic trough, or a 'U'-shaped mirror that reflects
or concentrates the sunlight by a factor of 100 to this thin tube of transfer fluid. In
this case, it's a synthetic oil heated to 800 degrees by the sun's light. There are rows
and rows of these collectors and this 800 degree oil is pumped to a central power block, a
central location where that hot oil goes to a boiler. It makes steam and drives a single
steam turbine. Of course the whole installation would use many arrays of parabolic
troughs. Energy generated by the plant would be purchased by California, Nevada, Arizona
and Colorado. If the planning and construction processes go smoothly the plant could
starting producing electricity by 2013. The planning actually has been going on for some
time: 'We have been working on this for over a year,' said Mohave County Supervisor Buster
Johnson. (Mohave County has already had a different 200 MW project planned for
construction.) This larger one will depend upon federal stimulus money for financing. If
approved and funded, the project could generate an estimated 1,500 jobs during the
construction phase, and require 100 employees when operational. Such a large plant would
also generate local tax revenues. Construction cost is estimated at two billion
dollars." World's Largest Solar Thermal Plant Planned for Arizona Reuters, 13 May 2009 |
"Samsung Electronics plans to invest a massive amount of money to
develop new businesses ranging from green energy to healthcare, such as solar cells and
biopharmaceuticals. The 23.3 trillion Korean won (US$21 billion) investment is aimed at
developing five new businesses that the company expects to create 45,000 new jobs and
generate 50 trillion won in annual revenue for affiliate companies by 2020, Samsung said
in a statement Tuesday. 'Governments around the world are now investing in green
industries to address the issues of depleting energy resources and the protection of our
planet's environment, which present pressing challenges to the global community,' Samsung
said. The company has earmarked 6 trillion won of the amount for solar cells, using
crystalline silicon technology and thin film technology. Another 5.4 trillion won will be
used for rechargeable batteries for hybrid electric vehicles and 8.6 trillion won will go
to LED (Light Emitting Diode) technology for a range of power-saving applications, from
computer screen backlights to car electronics and indoor/outdoor lighting." |
"The Department of Energy is
funding a series of projects that marry concentrating solar power with storage, which
offers the potential of solar power plants that operate 18 hours a day. The DOE said Friday that it has made $62 million available to 13 companies to
test equipment and materials, such as molten salts, to add storage to solar power systems
that use heat to produce electricity. Concentrating solar power, in
which the sun's heat creates steam to drive an electricity turbine, is seeing a
renaissance because it can be used for large-scale power plants in deserts. Adding storage
can extend the time these plants supply electricity to the grid and can potentially
improve the economics of solar versus fossil fuels. The DOE's target is to extend the
output of concentrating solar power systems to 18 hours, covering the peak times of
electricity usage. The top three recipients are Abengoa Solar, eSolar, and Pratt &
Whitney Rocketdyne, each of which received more than $10 million for molten-salt
research." |
| "Calling Silicon Valley 'the most innovative place in the world,'
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday told an audience of solar technology executives and
industry representatives that 'we need to find ways to reduce our use of fossil fuel and
use what we have in abundance in California — the sun.' 'I'm a big believer in solar
technology,' he told about 350 people attending a daylong 'solar summit' in San Jose meant
to accelerate the state's solar economy. 'We want to make this state the solar state.'
Schwarzenegger has already played a major role in pushing for solar in California. At his
direction in 2006, the California Solar Initiative created a $3.3 billion, 10-year program
to put solar panels on 1 million roofs in the state. The program includes state renewable
energy incentives and a rebates program. But he is frustrated by the public's capricious
reception to solar energy, the popularity of which seems to fluctuate with gas prices. 'You've got to look ahead 20 to 30 years,' he said. 'Every time
oil prices go down, we abandon that vision. '... You've got to have a plan and stick with
that plan.' The conference focused on developing
standards to reduce installation time and costs for solar-power systems." Schwarzenegger touts solar technology in San Jose Mercury News, 8 May 2009 |
| "Solar company Konarka has
developed a transparent solar cell that it hopes will be built onto electricity-generating
windows. The Lowell, Mass.-based company on Tuesday
said it has reached an agreement with Arch Aluminum & Glass to use Konarka's plastic
solar cells in building materials, including windows. Under its Arch Active Solar Glass
development, the company has built prototypes of windows with the solar cells between two
panes of glass. The photovoltaic cells can be tinted different colors.....But these
organic photovoltaics aren't very efficient at converting sunlight to electricity and
won't last as long as a rooftop solar panel, which is typically under warranty for 25
years. Konarka said late last year that it achieved 6 percent efficiency in its labs but
that's not yet available in its products. A high-efficiency silicon solar cell, the most
common cell material, can be over 20 percent. Konarka's factory is turning out red solar
cells but has started making the transparent cells in limited runs for prototypes and
development, according to a representative. Although Konarka has raised over $100 million
and has signed a number of partnerships, there are many people who are skeptical that the
company can be profitable. 'The real key will be to see if they can make
building-integrated products that can stand the weather for 20-plus years,' clean-tech
venture capitalist Rob Day from @Ventures told Greentech
Media in December last year. Konarka also faces
growing competition in the building-integrated photovoltaics field. Thin-film solar
manufacturers, including Heliovot, also make flexible cells that can be fitted onto glass
or building structures such as awnings but are more efficient. Nanosolar's cells made from
CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide), for example, are in the 9 percent to 10 percent range." Transparent plastic solar cells fitted into windows | Green Tech CNET News, 8 May 2008 |
| "Cars powered by hydrogen fuel
cells, once hailed by President George W. Bush as a pollution-free solution for reducing
the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, will not be practical over the next 10 to 20
years, the energy secretary said Thursday, and the government will cut off funds for the
vehicles’ development. Developing those cells
and coming up with a way to transport the hydrogen is a big challenge, Energy Secretary
Steven Chu said in releasing energy-related details of the administration’s budget
for the year beginning Oct. 1. Dr. Chu said the government preferred to focus on projects
that would bear fruit more quickly. The retreat from cars powered by fuel cells counters
Mr. Bush’s prediction in 2003 that “the first car driven by a child born today
could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free.” The Energy Department will
continue to pay for research into stationary fuel cells, which Dr. Chu said could be used
like batteries on the power grid and do not require compact storage of hydrogen." U.S. Drops Research Into Fuel Cells for Cars New York Times, 7 May 2009 |
| "Just as we already have a problem with peak oil having caused last
year's massive price spike at the pumps, there may be a similar paucity in the world's
capacity to produce lithium, the miracle metal key to so many automakers' future plans for
hybrid and electric vehicles.This lightest metal in the periodic table was used primarily
in the production of ceramics and high-temperature glass, not to mention anti-psychotic
drugs. But, about two decades ago, it started gaining prominence as a material used for
battery production, thanks to the relatively high energy density and comparatively light
weight of lithium ion cells. Virtually all cellphone and laptop batteries use lithium as a
core constituent. The much-ballyhooed but seldom-seem Tesla electric roadster uses more
than 6,000 computer-sized batteries all mashed into one package. But whether they are the
lithium cobalt batteries used in portable devices -- not very useful for automotive use
because of their reputation for overheating -- or the newer lithium phosphate or lithium
manganese formulations developed for cars, all use a base of lithium metal, which is most
easily extracted from salt brine....Now there may be
problems with how much lithium the Earth holds and how quickly it can be mined. On the
pessimistic side, there is William Tahil, author of the research paper The Trouble with
Lithium, who estimates the world's lithium reserves at about four million tons. He claims
the production of hybrid and electric cars will soon tax the world's production of lithium
carbonate. At the other end of the spectrum is Keith Evans, who has released An Abundance
of Lithium, a report estimating there are 28 million tons of the base metal to be had,
plenty enough to go around. Somewhere in the middle of these two opposing viewpoints is
the United States Geological Survey's somewhat dated estimate of 11 million tons. Part of the discrepancy is due to how economical and easily each group
thinks the mining of lithium will be, dividing their estimates between 'reserves' (think
of easily obtained Saudi Arabian oil literally bubbling to the surface) and the more
difficult to process 'base reserves' (think Canada's Athabasca Oil Sands). Even the
optimistic Evans allows that, like oil, his more generous prediction is based on the price
of lithium rising in order to make increased mining cost-effective. This is not good news
to automakers since it's estimated that these new high-tech batteries already cost as much
as US$10,000. While existing mining levels are able to cope with current demand, there is
no consensus on how many lithium-powered electric cars can be produced. Tahil says any
more than 1.5 million GM Volt-type vehicles annually would strain current production. SQM
S. A., Chile's largest producer of lithium carbonate, says there is plenty for about five
million electric vehicles. Evans predicts there's enough lithium for far more.Bob Kruse,
GM's executive director of Global Vehicle Engineering, also notes that some of the lithium
in his company's new Chevy Volt will be recyclable, thereby reducing demand. The
discrepancies owe as much to the types of electric cars being produced -- fully electric
cars need bigger batteries and, therefore, more lithium than hybrids -- as to the exact
amount of the world's lithium stocks. However, virtually everyone readily agrees that the
world's current production of lithium -- approximately 20,000 tons -- is woefully short of
what's needed if electric car production really takes off. Argentina, Australia and Chile
account for more than 50% of the world's lithium production; Russia also produces
significant amounts.But the real power player in the lithium market is Bolivia. Whether
you take the pessimistic or optimistic estimate of its reserves, the South American
country's Salar de Uyuni salt desert has about 40% of the world's lithium, so far
untapped. Mitsubishi, which thinks electric car production will outstrip lithium supply as
early as 2015, is already in talks with Bolivia about sourcing its lithium. Ditto Toyota,
one of the few automakers producing its own batteries." The problem with lithium National Post (Canada), 1 May 2009 |
| "Consumers are to be offered
incentives of up to £5,000 to purchase an electric car under government plans to be
unveiled today that will also see the creation of electric car cities across the UK and
the launch of large-scale experiments with ultra-green vehicles. The proposals are part of a £250m strategy, seen by the Guardian,
spelling out a revolution in Britain's road transport network based on ultra-low carbon
vehicles. It will be launched today by Geoff Hoon, the transport secretary, and Lord
Mandelson, the business secretary, with the aim of kickstarting the market for cleaner
road vehicles and slashing the UK's CO2 emisisons." Labour's £5,000 sweetener to launch electric car revolution Guardian, 16 April 2009 |
| "A leading American power company is hoping to turn science fiction
into reality by supporting a project to set up solar panels in outer space and beam the
electricity generated back to Earth. Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which serves San
Francisco and northern California, has agreed to buy electricity from a startup company
claiming to have found a way to unlock the potential power supply in space. The firm,
Solaren Corp, says it will launch solar panels into orbit and then convert the power
generated into radio-frequency transmissions, which will be beamed back down into a depot
in Fresno, California. The energy would then be converted into electricity and fed into
the regular power grid, PG&E said....PG&E
announced this week that it had agreed to buy 200 megawatts of electricity from Solaren
starting in 2016. The deal has yet to be approved by
California state government regulators and PG&E has not put any money into Solaren,
but the promise alone has turned the notion of space based solar power from fantasy to
reality. 'There is a very serious possibility they can make this work,' said PG&E's
spokesman Jonathan Marshall. Unlike on earth, with its cycle of nights and days and where
there can be clouds, sunshine in space is practically constant – aside from a few
days around the spring and autumn equinoxes. That means the space-based solar panels could
potentially produce a steady supply of electricity. The sunlight hitting solar panels 200
miles in space would be 10 times as powerful as the light filtering down to Earth through
the atmosphere. The satellite would then convert the energy into radio waves and beam them
down to a receiving station on Earth. Spirnak did not give details of how this would work
but said the technology was based on that now used by communications satellites,
describing it as 'very mature'. He added that power losses via the radio-wave route are
lower than transmission cables used on Earth. Another advantage of the plan is that it
does not require large amounts of real estate. Ground-based solar installations require
huge tracts of land." US power company to tap solar energy in space Guardian, 16 April 2009 |
| "Toshiba Corp is ready to mass-produce a quick-charging lithium ion
battery for hybrid vehicles with the highest electrical output for a battery of this kind,
the financial daily Nikkei said in its Tuesday edition. The
paper said Toshiba has quadrupled the output density of its Super Charge ion Battery, or
SCiB, to 3,900 watts. Output density is the power output per kilogram of the battery's
weight. It said the battery can be charged in as little as 90 seconds, making it suitable
for plug-in hybrids, and can be recharged more than 10,000 times. Nikkei said Toshiba has started shipping the battery to major Japanese,
U.S. and European automakers on a trial basis. It said Toshiba has also developed a
lithium ion battery with a high energy density aimed at electric vehicles that will be
able to discharge power over a long duration and hopes to start sample shipments in the
fall. Nikkei said Toshiba now makes 150,000 SCiBs a month but plans to start building a
plant this fall that would make about 2 million batteries a month on start-up, with hopes
for expansion to about 10 million by about 2015." Toshiba has quick-charge hybrid car battery: Nikkei Reuters, 13 April 2009 |
