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| SOLAR ENERGY AND WORLD PEACE | |||
| Introduction (To Go Direct To Solar Energy News Reports - Click Here) |
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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), and Joe Lieberman (Senator and former Vice Presidential running mate to Al Gore). 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 |
"The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Wednesday said it reversed an earlier decision freezing solar project applications
in six Western states and would accept new
applications.'We heard the concerns expressed...about waiting to consider new applications
and we are taking action,' BLM director James Caswell said in a statement. The government
agency announced a freeze a month ago and the decision was criticized by many in the solar
industry." |
| "The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has declared a moratorium on development of new solar power projects on
government land in six western states. The agency
said the huge increase in the number of plans for solar power plants has caused worries
about their environmental impact, The New York Times reported. Officials expect an impact
study to take two years. The moratorium affects millions of acres in Arizona, California,
Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. Officials said 130 applications to lease public
land for solar projects have been filed since 2005. The high price of oil makes solar
power an attractive alternative, energy analysts say. Advocates say sun-drenched public
lands in the Western deserts are a resource that should be used. 'It doesn't make any
sense,' said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for
Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. 'The Bureau of Land Management
land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the
growth of the industry.'" U.S. government delays solar projects United Press International, 29 June 2008 |
"A new type of
solar energy collector concentrates the sun into a beam that could melt steel. Researchers
say the device could revolutionize global energy production. The prototype is a
12-foot-wide mirrored dish was made from a lightweight frame of thin, inexpensive aluminum
tubing and strips of mirror. It concentrates sunlight
by a factor of 1,000 to produce steam. 'This is
actually the most efficient solar collector in existence,' said Doug Wood, an inventor
based in Washington state who patented key parts of the dish's design — the rights to
which he has signed over to a team of students at MIT." |
| "A team of Americans and Israelis launched an experimental solar
technology plant Thursday in Israel's Negev Desert, a
prototype designed to drastically cut the cost of energy produced from the sun. Israeli company Luz II, Ltd. and its American parent, Brightsource
Energy, Inc., plan to use the Israeli solar array to test new technology for the three new
solar plants they are building for California utility Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
Arnold Goldman, founder of the Oakland, California-based company, called the array 'the
highest performance, lowest cost thermal solar system in the world.' His previous company
built the first commercial solar plants in the 1980s. The new technology uses fields of
computer-guided flat mirrors called heliostats to track the sun and focus its rays on a
boiler at the top of a 200-foot tower. Water inside the boiler turns to steam, which
powers a turbine and produces electricity. The steam is then captured and cooled naturally
so the water, scarce in the desert, can be reused." 'Israeli technology may offer cheap solar power' Associated Press, 12 June 2008 |
| "Quartz, the raw material for
solar panels, is one of the most abundant minerals on earth. But for years, the solar industry has faced a bottleneck in processing
quartz into polysilicon, a principal material used in most solar panels. The problem
stalled a steady decline in prices for solar panels. Now the silicon shortage may be
coming to an end, predict some solar analysts, thanks to new factories coming online. If
true, the price for solar panel modules could start falling by as much as a third by 2010,
says Travis Bradford, president of the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development in
Cambridge, Mass. That’s good news for an industry that remains one of the most
expensive power sources." Brighter future for solar panels: silicon shortage eases Christian Science Monitor, 5 June 2008 |
| "Solar power from Africa's
deserts could supply all 600 million citizens currently without electricity and even
export power to Europe, a green energy conference in
Nairobi heard Thursday. The ferocious desert sun could provide the energy equivalent of
1.5 barrels of oil per square kilometre, said Gerhard Knies, project manager for
Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC), at a meeting of nine African
states. 'The largest source of energy is the solar radiation (and) the best place to
receive solar radiation is the desert,' he told reporters at the start of meeting of 20
parliamentarians in Kenya. 'Deserts get 700 times more energy per year than all human kind
is using,' he explained.'It is as if a layer of 25 centimetres (10 inches) of oil is
falling down in the deserts year after year.'" Africa's deserts could supply solar electricity to continent: experts Agence France Presse, 5 June 2008 |
"It has been called the holy grail of the
modern era - cheap solar energy. And scientists say it may be within our grasp soon.
Queensland University team has grown the world's first titanium oxide nano crystals that
are likely to revolutionise the way solar energy is harvested and used. Creating these highly efficient miniature crystals with large
reactive surfaces was thought of as impossible by most scientists. Max Lu, who led the study, sounded upbeat that they were a step closer
to the holy grail of cost-effective solar energy with their discovery. 'Highly active
surfaces in such crystals allow high reactivity and efficiency in devices used for solar
energy conversion and hydrogen production,' said Lu. 'Titanium nano-crystals are promising
materials for cost-effective solar cells, hydrogen
production from splitting water, and solar
decontamination of pollutants. The beauty of our technique is that it is very simple and cheap to make such materials at mild conditions.' .... Details of the project have been published in the latest edition
of the journal Nature." |
| "Check out the Czeers MK1 prototype
solar speedboat, a
10-meter long rig that manages to pack in 14 square meters of solar panels to power an
80kw electric motor. The MK1 plows through the water at a breakneck 30 knots, using no oil
and producing no fumes or engine noise. ..The boat is made from 100 percent carbon fiber and has an LCD
touch-screen control system, leather trimmings and, most importantly, photovoltaic cells
on almost all its horizontal services." World's First Solar Speedboat Does 30 Knots Gas-Free Gizmodo, 24 May 2008 |
| "Along a dusty two-lane highway in California's Mojave Desert,
550,000 mirrors point skyward to make steam for electricity. Google Inc., Chevron Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are betting this
energy will become cheaper than coal. The 1,000-acre plant uses concentrated sunlight to
generate power for as many as 112,500 homes in Southern California. Rising natural gas
prices and emissions limits may make solar thermal
the fastest-growing energy source in the next decade,
say backers including Vinod Khosla, the founder of computer maker Sun Microsystems Inc.
Costs for the technology will fall below coal as soon as 2020, the U.S. government
estimates. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. invested last year in the
biggest solar plant built in a generation; Chevron and Google are funding research; and
Goldman Sachs is seeking land to lease as demand outpaces wind turbines and geothermal.
'Solar thermal can provide a substantial amount of our power, more than 50 percent,' says
Khosla, who along with the Menlo Park, California, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins
Caufield & Byers led a $40 million investment in solar power producer Ausra Inc. 'This
is an industrial-strength solution.'...The Ardour Solar Energy Index, covering all forms of solar
power, climbed 55 percent in the 12 months through yesterday, outperforming an 8.5 percent
decline in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index. Unlike photovoltaic solar panels that
convert sunlight to electricity, solar thermal focuses sunrays with mirrors to heat oil in
glass pipes to about 700 degrees Fahrenheit (370 degrees Celsius). The oil turns water to
steam, which spins an electric turbine....Solar thermal companies are trying to develop
backup heat storage using pressurized boiling water or molten salt that can be warmed to
more than 1,000 degrees....A solar thermal unit that begins operation in 2010 will produce
power at 14.2 cents a kilowatt hour, almost triple the 4.8 cents for a plant using
pulverized coal, the Energy Information Administration estimates. Costs for solar thermal may fall as low as 3.5 cents a kilowatt
hour by 2020, according to a report
commissioned by the U.S. Energy Department. Meanwhile, coal expenses may rise...Ausra's plants will produce electricity at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour
starting in 2010, and the price will fall to 8 cents a few years later as it adopts
systems with fewer parts that will be less costly when widely deployed, the company says.
'We are going to beat coal,' says Bob Fishman, Ausra's chief executive officer.'' Google, Chevron Build Mirrors in Desert to Beat Coal With Solar Bloomberg, 23 May 2008 |
| "Thanks to its aggressive push into
renewable energies, cloud-wreathed Germany has become
an unlikely leader in the race to harness the sun's energy. It has by far the largest
market for photovoltaic systems, which convert sunlight into electricity, with roughly
half of the world's total installations. And it is
the third-largest producer of solar cells and modules after China and Japan.Now, though,
Conservative lawmakers want to pare back generous government incentives that support solar
development. They say solar generation is growing so fast that it threatens to overburden
consumers with high electricity bills.... At the heart of the debate is the Renewable
Energy Sources Act. It requires power companies to buy all the alternative energy produced
by these systems, at a fixed above-market price, for 20 years. This mechanism, known as a
feed-in tariff, gives entrepreneurs a powerful incentive to install solar panels. With a
locked-in customer base for their electricity, they can earn a reliable return on their
investment. It has worked: homeowners rushed to clamp solar panels on their roofs, and
farmers planted them in fields where sheep once grazed. The amount of electricity
generated by these installations rose 60% in 2007 compared with 2006, faster than any
other renewable energy. This is in a country that gets an average of only 1,528 hours of
sunshine a year, less than a third of the total daylight hours. That figure is comparable
to London's but it is one-third fewer sunshine hours than in Florence, Italy, and only
half San Diego's, making German solar installations less efficient, and their growth all
the more remarkable. With wind, biomass and other alternative energy also growing, Germany
derives 14.2% of its electricity from renewable sources. That puts it ahead of a European
Union target for countries to generate 12.5% of electricity from alternative sources by
2010." Future of solar cells industry too bright for its own good Scotsman, 18 May 2008 |
| "Thanks to nanostructures that scatter and channel light, University
of California, San Diego electrical engineers are working
toward thin-film 'single junction' solar cells with the potential for nearly 45 percent
sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiencies.
This effort to break the theoretical limit of 31 percent efficiency for conventional
single junction cells recently received a big funding boost from the U.S. Department of
Energy’s Solar America program." Nanostructures Will Raise Thin-Film Solar Cell Efficiency ScienceDaily, May 15, 2008 |
| "A Pennsylvania
energy company is putting up what it says will be the largest
rooftop solar installation in the country. The
1.7-megawatt solar system will go on the rooftops of eight buildings at the Summit, N.J.,
campus of pharmaceutical company Schering-Plough
Corp. PPL Renewable Energy of Allentown,
Pa., said Monday it will plan, construct and operate the system. PPL also will own the
system, which will supply power to the Schering-Plough campus. It will reduce the
company's emissions of greenhouse gases -- a goal of the drugmaker -- by about 1.3 million
pounds a year, equal to saving about 66,000 gallons of gasoline. PPL said such solar
systems reduce energy bills by generating electricity during peak daytime hours when power
prices are highest." Biggest US solar rooftop system planned Newsday, 12 May 2008 |
| "A Silicon Valley start-up says it has developed technology that can
deliver solar power in about a year at prices
competitive with coal-fired electricity, a milestone
that would leapfrog other more established players and turbocharge the fast-growing
industry. SUNRGI's 'concentrated photovoltaic' system relies on lenses to magnify sunlight
2,000 times, letting it produce as much electricity as standard panels with a far smaller
system. Craig Goodman, head of the National Energy Marketers Association, is expected to
announce the breakthrough Tuesday. Under its plans, which experts call promising but
highly ambitious, SUNRGI
would initially target utilities and large industrial and commercial customers. The
company — founded by veterans of computer, digital design, aerospace and solar
industries — would market to homes within three years. Executives of the year-old
company say they'll start producing solar panels by mid-2009 that will generate
electricity for about 7 cents a kilowatt hour,
including installation. That's roughly the price of
cheap coal-fired electricity. 'We're bringing the cost of solar electricity down to be
competitive with' fossil fuels, says Bob Block, a co-founder of SUNRGI. Solar power is
acclaimed as free of greenhouse gas emissions and able to supply electricity midday when
demand is highest. But its cost — 20 cents to 30 cents a kilowatt hour — has
inhibited broad adoption. Solar makes up less than 1% of U.S. power generation. An armada
of solar technology makers aim to drive solar's price to 10 to 18 cents a kilowatt hour by
2010, and 5 to 10 cents by 2015, at or below utility costs. SUNRGI's timetable is far more
aggressive." Start-up: Affordable solar power possible in a year USA Today, 28 April 2008 |
| "The sun blasts Earth with enough energy in one hour—4.3 x 1020
joules—to provide all of humanity's energy needs for a year (4.1 x 1020
joules), according to physicist Steven Chu, director of Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory. The question is how to most effectively harness it. Thin-film solar cells may be the
answer: One recently converted 19.9 percent of the sunlight that hit it into electricity,
surpassing the amount converted into power by mass-produced traditional silicon
photovoltaics and offering the potential to unleash this renewable energy source.
Prices for high-grade silicon (that can generate electricity from sunlight) shot up in
2004 in response to growing demand, reaching as high as $500 per kilogram (2.2 pounds)
this year. Enter thin-film solar cells—devices that use a fine layer of
semiconducting material, such as silicon, copper indium gallium selenide or cadmium
telluride, to harvest electricity from sunlight at a fraction of the cost. 'The
fundamental advantage of thin film comes in the form of the amount of material you need,'
says electrical engineer Jeff Britt, chief technology officer of thin-film manufacturer Global Solar Energy in Tucson, Ariz. 'These are
direct bandgap semiconductors. You can get by with one or two microns and still absorb 98
percent of the sunlight.' (In other words, it takes at least 100 times less thin-film
material to absorb the same amount of sunlight as traditional silicon photovoltaic
cells.)...In March, the company opened a new factory in Tucson, where it plans to produce
enough thin-film CIGS solar cells to generate 40 megawatts of electricity next
year—enough to power roughly 15,000 average American homes; it hopes to boost the
juice to 100 megawatts by 2010 in response to what it predicts will be a growing
market." Solar Power Lightens Up with Thin-Film Technology Scientific American, 25 April 2008 |
| "The Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and the Chesonis Family Foundation said today that they are launching a
"solar revolution" project with the ultimate aim of making solar energy
America's primary carbon-free fuel. The Solar Revolution Project, funded by a $10 million
gift from the Chesonis Family Foundation, aims to transform solar power from a ''boutique'
option to an affordable, dependable, mainstream energy solution,' MIT said. The project
will complement and interact with other large solar projects at MIT, creating one of the
largest solar energy clusters at any research university, MIT said." MIT unveils new solar energy project Boston Globe, 22 April 2008 |
| "It was with some trepidation that I went into the cellar this week
to take some meter readings in order to find out how the solar panels we had fitted on our
house exactly a year ago have been performing. Was the hefty sum of £8,500 we forked out
last year a good investment or a waste of money? Well, the news is better than I had
expected. We, a family of four, have produced 92% of
our electricity usage from the roof of a century-old terraced house in south-east London - laying to rest the idea that Britain is not sunny enough for solar
power. It also disproves any suggestion this sort of technology only works in
state-of-the-art, modern detached houses. Not only will we not pay for any electricity, we
should get a rebate of about £50 once a payment from the so-called renewables obligation
(RO) scheme, which rewards microgeneration schemes with cash, is included. In all, the
saving for the past year will be around £500, giving a return on our investment of 6%,
which is not subject to tax." Solar so good for our house Guardian, 19 April 2008 |
| "The race for high-capacity solar power is on. Southern California
Edison Co. announced plans last month to build the country's largest solar installation. The project is expected to power 162,000 houses in the greater Los
Angeles area - about 5 percent of the area's homes - with 250 megawatts of power by the
year 2010. This announcement came soon after the
Spanish firm Abengoa Solar launched its massive solar project - Solana Generating Station
- which it is calling the biggest in the world. This will be 70 miles southwest of Phoenix
and is expected to generate 280 megawatts by 2011. Both these plants are designed to
use 'concentrating solar power,' or CSP, technology to harness the sun's heat and convert
it to electricity. CSP is more efficient than other renewable energy alternatives. This
solar technology does what so many have talked about: it creates jobs.....The goal of
producing 4,000 megawatts of concentrated solar power is within sight, though, because
3,500 megawatts are already under contract to be built, says Morse. If all proposed
projects get built, CSP can become competitive with fossil fuel energy sources by
2013." Harnessing the Sun: Future of Green Jobs Washington Independent, 11 April 2008 |
| "Saudi Arabia's oil minister on Thursday slammed biofuels, saying
they did not protect the environment or help supply security, but added solar power had to be considered one of the best clean energy
sources.'Let's be realistic, ethanol and biofuels
will not contribute to the protection of the global environment by reducing (carbon
dioxide) emissions, they will not increase energy security, nor will they reduce
dependency on fossil fuels to any appreciable degree,' Ali al-Naimi told an oil
conference. 'Biofuels are not the solution,' he added. The rise in biofuel use was largely
due to government subsidies, high import taxes and financial favoritism vis-a vis others,
he added. 'That's why we have to look beyond biofuels... and concentrate instead on truly
renewable sources of energy,' he said, adding that solar power was perhaps the best clean
energy source available in all parts of the world. 'It is abundant, clean and available to
all,' he said.'There is a great chance to expand its usage to all parts of the world
especially in developing countries and to all economic sectors and activities including
power generation, manufacturing and so on,' Naimi said. What was needed, he said, was to
expand the use of solar energy and to make solar cells more effective to make the
transmission of solar power more cost effective." Saudi oil minister slams biofuels, favors solar energy Reuters, 10 April 2008 |
| "A solar-powered hydrogen fueling station is officially open, just
days after the state gutted rules designed to increase the number of hydrogen-powered cars
on the road. The station uses solar energy to
separate hydrogen from water to power clean-fuel vehicles. Its solar panels produce 80 kilowatts of electricity, roughly enough to
power 40 homes, or about 14 fuel-cell vehicles. The station opened Tuesday as a joint
venture between the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, British Petroleum, Ford Motor
Company and the U.S. Department of Energy. It will power SMUD's fleet of seven fuel cell
vehicles." Solar-powered hydrogen fuel station opens despite cuts Daily Democrat, 5 April 2008 |
| "After 11 years of testing and trying - and not making money -
startup Global Solar Energy says it has refined its thin-film flexible photovoltaic cell
to the point it says it can produce solar panels at
one-third to one-half the cost of the current industry standard. 'We're sold out for the next year at a price that ensures we're
profitable,' said Mike Gering, president and CEO of Global Solar. 'There's a big
difference between production and the laboratory. We're in production. We can replicate
this time after time.'...In December, the company achieved greater than 10 percent average
efficiency for its flexible solar cells, an ability to convert sunlight into clean energy
on par with Wall Street thin-film solar powerhouse First Solar, and near that of the
industry standard crystalline silicon, which, at 12 to 14 percent efficiency, dominates 90
percent of the solar market. But the Tucson firm, which will employ 180 people at the new
factory, is banking on the ultra-low manufacturing costs of its thin, flexible product to
make a glass-fronted rooftop solar panel that is lightweight, durable and cheaper than the
industry standard by a third to a half. 'What's significant is that (10 percent) is their
production average, not their best,' said Bill Shafarman, a materials scientist with the
University of Delaware's Institute of Energy Conversion. 'Other thin-film companies (such
as First Solar) are making single, large modules on glass with module efficiencies between
9 to 13 percent. So it's not as good as some of those companies, but this is a unique product because it's flexible and lightweight. Unlike First Solar, which uses cadmium telluride (CdTe) deposited
directly on large modules of glass, Global Solar uses a semiconductor material known as
CIGS - for copper, indium, gallium and di-selenide. At high temperatures, the material can
be applied to stainless steel foil in 3,000-foot rolls in a closed chamber about the size
of a refrigerator. The product is then printed with a conductive contact of metal ink, cut
into individual cells, tested, reassembled and laminated in clear plastic or glass." Global Solar brings cheaper solar a step closer Vail Sun, 1 April 2008 |
| "Solar energy is getting a big boost in Southern California with the
unveiling of two projects that will be capable of
generating a total of 500 megawatts of electricity, enough to serve more than 300,000
homes. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Southern
California Edison plan to announce today the country's largest rooftop solar installation
project ever proposed by a utility company. And on Wednesday, FPL Energy, the largest
operator of solar power in the U.S., said it planned to build and operate a 250-megawatt
solar plant in the Mojave Desert. The projects would help
California meet its goal of obtaining 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by
2010. In 2006, about 13% of the retail electricity
delivered by Edison and the state's other two big investor-owned utilities came from
renewable sources such as sun and wind, according to the California Public Utilities
Commission. Energy experts were struck by the size of the two projects, which would
bolster the state's current total of about 965 megawatts of solar power flowing to the
electricity grid. 'Five hundred megawatts -- that's substantial,' said spokesman George
Douglas of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. 'Projects
of that size begin to show that solar energy can produce electricity on a utility scale,
on the kind of scale that we're going to need.'....
FPL Energy's proposed 250-megawatt plant, dubbed the Beacon Solar Energy Project, will be
situated on about 2,000 acres in eastern Kern County. More than half a million parabolic
mirrors will be assembled in rows to receive and concentrate the sun's rays to produce
steam for a turbine generator -- a process known as solar thermal power. The generator
will produce electricity for delivery to a nearby electric grid. Construction is scheduled
to begin in late 2009 and will take about two years to complete, the Juno Beach,
Fla.-based company said." 2 big projects will amp up solar power in Southland Los Angeles Times, 27 March 2008 |
| "Spanish renewable energy firm Sener and Abu Dhabi's clean-energy
initiative, Masdar, announced a joint venture on Wednesday to build several power plants
fueled by the sun's heat. The newly created firm, Torresol Energy, said it plans to build at least
two large concentrating solar power plants a year with a goal of generating 320 megawatts
over the next 5 years and 1,000 megawatts in 10 years. A large coal-fired power plant
typically can produce hundreds of megawatts of electricity....One of the designs that the
venture intends to use is a solar receiver tower to be built in Abu Dhabi....The new company underscores the surge in investment on solar thermal technologies, which
use the sun's heat, rather than photovoltaic panels, to generate electricity. A number of solar thermal power plants are being proposed for the
Southwest United States and Spain, where conditions are best. Sener already operates three
50 megawatt plants that use parabolic troughs to reflect light
and generate heat. They also incorporate molten salt storage to
generate electricity when the sun is not shining." Solar tower of power coming to Spain, Abu Dhabi Cnet News, 13 March 2008 |
| "Saudi Arabia, the world's
biggest oil exporter, plans to become an expert in another, cleaner field of energy by
investing in solar power, the country's oil minister
said in an interview released Sunday. 'For a country like Saudi Arabia ... one of the most
important sources of energy to look at and to develop is solar energy,' Ali al-Nuaimi told
French oil newsletter Petrostrategies. He added: 'One of the research efforts that we are
going to undertake is to see how we make Saudi Arabia a centre for solar energy research
and hopefully over the next 30 to 50 years we will be a major megawatt exporter. 'In the
same way we are an oil exporter, we can also be an exporter of power.'" Oil giant Saudi to become solar power centre: minister Agence France Presse, 1 March 2008 |
| "Investors and utilities intent on building solar power plants are
increasingly turning to solar thermal power, a
comparatively low-tech alternative to photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight directly into electricity. This month, in the
latest in a string of recent deals, Spanish solar-plant developer Abengoa Solar and
Phoenix-based utility Arizona Public Service announced a
280-megawatt solar thermal project in Arizona. By
contrast, the world's largest installations of photovoltaics generate only 20 megawatts of
power. In a solar thermal plant, mirrors concentrate sunlight onto some type of fluid that
is used, in turn, to boil water for a steam turbine. Over the past year, developers of
solar thermal technology such as Abengoa, Ausra, and Solel Solar Systems have picked up
tens of millions of dollars in financing and power contracts from major utilities such as
Pacific Gas and Electric and Florida Power and Light. By 2013, projects in development in
just the United States and Spain promise to add just under 6,000 megawatts of solar
thermal power generation to the barely 100 megawatts installed worldwide last year, says
Cambridge, MA, consultancy Emerging Energy Research. The appeal of solar thermal power is
twofold. It is relatively low cost at a large scale: an economic analysis
released last month by Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California's
Energy Institute, notes that solar thermal power will become cost competitive with other
forms of power generation decades before photovoltaics will, even if greenhouse-gas
emissions are not taxed aggressively. Solar thermal developers also say that their power
is more valuable than that provided by wind, currently the fastest-growing form of
renewable energy. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, wind power costs about 8
cents per kilowatt, while solar thermal power costs 13 to 17 cents. But power from wind
farms fluctuates with every gust and lull; solar thermal plants, on the other hand, capture solar energy as heat, which is much easier to store than
electricity. Utilities can dispatch this stored
solar energy when they need it--whether or not the sun happens to be shining.... In fact,
the capacity to store energy is critical to the economics of the solar thermal plant.
Without storage, a solar thermal plant would need a turbine large enough to handle peak
steam production, when the sun is brightest, but which would otherwise be underutilized.
Stored heat means that a plant can use a smaller, cheaper steam turbine that can be kept
running steadily for more hours of the day. While adding storage would substantially
increase the cost of the energy produced by a photovoltaic array or wind farm, it actually
reduces the cost per kilowatt of the energy produced by solar thermal plants. Morse says
that while the design of solar thermal power stations is rapidly diversifying, most will
use essentially the same system for storing energy: tanks full of a molten salt that
remains liquid at temperatures exceeding 565 °C. 'It's basically two tanks with a lot of
heat exchangers, pipes, and pumps,' says Morse. For a sense of scale, consider that the
50-megawatt plants that Germany's Solar Millennium is building in Spain near Granada will employ 28,500
tons of molten salt in twin tanks standing 14 meters high and 38.5 meters in
diameter." Solar without the Panels Technology Review, 29 February 2008 |
| "Japan's Sharp Corp (6753.T: Quote, Profile, Research), which
aims to become the world's biggest maker of solar cells, is looking abroad to raise annual
output of thin-film solar cells by sixfold to 6,000 megawatts after 2012 and beat silicon
shortages. Sharp aims to raise its annual thin-film solar cell production capacity 'as
soon as possible' after a planned new plant in Osaka, western Japan goes online by March
2010 with eventual output of 1,000 MW per year, Toshishige Hamano, corporate senior
executive director, said on Wednesday. The electronics group, which also supplies liquid
crystal display panels, now has thin-film cell capacity of 15 MW per year at its Katsuragi
Plant in Nara, western Japan, and plans to raise this to 160 MW in October.... Thin-film solar cells use roughly one-hundredth of the silicon
needed in conventional solar cells, cutting production time and costs." Sharp looks abroad for thin-film solar cell output Reuters, 27 February 2008 |
| "Australia is to build the
world’s biggest solar power plant after the
Hong Kong-based CLP power generating group announced on Monday that it would invest $270m
in the project. The 154MW scheme, located in the south-eastern state of Victoria, would
have nearly twice the capacity of the biggest existing solar power plant, in
California’s Mojave desert. The Mojave system, however, links nine power plants
together for a total capacity of 354MW. The Victoria project was conceived and planned by
Solar Systems, an Australian private company, and aims to lower generating costs by using
mirror arrays that track the sun to concentrate light on to advanced photovoltaic cells.
The project, which is scheduled to be completed in 2013 would generate enough electricity
to power 45,000 homes. However, that is equivalent to only about 0.1 per cent of
Australia’s electricity generation in 2006. The cost of solar power has dropped by a
factor of 10 in the past three decades, according to Christophe Inglin, managing director
of Singapore-based solar systems specialist Phoenix Solar. 'But there is still a long way
to go before it is competitive with grid [ie conventional] energy costs,' he said. Mr
Inglin said that he expected some markets to achieve 'grid parity' within the next five to
10 years." Australia thinks big on solar power Financial Times, 26 February 2008 |
| "A team of US researchers has developed an anode coating strategy
which they claim significantly enhances the
efficiency of solar energy power conversion. The
'breakthrough' at Northwestern University promises cheaper
solar cells which are more easy to manufacture and implement. Tobin J. Marks, a research professor in the Weinberg College of Arts and
Sciences, and Robert Chang, professor of materials science and engineering in the
McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, led the research team. The
scientists explained that solar cells fabricated from plastic-like
organic materials are attractive because they can be printed cheaply and quickly by a
process similar to printing a newspaper, i.e. roll-to-roll processing." Boffins boost solar cell efficiency vnunet.com, 25 Feb 2008 |
| "Transparent electrodes created from
atom- thick carbon sheets could make solar cells and LCDs without depleting precious
mineral resources, say researchers in Germany. Solar cells, LCDs and some other devices,
must have transparent electrodes in parts of their designs to let light in or out. These
electrodes are usually made from indium tin oxide (ITO) but experts calculate that there
is only 10 years' worth of indium left on the planet, with LCD panels consuming the
majority of existing stocks....Although experimental alternatives to ITO exist, these are
also unstable and of unproven efficiency, said the report in New Scientist. Zhi and
colleagues Xuan Wang and Klaus Muellen believe they have a cheaper, more stable
alternative. The report said the team is testing solar
cells with transparent electrodes made from graphene
- flat sheets of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal structure. When rolled up, this
material makes carbon nanotubes. The solar panels they created were dye-sensitized solar
cells, first invented in 1991 and predicted by some to be the most likely successor to
silicon-based solar cells. Dye-sensitized solar cells use sunlight, a mixture of different
dye pigments, and titanium dioxide - the main ingredient in white paint - to excite
electrons. This is a process that, in some ways, mimics photosynthesis. It could make
solar cells cheaper to manufacture and more efficient, in terms of power collection, than
silicon-based ones....The team is now working on reducing the number of layers to increase
transparency, and on 'ironing out' the creases that can appear in the sheets. In theory, a
single perfect layer of graphene would work well enough to replace ITO. 'Replacing the ITO
with graphene is a real great step forward as the transparent current collector is a
critical and the most expensive part of our cell,' New Scientist quoted Michael Graetzel
of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, as saying. He
invented dye sensitised solar cells in 1991." Carbon electrodes could slash cost of solar panels Deutsche Presse Agentur, 4 February 2008 |
| "Qatar is considering building one of the world's largest solar power complexes to help meet demand, which could increase four-fold over the next 30
years, the Middle East Economic Digest (MEED) reported.
Gulf Arab states have about 30 percent of the world's oil reserves and 8 percent of
its gas, but an economic boom spurred by record crude prices is driving demand for power
and water so rapidly that many are considering turning to alternative energies including
nuclear. Qatar expects to add 16,260 megawatts of power to the national grid between 2011
to 2036, almost four times current capacity of 4,200 megawatts, the magazine said, citing
Salah Hamza, senior business development planner at Qatar General Electricity & Water
Corp (Kahramaa). The solar complex would have capacity of 3,500 megawatts by 2013, Hamza
said. 'You can have up to 500 MW in one place,' he said. 'Then you will need about seven
sites because the total capacity needed at that time is 3,500 MW,' he said adding that
solar capacity could increase to 4,500 megawatts by 2036." Qatar eyes solar power to meet surging demand: report Reuters, 2 February 2008 |
| "One of the most oil-rich countries on Earth is about to build the
world's first sustainable city. The United Arab Emirates is starting construction on
Masdar, just outside Abu Dhabi, designed by British architect Lord Foster. The city will
house up to 50,000 people, be car-free, produce no waste and no
carbon and run almost entirely on sunlight. A new solar-power plant is being built, with
80 per cent of roofs covered in solar panels.....
Photovoltaic solar cells, which convert sunlight into electricity, have always been
maligned as expensive (mostly because of the high price of silicon) and inefficient. But
the clunky panels of yesterday are being replaced with sleek, new designs able to create
more electricity with less - or even no - silicon. Already, companies all over the world
are selling solar panels with clever, more efficient arrays of prisms, mirrors and lenses.
And thin film solar panels - such as new flexible plastic sheets that can be easily rolled
onto any surface (or, theoretically, mounted onto the back of an iPod or cellphone) - are
generating excitement because of their low cost and durability. Solar power, after a long
incubation period, is now the world's fastest-growing sector in the global energy markets.
Cheap and efficient new technologies are mushrooming, California is installing a million
solar roofs and Ontario - which pays solar-panel owners a premium rate to feed electricity
into the grid - signed 145 contracts last year." Europe likes biofuels, but some are 'worse than useless' Globe and Mail, 2 February 2008 |
| "The biggest problem with the sun is that it's not always around. And
during the winter months it behaves like an absentee landlord and shows up only for a few
hours. Unfortunately, solar panels must contend with this erratic behavior if they are to
save us from ourselves. If only there was a panel that worked in the dark...Well, guess
what? It looks like we might now be on the brink of technology that effectively deals with
sun's temperament. Thanks to the wonders of nanotechnology and, in no small part the
efforts of Steven Novack of the Idaho National Laboratories, there are now foldable panels
that operate at 80 percent efficiency. Conventional photovoltaics yield only about 40
percent. But as EcoGeek
explains, 'the surface of the material is printed with miniscule nano-antennae that
capture infra-red radiation, the kind that the sun puts out in abundance, and is even
available at night.'" Solar Cells That Don't Need the Sun PC Magazine, 1 February 2008 |
| "U.S. researchers said on Tuesday they have made the darkest material
on Earth, a substance so black it absorbs more than 99.9 percent of light. Made from tiny
tubes of carbon standing on end, this material is almost 30 times darker than a carbon
substance used by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology as the current
benchmark of blackness. And the material is close to the long-sought ideal black, which
could absorb all colors of light and reflect none.....Ajayan said the material could be used in solar energy conversion. 'You could think of a material that basically collects all the light
that falls into it,' he said." New material pushes the boundary of blackness Reuters, 15 January 2008 |
| "The estimates in Section 5.5
indicate that meeting the RTFO target of 5% replacement of oil based transport fuels,
without using imports, would require anywhere between
10 and 45% of the UK arable land area. The inclusion
of energy production from organic and municipal wastes would raise this contribution and
reduce the land requirement. This is a relatively small but nevertheless useful
contribution; but it is clear that the transition to
a low-carbon transport economy will require a much wider range of policies, and involve several more technologies and practices, than we have been
able to pursue in this report. The key ones include: • Improvements in vehicle fuel
efficiency. For example hybrids and plug-in hybrids
could potentially double or more the efficiency of passenger vehicles, and thus they could double the effectiveness of the biofuel
programmes. The plug-in hybrid also opens up the
important possibility of the batteries being recharged through low carbon energy forms for
electricity generation, such as renewable energy and nuclear power, which would further
reduce the ‘carbon footprint’ of transport....
• Alternative
fuelled vehicles, such as hydrogen with fuel-cells or fully
electric vehicles.... the key will be to have a
combination of policies that: (1) extend the principle of carbon pricing to transport; (2)
extend the incentives for innovation to the development and use of low carbon/high efficiency vehicles and the use of electricity or hydrogen as a vehicle fuel...." Sustainable biofuels: prospects and challenges Royal Society, January 2008 |
| "On a bleak airfield 30km (19 miles) outside Leipzig in former East
Germany, a quiet but sunny revolution is taking place.... This is the heart of Germany's
solar industry and, although still under construction, once complete it will be the
world's largest solar power station, covering the equivalent of 200 football pitches and
providing enough electricity for 10,000 homes. Germany
is the world leader in solar energy: building power stations across the country,
developing the technology and manufacturing solar panels. One in a hundred homes has gone as far as installing its own solar
arrays....Germany has done this before. Over the past
25 years, it has built up wind power and is a world leader in that as well. There are even
claims that by 2050, Germany could derive all its energy from renewables. The European Union has set a target for its member countries: 20%
renewable energy by 2020. Germany is already more than half way there. In Britain we are
trailing behind with between 4 and 5% of our energy coming from renewables. But why is
solar power happening in Germany, which is not normally considered to be one of the
world's top sun spots? Christian Hinsch of Juwi, the company building and running the
power station near Leipzig, says that this part of Germany is sunny and he says there is
plenty of room for solar power stations, particularly in the East. Most importantly, there
is a market mechanism in place, which gives suppliers of solar electricity a guaranteed
price for the energy they supply to the national grid set for 20 years. 'If you put up a
wind turbine, if you put up a bio-gas power plant or if you put up a solar power plant,
then you get a fixed price for 20 years, depending of course on the size and type of
renewable,' he says. It is called the 'feed-in' tariff and it is considerably higher than
the price paid for fossil fuel electricity." Germany's sunny revolution BBC Online, 10 January 2008 |
| "A researcher at Israel's Bar-Ilan University has
created a solar cell 100 times bigger than previous designs using nano-based methods.
Professor Arie Zaban, head of the university's Nanotechnology Institute, had already
developed a method of using metallic wires mounted on conductive glass to form the basis
of solar cells. This method produces electricity with an efficiency similar to that of
conventional silicon-based cells, but which are much
cheaper to produce." Boffin boosts solar cell size 100-fold Vnunet, 8 January 2008 |
| "In the race to make solar cells cheaper and more efficient, many
researchers and start-up companies are betting on new designs that exploit
nanostructures--materials engineered on the scale of a billionth of a meter. Using
nanotechnology, researchers can experiment with and control how a material generates,
captures, transports, and stores free electrons--properties that are important for the
conversion of sunlight into electricity. Two nanotech methods for engineering solar cell
materials have shown particular promise. One uses thin films of metal oxide nanoparticles,
such as titanium dioxide, doped with other elements, such as nitrogen. Another strategy
employs quantum dots--nanosize crystals--that strongly absorb visible light. These tiny
semiconductors inject electrons into a metal oxide film, or 'sensitize' it, to increase
solar energy conversion. Both doping and quantum dot sensitization extend the visible
light absorption of the metal oxide materials. Combining these two approaches appears to
yield better solar cell materials than either one alone does, according to Jin Zhang,
professor of chemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Zhang led a team of
researchers from California, Mexico, and China that created a thin film doped with
nitrogen and sensitized with quantum dots. When tested, the new nanocomposite material
performed better than predicted--as if the
functioning of the whole material was greater than the sum of its two individual
components." New Nanostructured Thin Film Shows Promise For Efficient Solar Energy Conversion ScienceDaily, 8 January 2008 |
| "Researchers at Idaho National Laboratory, along
with partners at Microcontinuum Inc. (Cambridge, MA) and Patrick Pinhero of the University
of Missouri, are developing a novel way to collect energy from the sun with a technology
that could potentially cost pennies a yard, be imprinted on flexible materials and still draw energy after the sun has set. The new approach, which garnered two 2007 Nano50 awards, uses a special
manufacturing process to stamp tiny square spirals of conducting metal onto a sheet of
plastic. Each interlocking spiral 'nanoantenna' is as wide as 1/25 the diameter of a human
hair. Because of their size, the nanoantennas absorb
energy in the infrared part of the spectrum, just outside the range of what is visible to
the eye. The sun radiates a lot of infrared energy, some of which is soaked up by the
earth and later released as radiation for hours after sunset. Nanoantennas can take in energy from both sunlight and the earth's heat,
with higher efficiency than conventional solar cells. 'I think these antennas really have
the potential to replace traditional solar panels,' says physicist Steven Novack, who
spoke about the technology in November at the National Nano Engineering Conference in
Boston....Commercial solar panels usually transform less that 20 percent of the usable
energy that strikes them into electricity.....The team estimates individual nanoantennas
can absorb close to 80 percent of the available energy.... One day, Novack says, these nanoantenna collectors might charge portable battery packs,
coat the roofs of homes and, perhaps, even be integrated into polyester fabric.
Double-sided panels could absorb a broad spectrum of energy from the sun during the day,
while the other side might be designed to take in the narrow frequency of energy produced
from the earth's radiated heat." Harvesting the sun's energy with nanoantennas Nanowerk, 4 January 2008 |
| "The dream of inexpensive, ecofriendly aviation has come closer to
reality after a French test pilot achieved the first flight in a conventional light aircraft powered by an electric motor. The Electra, a wood-and-fabric single-seater, flew for 48 minutes for
50km (30 miles) around the southern Alps, winning a global race to apply battery power to
a fixed-wing standard aircraft. The APAME group, founded to develop green aviation, said
that the flight showed that nonpolluting, quiet light aviation was within reach.... The
quest to replace noisy, fossil-fuelled aircraft engines with quiet, clean power has been
under way for nearly 30 years. The big hurdle is the punitive weight of batteries, which
produce only 2 per cent of the energy from the same mass of petrol.... Recent advances in
battery technology have led to electric power for small unmanned observation drones and
radio-controlled model aircraft as well as the extra drive for motor gliders. Last summer
the French group and a US inventor each flew electric-powered, delta-winged microlight
aircraft for the first time. The last challenge has been to scale up electric drive to
equip passenger-carrying conventional aircraft of the kind flown by recreational
pilots.....The group used a Souricette kit aircraft and adapted to it a 25-horsepower
British-made motor of a type that powers golf carts. The key to their pioneering flight on
December 23 was the new generation of light lithium-polymer batteries, 48kg (105lb) of
which supply power in the Electra, which has a 9m (30ft) wingspan....Electric power for larger aircraft, including airliners, is also
on the horizon, with research by Nasa and Boeing into the holy grail of the field:
hydrogen-fed fuel cells. These will drive electric
motors with power like those on French high-speed trains." Air travel switches to electricity London Times, 3 January 2008 |
| "A newly discovered material, dubbed 'nano flakes', could
revolutionise the transformation of solar energy to electricity. If researcher Martin
Aagesen's future solar cells meet early expectations, the economy and the environment will
benefit from the research which could make solar power generation viable for ordinary
households. Aagesen is a PhD from the Nano-Science Center and the Niels Bohr Institute at
the University
of Copenhagen. Aagesen pointed out that less than one per cent of the world's
electricity comes from the Sun because it is difficult to transform solar energy to
electricity. But he believes his discovery may be a 'huge step' towards boosting the
exploitation of solar energy. 'We believe that the nano flakes have the potential to
convert up to 30 per cent of the solar energy into electricity, roughly twice the amount
that we convert today,' he said. 'I discovered a perfect crystalline structure. That is a
very rare sight. While being a perfect crystalline structure we could see that it also
absorbed all light. It could become the perfect solar cell.' Aagesen explained that the
material has the potential to reduce solar cell production costs because less
semiconducting silicium will be required in the process." Boffins warm to super-efficient solar cells vnunet.com, 20 December 2007 |
| "Nanosolar, a privately held solar energy company whose backers
include Google Inc's co-founders, on Tuesday said it has started to sell what it calls 'the world's lowest cost solar panel.' 'We have begun shipping panels for freefield deployment in Eastern
Germany,' said Chief Executive Martin Roscheisen in a statement on Nanosolar's Web site.
'The first megawatt of our panels will go into a power plant installation there,' The
company, which got early stage financing from Google Inc co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry
Page, uses a thin-film technology that requires only a fraction of the amount of silicon needed in
conventional solar cells. Nanosolar's technique allows it to make panels profitably for less than $1 per watt,
it says." Nanosolar starts sales of cheaper solar panels Reuters, 18 December 2007 |
| "Roscheisen said the manufacturing process the company has developed
will enable it to eventually deliver solar electricity for less than a dollar per watt,
which would be significantly cheaper than fossil fuel sources of power
generation.....Roscheisen said the manufacturing process the company has developed will
enable it to eventually deliver solar electricity for less
than a dollar per watt, which would be significantly cheaper than fossil fuel sources of power generation." Nanosolar 'prints' first flexible solar cells CNET News, 18 December 2007 |
| "Soaring oil prices approaching $100 a barrel are fueling a sleek new
kind of solar technology that could some day set skyscrapers and high-rise apartment
windows quietly buzzing with renewable energy production. The
emerging technology uses thin films mounted on the glass windows of skyscrapers and other
surfaces to harness the sun's power. It's more aesthetic and cheaper than the bulkier
conventional solar cells made from polycrystalline silicon whose supplies have tightened
and prices have risen as solar energy has taken off.
Current thin-film surfaces generate less power per area than traditional polysilicon
modules, but they also use less polysilicon then conventional cells making them attractive
to some of the world's top solar panel makers.... Thin-film is cheaper to produce, more
durable and more aesthetic than bulky solar panels, which are often accused of being
eyesores. The transparent sheets can serve as facades
for skyscrapers and housing roofs where they absorb the sun's rays and turn it into
energy. 'One big advantage of the thin film products
is that they don't have to use too many raw materials and they are much cheaper than
silicon solar wafers,' said Robin Cheng, an analyst at UBS Securities. The potential has
attracted major solar energy players such as German-based Q-Cells AG as well as the likes
of industrial giants like Applied Materials Inc, the world's biggest maker of
semiconductor manufacturing equipment, which see big growth potential in thin-film
machinery....Thin film's advantage comes in its low price in terms of production
costs as well as its ability to serve as attractive transparent panels on large buildings." Thin-film solar sheets seek time in the sun Reuters, 6 December 2007 |
"...more than a decade of pioneering work
has resulted in an organic solar cell that doesn't use expensive silicon. Conventional
photovoltaic (PV) solar cells are made from a thin slice (around 200 microns) of silicon
that is doped with chemicals to form a bilayer structure called a p-n junction. When
photons of light are absorbed by the silicon, electrons flow, creating a small electric
current. An organic solar cell takes a similar
approach but uses an ultra-thin (100 nanometre) film mixture of two semiconducting
polymers instead. The prototype organic solar cell -
the size of Greenham's hand - produces enough power to run an electronic calculator. The
idea of a purple-coloured polymer as a conductor seems odd when plastics are normally
considered excellent insulators. But mounted on glass, this solar cell uses the same class
of materials as the polymer light-emitting diodes: long-chain plastics with double bonds
which permit electron flow.... Greenham is now working on a £5m project funded by the
Carbon Trust to deliver solar energy at radically
lower cost. Led by the University of Cambridge's
Cavendish Laboratory with The Technology Partnership, there's a huge target: deploy more
than one gigawatt of organic PV by 2017 to make carbon dioxide savings of more than 1m
tonnes per year.....If all goes well, O'Brien reckons
the new solar cell technology may be one hundredth of the cost of a silicon cell when in
mass production - promising a solar energy revolution." |
"Renewable energy company Solar
Systems says it has developed a way of converting solar power into electricity around the
clock, even when the sun is not shining. Managing director Dave Holland told BusinessDaily
that although the process, which produces hydrogen and stores it, is still years from
connecting to the electricity grid, it has been demonstrated to produce baseload power. He
said less than 1 per cent of the planet's arid lands could produce the entire world's
energy needs using the technology, without harmful emissions, concern about finite fuel
supply, or toxic waste. The company already operates four small commercial solar power
stations in central Australia and is in advanced talks to export its technology through
the Asia Pacific Partnership (AP6). Its innovative
solar concentrating technology is much further down the cost curve than conventional
photovoltaics.... It is envisaged the hydrogen
technology will be added to Solar Systems' proposed $420 million solar power station near
Mildura, which when it is complete in 2013 will have the capacity to supply
electricity to 45,000 homes. Solar Systems began to develop research by its technical
director John Lasich 17 years ago and employs 90 people. Recently the company said it
would spend $22 million to establish a manufacturing plant in Melbourne employing 150
people to make high efficiency photovoltaic components for domestic and overseas markets. The components produce up to 1500 times more electricity per
square metre than traditional photovoltaic cells.
The established outback generators use mirrors on giant dishes to concentrate solar energy
and focus it on to photovoltaic receivers connected to the dish. The next generation
technology being developed at Bridgewater takes the mirrors and lines them up in dozens of
flat rows, rather than in dishes. Known as heliostats, the mirrors track the sun and focus
its energy on to a receiver mounted on a tall pole. The technology that will continue to
produce electricity when the sun goes down works by using the concentrated solar energy to
separate water into hydrogen and oxygen through a spectrum splitter and then an
electrolyser. The hydrogen is then stored in large
onsite tanks, ready to be used by fuel cells for electricity generation at night." |
| "In the local airport parking lot, Steve Titus clicks shut the
lightweight fiberglass door of his fireman-yellow 'Solar Bug.'.... On display at a
recent alternative-car expo here, this is Titus's second and latest rendering of a
solar-powered car concept. It gets up to a fourth of its 60-mile capacity from 200 watts
of roof-mounted solar panels. Titus is among those entrepreneurs trying to create and
market an affordable, renewable-energy vehicle – a step beyond gas-electric
hybrids." Could the Solar Bug bring the sun to the car market? Christian Science Monitor, 15 November 2007 |
| "Lockheed
Martin Corp. and Starwood
Energy Group Global LLC said Friday they are teaming up to pursue building
utility-scale solar generation projects in North America. Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems
and Sensors, which is based in Moorestown, N.J., will handle engineering, procurement,
manufacturing and systems integration. Starwood Energy Group will be in charge of
arranging long-term power purchase agreements, site selection, getting permits and
providing construction and permanent debt and equity financing. The companies estimate
that up to 10,000 megawatts of solar power generating capacity could come on line in the
next 10 years. At an expected cost of $3 per watt of generating capacity, that would put
the market size at $30 billion dollars. Lockheed
Martin (NYSE:LMT) is a defense contractor based in
Bethesda, Md." Lockheed Martin and Starwood Energy in solar generation partnership Philadelphia Business Journal, 9 November 2007 |
| "A prototype of the 'Solar Impulse' round-the-world solar plane
should make its first piloted flight in autumn 2008, the Swiss project leaders said
Monday. The reduced-size model of the aircraft -- which will have a wingspan of 61 metres
(201 feet), the equivalent of an Airbus A340 airliner -- is currently being built in
northern Switzerland to test the cutting-edge technology involved in its construction. If
successful, the dainty 1.5-tonne plane could make a pioneering 36-hour flight through the
night in 2009, piloted by round-the-world ballooning pioneer Bertrand Piccard.... The
project's goals include a transatlantic crossing in 2011 before what would be a historic,
fuel-less circumnavigation of the globe....The completed craft is expected to have 250
square metres (2,690 square feet) of solar panels stretched across wings the width of the
world's biggest airliner, a 580-tonne Airbus A380, but weigh just two tonnes." Groundbreaking solar plane to test flight in 2008 AFP, 5 November 2007 |
| "Berkeley is set to become the
first city in the nation to help thousands of its residents generate solar power without
having to put money up front - attempting to
surmount one of the biggest hurdles for people who don't have enough cash to go green. The
City Council will vote Nov. 6 on a plan for the city to finance the cost of solar panels
for property owners who agree to pay it back with a 20-year assessment on their property.
Over two decades, the taxes would be the same or less than what property owners would save
on their electric bills, officials say. 'This plan could be our most important
contribution to fighting global warming,' Mayor Tom Bates said Thursday. 'We've already
seen interest from all over the U.S. People really think this plan can go.' The idea is
sparking interest from city and state leaders who are mindful of California's goals to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020. Officials in San Francisco, Santa
Cruz, Santa Monica and several state agencies have contacted Berkeley about the details of
its plan. 'If this works, we'd want to look at this for other cities statewide,' said Ken
Alex, California deputy attorney general. 'We think it's a very creative way to eliminate
the barriers to getting solar panels, and it's fantastic that Berkeley's going ahead with
this.'" Berkeley going solar - city pays up front, recoups over 20 years San Francisco Chronicle, 26 October 2007 |
| "Solar power could be the world's number one electricity source by
the end of the century, but until now its role has been negligible as producers wait for
price parity with fossil fuels, industry leaders say. Once the choice only of idealists
who put the environment before economics, production of solar panels will double both next
year and in 2009, according to U.S. investment bank Jefferies Group Inc, driven by
government support especially in Germany and Japan. Similar support in Spain, Italy and
Greece is now driving growth in southern Europe as governments turn to the sun as a weapon
both against climate change and energy dependence.... The crux is how fast the industry
cuts costs and how fast power prices rise. European power prices neared all-time highs
this week, driven by record oil prices. The industry
could halve costs and achieve parity in significant markets including the United States,
Japan and parts of southern Europe by 2012, said
Erik Thorsen, chief executive of the world's biggest solar power company Renewable Energy
Corp." Solar power edges towards boom time Reuters, 19 October 2007 |
| "Santa Clara, Calif.-based Innovalight
says it has developed a somewhat contradictory-sounding process for creating crystalline
silicon solar cells with liquid. If it works in mass production, it could slash the cost of making these solar cells by half or
more, the company claims. Innovalight essentially
creates silicon nanoparticles,
inserts them into a solvent, and pours the solvent on a substrate. The solvent is then
extracted. What is left can sort of be analogized to a snowflake or a large sugar cube: a
highly organized structure made up of tiny parts. 'We use this technique to make something
that isn't much different from (traditional) crystalline silicon solar panels, except we
get there cheaper,' CEO Conrad Burke said. 'They (the solar cells) end up in a pretty
structured form.' The key is that the resulting solar cell has efficiencies--or the amount
of sunlight the solar cell can turn into electricity--that are closer to crystalline
silicon solar cells than thin-film alternatives such as amorphous silicon or copper indium
gallium selenide or CIGS." Pour yourself a silicon solar panel CNET News, 11 October 2007 |
| "John O'Donnell started thinking about saving the world 30 years
ago....The idea is to slow global warming and cure the planet's energy woes, not with
plasma or windmills or clean' coal smoke, but with mirrors. Miles and miles of mirrors, to
be exact, focusing the rays of the sun onto pipes to heat water to run hulking steam turbines.
This so-called solar thermal approach would mean no emissions that cause global warming. No worries
about radioactive waste. No need for coal power, which faces increasingly hostile
scrutiny. Not even much need for oil, if plug-in hybrid cars like the Chevrolet Volt start
to replace gasoline burners. 'I want people to have it in their heads that there is a
solution--and it doesn't even mean raising their electric bills,' he says. A fantasy?
Maybe. The big question is not whether solar thermal plants work, but how much the
electricity will cost. Right now, the price for
existing mirror and steam turbine systems is about half that of the more familiar
photovoltaic (PV) panels, which use sheets of
semiconductors to convert sunlight to electricity. But that's still nearly twice as much
as a new coal plant. O'Donnell believes the technology he plucked from obscurity in
Australia will be cheaper - although he has to prove it.... Basic physics shows enough
sunlight falls on the deserts of the Southwest to provide all of American's electricity
many times over - given enough mirrors. But O'Donnell is already thinking about the next
step - going global. He figures Europe could get all of its electricity from Big Solar
plants in Morocco. He even has a sneaky China plan. 'Frankly, the original goal for the
company was to get an arms race started, where we move ahead in the U.S. and then China
decides to get in on the act,' he says." Solar's Day In The Sun Businessweek, 15 October 2007 |
| "The next solar panel could be a
window. Konarka Technologies and Air Products have
received a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop
a transparent, flexible solar panel that could be placed on a piece of glass or integrated
into a window. Konarka specializes in organic photovoltaics. These are complex molecules
that can harvest portions of the infrared and visible light spectrum and turn the energy
into sunlight. Organic photovoltaic panels don't last as long as silicon panels and can't
aren't as efficient as silicon or other types of panels. But they can be transparent and
flexible, allowing them to be placed unobtrusively on a lot of surfaces." Will windows work as solar panels? CNET News, 9 October 2007 |
"Power electronics company Hykon India Pvt.
Ltd. has introduced a window collector solar water heater, claimed to be the first in the
country. Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, the company's CMD, Christo
George, said the window solar heaters were designed for installation on balconies and
windows of flats, apartments and individual villas where conventional roof-top water
heaters do not fit in." |
| "More utilities are looking to build large solar power (OTCBB:SOPW)
plants that can put out as much electricity as coal- or gas-fired plants, but run much
cleaner. 'We're at the start of something,' said Julia Judd, executive director at the
Solar Electric Power Association. Most of the buzz around solar energy has focused on
smaller-scale projects, such as solar panels on rooftops. Several solar companies with
highflying stocks, such as SunPower SPWR and JA Solar JASO, are in this field. But interest is building for large, utility-scale solar projects. Such plants offer utilities a way to meet regulatory demands for more
renewable energy. Governments worldwide are providing financial incentives for such
projects....Take Pacific Gas & Electric. Late last month it said it would double its
commitments to buy solar thermal electric power. It now plans to add 1,000 megawatts of
new supply during the next five years. By comparison, it has less than 200 megawatts of PV
projects planned, Wachs says. In California, three of the state's largest utilities have
announced a handful of solar thermal projects that combined will almost meet state
requirements for 3,000 megawatts (3 gigawatts) of renewable energy by 2016, Wachs
says." Big Utilities Interested In Big Solar Investor's Business Daily, 1 October 2007 |
| "The latest project comes from an Israeli who wants to use Israel's
'gift of enterprising' to help humanity wean off of oil. Shai Agassi, former executive at
German software enterprise company SAP AG, is leading a new team of minds into
not-so-charted territory. Agassi completed military service in Israel as a programmer for
the IDF, and then earned his bachelors degree in computer science from The Technion in
Haifa. Venturing into the business world, he later sold the most successful of his
software startups for over $400 million to SAP, where he continued working until March
2007. What he was up to next was first reported in August by Reuters - holding company
Israel Corporation agreed to invest $100 million in Agassi's new
electric vehicle venture, pending due diligence,
with several other investors; the first round funding is $200 million, bringing the total
value of the venture to $300 million. The company is stealthily named BetterPLC, a
reference to an automated method of manufacturing. The
electric car is a major component of the energy paradigm shift: one where the world relies
mainly on renewable sources of energy, thereby
reducing the human effect of global warming, shifting the currency balance away from
Muslim terrorists, and declawing the menace of peak oil. 'Our goal is to get to
100,000 cars on the road in 2010,' said Agassi. He believes that since Israel has an 89%
tax on vehicles, and a 100% tax on fuel, if there were zero emissions and zero fuel, there
would be zero taxes on cars. 'You tell an Israeli that Israel will be the first country to
eliminate the use of oil, and they sign up,' Shai said in a speech given at Stanford
University. But he realizes that the electric car won't stop in Israel, 'If we can do it
Israel, and it works, we can create a repeatable model that maybe then works in London...
and then we can hopefully do it 50 times in China." Riding an Israeli electric car to peace Israel21C, 30 September 2007 |
| "Power generation from low-carbon energy sources like wind, solar and
nuclear should soon become competitive with electricity generated by coal, the cheapest of
fossil fuels, the chief executive of FPL Group Inc. said Wednesday. FPL said on Wednesday it will spend US $1.5 billion aimed at
building solar thermal energy in Florida, California
or other states. It is part of a larger US $2.4 billion program aimed at cutting emissions
of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, including a more efficient power network. The
company is already the largest US wind power producer.....Hay said FPL will build at least
300 megawatts of solar thermal in Florida, which will help the state reach new goals on
renewables outlined by Republican Gov. Charlie Crist. Unlike photovoltaic rooftop solar
energy that converts sunlight into power, solar thermal generates electricity by
converting solar energy to heat to drive a thermal power plant. The other 200 MW will be
built in California or other states....FPL obtains most of its power from other
nonrenewable sources including natural gas. The company has a peak power generation of
about 22,000 MW and that is growing at about 500 to 600 MW a year. While the solar
commitment is small compared with its overall generation portfolio, Hay said it was
significant enough to make changes in the industry. 'Only through companies like ours
making commitments of this size are we really going to drive the cost of the technology
down.' The solar thermal project in Florida, which will start as a 10 MW pilot
project at one of its power plants in the state, will eventually grow to become the
largest solar plant in the state, the fourth most populous in the country. And he expects
to make the company a top US solar producer." FPL Sees Renewables Soon Competitive With Coal Reuters, 27 September 2007 |
"Nanotechnology is important across a broad number of areas;
in fact, ‘Nanotechnology’ is one of six Advanced Technology (AT) programs we
have at GE. We’re particularly interested in how nanotechnologies can improve our
energy and healthcare businesses.... At Global Research, we have a nano team that numbers
more than 70 scientists, not counting the support staff. My nano PV [photo voltaic] team
is roughly 5-6 people plus support staff. In solar cells, we are working across the board
with a number of nanotechnology approaches to improve efficiencies and lower production
costs for solar cells. There are 3 generations of solar cells.
Nanotechnology is currently most relevant to Generation 3
cells, though it may also have an impact on Generation 1 and 2 devices. In recent years the [silicon] supply was artificially
constrained. In fact, silicon is the second most abundant element in the earth’s
crust. So, the so-called ‘silicon shortage’ over the last few years was mostly
due to the fact that [solar companies] relied on recycled silicon from electronics
companies. But, now we see people adding new capacity for silicon made specifically for
the solar industry, because the required purity is not as high as for the electronics
industry. Nanotechnology does not seem to offer an immediate answer to the shortage since
conventional approaches are being used. There are 4 different classes of nano-structures
the community is applying to photovoltaics.... First you need to capture the light, and
that’s critical to transfer the light into the structure. And, then you have to
convert that into electron-hole pairs to create the electricity. That conversion is where
nanotechnologies offer various improvements. And, as I mentioned, we are also looking at
optical properties of nanowires, and how to apply what we learned there.... Overall, the
field of improving solar technologies is still in the research phase in nano-related
areas, and so we are still developing technologies and designs, but moving forward with
nano-manufacturing will be a key aspect to making solar at much lower cost.... GE is
involved with the Department of Energy’s Solar America Initiative, which is looking
at 3 different solar cell approaches – high-efficiency silicon-based solar cells,
molded silicon wafer cells, and flexible thin-film cells. These are all geared toward
lowering the cost and improving efficiencies of solar cells. We are collaborating with
several universities and small companies in this program. The research under [SAI] is not
directly nano-focused, but we’re certainly using what we learn under SAI for our nano
research programs. SAI is about applying innovative concepts for mass production of
Generation 1 and 2 technologies.... There is a lot of promise. A lot of interesting work
is going on out there, and it’s getting more interesting all the time." |
| "Solar-powered lights have improved as the
technology they use has advanced -- today's models give off more light than their
ancestors did. Plus, they don't go dark when the electrical lines go down. Solar-powered
lights have improved as the technology they use has advanced -- today's models give off
more light than their ancestors did. Plus, they don't go dark when the electrical lines go
down....The cheapest solar yard lights are $10 to $20 per lamp, and the better models run
higher. That's because solar cells are still expensive to produce -- they're manufactured
from silicon crystals in clean-room conditions -- and NiCd and NiMH batteries also are
expensive. If you have a long driveway or garden path that will need a couple of dozen
lamps, going solar will be pricey upfront. But once the lights are installed, they'll cost nothing to operate." Solar-Powered Lights Keep Getting Better Philadelphia Inquirer, 8 September 2007 |
| "Solar energy specialists are forecasting a
bright future by focusing on technology that uses less silicon as they move toward
cost-per-kilowatt hour parity with traditional power generating firms.... Two types of
cutting-edge solar technology are taking center stage as the industry moves beyond the
traditional crystalline silicon solar cells popularized in the 1960s and 70s: thin film
solar, which contains lower amounts of expensive silicon, as well as solar concentrators,
which use an array of lenses or mirrors to magnify the sun's power to boost electrical
output and efficiency." Solar energy hopes to shine with less silicon MarketWatch, 6 September 2007 |
| "Millions of inventions pass quietly through the U.S. patent office
each year. Patent No. 7,033,406 did, too, until energy insiders spotted six words in the
filing that sounded like a death knell for the internal combustion engine. An Austin-based
startup called EEStor promised 'technologies for
replacement of electrochemical batteries,' meaning a
motorist could plug in a car for five minutes and
drive 500 miles roundtrip between Dallas and Houston
without gasoline....Clifford's company bought rights to EEStor's technology in August 2005
and expects EEStor to start shipping the battery replacement later this year for use in
ZENN Motor's short-range, low-speed vehicles. The technology also could help invigorate the renewable-energy sector by providing efficient,
lightning-fast storage for solar power, or, on a
small scale, a flash-charge for cell phones and laptops.... EEStor's secret ingredient is
a material sandwiched between thousands of wafer-thin metal sheets, like a series of
foil-and-paper gum wrappers stacked on top of each other. Charged particles stick to the
metal sheets and move quickly across EEStor's proprietary material. The result is an
ultracapacitor, a battery-like device that stores and releases energy quickly. Batteries
rely on chemical reactions to store energy but can take hours to charge and release
energy. The simplest capacitors found in computers and radios hold less energy but can
charge or discharge instantly. Ultracapacitors take the best of both, stacking capacitors
to increase capacity while maintaining the speed of simple capacitors." Texas Startup Says It Has Batteries Beat Associated Press, 4 September 2007 |
| "Solar energy in Korea is mostly used to heat single homes, but now
the nation has its first regional solar heating system. On Friday, the Korea Institute of
Energy Research and the Korea District Heating Corp. will hold an opening ceremony for a
homemade regional solar heating system at the corporation's office in Bundang, Seongnam
city in Gyeonggi Province. The system includes the largest solar panel in the country,
measuring 1,069 sq. m. The panel will reheat water from an existing regional heating
system to 90 degrees Celcius and reintroduce it to the system. According to the results of
a test run, the solar system will be able to provide heat for 40 to 50 households. It is
expected to save W30 million (US$1=W940) and 82 tons of oil per year while reducing annual
carbon dioxide emissions by 138 tons." Korea Builds Regional Solar Heating System Chosun Ilbo (South Korea), 31 August 2007 |
| "With an aim to supply power to every nook and corner of the country,
the government is contemplating to provide solar energy to 25,000 unelectrified villages
by 2012. 'There are 25,000 villages in the country where due to technical reasons regular
electricity could not be provided. So, we are planning to connect them with solar and
bio-energy,' Union Minister for New and Renewable Energy Vilas Muttemwar said addressing a
function here. Acknowledging that 56 per cent villages have no power connection, he
said though the country needed 3 lakh MW power, the present production is just 1.35 lakh
MW. Muttemwar said renewable energy was the only solution in the future to overcome
the energy crisis in the country as excessive use of fossil fuels were creating
environmental problem in the form of global warming and climate change. 'India is blessed
with plenty of renewable energy sources such as solar, bio-energy, wind and hydel energy.
With such a vast pool of renewable resources available, the Ministry is striving to
provide energy in every village and lighting in every house,' he said. In her
speech, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit highlighted the steps taken by her government
to promote solar energy in the capital city." Solar energy to 25,000 villages by 2012: Muttemwar Economic Times (India), 22 August 2007 |
"Placing a film of silicon nanoparticles
onto a silicon solar cell can boost power, reduce heat and prolong the cell's life, researchers
now report. 'Integrating a high-quality film of silicon nanoparticles 1 nanometer in
size directly onto silicon solar cells improves power performance by 60 percent in the
ultraviolet range of the spectrum,' said Munir Nayfeh, a physicist at the University of
Illinois and corresponding author of a paper accepted for publication in Applied Physics
Letters. The process of coating solar cells with silicon nanoparticles could be easily
incorporated into the manufacturing process with little additional cost, Nayfeh
said." |
| "Amid a journey around the world with a solar energy vehicle,
Switzerland's Louis Palmer arrived in Beirut to promote clean sources of energy. 'For
the first time in history, we are driving a car, powered by solar energy, around the whole
world, Palmer told The Daily Star, near his car parked on Fouad Chehab street.... So far,
Parmer has crossed the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia,
Turkey, Syria, before coming to Lebanon. He will later continue on to Jordan. 'The journey
will last around 15 months with a goal to cover at least 50,000 kilometers. I will visit
50 countries and five continents,' Palmer said. Bertrand Picard, who intends to fly around
the world in his solar plane 'Solar Impulse' in 2011, was the first passenger on board,
accompanying Palmer on the first stage of his journey. The "solar taxi" consists
of a solar vehicle and a trailer with solar cells. The
car was dubbed 'Solar' because it is powered 100 percent from solar energy in its journey
around the world. The 'solar taxi' consists of a
solar vehicle and a trailer with solar cells. The car was dubbed 'Solar' because it is
powered 100 percent from solar energy in its journey around the world." Solar car makes stop in Beirut on world tour Daily Star (Lebanon), 14 August 2007 |
| "For many years, engineers have attempted to find ways to produce solar-powered electricity which is competitive with other methods. The most common solar-electric technique involves use of 'photovoltaic cells,' which convert sunlight directly into electricity. Unfortunately, these cells remain very expensive, despite many decades of research and testing. Until the costs of solar electricity at least approach those of conventional methods, it is difficult to envision large-scale adoption. Now the exciting part: an Israeli scientist has developed a methodology that may make solar power viable and competiti |
