| 2015 |
"One
of the limitations of current solar panel technology is the panels need to be facing in a
certain direction to make the most of the Sun's rays, otherwise the amount of energy they
can absorb drops off dramatically. A newly
invented material could make the direction of solar panels much less of a concern in
the future. The material has been produced by
electrical engineers at the King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST)
in Saudi Arabia and Taiwan's National Central University. Not only does the glass coating
they've come up with soak up sunlight from multiple angles more effectively, it's also
able to keep itself clean - the newly treated panels were able to maintain 98.8 percent of
their efficiency after six weeks outdoors. For several years now experts have debated
whether solar panels are more productive when facing south or west, with the majority
concluding that it really depends on where in the world you live. If the new coating can
be produced on a mass scale, not only will panels become more efficient, they can also be
placed in all kinds of positions to catch the sunlight. To
create the glass coating, the researchers integrated ultrathin nanorods and larger
honeycomb-shaped nanowalls into the existing material: the ability of the nanorods to
capture subwavelengths of light and the scattering ability of the nanowalls combine to
lead to a boost in efficiency of between 5.2 and 27.7 percent. In the long term, as much as
a 46 percent efficiency improvement could be possible, depending on the angle of the
light."
Scientists have invented a new glass coating for omnidirectional solar panels
Science
Alert, 23 December 2015 |
"India’s
total installed capacity of solar power has crossed the 5-GW-mark. The total commissioned utility solar capacity in the country stands at
about 4.7 GW, while rooftop capacity is 525 MW, according to Bridge to India, a solar
energy consulting firm. “Solar sector has got great momentum with capacity addition
in 2015 more than doubling up over last year and total pipeline of over 15 GW of projects
under bidding-cum-development,” Vinay Rustagi, Managing Director, Bridge to India,
said in a report. During last fiscal, a total capacity of 1,112 MW of grid connected solar
power projects and 44.5 MW of rooftop projects were installed. For the current fiscal, 827
MW of solar capacity has been added so far."
Solar capacity crosses 5,000 MW
The
Hindu, 6 December 2015 |
"Researchers
in the US have figured out how to make solar cells absorb significantly more sunlight than
they previously could by making the tiny wires that lie across the top of solar cells
effectively invisible. Conventional solar cells are
panels with a square grid of wires interlaced over the top of them. These wires are
necessary to conduct the electrical charge absorbed by the cell, but while they might not
look like they’re really blocking the cell’s capacity to absorb sunlight, in
reality they are – obstructing 5–10 percent of the light that would otherwise
hit the cell. If only you could make those wires… disappear? Well, it seems that we
can.“Using nanotechnology, we have developed a novel way to make the upper metal
contact nearly invisible to incoming light,” said
one of the researchers, Vijay Narasimhan from Stanford University. “Our new
technique could significantly improve the efficiency and thereby lower the cost of solar
cells.” ...With expectations that their nano-wire sheeting could boost the efficiency
of conventional solar cells from 20 to 22 percent, the researchers plan to test the design
on a working cell to see how it performs in the real world."
New 'invisible' nano-wires hide from the sun for increased solar cell efficiency
ScienceAlert,
27 November 2015 |
"SolarCity
today
said it has manufactured the world's most efficient rooftop solar panel. The
photovoltaic panels have an efficiency exceeding 22%, the company said, 7 percentage
points higher than the average rooftop panel efficiency rating of roughly 15%. "The new SolarCity panel generates more power per square foot and
harvests more energy over a year than any other rooftop panel in production and will be
the highest volume solar panel manufactured in the Western Hemisphere," the company
stated in its news release. SolarCity is headed by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk. It was
founded by Musk and his cousins Peter Rive and Lyndon Rive. SolarCity said it will
begin production of the new solar panels in small quantifies this month at its 100 MW
(megawatt) pilot facility in Freemont, Calif. The company, however, eventually plans to
begin mass production of the panels in its 1
GW (gigawatt) facility in Buffalo, N.Y. The 1 GW facility is expected to produce
from 9,000 to 10,000 solar panels per day once it's running at full capacity, SolarCity
stated. According to SolarCity, the new panels were measured as having a 22.04%
module-level efficiency by Renewable Energy
Test Center, a third-party certification provider. The new panels produce 30% to 40%
more power over the current models, but they cost the same to manufacture -- about .55
cents per watt, according to Bass. The panels, which are 1.61 meters or 1.81 meters in
size, depending on the model, will have a capacity of 355 watts each."
SolarCity claims it has created the world's most powerful solar panel
Computerworld,
2 October 2015 |
"Advances
in solar power are happening so quickly that they could herald the end of the era of large
coal-fired or nuclear power stations in Britain, according to senior executives at
National Grid. “From a consumer’s point of
view, the solar on the rooftop is going to be the baseload,” Steve Holliday, the
transmission network’s chief executive, said. “Centralised power stations will
be increasingly used to provide peak demand.”"
Grid shouts it from the rooftops: the future belongs to solar power
London
Times, 28 September 2015 |
"National
Grid finance chief Andrew
Bonfield says solar panel costs are falling so rapidly that energy from
the sun is expected to be one of the most cost-effective ways to power homes within
18 months. With home storage of electricity and
using battery technology fast advancing in the United States, he said that the prospect of
pulling the plug on a power company and going off-grid could become a reality for all in
the UK within five years. “From a consumer’s point of view, the solar on the
rooftop is going to be the baseload,” Steve
Holliday, the transmission network’s chief executive, said. “Centralised
power stations will be increasingly used to provide peak demand.” Mr Holliday, who is
scheduled to leave National
Grid next year after 15 years with the business, said that energy markets were
“clearly moving towards much more distributed production and towards microgrids”
— a big break from the past, when big power stations delivered centralised power to
consumers and businesses on demand....Mr Holliday made his remarks in an interview with
World Energy Focus, a publication of the World
Energy Council, an alliance of 90 nations that collaborate on energy policy matters.
“The amount of solar being added to the system is incredible,” he said.
“[There was] 1,500 megawatts in the first three months of this year. That’s the
capacity of two power stations. I made a comment to the energy minister four years ago
that there was little probability we would have 20,000MW of solar in the UK. Now three of
our scenarios have more than 20,000MW of solar by 2035.”"
Cost of Solar below Grid in 2017 – says UK Grid
off-grid,
28 September 2015 |
"When
world leaders assemble in Paris next month for the United Nations Climate Conference, they
will have to consider a difficult issue: Where humans will get enough energy to meet their
needs without destroying
the planet. From a purely scientific perspective, solar is the only solution. Humanity's most ambitious goals -- such as pulling another 2 billion
people out of extreme poverty, or getting a grip on global warming -- require an abundant
source of clean, renewable energy. The question is how to choose among options such as
solar, wind and biomass. To that end, a group of
scientists from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry decided to figure out
which energy source has the most potential to satisfy humans' long-term needs. Their
result is striking: Solar can offer about 100 times as much clean energy as any other
source. The total solar energy hitting the Earth at
the top of the atmosphere is about 175,000 terawatts, or about 10,000 times what humans
currently use. Much of this gets absorbed in the atmosphere, where it fuels winds and
storms and helps drive ocean flows. A bit less than half reaches the planet's surface in
the form of radiation energy. Humans collect the sun's energy in two ways. First, we
employ solar technology to harvest the light radiation directly. Second, we get it
indirectly, by burning organic matter (oil or coal) that the sun helped to grow, or by
harnessing the wind and waves that the sun's light stirs up. Each method has its own
physical limit -- the amount of sunlight that, according to the laws of thermodynamics, it
can convert into usable energy. The scientists from Max Planck find that the indirect
method is by far the most wasteful. For wind energy, the best possible efficiency --
defined as the fraction of initial sunlight captured for human use -- is only about 0.5
percent. Making biofuels from plants operating through photosynthesis turns out to be only
slightly better, with a maximum efficiency of 1.5 percent on land, mostly because plants
manage to gather light energy only from a small fraction of the spectrum. The direct
approach is much better. The scientists estimate that energy can be harvested with 93
percent efficiency from direct sunlight, and 73 percent from diffuse, ambient light. The
combination of abundance and efficiency makes solar power far more promising than other
energy sources. Using satellite data on global
radiation patterns, the scientists estimate the maximum solar energy derivable over land
at 16,300 terawatts, about 1,000 times our current energy usage. That's more than 100
times what can be had from either wind or biomass. Adding energy gathered over the oceans
doesn’t change the picture much. To be sure, photovoltaic technology remains far from
ideal. The current average efficiency is only 20 percent, well below the theoretical
maximum. Still, even with such devices, the available solar energy exceeds our current use
by more than 250 times. Hence, it makes sense to keep expanding the use of solar
technology, which has been
growing at nearly 5 percent a year for 20 years. We can meet our energy needs with
solar farms covering only a small fraction of the planet, particularly if one assumes that
efficiency will improve."
Need Energy? Look to the Sun
Bloomberg,
28 September 2015 |
"More American homes than ever before are getting solar panels. The
market to install solar panels on the roofs of homes in the U.S. set another record in the
second quarter of this year, indicating a shift in the U.S. solar panel industry towards
home owners and consumers. According to a new report from research firm GTM Research and
the Solar Energy Industry Association trade group, the recent record beat out the amount
of solar panels installed on home roofs in the first quarter of this year,
which itself was a record at the time..... The amount
of home solar roofs grew 70% year-over-year for the most recent quarter, and went from
four states with vibrant residential solar markets in 2013, to ten states today.... Overall the growth in both the utility-scale and residential solar
markets in the U.S. this year has been impressive. There are now over 20 gigawatts of
solar panels operating in the U.S., which can power 4.6 million U.S. homes. So far this
year, 40% of all the new electricity-generating capacity came from solar."
Solar panels just broke another record in the U.S.
Fortune, 9 September
2015 |
"Manhattan has approximately 47,000
buildings with around 10.7 million windows, according to a 2013 estimate from The New York Times. Now imagine if
just 1% -- or 100,700 -- of those windows could generate electricity through transparent
photovoltaics. That's the idea behind solar power windows, and at least two companies are
hoping to sell the technology to window manufacturers, saying once installed in a building
the technology will pay for itself in about a year. "If you look at the glass that's
manufactured worldwide today, 2% of it is used for solar panels; 80% of it is used in
buildings. That's the opportunity," said Suvi Sharma, CEO of solar panel maker Solaria. Solaria
uses existing photovoltaic (PV) cells and slices them into 2.5mm strips. It then
sandwiches those thin PV strips between glass layers in a window. "The way human eye
works, you don't even notice them," Sharma said. An additional benefit? As the PV
strips absorb light striking a building's window, they reduce the "solar heat gain
coefficient"; in other words, the windows reduce the sunlight's effect on a
building's internal air temperature and thereby lower air conditioning costs. Solaria is
targeting its technology for windows that will be installed in newly constructed
buildings. Another company, SolarWindow
Technologies, is pitching a different form of transparent PV cell technology for new
construction, replacement windows and retrofits to existing windows. SolarWindow is using
what it calls organic photovoltaics, which can vary in color and transparency. The company
is planning to announce its product in a couple of weeks. SolarWindow CEO John Conklin
said what sets his company's technology apart is its ease of integration. Because it's
based on a PV film, it can be adhered to existing windows or incorporated into
manufactured products relatively easily. Depending on the number of south-facing windows,
which receive a majority of the sun's light, and the building's location in the U.S.,
Solaria's technology could provide from 20% to 30% of a skyscraper's energy needs, Conklin
said. Conklin would not disclose exactly which
organic material SolarWindow uses. In 2013, however, Oxford University researchers released
the results of a study on how neutral-colored, semi-transparent solar cells made of
perovskite could be used in building and car windows to generate electricity. Perovskite
is an oxide used in ceramic superconductors. The Oxford researchers said they could create
transparent solar cells with comparatively high efficiencies. For example, the researchers
were able to drive PV efficiencies up to 20% in a "remarkably short period of
time" using a simple cell architecture. The university's work is being commercialized
by Oxford Photovoltaics (a spin-out company), which is planning to produce attractively
colored and semi-transparent glass, which works as a solar cell and could be integrated
into the facades of buildings and windows. Similarly, a team of researchers at Michigan
State University (MSU) has
developed a new type of transparent solar concentrator that when placed over a window
creates solar energy. Called a transparent luminescent solar concentrator (TLSC), MSU's
technology can not only be used on building windows but also on cell phones and any other
device that has a clear, uncolored surface. Richard Lunt of MSU's College of Engineering
said the key to the TLSC technology is that it's completely transparent. "No one
wants to sit behind colored glass," Lunt, an assistant professor of chemical
engineering and materials science, said in a statement. "It makes for a very colorful
environment, like working in a disco. We take an approach where we actually make the
luminescent active layer itself transparent." MSU's solar harvesting technology uses
small organic molecules developed by Lunt and his team to absorb specific nonvisible
wavelengths of sunlight. One problem with MSU's technology is that more work is needed to
improve its energy efficiency. Currently it is able to produce a solar conversion
efficiency close to 1%, but the researchers hope to achieve efficiencies beyond 5% when
fully optimized. Today, traditional solar power panels that reside in solar farms or on
building rooftops can achieve a PV efficiency of about 15% to 20%. The efficiency rating
refers to how much of the photons striking a solar cell are converted into energy.
Solaria's solar window technology can achieve a solar effiency of about 8% to 10%.
SolarWindow's Conklin would not disclose his company's technology efficiency rating, but
did say it was less than standard PV panels. "Obviously
when you're looking at absorbing visible light and it's transparent, it's not as efficient
as an opaque panel," Conklin said. When it comes to solar windows, however,
efficiency matters less than transparency, Conklin said. "When you're looking at
transparent or clear photovoltaics, it's not necessarily a function of power conversion
efficiency as it is about using the vast amount of space available for that tech,"
Conklin said. "We're making use of the space that right now is not available for
solar energy production. Passive windows are turned into active energy generating
windows." In other words, transparent solar PV is about not wasting perfectly good
real estate in order to supplement a building's power requirements. The solar window technologies utilize varying methods of transmitting the
energy that the PVs produce to a building's internal power infrastructure. Solaria, for
example, hides its wiring in the window's frame, and the connectors are wired into a newly
constructed building's electrical conduits. Those conduits lead to a central power
inverter, which converts the solar windows direct current to alternating current that's
usable in the electric grid. SolarWindow's technology can come with micro DC-to-AC power
inverters, allowing the electricity to be used only in one room with a solar window.
Alternately, it can be connected to a distributed microgrid inverter to power a single
floor of a building or to a central inverter from which the entire building can draw
power. Solaria is already piloting its windows in "a few" buildings and it is
working on the first large-scale commercial projects in California and Europe, according
to Sharma. Sharma did not disclose the projects..... Solar windows will cost about 40%
more than conventional windows, but the ROI is achievable in under a year and there's big
demand even though products have yet to ship, the manufacturers say. "It's actually
very viable and will be even more viable as we approach our product launch," Conklin
said. "It's in very high demand because right now skyscrapers... don't have a good
way of offsetting energy through renewable energy generation." "
Solar windows can power buildings
Fortune,
4 September 2015 |
"Thousands
of householders are installing solar-powered "smart meters" that promise to cut
household bills by £250 a year. The development comes as state payouts for renewable energy produced
in homes fall sharply. The devices track when
rooftop solar panels produce excess energy and divert it to a water heater. The hot water
can be used later, saving on gas and electricity bills. Any gadget that claims to improve
the return on solar panels will come as welcome news to home owners who could see
subsidies cut by 87pc as part of a government reform to the "feed-in tariff". If
you bought solar panels today the Government would pay a feed-in-tariff rate of 13p per
kilowatt hour (kWh). But from January this rate will drop to less than 2p. The move
will cut the taxpayer-funded subsidy by £192 per year for a typical household as
ministers attempt to halt a £1.5bn overspend on renewable energy."
'My solar power smart meter shaves £250 off energy bills'
Telegraph,
28 August 2015 |
"Tesla's
Elon Musk has long propagated the idea that solar is the power source of the
future, and tech giants like Apple
and Amazon
have recently been pushing to reduce their dependence on non-renewables. But Cochin, a
city in the South Indian state of Kerala, has upped the ante, announcing that its
international airport will now run completely on solar power from 46,150 panels laid
across 45 acres. According to a press release, Cochin International’s solar
power station is expected to save 300,000 tons worth of carbon emissions over the next 25
years. That’s the equivalent of planting three million trees or not driving 750
million miles."
India reveals world’s first 100 percent solar-powered airport
The Verge,
19 August 2015 |
"A
team of experts from the University of Exeter mimicked the v-shaped posture adopted by the
butterflies to heat up their flight muscles before take-off. In doing this, they were able
to increase harvested solar power in panels by almost 50%. The power-to-weight ratio of the overall solar energy structure was also
increased 17-fold in the process, making it much more efficient. Professor Tapas Mallick,
lead author of the research said: "Biomimicry in engineering is not new. However,
this truly multidisciplinary research shows pathways to develop low cost solar power that
have not been done before." Being the early birds among butterflies on cloudy days,
the Cabbage White butterflies that take off early have limited access to solar energy. The
V-shaped posturing used on such days helps them maximise the amount of solar energy onto
their thorax and fly. Sub-structures on their wings reflect light efficiently, ensuring
that the flight muscles are warmed to an optimal temperature as quickly as possible. The
optimal angle of 17 degrees between the wings increases temperature by around 7 degree C
as compared when held flat. The Exeter team set out to replicate the wing structure and
develop a new, lightweight reflective material for solar panels. Besides the angle, a
single layer of scale cells as found in the butterfly wings helped improve power-to-weight
ratios of solar concentrators, making them significantly lighter and more efficient. The
research by the team from the Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI) and the
Centre for Ecology and Conservation, based at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in
Cornwall, is published in the leading scientific journal, Scientific Reports. Solar energy is predicted to become the cheapest source of
electricity across much of the globe in the next 10 years. It is fast approaching grid
parity with fossil fuel power, and in some cases falling even lower as wafers go thinner
and more efficient. Solar photovoltaic prices have fallen by 80% since 2008. The global
installed capacity of solar electricity has increased by six times to 135GW in 2013 from
23GW in 2010."
Solar energy: Butterfly wing design helps increase power collection by 50%
International
Business Times, 4 August 2015 |
"Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton called on Sunday for a dramatic national shift to energy sources such as
solar and wind, setting a goal of generating enough clean renewable energy to power every
U.S. home within a decade after she takes office. Clinton,
the front-runner for her party's 2016 presidential nomination, also pledged to have more
than half a billion solar panels installed nationwide within four years of taking office."
Hillary Clinton sets renewable energy goals to spur more wind, solar power
Reuters,
26 July 2015 |
"Solar
power could become as cheap as conventional thermal energy over the next two to three
years and reach Rs 4-4.5 per unit by FY18, India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) said in a
report.
'This will be driven by a decline in capital costs -- solar modules and other balance of
plant equipment, an increase in efficiency, a shift towards large solar photovoltaic
projects leading to the economies of scale and lower return expectations by developers,'
Ind-Ra said."
Solar power may become cheaper than thermal in 2-3 years: India Ratings and Research
The
Economic Times, 22 July 2015 |
"Oman’s largest oil
producer ordered work to begin on what will be one of the biggest solar plants in the
world, establishing the technology as an alternative to fossil fuels for coaxing crude out
of the ground. GlassPoint Solar Solar Inc. will build the facility at the Amal oilfield in
southern Oman, according to a statement on
Wednesday. Rows of parabolic mirrors covering 2 square kilometers (0.8 square mile) will
heat 1,021 megawatts of steam, which will be injected into underground reservoirs to
reduce the viscosity of the crude produced there. The development is a landmark both for
its scale and because it shows the oil industry can tap renewables instead of its own
supplies to power its own facilities. Those energy needs are vast and growing as the top
grades of crude drain away, leaving producers dependent on heavier deposits."
World’s Biggest Solar Heat Plant Backed by Oman to Boost Oil
Bloomberg,
8 July 2015 |
"A consortium of eleven European partners in eight countries claims
to have an effcient alternative to silicon that achieves 25% efficiency with its Sharc25
(super-high efficiency CIGS thin-film solar cells) program to produce single-junction
thin-film solar cells that rival silicon at 25 percent efficiency for a fraction of the
cost of the cheap low-efficiency Chinese varieties.
Today run-of-the-mill single-crystal silicon solar cells—the most used
variety—average about 25 percent efficiency, although advanced designs have been
reported to have efficiencies approaching the theoretical limit of 33 percent. The cheap
thin-film variety favored by Chinese manufacturers and other low-cost solar cell suppliers
use achieve significantly lower efficiencies, although last month Japan's National
Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), the Photovoltaic Power
Generation Technology Research Association (PVTEC), Sharp, Panasonic, and Mitsubishi
reported a triple-junction thin-film solar cell built in a joint venture that achieved in
excess of 13
percent efficiency. The Sharc25 project, coordinated by the Centre for Solar
Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Wurttemberg (ZSW, Stuttgart, Germany) was funded to the
tune of $6.9 million by the European Union's Horizon 2020 program in conjunction with the
Swiss government's Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology at
Eidgenossische Materialprufungs und Forschungsanstalt (Empa, Dubendorf, Switzerland).
"Our solar cells could be used for small devices such as wearables," Ayodhya
Tiwari, head of Empa’s Thin Film and Photovoltaics laboratory and the scientific
coordinator of Sharc25 told EE Times. "But our main interest is large scale power
generation for applications in buildings and solar farms on a utility scale."
Thin Film Solar Cells May Rival Silicon
EE Times, 6 July 201 |
"A
new power converter chip that can harvest more than 80 per cent of the energy trickling
into it has been designed by MIT researchers. Previous ultra-power converters had
efficiencies of only 40 or 50 per cent, and where its predecessors could use a solar cell
to charge a battery or directly power a device, the new chip can do both, the researchers
said. It can power the device directly from the
battery. The chip could forge the way for extremely low-power sensors that can run for
months without battery changes or that can extract energy from the environment to
recharge, which is necessary in the Internet of Things age. Vehicles, appliances and
equipment would have their own embedded sensors to feed back information directly to
network services, streamlining the maintenance process and coordination of tasks. The
chip's operations share a single inductor, its main electrical component, which saves
space on a circuit board, but increases the circuit complexity even further while keeping
the power consumption low."
Solar-powered sensors to harvest almost double the energy
E & T, 24
June 2015 |
"The
Government and local councils have splashed millions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash on
building thousands of electric
car charging points that barely anyone uses. Ministers confirmed that public money had
been used to construct a network of of 57,567 publicly-funded charging points as of the
end of the last financial year. The figure is roughly double the number electric cars
actually registered for use on the road in Britain – around 24,500 as of December
2014, according to the Office for Low Emission Vehicles. Despite the rarity of electric cars, there are now more than six times as
many charging points in Britain as there are petrol stations. In 2013 the Government
unveiled a £37m grant package to build the charging stations, with cash strapped local
councils forking out even more money to install the points. The grant was part of a £400m
commitment towards encouraging the take-up of similar cars."
Britain has twice as many taxpayer-funded electric car charging points as it actually has
electric cars
Independent,
22 June 2015 |
"A
new technology developed by scientists at University of California - Los
Angeles (UCLA) can store solar energy for up to several weeks -- an advance that could
change the way scientists think about designing solar cells. The materials in most of
today's residential rooftop solar panels can store energy from the sun for only a few
microseconds at a time. The new design is inspired by the way that plants generate energy
through photosynthesis. 'In photosynthesis, plants
that are exposed to sunlight use carefully organised nanoscale structures within their
cells to rapidly separate charges -- pulling electrons away from the positively charged
molecule that is left behind, and keeping positive and negative charges separated,' said
senior study author Sarah Tolbert. 'That separation is the key to making the process so
efficient,' Tolbert said. To capture energy from sunlight, conventional rooftop solar
cells use silicon, a fairly expensive material. On the other hand, plastic solar cells -
which are cheaper - are relatively inefficient, because the separated positive and
negative electric charges often recombine before they can become electrical energy.
'Modern plastic solar cells don't have well-defined structures like plants do. But this
new system pulls charges apart and keeps them separated for days, or even weeks,' Tolbert
said. 'Once you make the right structure, you can vastly improve the retention of energy,'
she added. The two components that make the UCLA-developed system work are a polymer donor
and a nano-scale fullerene acceptor. In the new system, the materials self-assemble just
by being placed in close proximity. The new design is
also more environment-friendly than current technology, because the materials can assemble
in water instead of more toxic organic solutions that are widely used today, the
researchers said. The findings were published in the journal Science."
Plant inspired solar cells to revolutionise energy storage
IANS,
21 June 2015 |
"While
China has long been a leader in making solar panels, it’s now become the largest
market, by far, for solar panels. China has emerged as the world’s largest market for
solar panels and in 2015 is expected to be home to a quarter of the planet’s new
energy capacity from solar panels, according to a new report from GTM Research. China is rapidly adding as much power generation as possible, and solar
is just one source of new energy generation in the country. China is expected to install
14 gigawatts of solar panels in 2015 out of a total 55 gigawatts worth of solar panels
installed worldwide. In addition to China, countries in the Asia Pacific region are
supposed to count for more than half of the world’s new solar panel capacity this
year, including many new solar installations in Japan (a huge market following the
reduction of nuclear in the wake of the Fukushima crisis), and an emerging potentially
huge market in India. One gigawatt is around the size of a large natural gas or nuclear
plant. Usually when people think about solar panels they picture panels installed on the
rooftops of homes or buildings. And while that market
is growing in some
countries, the vast majority of solar panels being installed in China are mounted on
the ground, organized into big solar farms, installed in remote areas and sold to
utilities. China’s National Energy Administration says that out of the 28.05
gigawatts of solar panels that were connected to the country’s grid by the end of
2014, 23.38 gigawatts came from the ground-mounted type of solar panels."
China is utterly and totally dominating solar panels
Fortune,
18 June 2015 |
"They have become a commonplace sight across Britain: rows of
darkly-winking panels nestling across rooftops, quietly generating free energy for the
inhabitants below during daylight hours. It is fair to say that the success of solar power has astonished energy analysts over the last
five years. The International Energy Agency yesterday forecast that renewables will
produce more power than coal within 15 years.Technically, if solar’s current rate of
growth continues, its output could match world power demand in just 18 years time. From
big banks such as UBS and Citigroup, to environmental groups and technology entrepreneurs,
everyone is talking of a 'solar revolution'. The sun
has become mainstream, and the world is moving inexorably towards a future that is not
only clean, but which promises to democratise energy generation. UK solar output nearly doubled last year and in Britain there is
now around 8GW installed across houses, offices, schools and poor-quality land –
enough to power 2.4 million homes. Combined with unprecedented cost reductions (a 70 per
cent price drop in five years) and massive public popularity (80 per cent plus in repeated
opinion surveys), solar power has been an astonishing UK energy success story. Unfortunately, politicians don’t seem to have woken up to the
extraordinary implications. Policy changes made towards the end of the last government
favour more expensive and less popular technologies, which risks stalling further growth.
Other nations, by contrast, are not restraining themselves. Both
India and China will have 100GW installed within the next seven years. However, in its official projections, the Department for Energy and
Climate Change anticipates that Britain will install only 4GW between now and 2020 - as
much as we installed over the past year alone. To follow this pathway would be to
constrain a cutting-edge British industry that has the potential not only to generate
cost-effective electricity at home, but also to become a leading player in the global
market, guaranteeing jobs and revenue. So what do we need to do to develop our solar
industry? The first thing is to unlock the barriers to installing solar panels across
large rooftops: factories, supermarkets, university buildings, warehouses and the like. Our independently verified analysis shows that the UK can install
twice as much solar capacity by 2020 as currently forecast, for only a little more than we
estimate current policies will cost. This is a question of using financial support more
efficiently and providing better stability for the industry. Our plan would see solar
power providing seven per cent of UK electricity in 2020 and providing 57,000 jobs across
the solar industry and its supply chains."
Leonie Greene, head of strategy at the Solar Trade Association
Solar power’s success is key to clean energy
Telegraph,
15 June 2015 |
"The
Spanish government is planning to tax homes that produce their own energy through solar
power and store some of it using batteries. A draft decree prepared by the Industry,
Energy and Tourism Ministry establishes a new fee to discourage the use of batteries or
other storage systems by people who produce electricity, with solar or photovoltaic panels
for instance, and who are connected to the national power grid. Under the new rules, these self-reliant consumers will not be able to use
products such as the Powerwall battery
recently launched by American automotive and energy-storage company Tesla, and will
additionally be penalized for the storage systems that come included with the latest
generation of solar panels. Only off-grid consumers who have their own, completely
independent energy-production systems will be able to use batteries without being
penalized for it. Modern storage devices typically have an autonomy of two hours or so,
making it difficult to be entirely self-reliant. The
new fee will not affect systems without storage, which work only for instantaneous
consumption."
Government to tax consumers who store their own renewable energy
El Pais, 11
June 2015 |
"A
record amount of solar power was added to the world’s grids in 2014, pushing total
cumulative capacity to 100 times the level it was in 2000. Around 40GW of solar power was
installed last year, meaning there is now a total of 178GW to meet world electricity
demand, prompting renewable energy associations to claim that a tipping point has been
reached that will allow rapid acceleration of the technology. 'For the first time ever in Europe, renewables produced more power than
nuclear – and solar power was key in achieving this remarkable achievement,' said
Michael Schmela, executive adviser to trade body SolarPower Europe, which compiled the
statistics published on Tuesday. Britain led the European solar expansion, with
government incentives helping to add 2.4GW of solar resources to the domestic market, and
a third to Europe’s overall 7GW of growth. Unofficial sources estimated the British
numbers even higher – at up to 3GW – based on an analysis of solar module
shipments.... Although global growth was impressive, the European pace of development last
year slowed to its lowest since 2009, as incentives known as feed-in tariffs were removed
across Europe in 2014. Even Germany, the continent’s largest solar market, saw a
slight decline in annual installed capacity to 1.9GW, as incentives were cut and market
uncertainties increased."
Record boost in new solar power continues massive industry growth
Guardian,
9 June 2015 |
"So what to make of the statement by
Saudi Arabia’s oil minister that the world’s biggest oil exporter could stop
using fossil fuels as soon as 2040 and become a 'global power' in solar and wind energy?
Ali Al-Naimi’s statement is striking as Saudi Arabia’s wealth and influence is
entirely founded on its huge oil wealth and the nation has been one of the strongest
voices against climate change action at UN summits. 'In
Saudi Arabia, we recognise that eventually, one of these days, we’re not going to
need fossil fuels,' said Naimi at a business and climate conference in Paris on Thursday.
'I don’t know when - 2040, 2050 or thereafter. So we have embarked on a program to
develop solar energy,' he said in comments reported
by the Guardian, Bloomberg and the Financial Times. 'Hopefully, one of these days, instead
of exporting fossil fuels, we will be exporting gigawatts of electric power.' Naimi also
said he did not think that continuing low crude oil prices would make solar power
uneconomic: 'I believe solar will be even more economic than fossil fuels.'"
Saudi Arabia is hedging its bets with solar power
Guardian, 23
May 2015 |
"A
company in Sweden is claiming to have designed a system that can convert 34% of sunlight
into solar energy, potentially changing the future of solar power. Ripasso, the company behind the development, is currently testing the
product in South Africa’s Kalahari desert. The
34% power conversion is around double that of normal solar panels, reports The
Guardian."
New panels could have a 34% energy conversion rate
TIME, 18 May 2015 |
"The
UK’s new
Secretary of State for energy and climate change, Amber Rudd, has spoke of her desire
to increase the deployment of solar PV under her watch. Speaking to a local paper in her constituency, Amber Rudd told The
Hastings Observer that she was 'honoured' to land the top role at the Department of
Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Rudd was previously a climate change minister at DECC.
Commenting on her focus in the new role, Rudd said: 'I want to unleash a new solar
revolution – we have a million people living under roofs with solar panels and that
number needs to increase.'"
UK’s new energy minister calls for ‘solar revolution’
PV-tech,
15 May 2015 |
"Engineers
in the Netherlands say a novel solar road surface that generates electricity and can be
driven over has proved more successful than expected. Last year they built a 70-metre test
track along a bike path near the Dutch town of Krommenie on the outskirts of Amsterdam. In
the first six months since it was installed, the panels beneath the road have generated
over 3,000kwh. This is enough to provide a single-person household with electricity for a
year. 'If we translate this to an annual yield, we expect more than the 70kwh per square
metre per year,' says Sten de Wit, spokesman for SolaRoad, which has been developed by a
public-private partnership..... The project took
cheap mass-produced solar panels and sandwiched them between layers of glass, silicon
rubber and concrete. 'This version can have a fire brigade truck of 12 tonnes without any
damage,' said Arian de Bondt, a director at Ooms Civiel, one of consortium of companies
working together on the pilot project. 'We were working on panels for big buses and large
vehicles in the long run.' The solar panels are connected to smart metres, which optimise
their output and feed the electricity to street lighting or into the grid. 'If one panel
is broken or in shadow or dirt, it will only switch off that PV panel,' said Jan-Hendrik
Kremer, Renewable Energy Systems consultant at technology company Imtech."
Dutch solar road makes enough energy to power household
Aljazeera, 10 May
2015 |
"The
Conservative election victory has dealt a severe blow to Britain’s green energy
industry, campaigners have warned, as the new majority government prepares to scrap
crucial subsidies for renewable power; champion the development of polluting shale gas;
and make significant cuts to spending. The renewable
industry is most worried about the future of onshore wind farm developments, which the
Tories have repeatedly dismissed as an unwanted eyesore despite being cheaper than other
forms of green energy. The party’s manifesto pledges 'to halt the spread of onshore
wind farms' – and although it is not clear exactly when subsidies for new land-based
turbines will be scrapped, an announcement is expected soon. But the Government’s axe
is likely to fall across much of the renewable energy industry, campaigners say. They
point to David Cameron’s plan to remove what he in 2013 reportedly called the 'green
crap' that subsidises renewable power from Britain’s energy bills as evidence of his
dislike for alternative energy sources."
Tory victory a huge blow to UK green energy industry, campaigners warn
Independent,
10 May 2015 |
"Britain’s
antiquated electricity grid is stopping renewable energy projects connecting to the
system, threatening the country’s prospects for a low-carbon future, the solar power
industry’s trade body has warned. Parts of the grid are closed to new connections and
further shutdowns are likely, the Solar Trade Association (STA) said. It claimed the new Conservative government needs to invest heavily in the
UK’s power infrastructure to prevent the withering of low-carbon projects and ensure
Britain meets its 2020 renewable energy goals. The lack of capacity is at the 14 private
sector distribution network operators (DNOs) which carry electricity from the main grid to
commercial and domestic users. Western Power Distribution, the DNO for the Midlands,
south-west England and Wales, has closed the grid to new large renewable projects in
Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset for up to six years. Large parts of eastern and
south-east England barely have any capacity, maps from
UK Power Networks, the DNO for these regions, show."
UK electricity grid holds back renewable energy, solar trade body warns
Guardian,
10 May 2015 |
"In recent years, the fast-growing
popularity of solar panels has intensified a central challenge: how to use the sun’s
energy when it isn’t shining. Now, Tesla Motors, the
maker of luxury electric sedans, says it is taking a big step toward meeting that
challenge with a fleet of battery systems aimed at homeowners, businesses and utilities.
The company’s foray into the solar storage market will include rechargeable
lithium-ion battery packs that can mount to a home garage wall as well as battery blocks
large enough to smooth out fluctuations in the grid.
'We’ve obviously been working on building a world-class battery, a superefficient and
affordable way to store energy,' said Khobi Brooklyn, a Tesla spokeswoman. 'It’s just
that we’ve been putting that battery in cars most of the time.' To herald its
ambitions in the field, the company scheduled an event Thursday night at its design studio
in Hawthorne, Calif., with Elon Musk, its chief
executive, presiding. In a news conference before the event, Mr. Musk said the consumer
battery, called the Powerwall, would sell for $3,500, and was derived from the batteries
that Tesla uses in its Model S vehicles. The device, which Tesla will start producing
later this year, will be installed by licensed technicians. The batteries will be
connected to the Internet and can be managed by Tesla from afar. Customers can connect up
to nine battery packs to store larger amounts of power. 'If you have the Tesla Powerwall,
if the utility goes down, you still have power,' Mr. Musk said. He added: 'The whole thing
is an integrated system that just works.'.... Tesla’s announcement comes as energy
companies are moving in the same direction. Sungevity, a leading solar installer, announced a partnership
this week with Sonnenbatterie, a smart energy storage provider in Europe, to begin
offering their systems to its customers. NRG, one of the largest independent power
producers in the United States, is also developing storage products.... The Tesla systems are designed for different scales. The home
battery, roughly four feet by three feet, would allow solar customers to have power in the
event of an failure, draw from it when utility rates are higher and use more of the
electricity their panels produce, easing reliance on the grid. For utilities, they can
help compensate for fluctuations from intermittent sources like solar and wind —
whose production can dip sharply or stop altogether — as well as meet demand during
peak periods. And for businesses, they can help
lower demand for electricity from the grid, which in turn can lower costly demand
charges."
Tesla Ventures Into Solar Power Storage for Home and Business
New
York Times, 1 May 2015 |
"The White House has announced a
goal to train 75,000 workers in the solar industry by 2020, many of them veterans. 'These are good-paying jobs that are helping folks enter the
middle-class,' President
Barack Obama said on Friday at Hill Air Force Base in Utah. The plan will expand on
the Department of Energy SunShot
Initiative's Solar Instructor Training Network currently running at more than 400
community colleges. The White House also announced the Solar Ready Vets program aimed at
helping veterans transition into the solar industry. A joint program between the
Department of Defense and the DOE, it's currently being launched at 10 military bases
across the country, including Hill Air Force Base and Camp Pendleton in California. Obama
touted the new goal as a way to bolster the economy and help meet the White House's
climate change goals, which call for greenhouse
gas emissions to be cut 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. The solar
industry is creating jobs at a rate of 10 times faster than the overall economy, the White
House said."
Obama Announces Plan to Train 75,000 Solar Workers
NBC,
3 April 2015 |
"Solar power could provide up to
4% of the UK's electricity by the end of the decade, the government has said. The
plummeting cost of solar panels has caused the government to revise upwards its forecast
for solar energy use, Energy Secretary Ed Davey said. This had contributed to the government decision to end most subsidies for
large-scale solar this month, he added. But the solar industry said the cuts were a
mistake and would prevent it from competing with fossil fuels. The price of solar panels has reduced by 70% in the past few years
as subsidies in many countries created a mass market and drew in Chinese manufacturers. In the UK this prompted the government to withdraw subsidies from
large-scale solar farms - above 5MW - from the end of March. That in turn has created a
temporary solar boom as firms race to connect to the grid in the coming days. The Solar
Trades Association said as much new capacity has been installed in the first three months
of this year as in the whole of 2014. But after April it expects installations to fall
80%, because most firms will not be able to compete."
Solar energy 'could provide 4% of UK electricity by 2020'
BBC Online, 24 March 2015 |
"Japanese
scientists have succeeded in transmitting energy wirelessly, in a key step that could one
day make solar power generation in space a possibility, an official said Thursday. Researchers used microwaves to deliver 1.8 kilowatts of power --
enough to run an electric kettle -- through the air with pinpoint accuracy to a receiver
55 metres (170 feet) away. While the distance was not huge, the technology could pave the
way for mankind to eventually tap the vast amount of solar energy available in space and
use it here on Earth, a spokesman for The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said.
'This was the first time anyone has managed to send a high output of nearly two kilowatts
of electric power via microwaves to a small target, using a delicate directivity control
device,' he said. JAXA has been working on devising Space Solar Power Systems for years,
the spokesman said. Solar power generation in space has many advantages over its
Earth-based cousin, notably the permanent availability of energy, regardless of weather or
time of day. While man-made satellites, such as the International Space Station, have long
since been able to use the solar energy that washes over them from the sun, getting that
power down to Earth where people can use it has been the thing of science fiction. But the
Japanese research offers the possibility that humans will one day be able to farm an
inexhaustible source of energy in space. The idea, said the JAXA spokesman, would be for
microwave-transmitting solar satellites -- which would have sunlight-gathering panels and
antennae -- to be set up about 36,000 kilometres (22,300 miles) from the earth. 'But it could take decades before we see practical application of
the technology -- maybe in the 2040s or later,' he said."
Japan space scientists make wireless energy breakthrough
AFP,
12 March 2015 |
"Researchers
at Harvard have discovered how to convert solar energy into liquid fuel, potentially
accelerating our switch to the alternative-energy source, according to an article in this
month’s scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). At the moment, solar energy can be converted into hydrogen by using
photovoltaic cells. The hydrogen can then be stored in fuel cells for future use. But
hydrogen has failed to make headway as an energy source in a world that is
infrastructurally set up to handle liquid fuels. Now,
however, scientists have figured out a way of using sunlight to split water into hydrogen
and oxygen. They then use a bacterium to convert the hydrogen, plus carbon dioxide, into
the liquid fuel isopropanol. 'This is a proof of
concept that you can have a way of harvesting solar energy and storing it in the form of a
liquid fuel,' said researcher Pamela Silver. The hope now is that solar energy will find
more takers, particularly in the developing world, where the ability to make energy
locally will be a boon."
Scientists Have Figured Out a Way to Convert Solar Energy Into Liquid Fuel
TIME, 12 February 2015 |
"On
Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced a massive new investment by the company in solar
energy: an $850 million installation that will cover 1,300 acres in Monterey County,
California. Apple is partnering with First Solar the nation's biggest utility-scale installer on the project,
which will produce enough power to supply 60,000 Californian homes, Cook said. According
to a press release from First Solar, Apple will receive 130 megawatts
from the project under a 25-year deal, which the release describes as the largest such
agreement ever. Cook called it Apple's 'biggest, boldest and most ambitious' energy
project to date, designed to offset the electricity needs of Apple's new campus, the
futuristic circular building designed by Norman Foster, and all of Apple's
California retail stores. 'We know at Apple that climate change is real,' he said."
Apple Is About to Shell Out $850 Million for Solar Energy
Mother
Jones, 10 February 2015 |
"University
of Toronto engineers study first single crystal perovskites for new applications Engineers have shone new light on an emerging family of
solar-absorbing materials that could clear the way for cheaper and more efficient solar
panels and LEDs. The materials, called perovskites, are particularly good at absorbing
visible light, but had never been thoroughly studied in their purest form: as perfect
single crystals. Using a new technique, researchers
grew large, pure perovskite crystals and studied how electrons move through the material
as light is converted to electricity. Led by Professor Ted Sargent of The Edward S. Rogers
Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto and
Professor Osman Bakr of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST),
the team used a combination of laser-based techniques to measure selected properties of
the perovskite crystals. By tracking down the rapid motion of electrons in the material,
they have been able to determine the diffusion length--how far electrons can travel
without getting trapped by imperfections in the material--as well as mobility--how fast
the electrons can move through the material. Their work was published this week in the
journal Science. 'Our work identifies the bar for the ultimate solar energy-harvesting
potential of perovskites,' says Riccardo Comin, a post-doctoral fellow with the Sargent
Group. 'With these materials it's been a race to try to get record efficiencies, and our
results indicate that progress is slated to continue without slowing down.' In recent
years, perovskite efficiency has soared to certified efficiencies of just over 20 per
cent, beginning to approach the present-day performance of commercial-grade silicon-based
solar panels mounted in Spanish deserts and on Californian roofs. 'In their efficiency, perovskites are closely approaching
conventional materials that have already been commercialized,' says Valerio Adinolfi, a
PhD candidate in the Sargent Group and co-first author on the paper. 'They have the
potential to offer further progress on reducing the cost of solar electricity in light of
their convenient manufacturability from a liquid chemical precursor.' The study has
obvious implications for green energy, but may also enable innovations in lighting."
New light-converting materials point to cheaper, more efficient solar power
ECN,
30 January 2015 |
"Global investment in clean
energy jumped 16% in 2014, boosted by fast-growing solar power in the US and China.
Solar, whose costs have plummeted in recent years, attracted over half the total funding
for the first time. The green energy market has been
gloomy in recent years and the rise in investment is the first since 2011. But despite
strong growth in most regions, only a series of large offshore wind farms stopped Europe
going into reverse, while the Australian government’s antipathy to renewables saw
investment there tumble by 35%. The new
figures, from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), show $310bn (£205bn) was ploughed
into green energy last year, just short of the record $317bn in 2011. However, as green
energy gets ever cheaper, the money invested in 2014 bought almost double the clean
electricity capacity than in 2011."
Solar power drives renewable energy investment boom in 2014
Guardian,
9 January 2015 |
| 2014 |
"Australia's
solar researchers have converted over 40 percent of the sunlight hitting a solar system
into electricity, the highest efficiency ever reported. A key part of the prototype's design is the use of a custom optical
bandpass filter to capture sunlight that is normally wasted by commercial solar cells on
towers and convert it to electricity at a higher efficiency than the solar cells
themselves ever could."
In world first, researchers convert sunlight to electricity with over 40 percent
efficiency
ScienceDaily, 7
December 2014 |
"Powering your tablet could soon be as
simple as wrapping it in cling wrap, thanks to a team of scientists that recently invented
a way to spray on solar power. Lead researcher Illan
Kramer and his colleagues at the University of Toronto developed miniscule light-sensitive materials
called colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) that can be used to spray solar cells onto virtually
any surface, from patio furniture to an airplane's wing....The technology is described further in three journals: Advanced
Materials, Applied Physics Letters, and ACS Nano.""
Spray-On Solar Power Coming Soon?
Nature
World News, 6 December 2014 |
"California’s
Topaz project is the largest solar power plant in the world with a 550
MW capacity, and it is now in full operation. It is located in San Luis Obispo County and has
9 million solar panels. Construction began just
two years ago. The electricity produced by the plant will be purchased by Pacific Gas and
Electric. The solar panels were manufactured by First Solar and the project was developed
by First Solar. SEIA says about 200 homes in California are powered for each MW of
solar power capacity. So, for a 550 MW solar plant, about 110,000 homes could be powered
when the sun is shining. First
Solar has said this figure could be 160,000 homes in the case of Topaz. The San Luis
Obispo county population is about 276,000. It might turn out that the majority of
this population could be powered by a single solar power plant. Energy storage is a
growing field, so it eventually might be that excess electricity generated by solar power
could be stored for nighttime use and for overcast days, extending the impact of Topaz
even further."
World’s Largest Solar Power Plant Is Now In Operation
CleanTechnica,
2 December 2014 |
"Barristers, it is said, should never ask
witnesses questions unless they already know the answers. Journalists, by contrast, do
best by seeking to elicit information that they genuinely do not know. But the other
evening I found myself getting a wholly unexpected answer to a question which I had
expected would produce a predictable one. The occasion was a scintillating lecture by Prof Sir David King, the
former government Chief scientist, put on by Ashden, the charity that runs the eponymous
energy awards. That’s not an adjective I apply often to talks, but I was riveted as
David ranged over subjects from population growth to water resources, the growth of cities
to commodity prices, spewing out new information and insights. But while he said a lot about the promise of renewable energy, he said
almost nothing about nuclear power – despite for long having been one of its foremost
and most influential advocates in Britain,
describing it, for example, as a 'massive economic opportunity' for the country. So I got
up and asked him about it, expecting the same pro-nuclear response as I had heard from him
many times before. Instead he amazed me by suggesting that Britain 'might well' be able to
do without atomic power altogether, and that the real priority should be on developing
ways of storing electricity so as to be able to depend on famously intermittent sun and
wind. 'We have to keep reassessing the situation', he said. 'I believe that what we need,
more than anything, is a surge of activity to develop energy storage capability ….
Once we can do that technologically, why would we not just keep with renewables.' For a country like India, with plenty of sunlight and deserts
where it can be collected, he went on, 'there’s no reason' for it not to go 'directly
wholesale into solar energy'. After all it was
already 'three to four times' cheaper to provide villages unconnected to the grid in India
and China with solar electric panels and batteries than to connect them up. In countries
like Britain and Japan, with less space and sun, he added, 'it was difficult to see that
we’re going to reach a position where we don’t want nuclear energy', and in that
case he favoured the small 'modular nuclear reactors' recently advocated by the former
environment secretary, Owen Paterson. But later he came back to the question and corrected
himself: 'if we can get the costs down we might well manage our future basically on
renewable energy and energy storage'. Which raised an interesting thought. In recent years
there have been several much publicised conversions of former opponents of nuclear power
– like columnist and activist George Monbiot, and former Greenpeace executive
director Stephen Tindale – to supporting it. Could
this be the first example of a powerful nuclear advocate going, at least partially, the
other way?"
Nuclear power may not be needed, says top atomic advocate
Telegraph,
21 November 2014 |
"Across
the world, efforts are underway to improve the way we store and distribute energy, as we
move towards more sustainable but intermittent forms of energy generation, such as wind
and solar power. Improving the way we store energy is important for the UK’s energy
security, as it will allow us to decouple energy generation and its usage. If we can find
a better way to store energy it will allow us to save it when it’s generated and use
it when it’s required, replacing our current awkward system where generation has to
match demand in real time. The UK’s first two-megawatt
(MW) lithium-titanate battery is to be connected to the energy grid as part of a new
research project to tackle the challenges of industrial-scale energy storage. The project aims to test the technological and economic challenges of
using giant batteries to provide support to the grid."
Giant batteries connected to the grid: the future of energy storage?
Guardian,
14 November 2014 |
"A British start-up has
developed a way for parking lots and structures with roofs that can’t take much
weight to harness the power of the sun. The Cambridge, England-based Solar Cloth Company
is beginning to run trials of its solar cloth, which uses lightweight photovoltaic fabric
that can be stretched across parking lots or on buildings that can’t hold heavy
loads, such as sports stadiums with lightweight, retractable roofs. Perry Carroll, Solar Cloth Company’s founder, told
BusinessGreen that the company is working to close deals to install solar cloth on
27,000 parking lots.'We have built a growing sales pipeline worth £4.2m [about $6.57
million] for 2015, including park and ride projects, airport parking operators and retail
park owners,' he said. According to Solar Cloth
Company, there are about 320 square miles of roof space and 135 square miles of parking
space in the U.K. that could be covered by solar cloth, and if all of these spaces were
covered, the solar power produced would be enough to power the U.K.’s grid three
times. The key to solar cloth’s adaptability is
its lightweight nature. An approximately ten square-meter piece of the cloth weighs about
7.3 pounds, far less than a traditional, silicone-based solar panel’s weight of about
35 to 48 pounds. The material is also flexible, which allows it to be installed on most
roofs, regardless of their shape."
New 'Solar Cloth' Allows Solar Cells To Be Stretched Across Parking Lots, Stadiums
Climate
Progress, 14 November 2014 |
"On
Nov. 12, the very first bike path powered by solar panels will open in Krommenie,
which lies just northwest of Amsterdam. Though the lane will stretch only 328 feet in
length when it's eventually completed, it's a big step for solar roadways, which, despite much fanfare,
are still only in the early
stages of development. CityLab
notes that the path is a result of a collaboration between the private industry, the
government and academia. Solaroad, as it's been dubbed, is made from concrete 'modules'
covered with a layer of glass and a friction-inducing layer to prevent accidents. The
solar cells are in place beneath only one traveling direction — the other side of the
road will be used to test various top layers to see which surfaces work
best. "In time, the solar power from the road will be used for practical
applications in street lighting, traffic systems, electric cars (which drive on the
surface) and households," reads the description.
The path does have a few drawbacks. It can't be angled toward the sun, so it receives
roughly 30%
less solar power than roof panels. It was also incredibly expensive — roughly $3.7
million, paid for largely by the local government. However, once completed,
researchers are hopeful that the path will produce enough energy to power
three households. Eventually, the plan is to extend the idea to roadways, as the
concrete and glass cover are strong enough to support the weight
of a truck. The
Guardian reported that up to 20% of the Netherlands' road system could be converted to
solar roadways, which could help provide energy to things like traffic lights and electric
cars. Across the ocean, a pair of Americans, Scott and Julie Brusaw, are attempting
to make solar roadways a reality as well. As Mic reported
in May, the couple are in the midst of bringing that idea to life. Their Indiegogo campaign has raised
more than $2 million so far; they also received a $50,000 private grant and two rounds
of Federal Highway Administration funding."
The Netherlands Has Built Something No Other Country Has
Mic,
8 November 2014 |
"German
car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz has debuted a new concept for a hydrogen-powered SUV, and
it's pretty crazy. The Vision G-Code is as striking as any concept, with a squat profile
and space-age interior, but it's not the car's looks that are interesting here: it's the
paint. When the G-Code is stationary, its multi-voltaic' paint generates electricity in a
number of ways. It acts like a giant solar cell, turning the sun's energy into
electricity, and also charges electrostatically, harnessing the power of the wind.Instead
of simply passing the electricity generated onto an internal battery, Mercedes uses it to
facilitate hydrogen synthesis, creating fuel for the car's engine. The front wheels are powered by a hydrogen engine, while an electric
motor drives the rear axle. It also has some other tricks to aid the production of
hydrogen: on the move, further power is drawn from the G-Code's suspension system. One
byproduct of the synthesis is oxygen, which Mercedes says "is routed to the interior
as needed," providing "a refreshing effect for the occupants." Of course,
it's worth remembering this is just a concept, and while its looks may filter down to
upcoming models, it's unlikely we'll see the more innovative tech on display in any
production cars soon."
Mercedes-Benz' insane new SUV concept is a giant solar panel
endgadget,
4 November 2014 |
"Every
time fossil fuels get cheaper, people lose interest in solar deployment. That may be about
to change. After years of struggling against cheap natural gas prices and variable
subsidies, solar electricity is on track to be as cheap or cheaper than average
electricity-bill prices in 47 U.S. states -- in 2016, according to a Deutsche Bank report
published this week. That’s assuming the U.S. maintains its 30 percent tax credit on
system costs, which is set to expire that same year. Even if the tax credit drops to 10
percent, solar will soon reach price parity with conventional electricity in well over
half the nation: 36 states. Gone are the days when
solar panels were an exotic plaything of Earth-loving rich people. Solar is becoming
mainstream, and prices will continue to drop as the technology improves and financing
becomes more affordable, according to the report. The chart below shows how far solar will
come out ahead in each state in 2016, assuming a worst-case scenario of lower tax credits.
The blue bars show the anticipated cost of solar energy (assuming a conservative 20-year
lifespan for the panels) minus average electricity prices. Positive numbers indicate the
savings for every kilowatt hour of electricity..... Solar has already reached grid parity
in 10 states that are responsible for 90 percent of U.S. solar electricity production. In
those states alone, installed capacity growth will increase as much as sixfold over the
next three to four years, Deutsche Bank analyst Vishal Shah wrote in the Oct. 26 report.
The reason solar-power generation will increasingly dominate: it’s a technology, not
a fuel. As such, efficiency increases and prices fall as time goes on. The price of
Earth’s limited fossil fuels tends to go the other direction.... The chart below
shows the price of energy sources since the late 1940s. The extreme outlier, of course, is
solar, which only recently became an expensive blip in the energy marketplace. It will
soon undercut even the cheapest fossil fuels in many regions of the planet, including
poorer nations where billion-dollar coal plants aren’t always practical. Solar will
be the world’s biggest single source of electricity by 2050, according to a recent estimate by the International Energy Agency. Currently,
it’s responsible for just a fraction of one
percent. Because of solar's small market share today, no matter how quickly capacity
expands, it won’t have much immediate impact on the price of other forms of energy.
But soon, for the first time, the reverse may also be true: Gas and coal prices will lose
their sway over the solar industry."
While You Were Getting Worked Up Over Oil Prices, This Just Happened to Solar
Bloomberg,
29 October 2014 |
"Solar
panels installed on the roof of a home or garage can easily generate enough electricity to
power an electric or plug-in gas-electric hybrid vehicle. The panels aren't cheap, and
neither are the cars. A Ford Fusion Energi plug-in sedan, for example, is $7,200 more than
an equivalent gas-powered Fusion even after a $4,007 federal tax credit. But advocates say
the investment pays off over time and is worth it for the thrill of fossil fuel-free
driving. 'We think it was one of the best things in
the world to do,' says Kevin Tofel, who bought a Chevrolet Volt in 2012 to soak up the
excess power from his home solar-energy system. 'We will never go back to an all-gas car.'
No one knows exactly how many electric cars are being powered by solar energy, but the
number of electric and plug-in hybrid cars in the U.S. is growing. Last year, 97,563 were
sold in the U.S., according to Ward's AutoInfoBank, up 83 percent from the year before.
Meanwhile, solar installations grew 21 percent in the second quarter of this year, and
more than 500,000 homes and businesses now have them, according to the Solar Energy
Industries Association. Tofel, 45, a senior writer for the technology website Gigaom,
installed 41 solar panels on the roof of his Telford, Pennsylvania, home in 2011. The
solar array — the term for a group of panels — cost $51,865, but after state and
federal tax credits, the total cost was $29,205. In
the first year, Tofel found that the panels provided 13.8 megawatt hours of electricity,
but his family was using only 7.59 megawatt hours. So in 2012, Tofel traded in an Acura
RDX for a Volt plug-in hybrid that could be charged using some of that excess solar
energy. In a typical year, with 15,243 miles of driving, the Volt used 5.074 megawatt
hours. Tofel used to spend $250 per month on gas for the Acura; now, he spends just $50,
for the times when the Volt isn't near a charging station and he has to fill its backup
gas engine. Charging the Volt overnight costs him $1.50, but the family makes that money
back during the day when it sends solar power to the electric grid. He estimates that
adding the car will cut his break-even point on the solar investment from 11.7 years to
six years."
Electric-Car Drivers Trading Gas for Solar Power
Associated
Press, 28 October 2014 |
"[A] study, commissioned by the E.U. and
conducted by Ecofys, a renewable
energy consultancy, considered the economic costs of climate change, pollution, and
resource depletion as well as the current capital and operating costs of the power plants.
The authors assessed the cost of generating electricity and any resulting environmental
damage. They used a measure known as the 'levelized cost,' the estimated cost per
megawatt-hour, without subsidies, of building and operating a given plant in a given
region over an assumed lifetime. The authors referred to established models and academic
literature to find monetary values for pollution, land use, and resource depletion. And to
account for climate change, they assumed a metric ton of emitted carbon dioxide costs
around €43 ($55).... Previous studies have
looked at the economic impacts of pollution and other environmental consequences of energy
production, but the Ecofy analysis is unique in that it includes the depletion of energy
resources as an additional cost, says Ann Gardiner, a consultant at Ecofys who co-authored it. Surprisingly,
solar power fared poorly in the analysis, costing far more than wind power and nearly the
same as nuclear power. The reason, says Gardiner, is that many of world’s solar
panels are manufactured in China, where electricity is very carbon-intensive. The depletion of metal resources also represents a larger cost for solar
than wind, she says. Gardiner notes, however, that solar technology is still improving and
may be more cost-effective today than it was in 2012, the year used for the study. According to the Ecofys analysis, new coal and natural gas plants
in the E.U. have levelized costs of just over €50 ($64) (in 2012 euros) per
megawatt-hour (assuming they are running at maximum capacity); onshore wind is around
€80 ($102) per megawatt-hour; utility scale solar PV is about €100 ($127);
nuclear power is around €90 ($115); and hydropower is as cheap as €10.... The environmental costs associated with different forms of energy
production are approximations, but they the show the scale of damages associated with each
technology. These costs would look different for other parts of the world. Two of the most
influential variables are the cost of fuel (natural gas is much cheaper in the U.S., for
example) and the capital cost of building power plants, which varies globally by as much
as four times, says David
Victor, professor of international relations at the University of California, San
Diego."
Why Solar Is Much More Costly Than Wind or Hydro
MIT
Technology Review, 22 October 2014 |
"Investors
are seeking funding from the UK government for an ambitious plan to import solar energy
generated in North Africa. Under the scheme, up to 2.5 million UK homes could be powered
by Tunisian sunshine by 2018. The company involved
says they have already spent 10 million euros developing the site. A number of overseas
energy producers are competing to bring green energy to the UK from 2017. The TuNur project aims to bring two gigawatts of solar power
to the UK from Tunisia if the company wins a contract
for difference (CFD) from the British government. Under new
rules published by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc) in the Summer,
the government will allow developers of renewable energy projects that are not based in
the UK to bid for contracts that guarantee subsidies to supply power."
Cheap African solar energy could power UK homes in 2018
BBC Online, 20 October
2014 |
"With
a speed of 106.966 kilometres an hour, a solar car
known as eVe is now officially the fastest electric vehicle over a distance of 500
kilometres in the world - and it was built entirely
by undergraduate engineering students from
the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia. The previous record was 73
kilometres an hour, and it stood for 26 years before Sunswift smashed it in July. The
Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, the world motorsport’s governing body,
has now updated its official records. 'It's not often you can confidently say you made
history before you even graduated,' said Sunswift’s project director and third-year
engineering student Hayden Smith
in a press release. eVe was built by Sunswift,
UNSW’s solar car racing team, and more than 100 undergraduate students were involved
in its world record attempt over the past two years. eVe is the fifth solar car to be
built by the student-led team, and previous models set a Guinness World Record for the
fastest solar car, and a world record for the fastest solar powered road trip from Perth
to Sydney."
A solar car built by Australian students has broken the electric vehicle world speed
record
Science Alert, 15
October 2014 |
"China has only completed a quarter of its rooftop solar installation
target for this year, industry sources say, raising further concerns about the growth
potential of domestic solar panel manufacturers in the world's largest solar market. Early this year, China set a
goal of building about 14 gigawatts (GW) of solar generating projects in 2014 - close to
Finland's entire power capacity. Of that, it expects 8 GWs to be so-called distributed
solar, which includes rooftop panels and other small installations.In the first nine
months of the year, however, China has built less than two GWs of distributed solar,
industry executives and analysts say. At best, that number may
rise to five GWs by year-end, they added."
China solar demand in doubt as rooftop installations lag target
Reuters,
9 October 2014 |
"On
June 8 Warren Buffett revealed that Berkshire Hathaway Inc's (NYSE: BRK-B )
subsidiary MidAmerican Energy (recently renamed Berkshire Hathaway Energy) has invested
$15 billion into solar and wind projects. Buffett added, 'there's another $15 billion
ready to go, as far as I'm concerned.' Why is the
Oracle of Omaha, who many consider to be history's greatest investor, willing to invest
$30 billion into renewable energy?... Warren Buffett is a man with an enviable problem.
His company is simply generating so much free cash flow that it's threatening his ability
to grow the company's profits, and thus his investors' (and his own) wealth. Thus,
Mr. Buffett has turned to one of the few global industries large enough to grow into:
global energy infrastructure and renewable power. These offer not only somewhere to
reinvest his rivers of cash, but also tax credits that can help boost Berkshire's earnings
growth rate and boost the stock price by a significant amount."
Why Warren Buffett Is Betting $30 Billion on Solar and Wind
Motley
Fool, 5 October 2014 |
"Researchers
have created a 'solar battery' by combining the energy-harvesting panel with the
energy-storing medium at a microscopic level. The
device could change the way solar power is used, though it still has much to prove. Ohio
State's Yiying Wu, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, led the team that made the
breakthrough, which was reported this week in Nature
Communications. The panel, like any other solar cell, produces electrons when struck
by sunlight. But then, instead of having those electrons piped to a separate battery unit
and leaking as much as 20 percent of them in the process, they built the battery right
into the panel. The solar-sensitive part is porous, and gives access to a battery layer
that attaches and detaches oxygen from lithium ions to store energy. 'Basically, it's a breathing battery,' Wu
explained in a news release. And, strangely enough, the panel is tuned to a certain
wavelength of reddish light by using iron oxide as a dust — also known as rust.
Combining the production and storage of solar power could potentially reduce costs and
make solar-powered devices compact."
World's First 'Solar Battery' Captures and Stores Sun's Energy
NBC
News, 4 October 2014 |
"Wearable
electronics are quickly becoming the fashion. And there could soon be a way to power those
electronics indefinitely, now that scientists
in China have developed a solar cell ‘textile’ that could be woven into clothes.
The textile retains a power-generation efficiency
close to 1% even after been bent more than 200 times, and can be illuminated from both
sides. Scientists have been looking into flexible solar cells for decades, partly for
coating irregularly shaped objects but also for integrating into wearable fabrics. One
popular line of investigation has been dye-sensitized solar cells, in which a pigment
absorbs sunlight to generate electrons and their positive counterparts, holes, before
passing on those charges to inexpensive semiconductors. These solar cells are cheap and
flexible, but the liquid nature of their pigments means that they must be well sealed.
Bend a dye-sensitized solar cell more than a few times and the seals are likely to break,
destroying its light-harvesting properties. That is why Huisheng Peng
at Fudan University in Shanghai and colleagues have been exploring another option: polymer
solar cells. Although their maximum efficiencies fall below 10% – about half
that of crystalline silicon, the most prevalent solar cell – polymer solar cells
are lightweight, flexible and easy to manufacture. Peng and colleagues’ solar cell
textile consists of microscopic interwoven metal wires coated with an active polymer (to
absorb the sunlight), titanium dioxide nanotubes (to conduct the electrons) and another
active polymer (to conduct the holes). The researches coated each side of the textile with
transparent, conductive sheets of carbon nanotubes, which complete the circuit."
Flexible solar cell woven into fabric
Chemistry
World, 2 September 2014 |
"Citigroup
said solar already competes in the growing regions of the world on "pure
economics" without subsidies. It has reached grid parity with residential electricity
prices in Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Australia and the US southwest. Japan will
cross this year, Korea in 2018. It forecast that even Britain will achieve grid parity by
2020, a remarkable thought for this wet isle at 51 or 52 degrees latitude. The industry
can at last tap a "large investor universe" through the market for asset-backed
securities. It priced debt below 5pc last year. Some US electric companies are starting to
build solar farms for hard-headed commercial reasons as a hedge against future shifts in
the gas price. This is astonishing. Roughly 29pc of all electricity capacity added in
America last year came from solar. The story is by now well-known. A McKinsey study found
that installed solar power in the US across all sectors has dropped from $6 a watt to
$2.59 in four years, largely due to the collapse in the cost of solar cells. The next leap
in competitiveness will come from falling "soft costs", currently 64pc of the
residential solar price in America. This happened in Germany as scale built up, and is
following in the US. In California you can sign up for solar panels in a supermarket, with
no money down, and make a saving from day one. The clinching shift will come when the battery storage is cheap enough and
lasts long enough for users to draw down their suplus generated during the day to cover
needs at night, opening the way for mass exodus from the grid, unless utilities harness it
first to their own advantage. There are at least 220 research projects into energy storage
currently under way in the US, many funded by the US Advanced Research Projects Agency and
other arms of the world's scientific superpower. It is Hegel's irony of history. We can now see that the oil price shock of 2008 was traumatic enough to
draw an emergency response, bringing forward oil's nemesis. Harvard is working on an organic flow battery using quinones - from
rhubarb - instead of rare earth metals. It hopes to cut battery costs by two-thirds within
three years. Rivals at the University of Southern California think they can eventually
slash the cost by 90pc below today's lithium-ion batteries. It
is a fair bet that scientists will have conquered intermittency by the end of the decade,
at which point the switch to renewables becomes a stampede. This is where great fortunes may be made, perhaps the mirror image of the
wealth to be lost on fossil defaults. Brokers Sanford Bernstein call it the new order of
"global energy deflation". Technology momentum is unstoppable, and one-way
only."
Oil industry on borrowed time as switch to gas and solar accelerates
Telegraph,
20 August 2014 |
"The
solar industry is facing a looming shortage of photovoltaic panels, reversing a two-year
slump triggered by a global glut. The oversupply pushed prices
through the floor, making solar power more competitive and driving up demand. It also
dragged dozens of manufacturers into bankruptcy, and slowed capital investment at the survivors. With installations expected to swell as much as 29 percent this year,
executives are bracing for the first shortfall since 2006. Scarcity will benefit the
biggest manufacturers, including China’s Yingli
Green Energy Holdings Co. (YGE) and Trina Solar Ltd. (TSL) A shortage may slow
development outside the top markets in Asia and North America if suppliers favor their largest customers.
Shipments to large, utility-scale solar farms may get priority over smaller, rooftop
systems, threatening one of the industry’s fastest-growing markets. “The cell
and module glut has certainly dried up,” said Stefan de Haan, a solar analyst at IHS
Inc. “There is no massive overcapacity anymore.” Related: Obama’s
Green Dilemma: Punish China, Imperil U.S. Solar. The
looming shortage shows the rapid expansion of solar energy. The industry may install as
much as 52 gigawatts this year and 61 gigawatts in 2015. That’s up from 40 gigawatts
in 2013, and more than seven times what developers demanded five years ago, according to
Bloomberg New Energy Finance."
Solar Boom Driving First Global Panel Shortage Since 2006
Bloomberg,
19 August 2013 |
"Solar just launched The National Photovoltaic Household Electrification
Program, an initiative to get solar to 2 million of the country’s poorest residents:
'The first phase of the program, called 'The National Photovoltaic Household
Electrification Program' was initiated on Monday (July 8) in the Contumaza province, where
1,601 solar panels were installed. These installations will power 126 impoverished
communities in the districts of Cupisnique, San Benito, Tantarica, Chilete, Yonan, San
Luis, and Contai. The program plans to install about
12,500 solar (photovoltaic) systems to provide for approximately 500,000 households at an
overall cost of about $200 million."
Peru’s poorest will soon have solar power
Grist, 18 July
2014 |
"Battery
storage paired with residential rooftop solar arrays are not a thing of the distant
future. It’s happening now and companies like SunPower and SolarCity are already
selling package systems. SolarCity partnered with Tesla to manufacture a lithium-ion
battery storage system. In a pilot program, SolarCity is offering the battery setup to
California customers for $1,500 down and $15 a month on a 10-year lease agreement.
Currently, the pilot system is only set up to work as a battery backup in case power goes
out.... The electric vehicle manufacturer recently
announced finalist cities for its proposed Tesla
gigafactory, where it will mass produce batteries for energy storage and electric
vehicles. In addition to rooftop solar systems paired with storage and electric vehicles
that demand batteries, utilities are investing in energy storage technologies. California
state regulators are requiring that PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas
& Electric collectively invest in 1.3 gigawatts of energy storage capacity by 2020 in
order to stabilize the grid as more and more intermittent renewable energy sources come
online."
Solar + Storage Has Arrived:
Clean
Energy, 11 July 2014 |
".... staggering
gains in solar power - and soon battery storage as well - threatens to undercut the oil
industry with lightning speed, perhaps in a race with cheap nuclear power from a coming
generation of molten salt reactors. The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory has
already captured 31.1pc of the sun's energy with a solar chip, but records keep being
broken. Brokers Sanford Bernstein say we are entering an era of "global energy
deflation" where gains in solar technology must relentlessly erode the viability of
the fossil nexus, since it goes only in one direction. Deep sea drilling will become
pointless. We can leave the Arctic alone. Once the
crossover point is reached - and photovoltaic energy already competes with oil, diesel and
liquefied natural gas in much of Asia without subsidies - it must surely turn into a
stampede. My guess is that the world energy landscape will already look radically
different in the early 2020s."
Fossil industry is the subprime danger of this cycle
Telegraph,
9 July 2014 |
"After
decades as an expensive and sometimes impractical source of energy, experts say solar
power is finally coming into its own. Not only has the technology improved the
efficiency and cost of solar panels, in some states, rising prices for conventional
electricity make solar panels an economical alternative. But can solar power actually compete with conventional electric
utilities? John Desmarteau waited 10 years before switching to solar, but the
retired Washington physician is glad he did. He says he's cut his reliance on the
electric company by 85 percent, and saved the equivalent of more than 200 trees. “In
fact, for the last two months, which would be April and May 2014, we’ve used from our
electric utility, no electricity," said Desmarteau. The 39 photo-voltaic panels
installed on Desmarteau's roof generate three times more than he consumes even with the
air conditioning at full blast. It's not just a greener alternative - for some it
can mean real savings. The industry is still evolving but AstrumSolar's Mark Manthy
says companies like his are making it easier for consumers to switch. "In most
markets right now, especially up and down the [U.S.] East Coast and the West Coast - you
could put solar panels on your house for no money down. Somebody else owns them, you
pay them a monthly payment that is cheaper than you would pay your utility," said
Manthy. In many states, brown energy - electricity generated from polluting, non-renewable
resources like coal - is still cheaper than solar. But green advocacy groups
such as the Rocky Mountain Institute say that's changing. “In our most optimistic case that we analyzed, all customers
in the Southwest, in the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah
would see favorable economics within 10 years and 90 percent of the customers in the
Mid-Atlantic," said RMI's Jon Creyts. Some will
not wait that long. American University in Washington just signed a 20-year deal
with solar pioneer Duke Energy. AU’s Chief Financial Officer Doug Kudravetz
says the long-term savings are substantial. “We’ve done quite a bit of financial
modeling and if brown power goes up five percent a year, we’ll save about $14
million, present value," he said. Barclays Bank believes solar is a big enough threat
to the status quo that it downgraded bond ratings for electric utilities. "
Experts: Solar Power Could Soon Pose Economic Threat to Electric Utilities
Voice
of America, 7 July 2014 |
"Last
week, for the first time in memory, the wholesale price of electricity in Queensland fell
into negative territory – in the middle of the day. For several days the price,
normally around $40-$50 a megawatt hour, hovered in and around zero. Prices
were deflated throughout the week, largely because of the influence of one of the
newest, biggest power stations in the state – rooftop
solar. “Negative pricing” moves, as
they are known, are not uncommon. But they are only supposed to happen at night, when most
of the population is mostly asleep, demand is down, and operators of coal fired generators
are reluctant to switch off. So they pay others to pick up their output. That's not
supposed to happen at lunchtime. Daytime prices are supposed to reflect higher demand,
when people are awake, office building are in use, factories are in production. That's
when fossil fuel generators would normally be making most of their money. The influx of
rooftop solar has turned this model on its head. There is 1,100MW of it on more than
350,000 buildings in Queensland alone (3,400MW on 1.2m buildings across the country). It
is producing electricity just at the time that coal generators used to make hay (while the
sun shines). The impact has been so profound, and wholesale prices pushed down so low,
that few coal generators in Australia made a profit last year. Hardly any are making a
profit this year. State-owned generators like Stanwell are specifically
blaming rooftop solar. Tony Abbott, the prime minister, likes to say that Australia is
a land of cheap energy and he’s half right. It doesn’t cost much to shovel a
tonne of coal into a boiler and generate steam and put that into a turbine to generate
electricity. The problem for Australian consumers (and voters) comes in the cost of
delivery of those electrons – through the transmission and distribution networks, and
from retail costs and taxes. This is the cost which is driving households to take up
rooftop solar, in such proportions that the level of rooftop solar is forecast by the government’s
own modellers, and by private groups such as
Bloomberg New Energy Finance, to rise sixfold over the next decade. Households are
tipped to spend up to $30bn on rooftop modules. Last week, the WA Independent market
Operator forecast that 75%
of detached and semi detached dwellings, and 90% of commercial businesses could have
rooftop solar by 2023/24. The impact on Queensland’s markets last week is one of the
reasons why utilities, generators and electricity retailers in particular want to slow
down the rollout of solar. The gyrations of wholesale power prices are rarely reflected in
consumer power bills. But let’s imagine that the wholesale price of electricity fell
to zero and stayed there, and that the benefits were passed on to consumers. In effect,
that coal-fired energy suddenly became free. Could it then compete with rooftop solar? The
answer is no."
Solar has won. Even if coal were free to burn, power stations couldn't compete
Guardian
(Comment Is Free), 7 July 2014 |
"Does
it make sense to soak up the sun and use the energy later? The Achilles' heel of
self-contained solar systems is batteries. The extra cost doesn't usually pay for itself
if your home is already connected to the electricity grid; wired electricity is cheaper
than stored. Yet there is a growing number of off-grid homes that make economic as well as
environmental sense if the alternative is paying for a new grid connection. Built four
years ago, Michael Carpenter's large family home in the Manukau hills was off-grid from
the start. Over two kilometres from the nearest supply, grid connection cost was
prohibitive. "It was going to be very expensive, with ballpark figures around
$100,000." His 4kW of solar panels and 1000Ah battery bank would have cost less than
the $60,000 he paid if built now, due to falling panel costs over the past few years. The battery bank can be the costliest component and needs replacement when
it wears out. Marijn Weehuizen's Waipu home has just been treated to new batteries after
seven years - a $9000 bill. Carpenter believes it's worth it in the long run. "What
we would pay in power bills is more than enough to set aside for new batteries," he
says. There are a number of battery options, but the most popular is lead acid. While your
car battery is 12V and perhaps 60Ah, solar battery banks tend to use 48V DC and store
10-20 times that energy. These are deep cycle batteries, designed to slowly release much
of their energy. However if you take too much charge out of them it does shorten their
life so they need to be used carefully. Flooded cells need regular electrolyte checks,
while costlier sealed units are maintenance-free. Other technologies are coming;
"Lithium batteries are starting to come into play and will be quite popular,"
says Kevin Hunter of Cellpower NZ. "For now they are at quite a high price."
Stanton offers NiFe batteries. "They are about twice the price, but virtually
indestructible." They also have a long cycle life, he says, and you can replace the
electrolyte around five times so they last a lifetime. Both
Stanton and Hunter estimate the break-even cost of going completely off-grid is when you
face a $20,000 bill for connection. Sue Pugmire,
whose Manawatu home has been off-grid since 2000, reckons for their set-up $15,000 is
nearer the mark. With a 5kW array and $27,000 spent, she estimates her lead acid and
ex-telecom gel cells can hold four days' supply. Her Nissan Leaf electric vehicle holds
four days (of average motoring) in its on-board battery if required."
Solar and batteries - an off-grid solution
New
Zealand Herald, 4 July 2014 |
"Fuel cell technology, which creates
power when hydrogen is combined with oxygen, was first used in spacecraft in the 1960s but
has since become significantly cheaper and is now seen as an alternative to conventional
battery power in cars. Japanese car manufacturer
Toyota plans to launch the first fuel-cell car in Europe next year for £40,000."
Fuel cell firm Intelligent Energy raises £55m in IPO
Telegraph,
4 July 2014 |
"A
breakthrough in the production of solar cells will make the next generation of solar
panels cheaper and safer, and promises to accelerate the development of solar energy over
the next decade, scientists said. A technical advance based on an edible salt used in the
manufacture of tofu could revolutionise the production of future solar panels to make them
less expensive, more flexible and easier to use than the current models seen on millions
of roofs across Britain. Researchers believe they have found a way of overcoming one of
the most serious limitations of the next generation of solar panels, which are based on
toxic cadmium chloride, by simply adding magnesium chloride, an abundant salt found in seawater. A study has shown that the solar
cells produced with magnesium chloride – which is also found in bath salts as well as
used to coagulate soya milk into tofu – work just as efficiently as conventional
cadmium cells but at a fraction of the cost and with much lower toxicity. “We certainly believe it’s going to make a big change to the
costs of these devices. The cost of solar is going to match fossil fuels eventually but
this is going to get us there quicker,” said Jon Major of the University of
Liverpool, who led the research. “Magnesium
chloride is incredibly low-cost and it’s simply recovered from seawater. It’s
used to de-ice roads in winter and it’s completely harmless and non-toxic. We’ve
managed to replace a highly expensive, toxic material with one that’s completely
benign and low cost,” Dr Major said. About 90
per cent of the solar panels currently in use are made of photovoltaic cells composed of
silicon semiconductors, which convert sunlight directly into electricity. However, silicon
is not good at absorbing sunlight which is why the next generation of PV cells will be
based on a thin coating of cadmium telluride, which absorbs sunlight so well that it only
needs to be about one hundredth of the thickness of silicon. However, although cadmium telluride is seen as the future for solar energy, it is
potentially dangerous after it is “activated” with cadmium chloride, a critical
step in the manufacturing process that raises the efficiency of converting sunlight to
electricity from about two per cent to 15 per cent or more. The Liverpool team attempted
to find an alternative to cadmium chloride in the activation step and discovered that it
could be done just as well with magnesium chloride, which they sprayed onto a test sample
of cadmium telluride with a model aircraft spray gun they bought for £49.99, Dr Major
said. In a study published in the journal Nature, the
researchers demonstrated that the efficiency of the resulting photovoltaic cells made from
cadmium telluride and magnesium chloride were on a par with commercial cadmium telluride
cells that had been activated with toxic cadmium chloride. “We have to apply cadmium chloride in a fume cupboard in the lab, but
we created solar cells using the new method on a bench with a spray gun bought from a
model shop,” Dr Major said. “Cadmium chloride is toxic and expensive, and we no
longer need to use it. Replacing it with a naturally occurring substance could save the
industry a vast amount of money and reduce the overall cost for generating power from
solar,” he said. It is not possible to estimate how much cheaper the new solar cells
will be, Dr Major said, but magnesium chloride is about one per cent of the cost of
cadmium chloride. In addition, waste disposal will be
far easier and cheaper with a product based on a non-toxic salt, he said. Asked why the solar power industry had not thought of using magnesium
chloride before, Dr Major said: “We genuinely don’t know. The only reason we can
suggest is that cadmium chloride works well so it may be a case of ‘if it’s not
broke, why is there a need to fix it?’” Jeremy
Leggett, chairman of the renewable energy firm Solarcentury, said that the development is
exciting because it promises to make an already competitive industry even more competitive
with conventional sources of energy, such as fossil fuels. “Their costs are coming
down so fast that they are already knocking the business models of utilities into what
some analysts call a ‘death spiral’. Imagine, then, what will happen if
developments such as the one described in the new research come to market,” Dr
Leggett said."
Breakthrough in solar panel manufacture promises cheap energy within a decade
Independent,
28 June 2014 |
"Japan is becoming one of the
world’s leading solar energy markets. The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry has released a report concerning the country’s growing solar power
capacity. Over the past year, Japan’s solar capacity has increased significantly,
partly due to the falling cost of photovoltaic technologies and the increased domestic
production of these technologies. The government has also been funding the development of
the solar energy sector throughout the country quite aggressively. The figures highlighted
in the report are based on data provided by the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy. The report shows that more than 7 gigawatts of solar capacity was
installed throughout Japan during the past fiscal year. This represents a 10-fold increase
over the country’s capacity as recorded in early 2013. Much of Japan’s solar growth is being attributed to the development
of commercial solar energy systems and the growing popularity of rooftop photovoltaic
systems."
Japan’s solar energy capacity continues to show impressive growth
Hydrogen
Fuel News, 26 June 2014 |
"According to Koh’s
estimates, the cost of residential photovoltaic systems declined at a compound annual rate
of 10% from 2007 through 2012, as governments around the world provided plenty of
incentives for manufacturers to increase output. While pointing out that “solid data
are difficult to come by,” the analyst added that “the average cost of
automotive batteries was in excess of $1,000/kWh as recently as 2009,” and that
according to electric-car and battery manufacturer Tesla Motors Inc. TSLA +0.79% , battery costs had declined to
$200-300/kWh earlier this year, “with the company guiding to significant (5% to 10%
annually) reductions in the next several years.” “Based on our analysis, the
cost of solar plus storage for residential consumers of electricity is already competitive
with the price of utility grid power in Hawaii,” Koh wrote. An analysis of California, the second most expensive state for residential
electricity, indicates consumers may find solar to be competitive by 2017, with New York
and Arizona following a year later, “and many states soon after,” according to
the Barclays research team. The trend is clear: Looking out over the next 10 years,
residential electric customers in most U.S. states will have a viable alternative to
regulated electric utilities, as long as they are able to cough up thousands of dollars to
install the photovoltaic panels and batteries. Millions of consumers will be unable to
afford the outlay for a solar system, but in California, which saw a terrible spike in
electricity rates in 2000 and 2001, many people will be eager to switch to solar, even if
the initial investment is high. Solar-panel production is hitting critical mass, pushing
prices down. The decline in battery costs may
accelerate, as Tesla plans to begin construction of its “gigafactory” for
batteries late this year, partnering with Panasonic Corp. PCRFY +1.02% , which will produce fuel cells. Tesla
CEO Elon Musk has said the company plans to build many more gigafactories. Musk said this
week he will share patents for battery and charger technology with other manufacturers.
That means more declines in battery prices."
Solar energy can’t kill old-school electric utilities
MarketWatch,
20 June 2014 |
"Germany
is big on renewables and at the beginning of June it succeeded in producing half of its
energy from solar power for the first time. But it didn't last long. For just a single day
production of solar energy hit 23.1 gigawatts, high enough to provide 50.6 per cent of
energy demand. A combinatio of factors such as good weather and a national holiday, when
demand tends to be lower, contributed to the country achieving the milestone for the first
time. However it signals just what the country's solar infrastructure is capable of
according to a renewable energies expert, and will help Germany reach the ambitious goal
of producing 80 per cent of its energy from renewables by 2050. The country is currently producing 27 per cent of its energy from
renewables on average this year.Germany Trade and Invest’s Tobias Rothacher told
The Local he thought this record could be broken every two to three months from now
on. Rothacher said that solar power production had
increased by 34 percent in the first five months of the year compared to last year as a
result of better weather."
Germany produces half of energy from solar power for first time
City
A.M, 20 June 2014 |
"Solar
cell efficiencies can be improved by as much as 50% with the use of a new optical element
designed by engineers from the University of Utah, according to recent reports. The
“optical element” — which is essentially just a thin layer of transparent
plastic or glass that can sort and concentrate light — can be readily integrated into
the glass covering of a solar panel. As a result, the new “polychromat” appears
to represent a fairly cheap means of boosting solar cell performance — though, as
always, until the technology is commercialized, there are no certainties.... “Currently, high-efficiency solar cells are very expensive
because they have to be carefully manufactured in a complex environment and are only
cost-effective for space or defense applications like the Mars Rover,” states Rajesh
Menon, a Utah Science Technology and Research (USTAR) assistant professor of electrical
and computer engineering at the U. “We have designed a very cheap optical element
that can be incorporated into the cover glass of a solar panel that will separate sunlight
into various colors.”...There are still challenges remaining, though, specifically
with regard to incorporating the technology into production processes — the
researchers think that, at the earliest, the technology could hit the solar market in 5-10
years."
Solar Cell Efficiency Boosted As Much As 50% With New Optical Element
Clean
Technica, 20 June 2014 |
"Like many consumers, David Polstein had
already done much to reduce energy use in his large Victorian home in Newton, Mass. He
replaced his appliances with energy-efficient models, installed better heating and put in
new insulation. But he was unable to get a solar system to reduce his utility bill, he
said, because his roof is too small and shady to make it worthwhile. Now, that could be
changing. Mr. Polstein is considering joining a so-called community solar garden that is
under development in his part of the state, one of many similar new arrangements now
available in Massachusetts. Through the approach
— largely pioneered in Colorado and spreading across the country — customers buy
into a solar array constructed elsewhere and receive credit on their electricity bills for
the power their panels produce. For developers, such shared or community solar arrays
create a new market from the estimated 85 percent of residential customers who can neither
own nor lease systems because their roofs are physically unsuitable for solar or because
they do not control them — like renters and people living in large apartment
buildings. And for those customers, it offers a way
into the solar boom, whether they seek to contribute to the spread of clean energy or to
reap the potential cost savings."
Buying Into Solar Power, No Roof Access Needed
New
York Times, 19 June 2014 |
"Pension
fund managers are investing more in solar energy, undeterred by declining returns because
the industry is considered a safe alternative to traditional securities such as government
bonds. That’s the conclusion of executives from two of the biggest Chinese solar
panel manufacturers, which have listed their shares in New York. Trina Solar Ltd. (TSL:US) said it’s seeing more interest from
fund managers, and Wuxi Suntech Power Co Ltd. said these managers accept returns as low as
1.7 percent. Pension funds are “prepared to invest more in PV, as they have done with
wind, because they see it as a sustainable and reliable income,” Benjamin Hill,
president of Trina’s unit in Europe, said in an interview. The comments are evidence that fund managers are getting comfortable with
solar projects, tapping stable returns as central banks keep their benchmark lending rates
near historic low levels. The European Central Bank earlier this month cut the main
refinancing rate to a record 0.15 percent and moved the deposit rate below zero for the
first time, meaning banks will be charged to park cash with the central bank.... While the
funds are most interested “in big utility-scale projects” earning between 2
percent and 5 percent, they’re content with lower returns if the plant is located in
a country with a stable government and regulatory regime, such as Germany and the U.K.,
Suntech Chief Executive Officer Eric Luo said in a separate interview....While
institutional investors generally seek to buy parks starting at 5 megawatts to 10
megawatts, they “also invest indirectly via securitized vehicles of pooled smaller
parks,” Seherr-Thoss said by phone from Berlin, where the company is based. He is
managing the potential sale of a 30-megawatt plant in France that requires 40 million
euros ($54 million) of equity and a portfolio of projects in Japan, he said. Last year,
the U.K.’s Lancashire County Pension Fund invested 12 million pounds in a bond for a
community-owned solar park and Aviva Plc bought the photovoltaic installations on 4,000
U.K. homes."
Solar Returns Declining as Investor Interest Seen Rising
Bloomberg,
12 June 2014 |
"Homeowners
and developers installed 1.33 gigawatts of solar panels in the first quarter, the
second-largest total on record, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Installation increased 79 percent from the same quarter a year earlier with utility-scale
projects making up almost two-thirds of the total and homeowner demand surging, the
Washington-based trade group said today in a statement. Total installations may reach 6.6 gigawatts this year, driven by
residential rooftop systems and more than 12 gigawatts of utility projects under
development, said Shayle Kann, vice president of research at Boston-based GTM Research,
which publishes the quarterly market reports with SEIA. This was the first quarter when
residential systems exceeded commercial and government solar."
U.S. Solar Power Rises 79% as Home Panels Beat Warehouses
Bloomberg,
29 May 2014 |
"INSTALLING
state-of-the-art solar panels on 250,000 roofs could meet one-sixth of Scotland’s
electricity demands, according to researchers. Scientists believe the strategy could help
the one in three Scottish households which they claim are currently struggling to provide
themselves with adequate heat and hot water. Experts
from the University of Edinburgh, along with other researchers, business leaders and
public sector representatives, contributed to a new report which sets out how Scotland
could benefit from solar power. Those involved in the project say it offers the most
comprehensive assessment yet of Scotland’s solar energy potential, and argue that
harnessing energy from the sun on the roofs of south-facing buildings could have
'significant economic, environmental and social impacts'. Solar power could help Scotland
meet renewables targets, create jobs and make sure the energy needs of people in cities
and rural areas are met, the project found."
Solar panels solution to Scotland’s energy demands
Scotsman,
21 May 2014 |
"India’s new government
led by Narendra Modi
plans to harness solar power to enable every home to run at least one light bulb by 2019,
a party official said. 'We look upon solar as having the potential to completely transform
the way we look at the energy space,' said Narendra Taneja, convener of the energy
division at Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, which swept to power on May 16 in the biggest
electoral win in three decades. About 400 million people in India lack access to
electricity, more than the combined population of the U.S. and Canada. The outgoing
government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh missed a 2012 target to provide electricity to all
households. The five-year goal will require the
cooperation of state-level administrations with which the central government shares
control over the power industry, Taneja said. If successful, solar panels could allow
every home to have enough power to run two bulbs, a solar cooker and a television, he
said. Expanding clean-power generation will be the administration’s top
energy-related priority, especially solar because it has the potential to create jobs and
supply millions of scattered households not connected to the grid, he said."
Modi to Use Solar to Bring Power to Every Home by 2019
Bloomberg,
19 May 2014 |
"Subsidies
that have driven the spread of large solar farms across Britain are to be scrapped under
plans to stop the panels blighting the countryside. Energy companies that build solar
farms currently qualify for generous consumer-funded subsidies through the so-called
'Renewable Obligation' (RO) scheme, and had expected to keep doing so until 2017. But the Department of Energy and Climate Change announced on Tuesday that
it planned to shut the RO to new large solar farms two years early, from April next year.
The decision follows an admission by ministers that far more projects have been built than
expected, leading to an rising subsidy bill for consumers and increasing local
opposition. Greg Barker, the energy minister, pledged last month that solar farms
must not become 'the new onshore wind' and said he wanted solar panels installed on
factory rooftops instead. Although a separate, new subsidy scheme will be made available
to large solar farms, it is expected to be far more difficult for solar farms to gain
funding under the new regime. A Whitehall source said: 'Large scale solar shouldn't be in
any place or at any cost. The direction of travel is away from farms - especially where
communities don't want them.' Leonie Greene, head of external affairs for the Solar
Trade Association, said the industry was 'dismayed' at the proposals. She said that the
replacement subsidy scheme - so-called 'contracts for difference' (CfD) - simply 'doesn't
work for solar'. The new scheme will have a capped budget and onshore wind and solar farm
projects will be forced to compete with each other in reverse auctions to win subsidy
contracts. Ms Greene said that, on current costs, solar farms 'can't compete with onshore
wind'. The uncertainty in the auction process also made solar farm development too risky
for the small businesses who typically build them."
End to solar farm blight as subsidy scheme is scrapped
Telegraph,
13 May 2014 |
"Agua
Caliente, the largest photovoltaic solar power facility in
the world, was completed last week in Arizona. The plant comprises more than five million solar panels that span the
equivalent of two Central Parks in the desert between Yuma and Phoenix. It generates 290
megawatts of power—enough electricity to fuel 230,000 homes in neighboring California
at peak capacity. The Agua Caliente Solar Project represents a significant advance in the
technology compared with just four years ago, when the largest solar facility in the U.S.
generated only 20 megawatts. 'Solar has completely arrived as a competitive energy
resource,' says Peter Davidson, executive director of the Loan Programs Office at the U.S.
Department of Energy (DoE)."
World’s Largest Solar Array Set to Crank Out 290 Megawatts of Sunshine Power
Scientific
American, 9 May 2014 |
"Driven by an energy-hungry population
and unstable oil prices, countries in the Gulf and the wider MENA region are investing in
various green energy options, with a focus on in solar energy. The Middle East could see more than $50 billion investment in its
solar power sector by 2020, according to report by Middle East Solar Industry Association
(MESIA). The report found that new renewable projects, providing around 37,000 megawatts
(MW) of energy, are to be commissioned by the end of this decade. Solar energy projects
are forecast to provide around 12,000MW to 15,000MW of power. Saudi Arabia is the largest
solar power market in the region with plans to install 23,900MW of renewable energy by
2020. The Kingdom announced plans to spend around $109 billion on solar, in a bid to shift
power generation to renewable sources. The UAE too has been stepping up investment in
solar. Last year Abu Dhabi launched Shams 1 – the world’s largest concentrated
solar power plant (CSP) in operation. The 100MW plant, located in the western region of
Abu Dhabi, generates enough clean energy to power 20,000 homes in the UAE. Dubai too
opened the first phase of a 13 MW photovoltaic park last year, which has the capacity to
generate 1,000MW of power when completed. Despite
being abundantly blessed with sun throughout the year, countries in the MENA region have
traditionally shied away from investing in solar, citing reasons of commercial unviability
in the long term. But attitudes have drastically changed in last few years. Experts point
out that a combination of rising population and declining oil reserves has increased the
appeal of renewables."
The Middle East Eyes Solar As Easy Oil Era Ends
Gulf
Business, 26 April 2014 |
"At long last, this Earth Day we
celebrate the true dawn of the Solar Age. That sunrise is hastened, here and abroad, by
the slow demise of the once-touted 'too-cheap-to-meter' Atomic Age of nuclear power. As
utilities find nuclear power less and less cost effective, new solar photovoltaic
installations in the United States are springing up. New
solar installations in 2013 reached a record 4.2 gigawatts, bringing the total to 10. On average,
one gigawatt of solar photovoltaics powers 164,000 U.S. homes. That means power for 1.6
million homes. Worldwide, in 2013, solar power installations grew by 38 gigawatts,
from 96 to 134. According to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2013, in the preceding year, 45
gigawatts of wind and 32 gigawatts of solar power were installed worldwide, compared with
a net addition of just 1.2 gigawatts of nuclear. Hastening this energy revolution is the
nuclear industry's Achilles heel: an aging, dangerous reactor fleet that is increasingly
uncompetitive and new reactor designs that are too expensive to build. Last year, utilities permanently shuttered five more reactors,
lowering the number of operating units in the United States to fewer than 100 for the
first time in two decades. Utility owners canceled at least nine planned upgrades of
existing reactors, deeming the investments no longer economically justifiable.
Additionally, nine planned new nuclear reactors were axed in 2013, an indication of how
rapidly things have changed. Just five years ago, utilities applied for licenses to
construct at least 27 new reactors. By the close of 2013, only four of those reactor
projects were still alive."
As nuclear power dies, solar rises
CNN, 22
April 2014 |
"It's
official. Off-grid energy is moving from the eco-fringe to mainstream. Last month US
investment bank Morgan Stanley announced that the off-grid era had arrived: falling prices
for renewable energy equipment and rising prices for energy supplied by power companies
are fundamentally altering the business model of the trillion-dollar electricity industry.
A key piece of the jigsaw came in another statement last month: Tesla Motors are now
committing to a huge increase in battery production, bringing down the cost of energy
storage capacity by over 50%. The power grid is like
a giant battery and up to £500 per year of our energy bills is paying for the maintenance
of that battery. Morgan Stanley calculates that Tesla's batteries will only cost an
off-grid household £350 per year, rendering the Utility company business model obsolete.
'Our analysis suggests utility customers may be positioned to eliminate their use of the
power grid,' says the Morgan Stanley report, Clean Tech, Utilities and Autos. 'We expect
Tesla's batteries to be cost competitive with the grid in many states, and think investors
generally do not appreciate the potential size of the market.'"
Off-grid living: it's time to take back the power from the energy companies
Guardian
Online, 11 April 2014 |
"Internet
access fuelled by solar
power could soon be a reality. Researchers at the University of
Edinburgh have developed technology that enables solar panels to detect broadband
signals, allowing data to be transmitted on the world wide web using daylight. In
addition, solar energy
can be used to power such a device, as well as detect and carry data.... The two technologies combined could enable self-sufficient wireless
communications in remote areas, in developing regions with no web infrastructure, or in
emergency situations. Prototypes of the system have reached transmission speed of about 7
Mbps, which is equivalent to maximum speeds in conventional wireless networks. The
research builds on the Edinburgh team's pioneering Li-Fi technology, which enables data to
be transmitted over the Internet using LED light bulbs. Telecommunications pioneer Professor Harald Haas explains
the latest developments in his research at the Tam Dalyell prize
lecture at the Edinburgh International Science Festival. This University of Edinburgh
annual prize recognises an individual or group for their public engagement work such as
hosting school visits, talks and other public events or through publishing and
broadcasting."
Solar-powered Internet access set to broaden reach of web
Economic
Times, 11 April 2014 |
"The total grid-connected solar capacity, commissioned under the
National Solar Mission, crossed the 2,500-MW mark and stood at 2,632 MW as on March 31,
2014. Of the total, a little over a third of capacity was commissioned in Gujarat. A total
capacity of 947 MW was commissioned during fiscal 2013-14 and Madhya Pradesh added highest
capacity of 310 MW during the year, according to a document of Union Ministry of New and
Renewable Energy (MNRE). Of the commissioned, higher
contribution came from state-policy driven projects at 1,322 MW, followed by MNRE projects
at 688 MW, REC Scheme at 491 MW and the rest came from RPO (renewable purchase
obligation), private sector rooftop and central government organisations."
Solar capacity in India crosses 2,500 MW
The
Hindu, 5 April 2014 |
"Oregon
State University chemists have discovered how to use the sun as more than just a way to
harvest passive energy - they can use it to directly produce the solar energy materials
that make energy harvesting possible. This breakthrough by chemical engineers at Oregon
State University could soon reduce the cost of solar energy, speed production processes,
use environmentally benign materials, and make the sun almost a 'one-stop shop' that
produces both the materials for solar devices and the eternal energy to power them.
Writing in RSC Advances, they say the work is based on the use of a 'continuous
flow' microreactor to produce nanoparticle inks that make solar cells by printing. Existing approaches based mostly on batch operations are more
time-consuming and costly. In this process, simulated sunlight is focused on the solar
microreactor to rapidly heat it, while allowing precise control of temperature to aid the
quality of the finished product. The light in these experiments was produced artificially,
but the process could be done with direct sunlight, and at a fraction of the cost of
current approaches."
How Meta: Using The Sun To Create Solar Energy Materials
Science2.0,
3 April 2014 |
"Solar
energy now costs the same as conventionally generated electricity in three European
countries. The latest report
from an ongoing "PV (Photovoltaic) Grid Parity Monitor" study by consulting firm
Eclareon found that the cost of solar- and fossil fuel-powered electricity has the same
per kilowatt hour (kWh) price tag in Germany, Italy and Spain. Germany decommissioned all of its nuclear power plants in 2012 after the Fukushima
nuclear disaster in Japan. The country has a ways to go to replace that with energy
from renewable resources. While Germany is the world's top PV installer, with a solar PV
capacity of 35.8 gW at the end of January, the total represents only 3% of its total
energy produced there. Germany has set a goal of producing 35% of electricity from
renewable sources by 2020 and 100% by 2050.... Cory Honeyman, a solar power analyst with
GTM research, said the dropping costs of solar power has spurred utilities to sign
contracts to use renewable energy rather than conventional fuels like gas in power plants.
For example, utility Austin Energy recently
signed a contract to buy solar energy-produced electricity from SunEdison at a rock
bottom price of 5 cents per kilowatt hour of energy. SunEdison will generate the power at
two solar energy plants in West Texas. 'SunEdison beat out the natural gas prices by 2
cents per kilowatt,' Honeyman said. 'That's a prime example of what we're seeing in terms
of [solar plant] projects bid by developers at really competitive prices.' Power costs
from plants fueled by renewable energy and conventional fuels fluctuate state-by-state in
the U.S. due to subsidies and other factors. According to a July 2013 report from
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories in Berkeley, Calif., the price of PV solar power
plant installation has seen a 'precipitous decline' year over since 2008. On average, the
plant installation price has declined by 9 cents per watt (or 14%) for solar
installations. Among projects installed in 2012, the median plant cost $5.30 per watt for
systems under 10kW in size, $4.9 per watt for systems ranging from 10-100 kW, and $4.6 per
watt for systems greater than 100 kW in size. A separate
study by Stanford University revealed that it's possible to fulfill all of America's
energy needs through renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and hydroelectric, while
creating jobs in the process. The Stanford team of researchers created 50 individual plans for how
each U.S. state could transition to 100% renewable energy.... The
GPM by Eclareon monitored competitiveness in seven European countries with retail
electricity prices for residential consumers (PV systems of 3kW) and commercial segment
(PV systems of 30kW). Photovoltaics (solar PV) is already price competitive against retail
electricity in the commercial sector of major European markets, according to Ecareaon.... While the cost of renewable energy has gone down, high installation
prices in Latin America still prevent PV technology from being competitive against grid
electricity there, according to Eclareon's report. At the same time, the majority of Latin
American countries have been facing retail electricity price decreases. In contrast,
European countries such as Germany, Italy, and Spain have reached grid parity. France is
the only exception of the analyzed markets in continental Europe, as high irradiation
levels and relatively low installation prices are offset by low electricity rates there,
the report stated."
Solar achieves price parity in Europe
ComputerWorld,
27 March 2014 |
"Testing
by AAA has
found that how far an electric vehicle can travel on one charge varies widely depending on
the weather. Frigid temperatures can reduce that distance by 57%. The research is important to the Automobile Club of Southern California
because it maintains mobile recharging trucks for people who misjudge how far they can go
in their electric car. 'EV drivers need to carefully monitor range in hot and cold
weather,' said Steve Mazor, the engineer who manages the Southern California club’s
Automotive Research Center...The average EV battery range in AAA’s test was 105 miles
at 75 degrees but dropped 57% to just 43 miles at 20 degrees. Heat also sliced the cars'
ranges but by not as much: The cars averaged 69 miles per full charge at 95 degrees, 33%
less than in 75-degree weather."
Electric cars can go only half as far in freezing weather, AAA finds
Los
Angles Times, 20 March 2014 |
"First
Solar, Inc. FSLR +0.18% today announced it has set a world
record for cadmium-telluride (CdTe) photovoltaic (PV) module conversion efficiency,
achieving a record 17.0 percent total area module efficiency in tests performed by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable
Energy Laboratory (NREL). The new record is an increase over the prior record of 16.1
percent efficiency, which the company set in April 2013. This announcement comes weeks
after First Solar announced it achieved a world record in CdTe research cell efficiency of 20.4 percent."
First Solar Sets Thin-Film Module Efficiency World Record of 17.0 Percent
Business
Wire, 19 March 2014 |
"Basic,
safe, sustainable sanitation remains an issue for approximately 2.5 billion people
world-wide. These people do not have access to running water or safe sanitation methods
such as sewage systems or water processing plants. Now, with sufficient
sunlight, a new solar powered toilet can serve up to a family of six while turning their
waste into a product that they may want. A University of Colorado at Boulder team has
developed a toilet that is not only solar powered but can generate biochar. Biochar was used as a farming aid in the Amazon basin almost 3,000 years
ago. The indigenous people took wood and leafy greens and roasted them in smothered fires.
These low temperature burns created charcoal as opposed to ash. The people then took the
charcoal and buried it in the fields to fertilize crops. With the arrival of the
Europeans, this type of farming was soon gone but the layers of biochar remained. In the
20th Century, these deposits of black soil were found and in the 1990s it was discovered
by scientists that this black soil was actually made by man. The soil deposits were
immense. Some of the deposits were up to six feet deep with a total acreage on the order
of 180,000 square miles.... The self-contained solar powered toilet was developed by Karl
Linden, a professor of environmental engineering at Colorado University in Bolder. The
toilet uses the sun’s energy to sterilize the solid human waste, a need and a want of
approximately 40 percent of the Earth’s population. In addition to the sterilization
of the waste, this particular toilet turns the waste into biochar. Not only simply a soil
additive, the resultant product from the toilet may be used for heating.The toilet utilizes the sunlight to heat up the waste and turn it into
biochar. This process is done by using eight parabolic mirrors which focus the light on a
small area. This, in turn, heats up a bundle of fiber optic cables which transmits the heat to a
reaction chamber. The temperatures in this reaction area may exceed 600 degrees
Fahrenheit."
Solar Powered Toilet Turns Waste to Want
Liberty
Voice, 18 March 2014 |
"California
set back-to-back solar power records last week, the state grid operator said on Monday.
The amount of electricity produced from carbon-free solar facilities connected to the grid
reached 4,093 megawatts on Saturday, surpassing the day-earlier record of 3,926 MW, the
California Independent System Operator (ISO) said in a statement. With 5,231 MW, California leads the nation in installed solar generation,
including thermal and photovoltaic facilities, according to the Solar Energy Industries
Association. Power generated from solar has more than doubled from June 2012 when the ISO
recorded 2,071 MW of peak production, the ISO said. 'This shows that California is making
remarkable progress in not only getting new resources approved and connected to the grid,
but making meaningful contributions in keeping the lights on as well,' Steve Berberich,
president the California ISO, said in a statement. Electricity was being produced by 78
percent of the state's installed solar capacity Saturday, well above the 20 percent of
nameplate electric capacity solar plants typically produce on an annual basis, according
to the Electric Power Research Institute. The record
solar generation accounted for about 18 percent of the state's 22,700-MW demand on
Saturday, the ISO said, with the ability to supply about 3 million homes. 'The milestones illustrate that we are well into a new era when clean,
renewable energy is shouldering its share of our electricity needs,' Berberich said.
California also has about 5,890 MW of wind generation, second only to Texas which has
11,213 MW in commercial operation. California's wind, solar and geothermal resources make
up about 15,000 MW of the state's generation mix. California's wind production record
stands at 4,302 MW, set June 23, 2013."
California electric grid sets solar generation record
Reuters,
10 March 2014 |
"Now that the world’s largest
concentrated solar plant is operational in California’s Mojave Desert, the question
is whether it will prove its mettle and whether more of those facilities will crop up. The
392-megawatt Ivanpah solar plant doesn’t just have competition from natural gas and
nuclear facilities. It is also up against photovoltaic (PV), or rooftop solar panels,
which have fallen in price by 70 percent since 2010. Odds are that concentrated solar
power (CSP) technology, which focuses the sun’s rays to produce heat, will have a
tough time competing, unless it can reduce costs and perfect the technology. 'CSP has
fallen by the wayside of the solar industry after attracting huge amounts of government
and investor money in 2010 and 2011,' says Ed Cahill, a research associate with
Boston-based Lux Research and lead author of its recent report on CSP. ' But the industry
can still bring the technology back to the forefront for utility-scale, stand-alone power
applications.' The plunge in solar PV prices has led
to 4,400 megawatts of solar-panel installations in the United States. PV’s gain will
be CSP’s loss. Because several large plants are in the pipeline, the 520 megawatts of
CSP capacity in operation now could become 1,300 megawatts by year end. But after that,
while PV takes off, CSP's growth will slow and eke its way to 2,000 megawatts by 2018."
Concentrated solar power: Did it miss its chance?
Christian
Science Monitor, 7 March 2014 |
"The
latest Bloomberg prediction is that the solar market will grow 20%-plus in 2014. After consulting with 'some of the world’s most knowledgeable and
respected solar analysts' – Deustche Bank, HSBC, Citigroup, Yingli, NPD Solarbuzz,
Wacker Chemie, and PricewaterhouseCoopers – Bloomberg suggests there will be around
44.5 GW installed. That is only a little less than the 46 GW suggested by the Deutsche
Bank. The big story, from 2013, is the change of leadership amongst the world’s solar
powers. After dominating the industry for more than six years, Germany is expected to
install a mere 3.3 GW this year. Instead of incentives, the owners of clean energy plants
may soon be paying a 4.4 euro cents (6 cents) a kilowatt-hour tax. That could turn
potential customers away."
Solar to grow 20% in 2014: analysts
The
Australian, 6 March 2014 |
"Energy
harvested from the Sun was the second-biggest source of new electricity generation
capacity in 2013, but there are clouds on the horizon as a trade war between the U.S. and
China stands to throw a monkey wrench in the works... While big utility scale plants like
Ivanpah, which harnesses the heat of the sun
with concentrated solar mirrors, got most of the headlines, it was small-scale residential
systems that drove much of the demand last year. Residential projects increased by 60%
over 2012 as the price of installing solar fell and as customers took advantage of leasing
options—offered by companies like Solarcity....Last
year China installed at least 12 gigawatts of solar capacity, at least 50% more
than any other country had ever built in a single year. But that’s where things get
cloudy. The U.S. solar boom has been fueled in part by cheap solar panels from China, which have
helped bring down the cost of solar power—now 15% cheaper than it was in 2012. But
those same cheap Chinese panels have hurt domestic manufacturers of solar PV, even as
they’ve helped installers like Solarcity. Several domestic solar manufacturers—led by SolarWorld, an American arm of a German company—have
complained that the Chinese government is unfairly subsidizing national solar PV
manufacturers, which allows them to undercut their American competitors. In response, the
U.S. government agreed in 2012 to impose tariffs of 24 to 36% on Chinese PV panels. But
that made little difference—Chinese companies just outsourced much of their
production to Taiwan. This year, however, SolarWorld brought a new suit in response, pushing the U.S. to extend those
tariffs to Chinese panels made in Taiwan. Last month, the U.S. International Trade
Commission said it would move forward with an investigation, and is set to issue
a preliminary ruling by the end of March. If those tariffs are indeed extended, you can
expect solar power in the U.S. to get more expensive, slowing down growth and hitting
installers—who employ far more Americans than U.S. solar manufacturers do—very
hard, especially since China has already said it would impose retaliatory tariffs. More
expensive panels would likely depress demand for solar in the U.S., hurting
installers."
A Bright Year for Solar in the U.S.—But There Are Clouds on the Horizon
TIME, 5 March 2014 |
"Volkswagen
has released the first official images of the Golf GTE plug-in hybrid ahead of its world
premiere at the Geneva
motor show on March 4. Claimed to combine the dynamics of the petrol GTI with the
cleanliness of electric propulsion, the GTE has a range of about 37 miles in electric-only
mode and a total range of 583 miles. Its Combined
fuel consumption is 188mpg, with 35g/km of CO2. It
will cost about £28,000 after a Government grant has been included. It will be available
to order in late August, with the first cars expected in showrooms in late
November.Essentially it’s a Golf GTI with a smaller capacity petrol engine and the
addition of an electric motor. A 1.4-litre, turbocharged TSI unit develops 148bhp, with a
75 kW/100bhp electric motor integrated into the housing of the six-speed, triple-clutch
DSG gearbox to provide a total power of 248bhp. Even better,
the combined petrol engine and electric motor develop 258lb ft of torque. Using the
electric motor only, the GTE is capable of 80mph. With the addition of the TSI petrol
engine, it can accelerate from 0-62mph in 7.6sec, with a top speed of 138mph. The
battery can be fully charged in three and a half hours from a domestic socket, or about
two and a half hours using a high-capactiy home charger or public charging site. The
car’s socket is located behind the VW badge on the grille.'"
VW Golf GTE plug-in hybrid revealed
Telegraph,
20 February 2014 |
"'You
can just imagine the area in New York, Chicago, or Hong Kong: There are huge buildings
with big windows. That area is just wasted.' That’s Alan Heeger, a Nobel chemistry
laureate, getting enthusiastic about new uses for thin, flexible, semi-transparent solar
cells he’s developing using a 'liquid ink' material. The transparent solar cells can generate power for air conditioning and
even serve to screen from the sun’s rays. 'It’s like wearing sunglasses,' Heeger
explained; the cells act as a solar insulator, reducing the amount of heat radiating in
the building. The liquid solar cell material can be printed from a roll-to-roll printing
press, much as newspaper is printed; comes in different colors; is durable; and being
bendable, can be placed along curved surfaces like the outer walls or windows of high
rises. Its lightweight and rugged aspect is very attractive to urban planning specialists
because it allows endless possibilities on where and how the solar cells can be applied to
surfaces. Another interesting use of these solar cells is on greenhouses. They are light
enough to be placed on the roof and sides of the structure, and their transparency lets
the sun shine through toward the plants. Heeger suggested that tinting the color of the
cells may increase the productivity of the plants below. The possibilities of solar
installation are endless with the new variables of flexibility and lightweight technology.
This alone may allow people who’ve never considered using solar cells to find ways to
apply them to their structures. Solar cells need a reasonably high efficiency to make the
cells productive. Heeger explained that he and his colleagues originally sparked the idea
in 1995 in the laboratory and created cells that were about one percent efficient. He
explained, 'Many people around the world see the potential value in this research. Now, the efficiencies [of our solar cells] are steadily rising up
to about 12 percent, and we foresee 15-20 percent in the reasonable future. By utilizing tandem cells, we could probably obtain even higher
efficiencies, which is fantastic.'"
Solar Window Panels?
Santa Barbara
Independent, 14 February 2014 |
"The
world's largest solar energy plant has officially opened in California. Sprawling across
3,500 acres in the Mojave desert, Ivanpah solar thermal power plant can produce nearly 400
megawatts of energy - enough to power 140,000 homes. The opening of the $2.2 billion
complex of three generating units represents a major milestone in the growing green
industry. .... The plant consists of three 459-foot
tall towers each with tens of thousands of robotic, heliostats that angle sunlight towards
a water boiler. Each heliostat consists of two garage size doors. The reflective area of
each heliostat is 163 square feet. Seen from above the 173,500 heliostats together
look like a lake, reflecting the blue sky, but this has proved problematic for birds.
Government documents show dozens of dead birds from sparrows to hawks have been found on
the site, some with melted feathers. The suspected causes of death include collisions with
mirrors and scorching."
World's largest solar energy plant opens in California
ITV,
14 February 2014 |
"It seems far-fetched to imagine that
putting money into solar panels on the roof of your house could deliver a better return
than in a private pension. But that is exactly what the energy minister, Greg Barker,
argued in an interview with the Telegraph this week. Installation costs for
solar panels have fallen, and the Government subsidises the electricity they produce,
meaning households could get typical rates of return of between 5pc and 8pc, according to
official figures. Average rates on annuities, which many pensioners buy to guarantee a set
income for life, are currently around 3.5pc, if the rate of return is linked to inflation.
Financial advisers have been swift to warn that while solar panels have their merits, they
are no substitute for a pension in retirement planning. Laith
Khalaf, head of corporate research at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: 'There is nothing wrong
with the idea of installing solar panels, but it is not a way to save for retirement.
Rather, they are something you spend your retirement savings on.' Figures calculated for the Telegraph show that when compared on an annual
basis, solar panels could provide a higher income than a pension. But there are certain
provisos – and over the long term, the figures appear to swing in favour of pensions.
Some 500,000 British homes have installed solar panels, which enable users to generate
their own electricity and sell any excess power to energy firms. If a householder spent
£7,500 on a 4kWp installation of solar photovoltaic panels to generate electricity, under
the current feed-in tariff rates they could generate an income of £770 a year. The Energy
Saving Trust, which provided the figures, said that households could earn £555 a year for
generating the electricity, as well as £90 a year selling excess power back to the energy
companies. The trust estimated that savings on electricity bills would add another £125 a
year. These figures are calculated on the current tariff rates, which will fall slightly
on April 1, so the average 4kWp system could save around £750 a year. A lump sum of
£7,500 paid into a pension by a 50-year-old higher rate taxpayer can produce a tax-free
lump sum of £5,600 and a pension income of £504 a year when they retire at 60, according
to Hargreaves Lansdown. After income tax at retirement, which is calculated for a basic
rate taxpayer at 20pc, this leaves an income of £403 a year. A key advantage of pension
saving is that a pension typically comes with an employer contribution, as well as
benefiting from tax relief from the Government, so a lump sum can go much further.
For each £100 a saver puts into a pension, for example, a further £100 will typically be
added by your employer and the Government. Higher rate taxpayers get a further £25 tax
back from the Government, turning a saving of £75 into a pension investment of £200. A pension generates a secure income for life, while the solar
panel income will last for 20 years; and the average lifespan of a panel system is 25
years. If the average male, who has a life expectancy of 86, retired at 60, then the
£7,500 lump sum would pay out £16,070 in total over his retirement. Women on average
live slightly longer, with a life expectancy of 89, so they can expect a total of
£17,280. If a pensioner lived until they were 95, which is increasingly common, the
initial lump sum would pay out £19,700 over the course of their retirement. These figures
are based on assumptions of 6pc investment growth over the decade before the pensioner
retires, and an inflation-linked annuity over the course of their lifetime. The expected
profit for households for solar panels over 25 years is around £10,500, according to the
Energy Saving Trust, based on the income and savings after installation and maintenance
costs. ... Mr Khalaf said that rather than replacing
a pension in a retirement plan, solar panels could be a good use for the tax-free lump sum
people can take out of their pension savings. To extend the tax efficiency even further,
people could put the money saved each year on energy bills into an individual savings
account (ISA), which will allow the savings to grow each year free of income and capital
gains tax.... Once fitted, solar panels require little maintenance and they should last 25
years or more, although the inverter, which converts the electricity for household use, is
likely to need replacing at some point, at an approximate cost of between £800 and
£1,000. "
Can solar panels really beat your pension?
Telegraph,
6 February 2014 |
"The
Punjab government has approved a PC-1 to install 20 Solar Energy Irrigation System (SEIS)
across Rawalpindi Division in a bid to improve crop yield in the rain-fed region, The
Express Tribune has learnt. The Potohar region has a
unique topography which offers perfect storage-and-fall terrain suitable for making small
dams. Realising the potential and making up for the absence of canal water, past
governments have constructed over 900 dams in the division."
Solar irrigation: Harnessing sun to benefit Potohar farmers
Express
Tribune, 3 February 2014 |
"Saudi
Arabia, the biggest producer in Opec,
and the UAE plan to solicit bids this year for as much as 1,000 megawatts of new solar
capacity to reduce reliance on fossil fuels for domestic power production. Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company Masdar, along with Total and Abengoa,
borrowed about US$600 million from 10 banks in March 2011 to build the Arabian Gulf’s
first large-scale solar plant. They did not disclose the interest rate for the 100MW
facility, which started operating last March....The
Middle East and North Africa will need more than $50 billion in investments by the end of
the decade to add as much as 15,000MW of solar-generating capacity, the Middle East Solar
Industry Association and Meed Insight said in a report last month. Fourteen countries in the region have a combined capacity to produce
260,000MW from all energy sources, including 271MW of solar, according to the
report."
Solar energy progress comes at a price
Bloomberg,
2 February 2014 |
"Advances
in solar technology are set to revolutionise the Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV)
market with the development of a new type of cells which combine semi-transparency with
good efficiency, opening up the possibility of entire facades formed of electricity
generating glass. A paper in the prestigious American Chemical Society (ACS) journal ACS
Nano, by Oxford University physicist and Oxford Photovoltaics co-founder Professor Henry Snaith and his team,
charts the development of alternatives to crystalline silicon photovoltaics, describing
how the original ‘new generation’ technology based on organic or dye-sensitised
solar cells achieved the semitransparency that is desired by designers and developers of
buildings, but was unable to achieve efficiencies close to crystalline technology. Now,
however, Professor Snaith and his team at the University have developed solar cells using
perovskite. These solar cells have achieved efficiencies over 15% in the last 12 months,
overtaking other emerging solar technologies which have yet to break the 14% barrier
despite decades of research. Most significantly, the team has also found a solution to the
reddish-brown tint previously associated with the use of perovskite to produce neutral
coloured, semi-transparent cells which address the needs of the construction industry. This world-leading research is being brought to market by Oxford Photovoltaics
(Oxford PV), which holds an exclusive license to the technology. Oxford PV scooped a
number of awards for its progress in the commercialisation of the technology during 2013
including the British Renewable Energy Association’s Innovation Award, the UK
Business Angels’ Best Early Stage Investment in a Disruptive Technology Business
Award and the Solar Award for Excellence: BIPV Innovation at the 2013 Solar UK Industry
Awards. In December last year, Nature magazine identified Professor Snaith, Oxford
PV’s Chief Scientific Officer, as one of the ten people who made a difference to
science in 2013. Commenting on this latest breakthrough he said: 'The pace of development, of this new solar technology, alongside
ongoing research into storage solutions, means that photovoltaics will play an
increasingly important role in meeting future energy demand globally.'"
Semi-transparent perovskite solar cells
AZoM, 31 January 2014 |
"Ten
million homes in the UK should have their roofs covered with solar panels in the next six
years, if the country is to fulfil its renewable energy potential, energy experts said on
Wednesday. That number - of more than a third of households generating energy from the sun
- would allow the UK to produce about 6% of its annual electricity needs from solar power,
with as much as 40% coming from the panels on sunny days in summer, by 2020. These figures are comparable to those of Germany, which has made a major
push on solar power in the last decade. Installing more solar panels brings the costs of
the technology down dramatically, because of economies of scale, as the example of Germany
and other countries shows. By 2030, the cost of solar should be comparable to that of even
the dirtiest forms of coal, and of gas, said Ajay Gambhir, of Imperial College London.
Nearly half a million homes in the UK have
solar panels installed today, recent figures show. At present, the cost of solar power
in Germany is about Euro cents 10 per kilowatt hour, compared with about 6 to 8 Euro cents
per kilowatt hour for 'brown' coal – the most carbon-intensive form of the fuel, but
also the cheapest – and gas. On current trends that should reduce to 6 to 8 Euro
cents per kilowatt hour for solar energy by 2030, while the cost of fossil fuels is
expected to stay the same, according to academics from the Grantham Institute at Imperial
College London, who published a briefing paper on the subject on Wednesday."
UK should have 10 million homes with solar panels by 2020, experts say
Guardian,
29 January 2014 |
"A
new approach to harvesting solar energy, developed by MIT researchers, could improve
efficiency by using sunlight to heat a high-temperature material whose infrared radiation
would then be collected by a conventional photovoltaic cell. This technique could also
make it easier to store the energy for later use, the researchers say. In this case, adding the extra step improves performance, because it
makes it possible to take advantage of wavelengths of light that ordinarily go to waste.
The process is described in a paper published this week in the journal Nature
Nanotechnology, written by graduate student Andrej Lenert, associate professor of
mechanical engineering Evelyn Wang, physics professor Marin Soljacic, principal research
scientist Ivan Celanovic, and three others. A conventional silicon-based solar cell
"doesn't take advantage of all the photons," Wang explains. That's because
converting the energy of a photon into electricity requires that the photon's energy level
match that of a characteristic of the photovoltaic (PV) material called a bandgap.
Silicon's bandgap responds to many wavelengths of light, but misses many others. To
address that limitation, the team inserted a two-layer absorber-emitter device — made
of novel materials including carbon nanotubes and photonic crystals — between the
sunlight and the PV cell. This intermediate material collects energy from a broad spectrum
of sunlight, heating up in the process. When it heats up, as with a piece of iron that
glows red hot, it emits light of a particular wavelength, which in this case is tuned to
match the bandgap of the PV cell mounted nearby."
Solar-power device would use heat to enhance efficiency
Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, 19 January 2014 |
"Cloudy
Britain is emerging as Europe’s hottest market to build solar parks. Cheaper
equipment costs and steady subsidies are attracting developers of large-scale,
ground-mounted projects from nations like Germany and Spain that pioneered solar on the
continent. Britain may build more big plants —
2 megawatts or larger — than any European country, adding as much as 2,000 megawatts
of capacity this year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Those panels would occupy
about 16 square miles, enough to cover most of central London. While much of the continent
has scaled back solar aid to favor economic growth over green policies, Britain pledged
subsidies through 2020 with no limit on the size of projects. Investors raised at least
$1.2 billion last year for megawatt-scale projects, according to data compiled by
Bloomberg."
England's clouds part for solar energy
The
Record, 18 January 2014 |
"Ford
Motor Company, in collaboration with Georgia Tech, debuted a new solar car concept earlier
this month at the 2014 International CES in Las Vegas. The C-MAX Solar Energi Concept is a
first-of-its-kind hybrid electric vehicle with the potential to free drivers of their
dependence on the electric grid. Instead of recharging its battery from an electrical
outlet, C-MAX Solar Energi Concept harnesses the power of the sun by parking under a
special concentrator that acts like a magnifying glass, directing intensified rays from
the sun onto solar panels on the parked vehicle’s roof below. The result is a car that takes a day’s worth of sunlight to deliver
the same performance as Ford’s conventional C-MAX Energi plug-in hybrid, which gets
combined miles per gallon gasoline equivalent (MPGe), with EPA-estimated 108 city/92
highway/100 combined MPGe. “Ford didn’t just want to build an electric car, but
a plug-in hybrid electric car that actually uses green electricity,” said Bert Bras,
a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia
Institute of Technology in Atlanta. “Just putting photovoltaic cells onto a car is
not going to do it, so they reached out to us to help progress the concentrator
idea.”"
New Solar Car Concept Shines
Product Design
and Development, 17 January 2014 |
"Roughly 300 million Indians living in 80
million households — about a quarter of the country’s population of 1.2 billion
— do not have access to electricity. According to the World Bank, per capita
electricity consumption in India, centered mainly in cities and towns, is 684 kilowatt
hours — just 1/20th of the United States’ per capita consumption of
13,246 kilowatt hours. Nearly all microgrids in India are powered by solar
photovoltaic panels, with the exception of 20 to 30 networks that run on hydropower in the
states of Karnataka and Uttarakhand and the biomass-powered grids operated by Husk. To
date, microgrids provide just a tiny fraction of India’s overall power needs.
Although no comprehensive statistics exist on the number of microgrids, a conservative
count shows that they serve at least 125,000 households in India, divided mostly between
large, government-sponsored projects in the North Indian states of Chhattisgarh and West
Bengal and private ventures centered on Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar
are among the most rural and least electrified states in India — a countryside packed
with tens of millions of people, united by darkness. India’s
Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, through its National
Solar Mission, has set the highly ambitious goal of replacing kerosene lamps with 20
million solar lighting systems — powered by microgrids, solar panels on individual
homes, or solar lanterns — by 2022. ...By illuminating an entire village at once, a
microgrid can spread light more quickly than handouts of solar-powered lanterns. It can also scale up far faster than traditional power lines, which are
often promised in India but seldom delivered. By deriving their power from biomass or
solar panels, microgrids raise the possibility that large regions could stay off the
coal-fired power grid forever, shaving a significant chunk off the world’s future
carbon budget. Whoever finds the business model for providing cheap, reliable, local power
will help pull 300 million Indians from the 19th century into the 21st century, with
vastly expanded opportunities for education and commerce."
Indian Microgrids Aim to Bring Millions out of Darkness
Yale
environment 360, 16 January 2014 |
"US
researchers have made an important step forward in the quest to store electricity from
intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar. A Harvard University team came up with
a way to drive down the cost of flow battery technology, which is capable of storing
energy on large scales - within an electrical power grid, for example. Grid-scale storage
for renewables could be a game-changer - making wind and solar more economical and
reliable. While flow battery designs are suited to storing large amounts of energy
cheaply, they have previously relied on chemicals that are expensive or difficult to
maintain, driving up costs. Most previous flow
batteries have chemistries based on metals. Vanadium is used in the most commercially
advanced flow battery technology, but its cost is relatively high. Other variants contain
precious metal catalysts such as platinum. The
researchers say their new battery already performs as well as vanadium flow batteries, but
uses no precious metal catalyst and has an underlying chemistry that is metal-free,
instead relying on naturally abundant, more affordable chemicals called quinones. These
water-soluble compounds are organic (carbon-based) and are similar to chemicals that store
energy in plants and animals. These molecules are cheap and they're in all green
vegetables, as well as crude oil,' said co-author Michael Aziz from the Harvard School of
Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.... Much like fuel cells, flow batteries store energy in chemical fluids
contained by external tanks, instead of within the battery container itself as do the
solid-electrode batteries found in cars and mobile devices. '[A flow battery is] similar
to a fuel cell in that respect. It stores energy as hydrogen gas outside the fuel cell and
when you need to convert that chemical energy into electrical energy, you run it through
the fuel cell to make electricity,' Prof Aziz explained. 'The difference with a flow
battery is that you need to run it forwards and backwards. You run it backwards to turn
the electrical energy into chemical energy and store it in the tanks. Then you run it
forwards to get the energy back out, converting the chemical energy back into
electricity.' The amount of energy that can be stored by a flow battery is limited only by
the size of the tanks and the amounts of storage chemicals that can be afforded, he added.
In an accompanying article in Nature, Grigorii Soloveichik, from General Electric Global
Research in New York, called the results 'promising', and said the approach 'may serve as
the basis for a new flow-battery technology".
Battery advance could boost renewable energy take-up
BBC Online, 9 January
2014 |
"To help remedy India’s situation,
two solar septic systems and a lavatory are being shipped from the Caltech campus to India
on Tuesday. Using the solar toilet system will provide underdeveloped or impoverished
areas a cleaner and healthier way to dispose of human waste without the risk of mixing it
with drinking and bathing waters.... According to the World Wide Water Report, 2.5 billion
people live without basic sanitation like flushing toilets and latrines, almost one
billion of them children. Every 20 seconds, a child dies as a result of poor sanitation. A
20-foot lavatory and treatment system will be sent to Mahatma Gandhi University in
Kottayam, Kerala, which will collaborate with Caltech on the solar-powered septic system.
A treatment system will be shipped to either Ahmedabad or Trivandrum to be connected to an
Eram Scientific 'eToilet,' an energy-saving approach to the toilet. The systems were built
three months ago. A third solar toilet will stay at Caltech for further studies, and can
be used by anyone on campus. Kohler, a kitchen and bathroom design and technology company,
is supporting the efforts by donating plumbing products and design advice...'In 2011, a
team of Caltech researchers was awarded a $400,000 grant to create a toilet that would
safely dispose of human waste for just five cents per use per day. In 2012, their solar
system won first place in the Reinventing the Toilet Challenge sponsored by the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation. Using solar power, which
can be operated remotely, the solar toilet converts sunlight to electricity that powers an
electrochemical reactor, which breaks down water and human waste into fertilizer and
hydrogen, which can be stored in hydrogen fuel cells. In addition, the waste water can be
recycled through the septic system to keep the toilet from contaminating drinking water. 'We’re oxidizing the waste, and we’re also disinfecting it, so
we’re killing bacteria,' Cid said."
Caltech solar toilet set to flush away to India to provide cleaner sanitation
Los
Angeles Daily News, 3 January 2014 |
| 2013 |
"Four
million solar panels covering land the size of 3,400 football pitches should be built on
government land and property including schools and prisons, a minister will announce. Greg Barker, the energy minister, is expected to in the New Year disclose
plans for one gigawatt of electricity generated by solar panels on the 'government
estate'. It could mean huge solar farms on Government land as well as panels on thousands
of public buildings. Mr Barker's desire to dramatically increase the Government's
commitment to renewable energy will dismay many senior Conservatives. The plans are
understood to be a 'personal ambition' of Mr Barker’s and are not an official
Government target."
Energy minister wants four million solar panels installed on government land and buildings
Telegraph,
30 December 2013 |
"The documented savings for people who go
solar are enormous. Solar power is surely now saving millions of people billions of
dollars. However, generic studies regarding solar savings and even building-specific
projections of how much you can save aren’t enough for some people. Generaytor
may have a solution for those who need a little more convincing. The company started off
by offering its service to IKEA customers in the UK (solar panels are sold at IKEA there),
but it has now expanded its service to web users the world over. So, compared to other
solar savings projections that companies like 1BOG (with whom we have a partnership) and Cost of Solar (for whom I write) offer,
what’s so unique about Generaytor?
'With Virtual Solar, users get a live simulation of their savings, powered by actual data
from solar systems of nearby community members,' Generaytor writes. In other words, rather
than using entirely generic inputs + your home’s specifics, the service also utilizes
the solar data from houses in your area. Additionally, it
lets you look at how solar would theoretically perform on your roof in real time. As they say, it’s 'try before you buy' for solar… or something
close to it.'"
Virtual Solar Roofs Let You “Try Solar” Before You Buy It
Clean
Technica, 21 December 2013 |
"Photovoltaics
proved so successful in Hawaii that the local utility, HECO, has instituted policies to
block further expansion....Hawaiian Electric Co., or
HECO, in September told solar contractors on Oahu that the island's solar boom is creating
problems. On many circuits, the utility said, there's so much solar energy that it poses a
threat to the system and a safety issue. Studies are needed on whether grid upgrades are
necessary. If they are, residents adding solar must foot the bill. And starting
immediately, contractors and residents would need permission to connect most small rooftop
systems to the grid. The new HECO policy was included deep in the text of emails the
Walkers' solar contractor had sent, but it escaped their notice before installation.
They're now paying $300 per month on a loan for the panels, plus the $250 electric bill.
'It goes from frustration to outrage,' William Walker, 33, said of his reaction. 'We hear
the excuses that HECO provides, that they put out there at least as far as the
justification. There's really not a lot of substantiation. My belief is it's purely
profit-motivated, to keep people away from PV and keep them on the grid.'...The new
struggle on Hawaii foreshadows what the rest of the country could face as solar moves
closer to the mainstream, several involved in the debate said."
A Solar Boom So Successful, It's Been Halted
Scientific
American, 20 December 2013 |
"You
may have noticed lately that more residences and businesses are being equipped with
photovoltaic solar roof panels. The reason is relatively simple: the cost to do so has
dropped dramatically over the past five years. The cost of installing photovoltaic solar
arrays has dropped to $3 per watt of electricity they produce - about the same as
coal-powered plants cost to build - creating a watershed moment in the development of
clean energy, experts say. The average price of a solar panel has declined by 60% since
the beginning of 2011, according to GTM Research.
And, according to CleanTechnica, a website dedicated to renewable energy news,
the price of solar power has fallen rom $76.67 per watt in 1977 to 74 cents today. This
year, solar power was the second leading source of new electricity, according to CleanTechnica. The amount of power produced by solar arrays
in the U.S. is skyrocketing as installations soar. This year, it's expected that the
amount of power solar arrays produce will be equal to that of 10 nuclear power plants or
10 gigawatts (a GW is equal to 1 billion watts), according to GTM. As a whole, the U.S.
installed 4.3GW of PV solar arrays this year, a 27% increase over 2012."
Solar power installation costs fall through the floor
Computer
World, 16 December 2013 |
"Israel’s
foremost green energy pioneer is visiting London next week, where he will propose, among
other innovations, a 'renewable energy' solution to the Iranian crisis. 'Nuclear power is
the power of war and solar power is the power of peace,' said Yosef Abramowitz, who has
set up massive solar fields in Israel’s Negev desert. 'If the Iranian
government says it is concerned about having electricity for its people, no one so far has
either called its bluff or helped it towards cheap energy that is greener.' Mr Abramowitz will argue at a meeting in Parliament that the West should
try to end the nuclear crisis with Iran by offering to help it develop large-scale green
energy capabilities. He acknowledged that his idea is unorthodox, but said he thinks there
is a 'diplomatic opening' for it."
Peace is solar-powered, says Israeli green energy guru
Jewish
Chronicle, 6 December 2013 |
"A
Japanese construction firm is proposing to turn the moon into a colossal solar power plant
by laying a belt of solar panels 250 miles wide around its equator and beaming the energy
back to Earth by way of lasers or microwave transmission. The 'Luna Ring' that is being proposed would be capable of sending 13,000
terawatts of power to Earth - more than three times more than the United States generated
throughout the whole of 2011. Shimizu is reluctant to put a price tag on the construction
costs involved but, given adequate funding, the company believes construction work could
get under way as early as 2035. Robots and automated equipment would be developed to mine the
moon’s natural resources and produce concrete and the solar cells required for the
scheme. Shimizu believes that “virtually inexhaustible, non-polluting solar energy is
the ultimate source of green energy”. "
Could this be future of renewable energy?
Telegraph,
29 November 2013 |
"Fracking
is not going to reduce gas prices in the UK, according to
the chairman of the UK's leading shale gas company. The statement by Lord Browne, one of the most
powerful energy figures in Britain,
contradicts claims by David Cameron and George Osborne that shale gas
exploration could help curb soaring energy bills. Browne added to the
government's ongoing troubles over energy policy by labelling nuclear power as 'very, very
expensive indeed' and describing the fact that more state subsidies are given to oil and
gas than to renewable energy as 'like running both the heating and the air conditioning at
the same time'. The former chief executive of BP,
who now holds a senior
government position as lead non-executive director, told an audience at the London
School of Economics that climate change was 'existentially important', but that without
gas the transition to a zero-carbon energy system would never happen. However, Browne, who is the chairman of fracking company Cuadrilla, said: 'I don't know what the contribution of shale gas will be to the
energy mix of the UK. We need to drill probably 10-12 wells and test them and it needs to
be done as quickly as possible.' 'We are part of a
well-connected European gas market and, unless it is a gigantic amount of gas, it is not
going to have material impact on price,' he said.....
Browne criticised the UK's fossil fuel subsidies: 'In
2011, the UK spent over £4bn supporting the production and consumption of oil and gas,
more than they spent to support renewable energy.' Across
the OECD, he added, $80bn every year is spent supporting production of carbon-based fuels:
'It is like running both the heating and the air conditioning at the same time,' he
said..... Browne said nuclear power was one of the safest energy sources available, but
said that had come at a cost: 'Nuclear power has
become very, very expensive indeed.' In October,
ministers agreed a deal to pay French state energy company EDF billions of pounds in
subsidies if it goes ahead with two new reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset, a deal that
left some analysts
'flabbergasted' at the cost. Browne also said the siting of new
reactors on the coast when sea level and storm surges are rising was a 'big issue' and
that they must be made resilient. Lord Adair Turner, the former chairman of the Financial
Services Authority and Committee on Climate Change, introduced Browne's lecture and agreed
that the cost projections for nuclear power were 'disappointing' compared to a 2008
analysis he led. Turner said that in contrast, solar power costs had fallen 'beyond our
wildest dreams' by about 80% in five years.' Browne, once known as the 'sun king' and who
said he is now co-head of the largest private equity renewable energy fund in the world at
Riverstone
Holdings, said: 'Solar is a very good technology and we should use more of it.'"
Lord Browne: fracking will not reduce UK gas prices
Guardian,
29 November 2013 |
"If anybody doubts that federal energy
regulators are aware of the rapidly changing electricity landscape, they should talk to
Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). 'Solar is growing so fast it is going to overtake everything,' Wellinghoff told GTM last week in a sideline conversation at the National Clean Energy Summit
in Las Vegas. If a single drop of water on the pitcher’s mound at Dodger Stadium is
doubled every minute, Wellinghoff said, a person chained to the highest seat would be in
danger of drowning in an hour. 'That’s what is
happening in solar. It could double
every two years,' he said. Indeed, as GTM
Research's MJ Shiao recently pointed out, in the next 2 1/2 years the U.S. will double its entire
cumulative capacity of distributed solar -- repeating in the span of a few short years
what it originally took four decades to deploy."
FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff: Solar ‘Is Going to Overtake Everything’
Greentechmedia,
21 August 2013 |
"In
a first for the solar power industry, Wall Street is dealing with bonds backed by solar
electricity payments. SolarCity, a provider of energy services, plans to sell the bonds,
secured by its residential and commercial power contracts. The offering will be managed by
Credit Suisse and has received an investment-grade classification of BBB+ from Standard
and Poor’s. The bonds will have a yield of 4.8 percent, a relatively high rate that
rewards investors for buying untested securities, and will be sold initially to select
institutional investors. The solar industry needs
new sources of financing. To date, it has relied on tax equity investments and has not
been able to draw on capital from public markets. In its preliminary rating report,
S&P outlined the risks of the industry’s limited operating history as well as
uncertainty about the future of tax credits: the federal tax credit for solar energy
projects is set to drop to 10 percent from 30 percent at the end of 2016. Other risks were
identified, such as quickly evolving technology
and changing utility rates. But S&P also pointed out benefits to the bonds, such as
the inclusion of extra collateral, a special reserve account to cover equipment failures,
and a shortened, 13-year bond term. In conclusion, S&P stated that it expected the
market to continue to grow rapidly. This bond offering is an important step toward
financial sustainability as we move toward an energy future powered by renewable
sources."
Solar Power Industry to Sell First Investment Bonds - Energy Minute for November 21, 2013
3BL
Media, 21 November 2013 |
"Saudi Arabia has long been known for its
oil. According to Oil and Gas Journal, Saudi Arabia has almost 265 billion barrels of
proven oil reserves or around one-fifth of the world's oil reserves. Those oil riches
afford Saudi citizens one of the highest living standards in the Middle East with a
purchasing power parity per capita of $31,800 per year. With
the trend of increasingly affordable solar, Saudi Arabia may soon be known for solar as
well. According to Reuters, Saudi Arabia plans to install 41 gigawatts of solar power over
the next 20 years from the current 12 Megawatts of capacity today. To put that in
perspective, according to the European Photovoltaic Industry Association, the entire
continent of Europe had 70 gigawatts of solar installed at the end of 2012."
Why Saudi Arabia Is Going Solar
Motley
Fool, 16 November 2013 |
"Solar
panels work great, as long as the sun is shining. This is not some esoteric problem.
Solar's intermittency boosts its overall cost because utilities can only depend on a small
portion of a panel's generational capacity. The good news is that grid operators realize
that pumped hydro storage is tried and tested, offering grid scale storage and a
straightforward path for more reliance on solar. Pumped hydro storage transfers water
between two reservoirs, allowing the water to flow downhill and make electricity when
prices are high. Back in the 1890s Italy and
Switzerland were already using pumped hydro storage, and it currently represents around 3%
of global generation capacity. More storage facilities are already being built to help
handle the new solar farms in America's Southwest. The 1,300 megawatt (MW) Eagle Mountain
facility was recently approved with a price tag of $1.4 billion. The operator will be able
to release energy during times of peak demand, helping California meet its renewable
energy goals."
Solar's Biggest Problem Is Being Solved
Motley
Fool, 16 November 2013 |
"BMW, a manufacturer that knows how to
make cars sell, has partnered with SolarCity, which happens to be very good at selling its
solar services to provide a package in which they could enjoy SolarCity’s famous
solar leasing plan (but at a discount) when they buy BMW i series vehicles at any of the
participating BMW i Centers in SolarCity’s territory.....Normally, the high initial
cost of a solar
system plus the high initial cost of an electric vehicle is a major problem. However, BMW and SolarCity’s bundle marks a big step forward towards
zero emissions transportation, and away from that financial issue."
BMW Partners With Solar City To Offer Solar + EV Bundle
CleanTechnica,
15 November 2013 |
"Toward the end of last year, installed global photovoltaic
generating capacity passed the milestone of 100 gigawatts — enough to meet the energy
needs of 30 million households and save more than 53 million tons of carbon dioxide
emissions annually, according to a recent report by the European Photovoltaic Industry
Association, E.P.I.A., a solar
power industry lobby group. 'Right now, today,
the world has installed 130 gigawatts of PV, up from 1.4 gigawatts in 2000,' Wolfgang
Palz, a former manager of the European Commission’s development program for renewable
energies, told a conference organized by France’s National Center for Scientific
Research, CNRS, in Paris last month. Europe alone now has 80 gigawatts of installed
photovoltaic capacity, of which 35 gigawatts is in Germany, the European Union leader,
providing about 7 percent of the country’s electricity, he said. Some regions of
Germany are even further ahead: 'If you buy an Audi today, manufactured in Bavaria, 10
percent of the electricity used to produce it is PV,' Mr. Palz said in an interview. With
large-volume installation, economies of scale have substantially reduced unit costs.
According to a report by the E.P.I.A., the European solar industry’s lobby group,
photovoltaic costs have dropped 22 percent with every doubling of production capacity.
Going back 10 to 15 years, 'we had to fight to find some crazy people who would install
solar panels for $70 per watt on the rooftop,' said Eicke Weber, director of the
Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, in Freiburg, Germany. 'We had to find
some market support systems for the first thousand-roof program,' Mr. Weber said. 'That
became the 100,000-roof program — and then the million-roof program.' Now, 'the number that should be broadcast is that, in Germany now,
we are able to put PV systems on the rooftop for one euro per watt,' or $1.34, 'with the
back-up system, with the inverter, and with the cost of installation,' Mr. Weber said. An inverter is a device that converts the direct current electricity
produced by solar generation into alternating current that can be fed into the electrical
grid. “In other countries, in the United States, it’s about a factor of two to
three more expensive,” he added."
Solar Power Begins to Shine as Environmental Benefits Pay Off
New
York Times, 11 November 2013 |
"American
innovators still have some cards to play when it comes to squeezing more efficiency and
lower costs out of silicon, the workhorse of solar photovoltaic (PV) cells and modules
worldwide. A recent breakthrough - the product of a partnership between manufacturer
TetraSun and the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) - could
spark U.S. solar manufacturing when the approach hits the assembly line next year. The
innovative design, simple architecture, and elegant process flow for fabricating the cells
make the technology a prime
candidate for large-scale production. Solar industry
leader First Solar acquired TetraSun in April 2013, about the time R&D Magazine
honored TetraSun and NREL with one of its coveted R&D 100 Awards for the year's top
innovations. Typically, silicon PV cell manufacturers add a grid of thin silver lines to
the cell via a screen-printing process to form the front contacts. The TetraSun cell
instead loads 50-micron-wide copper electrodes on its front contacts in a way that
prevents diffusion of the metal-which can degrade performance. The new process exceeds the
performance of traditional heterojunction cells without the need of any special equipment,
complicated module assembly, or costly transparent conductive oxides. That adds up to a
significant cost advantage when it comes to high-volume manufacturing. 'It's a potentially
disruptive technology, and
that's why we decided to work with TetraSun,' said NREL's Martha Symko-Davies, who headed
the Energy Department's SunShot Initiative PV Incubator program when TetraSun received a
grant from it back in 2010. 'The Incubator program supports potentially disruptive
innovations from small startups.'"
New Solar Cell Is More Efficient, Less Costly
HispanicBusiness,
8 November 2013 |
"The
sound vibrations that make up music can make solar panels work harder, according to new
research, and pop music performs better than classical.Scientists showed that high pitched
sounds like those common in pop and rock music caused the greatest improvement in the
solar cells' power output, increasing it by up to forty per cent. Classical music, with typically lower pitched sounds, still increased the
cells' output, but not as much.This discovery makes it possible to power a wider range
devices with solar energy than at present, as scientists can improve the efficiency of
solar cells using the ambient, or background, noise present in many environments. The study is published today by LCN researchers at Imperial
College London and Queen Mary University of London, in the journal Advanced
Materials. They found that sound levels as low
as 75 decibels (equivalent to a typical roadside noise or a printer in an office) could
significantly improve the performance of the solar cells tested in the study. Practical
uses for this discovery could include solar powered air conditioning units, laptop
computers or electronic components on buses, trains and other vehicles... 'After
investigating systems for converting vibrations into electricity this is a really exciting
development that shows a similar set of physical properties can also enhance the
performance of a photovoltaic solar cell,' said Dr Steve Dunn, Reader in Nanoscale
Materials from Queen Mary’s School of Engineering and Materials Science. 'The work
highlights the benefits of collaboration to develop new and interesting systems and
scientific understanding,' he added."
Solar panels perform better when listening to music
London
Centre For Nanotechnology, 6 November 2013 |
"Sunlabob
Renewable Energy and Fondation Energies pour le Monde this week announced the completion
of a solar-powered mini-grid that is now delivering reliable, affordable electricity to
nearly 500 people in a remote village in Luang Prabang Province, Laos. Ban Houaypha, a village of 83 households, has limited job opportunities,
low income levels, inadequate education and health services and no short-term outlook to
receive electricity from the national electricity grid. The average household income is
less than $2.50 a day. The 6.5 kWp solar plant will distribute electricity through a
decentralized village grid to households, a community center and five street lights. The
Ban Houaypha mini-grid is the first step within the Fondation’s long-term rural
electrification strategy in Laos that aims to implement 15 solar village grids to provide
energy access to at least 10,000 rural Laotians and contribute to the Lao
Government’s target of 90% electrification by 2020."
Solar power mini-grid opens energy access in rural Laos
Eco-Business,
30 October 2013 |
"Sitting on a rooftop, soaking up sun,
the humble solar panel may not look like a threat to a multibillion-dollar industry. But
some electric utility executives say it is. They even have a name for the nightmare
scenario solar could create - the 'death spiral.' They fear solar's rapid spread across
homes and businesses, combined with the increasing efficiency of modern buildings and
appliances, could slowly erode the utilities' ability to grow. California utilities get
paid based on the value of the assets they own - the transmission lines, substations and
wires. As more businesses and homeowners generate their own electricity, the utilities
won't need to add as many of those assets as before. At the same time, the costs of
maintaining the electricity grid might fall on fewer and fewer nonsolar utility customers.
The companies could compensate by tacking on fixed monthly charges for all customers,
solar and nonsolar alike. But those new charges would jack up bills, and that could prompt
more people to slap panels on their roofs. The
problem will only get worse if advanced battery packs become cheap enough for home use,
parked in the basement by the water heater. Mike
Florio, a member of the California
Public Utilities Commission, remembers listening to an irate solar homeowner at a
hearing in San Diego, where utility executives had proposed a fixed charge. 'A gentleman
came up and said, 'Well, I put in solar, and now the utility wants to hit me with a fixed
charge,' ' Florio said. ' 'Guess I'll just put in storage with solar and get off the grid
altogether.' That's the death spiral. That's what we don't want.' Most everyone who uses
the term death spiral quickly acknowledges that it's overblown. Solar installations are spreading at breakneck speed, with another
added somewhere in the nation every four minutes, says the Solar
Energy Industries Association. But the number of
systems is still small, estimated by GTM
Research to reach 399,111 by year's end. Most of those systems will be in
California."
Solar switch forces utilities to shift priorities
San
Francisco Chronicle, 26 October 2013 |
"All
indications are that electric vehicles will rapidly come into common use. The major
problems have been the cost, cruising ranges that are less than what we are used to, the
time it takes to recharge batteries, and for many, a place to do the recharging. During
the last six months there have been dozens of announcements by companies and laboratories
around the world concerning the improvement in battery and occasionally ultra-capacitor
technology. Many of these speak of 4-5 fold
increases in potential energy density of their new electricity storage devices. While most
of these are still at the laboratory-bench stage, a few appear ready for commercial
application in the next few years or at least before the end of the decade. In August, the
Department of Energy announced that it will award $36 million to spend on 22 projects
aimed at accelerating the development of better energy storage systems that will speed the
adoption of electric vehicles. The era of the
electric vehicle is much closer with a dozen or so models from different manufacturers
likely to be on the market within the next year. These are coming from manufacturers in
the U.S., Europe and the Far East. BMW, Mercedes and VW will have high quality vehicles
with ranges in excess of 100 miles on the market next year. Rapid charging that will boost
a battery to 80 percent of capacity or less in 20 minutes is being tested as are methods
of charging a vehicle simply by stopping over a device on the ground. Similar progress is
being made for light trucks and buses. The Koreans
are testing a bus that recharges its electric batteries from wires buried beneath its
route as it is moving. This allows for smaller and cheaper battery packs and the ability
to move the bus off its designated route. Forecasters are starting to take notice of these
developments and making what they consider bold predictions that sales of electric-powered
cars might reach 400,000 vehicles ten years from now."
The Peak Oil Crisis: Cars, Trucks & Buses
Falls Church
News-Press, 22 October 2013 |
"Significant
improvements to the efficiency of solar cells could be possible in the near-future thanks
to the recent development of a new heat-resistant thermal emitter by researchers at
Stanford University. The new heat-resistant thermal
emitter was created as a means of converting the higher-energy portion of light into lower
energy waves which can then be absorbed by the solar cells and converted into electricity,
along with the lower energy portions that most solar cells convert. Technologies such as
this — more broadly known as thermophotovoltaics — have been around for quite
some time, but have, until now, possessed a number of important limitations that this new
device seems to overcome. Foremost of which, are the limitations to do with operating
temperature ranges — earlier designs have all become nonfunctional at temperatures of
around 2200 degrees Fahrenheit, whereas the new one “remains stable at temperatures
as high as 2500 F”..... 'These results are
unprecedented,' stated lead author Kevin Arpin. 'We
demonstrated for the first time that ceramics could help advance thermophotovoltaics as
well other areas of research, including energy harvesting from waste heat,
high-temperature catalysis and electrochemical energy storage.' 'We’ve demonstrated
that the tailoring of optical properties at high temperatures is possible,' Braun added.
'[Hafnium and tungsten are abundant, low-cost materials, and the process used to make
these heat-resistant emitters is well established. Hopefully these results will motivate
the thermophotovoltaics community to take another look at ceramics and other classes of
materials that haven’t been considered.' The new research was just published in the
October 16th edition of the journal Nature Communications."
Vastly Improved Solar Cells Possible With Use Of New Heat-Resistant Materials
CleanTechnica,
19 October 2013 |
"Concentrated
solar thermal is again making the news, with the world’s largest parabolic trough
array with thermal storage – opening for business in Arizona. The 280 MW Solana
Generating Station constructed by Spanish group Abengoa has six hours of molten storage
capacity that will allow it to produce energy into the evening, and deliver output
according to the needs of the customer. 'Solana is a monumental step forward in solar
energy production,' said Don Brandt, the president of APS, the local utility. 'This
provides a huge boost toward our goal to make Arizona the solar capital of America.' The
opening of Solana is one of three major new projects that are coming on stream, as CSP
begins to recover the ground lost, and projects ceded, to solar PV when that technology
delivered massive cost reductions in recent years. The 375 MW Ivanpah project, the largest solar power tower in the world, has
delivered to the grid for the first time and is due to start full operations within the
next few months, as is the 110 MW Crescent Dunes facility in Nevada, which will be the
world’s largest solar power tower project with molten salt. Also, the first commercial scale solar thermal plant with storage, the Gemasolar plant in Spain, recently marked its second anniversary by
delivering electricity 24/7 for 36 consecutive days. On Thursday, Dr Keith Lovegrove, the
head of solar thermal at Australia’s IT Power, said CSP with storage is ”virtually unbeatable” as a technology, and the costs are
coming down quickly. The Solana plant’s CSP technology produces electricity by
collecting the sun’s heat to create steam that turns conventional turbines. It has
2,700 parabolic trough mirrors,which follow the sun to focus its heat on a pipe containing
a heat transfer fluid. This fluid, a synthetic oil, can reach a temperature of 735 degrees
Fahrenheit. The heat transfer fluid then flows to steam boilers, where it heats water to
create steam. The steam drives two 140 MW turbines to produce electricity, much like a
traditional power plant."
World’s Largest Solar Thermal Plant With Storage Comes Online
CleanTechnica,
14 October 2013 |
"A
novel device that uses only sunlight and wastewater to produce hydrogen gas could provide
a sustainable energy source while improving the efficiency of wastewater treatment. A
research team led by Yat Li, associate professor of chemistry at the University of
California, Santa Cruz, developed the solar-microbial device and reported their results in
a paper published in the American
Chemical Society journal ACS Nano. The hybrid
device combines a microbial fuel cell (MFC) and a type of solar cell called a
photoelectrochemical cell (PEC). In the MFC component, bacteria degrade organic matter in
the wastewater, generating electricity in the process. The biologically generated
electricity is delivered to the PEC component to assist the solar-powered splitting of
water (electrolysis) that generates hydrogen and oxygen."
New device harnesses sun and sewage to produce hydrogen fuel
University of
California Santa Cruz, 10 October 2013
EE Herald, 29
September 2013 |
"Last week there were two announcements
related to innovation in increasing solar PV efficiency. Both are from a team of companies
rather than individual company. In the established silicon PV cell domain imec, RENA, and
SoLayTec have achieved solar PV cell efficiency of 20.1% on a Passivated Emitter and Rear
Cells (PERC) type silicon solar cells, which are made using atomic layer deposition (ALD)
Al2O3 passivation and standard screen printed contacts. These silicon solar cells are
manufactured on imec’s silicon solar cell pre-pilot line using RENA’s InPilot
tool for rear-side polishing and emitter removal, and SoLayTec’s spatial ALD tool for
Al2O3 deposition. A top efficiency of 20.6% was
reached when applying Cu-plated contacts at the front instead of silver screen printed
contacts. ALD Al2O3 passivation process by SolaYTec
is aimed at lower cost of ownership (< 2€ct/layer) without effecting the cell
efficiency, which is ready to be implemented in an industrial environment. While
silicon-based solar PV getting better, researchers are exploring III-IV group
semiconductor materials to develop high-efficiency solar cells for concentrated solar
photovoltaic applications. The CPV is suitable for areas where sunlight intensity is very
higher. In another announcement on solar PV
efficiency achievement, The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, Soitec,
CEA-Leti and the Helmholtz Center Berlin have jointly achieved a new record efficiency of
44.7%. Scientists have used multi-junction solar
cells to achieve increased efficiency, several cells made out of different III-V
semiconductor materials are stacked on top of each other. Each material is designed to
convert light radiation into electricity for different wavelengths such as infrared,
ultraviolet and visible light. Multiple semiconductor wafers were bonded one over the
other."
Solar PV cell efficiency taken to new levels |
"Solar power is here, and it isn’t
just environmentalists saying it anymore. A research division of Citigroup, the massive
multinational bank that probably doesn’t share Greenpeace’s worldview
on many issues, does agree with us on one point: solar energy is poised to explode in the
U.S. Citi Research published the report, 'Rising Sun: Implications for U.S. Utilities,' in
August (hat tip to Marc Gunther, who referenced it in a great piece for Yale
Environment 360.) It slipped under the media radar, which is unfortunate because the
analysis is phenomenal and offers great hope for the clean energy
revolution here in the U.S. Citi’s analysts don’t mince words: 'Our viewpoint is
that Solar is here to stay and very early in the growth cycle in the U.S.' They note that solar panels costed an average of $75/watt in 1972.
In 2012, that number was down to less than $1/watt (the number is even lower now, closer
to $.65/watt in some places.) The report compares that rapid decrease in cost to
Moore’s Law, the famous theory which postulated in 1965 that computer chips could
double in performance every two years. That
prediction turned out to be uncannily accurate, which is the basic reason for why
you’re reading this on a laptop, tablet or smartphone right now. A similar phenomenon
is happening now with solar costs, which have shrunk reliably and quickly. As a result,
two thirds of all the solar power in the world has been installed since 2011, and that
number will double again by 2015, Greentechmedia reported. Citi’s
analysts noted that this solar growth has exceeded almost everyone’s expectation:
'The biggest surprise in recent years has been the speed at which the cost of solar panels
has reduced, resulting in cost parity being achieved in certain areas much more quickly
than was ever expected.' The most exciting thing
about this solar boom is probably the hope that it provides for everyone who depends on a
healthy planet (AKA, everyone.) Solar growth means less burning of coal, gas and
eventually oil, the main causes of the climate change
that is already causing extreme weather here in the U.S. and around the world, and
portends much uglier effects like increased conflict, rising sea levels, ocean
acidification and fresh water scarcity down the road.'"
Solar Energy Revolution Reaching Full Speed
EcoBusiness,
27 September 2013 |
"A
new world record has been set for solar hydrogen production efficiency — the new
record-breaking efficiency of 5.3% blows past the previous record of 4.2%, thanks in large
part to the development of a new 'wormlike' hematite photoanode. The new photoanode was developed by researchers from the Ulsan National
Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in South Korea, and from the University of
Tokyo in Japan. The impressive jump from a record efficiency of 4.2% to 5.3% was achieved
by the researchers through the utilization of an entirely new method/different materials
— whereas the previous record was set by researchers (from the Ecole Polytechnique de
Lausanne in Switzerland) using stable oxide semiconductor photoanodes, the new record was
set via the use of the new worm-like hematite photoanode."
Solar Hydrogen Production Efficiency World Record Broken — “Wormlike”
Hematite Photoanode Crushes Old Record
CleanTechnica,
27 September 2013 |
"German
and French researchers said Thursday that they have achieved a new world record on
converting sunlight to energy through a photovoltaic, or solar cell. The solar cell
was able to collect energy at a 44.7% rate of efficiency, which was measured at a
concentration of 297 suns. The team of scientists
from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, Soitec, CEA-Let and the
Helmholtz Center Berlin jointly announced the "major breakthrough" with their
new solar cell. The solar cell contains four solar sub cells and paves the way to
achieving their 50% efficiency roadmap, the researchers said in a statement.....The efficiency rating means the solar cell collects 44.7% of the
sun's spectrum's energy, from ultraviolet to the infrared spectrum, which is converted
into electrical energy."
New solar cell sets world record, focusing the power of 297 suns
ComputerWorld,
26 September 2013 |
"For
the first time, more solar will be added to the world's grid this year than wind. About 36.7 gigawatts (GW) of solar is expected to be installed this year
compared to 33.8 GW of onshore wind and 1.7 GW of offshore wind, says Bloomberg New Energy
Finance. That's because this is the worst year for wind installations since 2008 - down
25% - largely because of policy uncertainty in the US and China. Last year, new wind
capacity totaled 46.6 GW, much more than solar at 30.5 GW - but both were record
figures. Going forward, wind and solar PV are expected to grow neck-in-neck through
2030 - expanding at about the same rate, says New Energy Finance. Wind is expected to grow
from 5% of the world's total installed capacity in 2012 to 17% in 2030. Solar PV is
projected to grow from 2% today to 16% of world energy generating assets by 2030."
Solar Catches Up With Wind: Growing Neck-in-Neck Worldwide
SustainableBusiness,
26 September 2013 |
"More
than two-thirds of the residential solar power systems installed in California over the past two years
were owned by third-party investors, according to
the U.S. Energy Information Administration. In other
words, most of the solar power systems installed at homes in California are owned by
someone other than the homeowner. The EIA’s analysis, which relied on data from the California Solar
Initiative, provides still more evidence of a maturing third-party financing market
for solar PV projects. While the CSI data is limited to California, other industry reports
have shown similar growth trajectories for third-party-owned residential solar PV systems
in other states."
Majority Of California's Residential Solar PV Not Owned By Homeowners
Forbes,
17 September 2013 |
"Developers installed 832 megawatts of
solar power capacity in the U.S. in the second quarter, led by large projects that sell
electricity to utilities, a trade group said. Installation grew 15 percent from the prior
quarter, with flat results in the residential market and commercial demand slumping 11
percent, the Washington-based Solar Energy Industries Association said today in a
statement. Utility-scale projects increased 42 percent. The
U.S. will probably install 4.4 gigawatts of solar power this year, up 30 percent from
2012, as demand increases for residential rooftop systems and the pipeline of
utility-scale projects increases, according to Shayle Kann, vice president of research in Boston at GTM, which wrote
the report with SEIA."
U.S. Solar Power Rises 15% on Large Scale Power Projects
Bloomberg,
12 September 2013 |
"Today’s solar industry is puny
– it supplies less than 1 percent of the electricity in the U.S. – but its
advocates say that solar is, at long last, ready to move from the fringe of the energy
economy to the mainstream. Photovoltaic panel prices are falling. Low-cost financing for
installing rooftop solar is available. Federal and state government incentives remain
generous. Yet opposition from regulated utilities, which burn fossil fuels to produce most
of their electricity, could stop a solar boom before it gets started. Several
utilities, including Arizona Public Service and Denver-based Xcel Energy, have asked their
state regulators to reduce incentives or impose charges on customers who install rooftop
solar; so far, at least, they aren’t making much headway. A bill in the California
legislature, backed by the utility interests would add $120 a year in fees to rooftop
solar customers. But other utility companies
are adopting a different strategy – they are joining forces with solar interests. NRG
Energy, based in Princeton, N.J., has created a rooftop solar unit to sell systems to
businesses and, eventually, homeowners. New
Jersey’s PSE&G is making loans to solar customers, and Duke Energy and Edison
International have invested in Clean
Power Finance, a San Francisco-based firm that has raised half a billion dollars to
finance solar projects. 'The industry is divided on how to deal with the
opportunity – or threat,' says Nat Kreamer, Clean Power
Finance’s CEO. 'Some utilities are saying, how
do I make money off distributed solar, as opposed to, how do I fight distributed solar.'”
With Rooftop Solar on Rise, U.S. Utilities Are Striking Back
Yale
Environment 360, 3 September 2013 |
"A
new tax on solar power introduced two weeks ago by the Spanish government has been
described as 'ludicrous' and 'stupid' in two leading international publications. US business and finance magazine Forbes pulled no punches in an article
titled, 'Out of ideas and in debt, Spain sets sights on taxing the sun'. It pointed out
that Spain 'is one of the top countries in the world with respect to installed
photovoltaic (PV) solar energy capacity.' But the author took an incredulous tone and
noted: 'Spain is now attempting to scale back the use of solar panels – the use of
which they have encouraged and subsidized over the last decade – by imposing a tax on
those who use the panels.'"
'Let's tax the sun': new law shocks world press
The
Local (Spain), 12 August 2013 |
"The
world installed 31,100 megawatts of solar photovoltaics (PV) in 2012—an all-time
annual high that pushed global PV capacity above 100,000 megawatts. There is now enough PV
operating to meet the household electricity needs of nearly 70 million people at the
European level of use. While PV production has
become increasingly concentrated in one country—China—the number of countries
installing PV is growing rapidly. In 2006, only a handful of countries could boast solar
capacity of 100 megawatts or more. Now 30 countries are on that list, which the
International Energy Agency (IEA) projects
will more than double by 2018."
Solar Power
Earth Policy Instititute, 31 July
2013 |
"China has raised its 2015 target for
solar-electricity capacity, giving a shot in the arm to its solar companies, many of which
are struggling due to industry overcapacity, slow global demand and overseas trade
disputes. China’s State Council, or cabinet, in
a statement dated July 4 but posted Monday said installed capacity for solar electricity
would reach more than 35 gigawatts by 2015, and would grow by about 10 gigawatts a year
between now and then. China’s previous target was 21 gigawatts, and its installed
capacity in 2012 was about 7 gigawatts."
China Raises Target For Solar Power Capacity
Wall
St Journal (blog), 15 July 2013 |
"Britain's
new support plans for renewable energy confirm that offshore wind is the most expensive
green power technology, raising the question why the country is placing so much faith in
it. Offshore wind is even more expensive than solar power, which is not an energy
technology where Britain has a competitive advantage, as a northern country whose climate
is dominated by wet Atlantic weather. The country
has one of the best wind resources in Europe, which has led to a belief by some that it
makes more sense to invest in offshore wind. Such thinking is muddled because solar power
is cheaper, even in Britain, and will probably remain so. Britain announced support rates
on Thursday for the second half of the decade which would provide offshore wind with a
20-25 per cent premium to solar power. The premium was even greater compared with other
low-carbon technologies including onshore wind, biomass, waste-to-energy and hydropower.
That is before accounting for the astronomical grid connection cost for offshore wind - by
sub-sea cable. This cost, about 10 times that for rival electricity generation
technologies, is subsidised separately and is far from transparent. The evidence for
higher costs is a concern for Britain's plans, confirmed on Thursday, to install more
offshore wind capacity than any other renewable power technology by 2020. The government
says it supports offshore wind because of its potential to help generate thousands of
jobs, and to improve Britain's security of energy supply with low-carbon power....Under
the new system of support, offshore wind will qualify for a strike price of 155 pounds per
megawatt hour (MWh), from 2014/2015, while large-scale solar photovoltaics will get 125
pounds, and onshore wind 100 pounds. The rate for offshore wind is higher than any other
technology, with the exception of an experimental waste-to-energy process called
pyrolysis, and marine wave and tidal projects. Offshore wind will continue to earn the
highest level of subsidy - with the exception of wave and tidal - through 2018/2019. (See
Chart 1) The difference with pyrolysis, wave and tidal power is that these are unproven
and experimental, and will therefore see negligible capacity installed by 2020 - an
aggregate of about 0.4 gigawatts, according to the DECC figures. By contrast, offshore
wind will see the most capacity installed of any renewable technology, at 8-16 GW. The
logic of selecting the most expensive technology for the largest deployment is unclear. It
may be that DECC expects the costs of offshore wind to plummet shortly thereafter, but
that expectation is not demonstrated."
Solar beats wind even in cloudy Britain
Reuters,
28 June 2013 |
"Most efforts at improving solar cells
have focused on increasing the efficiency of their energy conversion, or on lowering the
cost of manufacturing. But now MIT researchers are
opening another avenue for improvement, aiming to produce the thinnest and most
lightweight solar panels possible. Such panels,
which have the potential to surpass any substance other than reactor-grade uranium in
terms of energy produced per pound of material, could be made from stacked sheets of
one-molecule-thick materials such as graphene or molybdenum disulfide. Jeffrey Grossman,
the Carl Richard Soderberg Associate Professor of Power Engineering at MIT, says the new
approach 'pushes towards the ultimate power conversion possible from a material' for solar
power. Grossman is the senior author of a new paper describing
this approach, published in the journal Nano Letters.... Pound
for pound, he says, the new solar cells produce up to 1,000 times more power than
conventional photovoltaics. At about one nanometer (billionth of a meter) in thickness,
'It’s 20 to 50 times thinner than the thinnest solar cell that can be made today,'
Grossman adds. 'You couldn’t make a solar cell any thinner.' This slenderness is not
only advantageous in shipping, but also in ease of mounting solar panels. About half the
cost of today’s panels is in support structures, installation, wiring and control
systems, expenses that could be reduced through the use of lighter structures. In addition, the material itself is much less expensive than the highly
purified silicon used for standard solar cells — and because
the sheets are so thin, they require only minuscule amounts of the raw materials."
Solar power heads in a new direction: thinner
MIT, 26 June 2013 |
"An
expert here believes that the Kingdom is likely to spend all its oil on electricity in the
country by 2031 if current consumption continues, and has called for an urgent program to
harness solar energy. 'There must be real work done
to benefit from this alternative energy in the Kingdom in light of climat changes,
population growth and increasing electricity use,' said Abdel Malik Al-Junaidi, chairman
of the mechanical engineering department at King Abdul Aziz University. He said Saudi
Arabia has a 'real wealth' of alternative energy but has not exploited it. He said Saudi
Arabia could become a leading exporter of solar power. The Kingdom has this potential
because it is located close to the equator, its skies are cloud-free and because the sun's
rays fall vertically onto the country. 'Solar energy generation can be 1,000 watts for
every square meter which requires stations to transfer this solar energy to electrical
energy. (This is important) especially since Saudi Arabia by 2031 will need to use all its
oil for electricity production.' Al-Junaidi said that Saudi Arabia has "the highest
consumption of electricity in the world.” He said Saudi Arabia has become dependent
on oil for its electricity because of the low production costs involved. In contrast,
there is a fivefold increase in costs for solar power stations. However, the cost will be
much less over the long term, beating traditional sources. He said there was too much
electricity consumption in the Kingdom, with the Saudi Electricity Company producing 50GW.
In comparison, dams only produce 2GW. There are 25 dams used for electricity generation in
the Kingdom."
‘Solar energy crucial to meet rising demand in Saudi Arabia'
Al
Bawaba, 16 June 2013 |
"Ambulance
service vehicles in the south of England have become the first in the country to be fitted
with solar panels. Thirty-six rapid response
vehicles from the South Central Ambulance Service have been fitted with the panels
following a nine-month trial last year. The panels, on the single-crewed cars, help power
life-saving equipment and will now be trialled on larger double-crewed ambulances. The
ambulances cover Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Hampshire. The solar panels
charge the emergency vehicle's secondary battery which powers on-board equipment such as
defibrillators, satellite navigations systems and communication devices. Before,
ambulances had to let their engines run idle while on standby between emergency calls in
order to keep the equipment charged. The idea has come from within the south ambulance
service itself as its engineers sought ways of reducing its carbon footprint and fuel
costs. It cost £34,560 in total to fit the vehicles with the panels, but the service
anticipates reducing its carbon dioxide emissions by 30.28 tonnes and its fuel costs by
more than £50,000 over the next five years."
Solar panels installed on ambulance vehicles
BBC Online, 15 May 2013 |
"It's
the first manned plane to fly for 24 hours on nothing but solar-powered batteries. That's
right -- we're talking about a sun-powered plane that can fly at night. 'Theoretically,' said its pilot, Bertrand Piccard, 'the plane can fly
forever.' The Swiss-made Solar Impulse is in the middle of a U.S. tour this month, flying
five legs from California to New York. In 2015, Piccard and his co-pilot, Andre
Borschberg, hope to make the next generation of Solar Impulse the first solar-powered
plane to circle the globe."
Funny-looking plane designed to make history
CNN, 13 May 2013 |
"In February, California, which
mandates that 33% of its electricity come from renewable sources by 2020, required a Los
Angeles-area utility to ensure some capacity comes from energy storage. On May 1, Germany,
which is shuttering its nuclear power plants as it boosts renewables, began subsidizing
homeowners' purchases of batteries to store power from solar panels. China's five-year
plan calls for 5% of all electricity to be stored by 2020. In the United States, about 2%
of electric capacity is pumped hydro storage, the most common form of energy storage. The
global market for storing power from solar panels is forecast to explode, from less than
$200 million in 2012 to $19 billion by 2017, according to a report this month by IMS
Research. One factor driving this growth is the plummeting price of renewables, especially
solar panels that have fallen at least 60% since the beginning of 2011. As a result,
industry groups report historic growth as U.S. electric capacity from solar panels jumped
76% and from wind turbines, 28%, last year alone.... Toyota's Jaycie Chitwood said
lithium-ion batteries are just too expensive to make electric cars cost competitive
without subsidies. Speaking at the Advanced Energy 2013 conference last month in New York
City, she said Toyota is expanding its line of electric vehicles to meet the U.S.
government's fuel-efficiency targets — not because they're profitable. She said it
gives a $14,000 discount for each new electric RAV4. Chitwood said a major battery advance
is needed. Toyota is working on several alternatives, including cheaper, longer-range
batteries that use magnesium instead of lithium. Commercialization, though, is years away.
'Batteries continue to be a challenge,' especially those for electric vehicles, Esther
Takeuchi,chemistry professor at SUNY Stony Brook, said at the same conference. 'Things
aren't where we'd want them to be, but they're getting closer.' ... IBM's Allan Schurr is bullish on his company's new lithium-air battery,
which takes in oxygen from the air to form a chemical reaction that generates an electric
charge. It's lighter and denser than the lithium-ion ones in most of today's electric
vehicles, which use heavy metal oxides to drive the chemical reactions that produce power.
'The performance we've seen in tests so far is at or above our expectations,' he says.
With 500 miles on a single
charge, he says, 'You'd take the 'range anxiety' out of the equation.' The current Nissan
Leaf gets up to 75 miles on a single charge, and the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, 62 miles."
Better batteries could revolutionize solar, wind power
USA
Today, 12 May 2013 |
"A
Vijayawada-based solar energy equipment manufacturer, Jyothi Solar Power Projects has
claimed that by using two new technologies together with the existing photo-voltaic (PV)
panel system, 91 per cent of the Sun’s energy could be converted into electrical
power. At a meeting to showcase the technologies
here on Saturday, P. Lakshminarayana, Director-Technical of the company said they had
applied for patents. They include ‘Twintin’, a system based on sensors that
could synchronise PV panels with the Sun’s movement, thus capturing maximum heat and
a Multi-Junctional Device (MJD) with Nano technology that could instantly convert solar
energy into electrical power.... In two months, the company’s technical team would
prove the technology by generating 40 megawatts of solar power in the presence of
scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, USA. A young scientist
with Jyothi Solar Power Projects, Prasanna Kumar said the cost would work out to between
Rs. 1 and 1.2 lakh per kilowatt of electrical power produced. Currently, he said between
14 and 16 per cent of solar energy was converted into electrical power in India."
New technology to instantly convert solar energy into electricity
The
Hindu, 12 May 2013 |
"A
project that envisaged supplying solar and wind energy from Morocco to Europe has been
shelved. Observers say the question is now whether
it will be possible to revive at a later stage. Expectations were running high at the
start of November last year for plans to construct a solar and wind power plant in Morocco
and export the energy it produced to Europe. Paul von Son, head of the green energy
project Desertec Industry Initiative (Dii), had been waiting for a declaration of intent
to be signed by Morocco and a number of European countries. 'It would be the first
agreement between European and North African governments that regulates the transfer of
electricity from renewable sources across national borders,' said von Son at the last Dii
annual conference November 2012 in Berlin. That could have been the breakthrough moment
for the Desertec project - but in the end, nothing was signed."
Europe not likely to get North African electricity
Deutsche
Welle, 11 May 2013 |
"'We're fifteen to twenty years out of
date in how we think about renewables,' said Dr. Eric Martinot to an audience at the first
Pathways to 100% Renewables Conference held April 16 in San Francisco. 'It's not 1990
anymore.' Dr. Martinot and his team recently compiled their 2013 Renewables
Global Futures report from two years of research in which they conducted interviews
with 170 experts and policymakers from fifteen countries, including local city officials
and stakeholders from more than twenty cities. They also reviewed more than 50 recently
published scenarios by credible international organizations, energy companies, and
research institutes, along with government policy targets for renewable energy, and
various corporate reports and energy literature. The
report observes that '[t]he history of energy scenarios is full of similar projections for
renewable energy that proved too low by a factor of 10, or were achieved a decade earlier
than expected.' For example, the International
Energy Agency's 2000 estimate for wind power in 2010 was 34 gigawatts, while the actual
level was 200 gigawatts. The World Bank's 1996 estimate for China was 9 gigawatts of wind
and 0.5 gigawatts for solar PV by 2020, but by 2011 the country had already achieved 62
gigawatts of wind and 3 gigawatts of PV."
Conventional Wisdom About Clean Energy Is Still Way Out of Date
Greentechmedia,
9 May 2013 |
"Australian
scientists have found a way of hugely increasing the efficiency of solar panels while
substantially reducing their cost. The University of NSW researchers have come up with
improvements in photovoltaic panel design that had not been expected for another decade.
The breakthrough involves using hydrogen atoms to counter defects in silicon cells used in
solar panels. As a consequence, poor quality silicon can be made to perform like high
quality wafers. The process makes cheap silicon 'actually better than the best-quality
material people are using at the moment' the head of the university's photovoltaics centre
of excellence, Professor Stuart Wenham, said. Silicon wafers account for more than half
the cost of making a solar cell. 'By using lower-quality silicon, you can drastically
reduce that cost,' he said. 'We've been able to
figure out what the secret is that enables hydrogen to sometimes work the way people want
it to, and sometimes doesn't.' At present, the best
commercial solar cells convert between 17 per cent and 19 per cent of the sun's energy
into electricity. UNSW's technique, patented this year, should produce efficiencies of
between 21 per cent and 23 per cent. The price of
solar panels has fallen by about 65 per cent in two years, partly due to a huge rise in
production in China. Australians have been taking advantage of lower prices, with the
number of homes with solar panels exceeding 1 million. The phenomenal growth has caused
some casualties in the industry as companies have taken on massive debt to expand supply,
then struggled with falling prices in saturated markets. Notable among them is the recent
debt default by Suntech Power, once the world's largest solar-panel maker, founded by
former University of NSW researcher Shi Zhengrong. Panel prices are predicted to fall much
further. European producers predict they will be 60 per cent cheaper by 2020. 'Based on
the technological advances we're making, we think that's certainly achievable,' Dr Wenham
said."
Breakthrough in solar efficiency by UNSW team ahead of its time
Sydney
Morning Herald, 6 May 2013 |
"In
2007 installed solar power amounted to .0006 of the world's electrical consumption and did
not keep pace with the growth of electric consumption. Or as Prieto put it in 2008: 'The
Energy Consumption Chariot goes over 200 times faster than the Solar Power horses.' Spain, of course, has gained some fame and notoriety as a global solar
pioneer. One-tenth in 2009 and one-fifteenth of the world's installed solar power modules
now dot the Spanish countryside. But these expansive operations provide but 4.3 per cent of Spain's electricity....The sun is
renewable but photovoltaics are not. Just to make the silicon used to trap the sun's rays
on manufactured wafers requires the melting of silica rock at 3,000 Fahrenheit (1,649
Celsius). And the electricity of coal-fired plants or ultrapurified hydrogen obtained from
fossil sources provide the heat to do that. It also takes a fantastic amount of oil to
make concrete, glass and steel for solar modules.... what troubled Prieto most were the
paltry energy returns of some 57,900 solar plants, both big and small. He reviewed Spain's
excellent data on the energy outputs of the nation's solar network and than compared those
findings to actual energy inputs. To his dismay Prieto found that solar offered only
slightly better returns than biofuels. Or 2.4 to one. #That is not enough to maintain
society as it is today.' His finding surprised many researchers and for good reason.
Previous studies put solar returns as high as eight or even up to 30 to one in some cases,
or almost on par with conventional oil. But most of this research used the same sort of
best-case scenario modelling typically employed by car industry mileage studies....Prieto
calculates.... that to replace all electricity made by nuclear and fossil fuels in Spain
would take a solar module complex covering 6,000 sq. km of the country at the cost the
entire Spanish budget (1.2 billion Euros in 2007). It would also require the equivalent of
300 billion car batteries to store the energy for night-time use. Prieto is not alone in
reaching such sobering conclusions. A 2013 Stanford University report, for example, calculated that global
photovoltaic industry now requires more electricity to make silicon wafers and solar
troughs than it actually produces in return. Since 2000 the industry consumed 75 per cent
more energy than it put onto the grid and all during its manufacturing and installation
process."
Solar Dreams, Spanish Realities
The Tyee, 3 May 2013 |
"Tesla pioneered the idea of harnessing
solar power to create an incentive to lure potential customers to its cars. Late last year
the Californian startup opened the first of a series of ‘fueling’ stations where owners of its Model S
could drive in and charge their batteries to approximately half their charge, for no cost
whatsoever. Now BMW, which later this year will launch its first of a new range of
electric cars, is announcing a similar concept. Rather
than establish its own solar-powered charging stations, BMW will offer owners of its new i
range of electric cars an elegant charging system designed to be installed on a garage at
their home. The solar-powered home charging system has been developed by fellow German
firm Solarwatt and includes a household microgeneration system that can be used to help
reduce a home’s power bill."
BMW To Offer Solar-Powered Charging Systems To EV Customers
High
Gear Media, 25 April 2013 |
"Qatar
is racing to develop efficient solar-powered cooling technology to counter the searing
heat of the Middle Eastern summer in its stadiums during the 2022 soccer World Cup, a
senior organizing committee official said. Nasser Al-Khater, the organizing committee's
communications and marketing director, also said the tiny gulf state would construct its
stadiums with modular technology so it could downscale them after the tournament, and
donate seating to countries with little sports infrastructure. Al-Khater said the wealthy emirate already boasted the world's first
cooled stadium, albeit with traditional energy sources. Temperatures in Qatar can reach
more than 40 C in the summer months."
Qatar races to develop solar-powered cooling
Reuters, 20
April 2013 |
"Solar
power and other distributed renewable energy technologies could lay waste to U.S. power
utilities and burn the utility business model, which has remained virtually unchanged for
a century, to the ground. That is not wild-eyed
hippie talk. It is the assessment of the utilities themselves. Back in January, the Edison
Electric Institute — the (typically stodgy and backward-looking) trade group of U.S.
investor-owned utilities — released a report
[PDF] that, as far as I can tell, went almost entirely without notice in the press.
That’s a shame. It is one of the most prescient and brutally frank things I’ve
ever read about the power sector. It is a rare thing to hear an industry tell the tale of
its own incipient obsolescence....the power generated by solar panels on residential or
commercial roofs is not utility-owned or utility-purchased. From the utility’s point
of view, every kilowatt-hour of rooftop solar looks like a kilowatt-hour of reduced demand
for the utility’s product."
Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities
David
Roberts - Grist (Blog), 10 April 2013 |
"Can solar power address the issue of
power deficit in Tamil Nadu? It appears so at his juncture considering that the State,
despite having the highest installed wind power capacity faces some inherent challenges.
These include poor evacuation infrastructure and age-old windmills. The above observation led speakers at the Solar Energy Investment
and Technology Forum 2013 to conclude that solar looked to be a more viable option than
wind, and probably ‘the’ option to mitigate the power deficit scenario in the
State."
‘Solar power becoming a more viable option than wind’
The
Hindu, 9 April 2013 |
"Australia
has reached one million rooftop solar systems installed on homes and businesses, capping off a massive rise over the past decade of federal and state
incentives. The one million mark was exceeded on March 12, with an analysis of government
data by solar industry consultants SunWiz finding 1,011,478 systems had been installed
across the country at the end of last month."
Solar hits the million mark despite cuts to incentives
Sydney
Morning Herald, 5 April 2013 |
"Japan
will probably become the largest solar market in the world after China this year, boosted by an incentive program that offers above-market rates for
energy from renewable sources. Commercial and
utility-scale projects will boost solar installations to a range of 6.1 gigawatts to 9.4
gigawatts in 2013, exceeding an earlier forecast of
3.2 gigawatts to 4 gigawatts, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said in a research note."
Japan to Become Largest Solar Market After China, BNEF Says
Bloomberg,
4 April 2013 |
"The excitement over solar power, which
once attracted billions in private investment and public subsidies, has waned recently,
underscoring the limitations of renewable energies and the unchallenged dominance of
fossil fuels. Some of the $75 billion sector's high profile names have fallen on hard
times recently – most notably Suntech
Power. The China-based solar panel company rattled the industry when it filed for
bankruptcy last week. In its heyday, the stock traded just shy of $90 and had a market
capitalization of $16 billion: on Thursday, the last day U.S. markets were open, the
shares traded around for 42 cents each. Alternative energy advocates point out that
Suntech's difficulties were specific to its business model, exacerbated by a trend of
compressed industry prices that have squeezed profit margins for solar companies. The company's failure belies a U.S. market where solar panel
installations grew by 76 percent last year, according to the Solar Energy Industries
Association (SEIA). 'The overall story is about growth and declining costs,' said Arno
Harris, chairman of the SEIA Board, in an interview. Much like the way low-cost natural
gas is transforming the U.S. energy market, '[solar] costs have come down so dramatically,
it's created a Darwinian environment,' Harris added.
He pointed to the collapse in silicon – a
linchpin of solar panel manufacturing – which has led to a steep drop in prices per
watt of solar panels. That amount is now less than a dollar, down sharply from $4 per watt
a few years ago, making it difficult for companies
to make money. ... SEIA's Harris said that prospects for solar remain bright as renewable
energy becomes more mainstream. 'Solar this year will
be the number two technology right behind natural gas,' he said. 'It's no longer this fringe thing that's a fun science
experiment.'"
Once 'Overhyped and Sexy,' Solar Tumbles Back to Earth
CBC, 30 March 2013 |
"Solar
power will be the second-biggest source of generating capacity added to the U.S. electric
grid this year, according to Sharp
Corp. (6753)’s Recurrent Energy unit. 'Solar is going to move into the No.
2 position in terms of new build, second only to gas,' Recurrent Chief Executive Officer Arno Harris said in an interview
yesterday at the company’s main office in San Francisco. Rooftop solar systems can be
installed for about $4 a watt and utility-scale systems for $2 a watt, Harris said. 'We
can see our way to $1.50,' he said. 'At those kinds of costs, we’re competitive in
the Southwest with conventional electricity.'”
Solar Will Be Second-Biggest Source of U.S. Power Added in 2013
Bloomberg,
21 March 2013 |
"President Barack Obama called on
Congress to approve $2 billion in funding for advanced vehicle technology over the next
decade, the latest in a series of proposals to boost research for cars and trucks. Obama
made the proposal Friday at an appearance at the Argonne National Laboratory in suburban
Chicago, where federally funded research helped develop lithium-ion
batteries for electric cars.... Obama said funding
research for an Energy Security Trust would help move the nation off oil and 'helps us
free our families and our businesses from painful spikes in gas once and for all.'...
Obama said the project could create more auto jobs. He pointed to progress by two U.S.
automakers: 'Last year, General Motors sold more hybrid vehicles than ever before. Ford is
selling some of the most fuel-efficient cars so quickly that dealers are having a tough
time keeping up with the demand,' Obama said. 'We're
making progress, but the only way to really break this cycle of spiking gas prices, the
only way to break that cycle for good is to shift our cars entirely — our cars and
trucks — off oil.'"
Obama seeks $2B for auto research
Detroit
News, 16 March 2013 |
"The
oil-rich sheikhdom of Abu Dhabi this week dedicated what it says is the largest
concentrating solar power plant in the world, a sign that Middle Eastern countries are
serious about developing their solar resources. The 100-megawatt Shams 1 power plant
covers two and half kilometers and generates electricity from over 700 rows of large
reflective troughs. Mirrors on the parabolic troughs
reflect light onto a tube carrying a synthetic oil, which is converting into steam to turn
a conventional electricity-generating turbine. The plant is part of Abu Dhabi’s
effort to diversify its energy supply and develop renewable energy technologies for
export, says Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the CEO of Masdar, the state-owned renewable energy
company. 'From precious hydrocarbon exports to sophisticated renewable energy systems, we
are balancing the energy mix and diversifying our economy–moving toward a more
sustainable future,' Al Jaber says in a statement. The project was developed as a joint venture of Masdar,
French energy company Total, and Abengoa Solar of Spain, which has a number of
concentrating solar plants around the world. The $600 million project took three years to
build and will power thousands of homes. It will use an air-cooling method to condense
steam, a water-conserving measure. The Middle East, with its ample sunlight, is emerging
as a promising area for growth in the solar industry. Neighboring
Saudi Arabia plans to generate one third of its electricity from solar in 20 years..."
Abu Dhabi Plugs in Giant Concentrating Solar Plant
MIT
Technology Review, 19 March 2013 |
"The
$77 billion solar-energy industry is forecast to expand the most since 2011, as China becomes the biggest
market for the first time and drives annual global installations to a record. New generation capacity will rise about 14 percent this year to 34.1
gigawatts, equal to about eight atomic reactors, according to the average estimate of
seven analysts surveyed by
Bloomberg. That would beat the 4.4 percent growth in 2012, when demand shrank in Italy and
France after subsidies
were cut."
China Drives Record Solar Growth Becoming Biggest Market
Bloomberg,
8 March 2013 |
"Hanergy
Holding Group Ltd., a Chinese thin-film solar panel maker, expects the technology it has
backed to take a greater share of the market that’s dominated by silicon-based cells
as the biggest manufacturers stumble...'A new age represented by thin-film technology will
come,' as silicon-based panel producers led by Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. and LDK
Solar Co. Ltd. suffered losses, Hanergy’s Chairman Li Hejun said in an interview. 'The market demands cheaper equipment that features flexibility and with
more applications.'... Our costs are around 50 cents a watt, and we aim to cut it by 10
percent this year,' Li said. 'The international market is very good for thin-film panels
as they don’t face anti-dumping and anti-subsidy probes in Europe and import duties
in the U.S.'”
Hanergy Sees Thin-Film Solar Gaining Market Share
Bloomberg,
8 March 2013 |
"A
new technique developed by University of Toronto Engineering Professor Ted Sargent and his
research group could lead to significantly more efficient solar cells. In a paper published in the journal Nano Letters, the group describes a
new technique to improve efficiency in what are called colloidal quantum dot
photovoltaics. It's a technology that already promises inexpensive and more efficient
solar cell technology. But researchers say such devices could be even more effective if
they could better harness the infrared portion of the sun’s spectrum, which is
responsible for half of the sun’s power that reaches the Earth. The solution has an
unwieldy name: spectrally tuned, solution-processed plasmonic nanoparticles. These
particles, researchers say, provide unprecedented control over light’s propagation
and absorption. The new technique developed by
Sargent’s group shows a possible 35% increase in the technology’s efficiency in
the near-infrared spectral region, says co-author Susanna Thon (pictured left). Overall,
this could translate to an 11% solar power conversion efficiency increase, she says, making quantum dot photovoltaics even more attractive as an
alternative to current solar cell technologies."
Improved colloidal quantum dots to make solar cells more efficient
R
& D, 8 March 2013 |
"If
the electric car batteries were much cheaper, the range longer, and recharging faster and
more readily available, such vehicles just might catch on as an attractive option in the
face of ever increasing gasoline costs. This is where the good news comes in, for in the
last year what may prove to be highly significant advances in battery technology have been
announced and partially verified. These new battery
technologies offer the prospects of greatly lowering the cost of batteries, increasing the
range of electric cars, and even offering an affordable way of storing intermittent power
generated by wind and the sun. The first announcement came in February 2012 from a
start-up in California, called Envia, which announced that they had developed a battery
cathode made of manganese for lithium ion batteries that would allow electrical energy to
be stored at a density of 400 watt-hours per kilogram as compared to 100-180 watt-hours in
current batteries. This announcement was followed shortly by one made in March of last
year from another California startup, CalBattery, who said they were developing a new
lithium ion battery anode material that would allow electric cars to go three times
further at a battery life-cycle cost 70 percent less than that of current batteries. Last
October CalBattery announced that independent tests had verified that their new
silicon-graphene anode material was showing an energy density of 525 watt-hours per
kilogram which should clearly allow three times longer ranges for electric cars –
provided of course that this new anode material can be introduced into batteries that will
last long enough to useful."
The Peak Oil Crisis: An Electric Car in Your Future?
Falls
Church News-Press, 6 March 2013 |
"The solar manufacturing industry is now
a highly competitive industry. Solar module companies that can’t compete are dropping
like icicles on a warm spring day. Shell dropped out of the solar module race in 2006,
giving its solar business to SolarWorld. Nonetheless,
Shell is still quite bullish on solar energy in the long term. In one of the two future
energy scenarios it just released (the New Lens
Scenarios), it projected that solar would become the largest source of energy by 2070."
Shell Bullish On Solar Despite Dropping Solar
Solar
Love!, 3 March 2013 |
"Buoyed
by bullish demand forecasts, and increasing utilization rates and pricing, Deutsche Bank
forecasts a solar market transition from subsidized to sustainable in 2014. The German bank has raised its 2013 global solar demand forecast to 30 GW
– representing a 20% year-on-year increase – on the back of suggestions of
strong demand in markets including India, the U.S., China (around 7 to 10 GW), the U.K.
(around 1 to 2 GW), Germany and Italy (around 2 GW). Rooftop installations are, in
particular, expected to be a main focus, says Deutsche Bank. A trend for projects being
planned with either 'minimal/no incentives' has also been observed, despite the belief
that solar policy outlooks are improving, particularly in the U.S., China and India, and
'other emerging markets'. Looking at India, Deutsche Bank predicts that due to state and
RPO programs, demand is likely to be strong, at between 1 to 2 GW. Meanwhile, it says,
'grid parity has been reached in India even despite the high cost of capital of ~10-12%.'
With system prices between €1,500 to €2,000/kW, net metering for systems below
200 kW and 'advanced' plans for unsubsidized projects in the south of the country, Italy
also 'appears to be at grid parity'. 'Assuming small commercial enterprises are able to
achieve 50% or more self consumption, solar is competitive with grid electricity in most
parts of Italy,' says Deutsche Bank."
Deutsche Bank: Sustainable solar market expected in 2014
PV
Magazine, 26 February 2013 |
"Solar
cells made using a process like spray painting have been developed by a research
collaboration between scientists at the University of Sheffield. The method could
potentially reduce the cost of solar cells significantly meaning the technology could be
provided to people in developing countries and perhaps one day be used on glass in
buildings or car roofs. Experts from the University of Sheffield’s Department of
Physics and Astronomy and the University of Cambridge have created a method of
spray-coating a photovoltaic active layer by an air based process – similar to
spraying regular paint from a can – to develop a cheaper technique which can be mass
produced. Professor David Lidzey from the University
of Sheffield said 'Spray coating is currently used to apply paint to cars and in graphic
printing. We have shown that it can also be used to make solar cells using specially
designed plastic semiconductors. Maybe in the future surfaces on buildings and even car
roofs will routinely generate electricity with these materials. We found that the
performance of our spray coated solar cells is the same as cells made with more
traditional research methods, but which are impossible to scale in manufacturing. We now
do most of our research using spray coating. The goal is to reduce the amount of energy
and money required to make a solar cell. This means that we need solar cell materials that
have low embodied energy, but we also need manufacturing processes that are efficient,
reliable and consume less energy.' Most solar cells are manufactured using special energy
intensive tools and using materials like silicon that themselves contain large amounts of
embodied energy. Plastic, by comparison, requires much less energy to make. By
spray-coating a plastic layer in air the team hope the overall energy used to make a solar
cell can be significantly reduced."
Solar cell fabrication is simplified by spray painting
University
of Sheffield, 11 February 2013 |
"Light-trapping,
silver nano-antennas could dramatically improve the performance of solar panels by
catching more light, according to a new study. A
team of physicists, including Professor Constantin Simovski from Finland's Aalto University, has developed
theoretical designs that could increase photovoltaic cell efficiency in a commercially
viable way. It proposes incorporating chessboard-patterned arrays of tiny silver
nano-antennas into solar panels. This would trap more incoming light, allowing it to be
preferentially re-radiated through the photovoltaic slab, improving efficiency. New fabrication techniques for printing a nano-antenna array on
thin film means it could be done at low cost."
Solar cells get silver lining
ABC
(Australia), 7 February 2013 |
"The
U.S. will add more solar power in 2013 than wind energy for the
first time as wind projects slump and cheap panels spur demand for photovoltaic systems, according to the head of Duke Energy Corp. (DUK)’s
renewable-energy development unit. The U.S. may install 3 gigawatts to 4 gigawatts of wind turbines this
year, and solar projects will probably exceed that, said Gregory Wolf, president of Duke
Energy Renewables. The U.S. added 13.1 gigawatts of wind power last year, beating natural
gas for the first time."
U.S. Solar Will Eclipse Wind in 2013, Says Duke Energy
Bloomberg,
5 February 2013 |
"Using
an exotic form of silicon could substantially improve the efficiency of solar cells,
according to computer simulations by researchers at the University of California, Davis,
and in Hungary. The work was published Jan. 25 in the journal Physical Review Letters. Solar cells are based on the photoelectric effect: a photon, or particle
of light, hits a silicon crystal and generates a negatively charged electron and a
positively charged hole. Collecting those electron-hole pairs generates electric current. Conventional solar cells generate one electron-hole pair per
incoming photon, and have a theoretical maximum efficiency of 33 percent. One exciting new
route to improved efficiency is to generate more than one electron-hole pair per photon,
said Giulia Galli, professor of chemistry at UC Davis and co-author of the paper. 'This
approach is capable of increasing the maximum efficiency to 42 percent, beyond any solar
cell available today, which would be a pretty big deal,' said lead author Stefan
Wippermann, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis. 'In fact, there is reason to believe
that if parabolic mirrors are used to focus the sunlight on such a new-paradigm solar
cell, its efficiency could reach as high as 70 percent,' Wippermann said. Galli said that nanoparticles have a size of nanometers,
typically just a few atoms across. Because of their small size, many of their properties
are different from bulk materials. In particular, the probability of generating more than
one electron-hole pair is much enhanced, driven by an effect called 'quantum
confinement.'"
One In, Two Out: Simulating More Efficient Solar Cells
Science Daily, 28
January 2013 |
"U.K.
solar electricity may more than double this year as a boom in solar farms and domestic
installations adds 2 gigawatts of new capacity, according toTrina (TSL)
Solar Ltd., the third-biggest solar cell maker. The U.K. industry benefits from a
stability that 'every other country in the world pretty much envies right now,' Ben Hill,
president of Trina Solar Europe,
said in a Jan. 25 phone interview from the World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Government incentives for rooftop panels and ground-mounted farms are
spurring both types of development, he said....Hill’s prediction for 2 gigawatts of
U.K. installations this year compares with the current installed base that Energy Minister
Greg Barker put at
1.8 gigawatts in a Jan. 16 speech. London-based Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts
installations this year will total 1.1 gigawatts, up from 830 megawatts in 2012. The
government is chasing 20 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2020, and on Dec. 27 added the
technology to a list of nine deemed crucial for the nation to meet renewable-energy and
carbon-reduction targets. That followed the second wettest year on record, with U.K.
rainfall averaging 1,330.7 millimeters (52.4 inches), just 6.6 millimeters short of the
record set in 2000, according to the Met Office, the government forecaster. Guaranteed prices for
electricity, known as feed-in tariffs, or FITs, are the main spur for rooftop
installations, and changes to them were the subject of the legal challenges in 2011. Since
then, the government has introduced a system of rolling cuts to ensure predictable
reductions as solar costs come down and installations mount."
Trina Predicts U.K. Solar ‘Boom’ to Double Installations
Bloomberg,
28 January 2013 |
".... researchers
announced that they’ve set a new record for flexible copper indium gallium selenide
(CIGS) solar cells, a type of solar cell that has the potential for low costs because it
can be made quickly with relatively small amounts of material. CIGS cells, if made on a
flexible plastic or metal foil, can also be flexible, unlike conventional silicon solar
panels, which are heavy and rigid. But CIGS cells
aren’t as efficient as conventional silicon ones, making it hard for the technology
to compete. Efficiency is the most powerful lever for reducing solar power costs. Improved
efficiency reduces the number of solar panels needed for a given installation, saving on
the cost of panels and labor. The researchers
demonstrated solar cells with an efficiency of 20.4 percent, which is far better than the
roughly 13 percent efficiency of flexible CIGS cells used in commercial applications such
as solar rooftop shingles. It’s also better
than typical silicon solar cells, which are roughly 16 percent efficient (higher cost,
premium silicon solar cells can have efficiencies as high as 24 percent)."
Thin Film Solar Gets a Boost from a New Record Efficiency
MIT
Technology Review, 22 January 2013 |
"Here's how to make a powerful solar
cell from indium and phosphorus: First, arrange microscopic flecks of gold on a
silicon background. Using the gold as seeds, grow precisely arranged wires roughly 1.5
micrometers tall out of chemically tweaked compounds of indium and phosphorus. Keep the
nanowires in line by etching them clean with hydrochloric acid and confining their
diameter to 180 nanometers. (A nanometer is one billionth of a meter.) Exposed to the sun,
a solar cell employing such nanowires can turn nearly 14 percent of the incoming light
into electricity—a new record that opens up more possibilities for cheap and
effective solar power.
According to research
published online in Science—and validated at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for
Solar Energy Systems—this novel nanowire
configuration delivered nearly as much electricity as more traditional indium phosphide thin-film
solar cells even though the nanowires themselves covered only 12 percent of the
device's surface. That suggests such nanowire solar cells could prove cheaper—and
more powerful—if the process could be industrialized, argues physicist Magnus Borgström of Lund University in Sweden, who led
the effort."
Novel Solar Photovoltaic Cells Achieve Record Efficiency Using Nanoscale Structures
Scientific
American, 17 January 2013 |
"The
global solar market will rise 22 percent to 33.4 gigawatts in 2013, with gains in China, the U.S. and India more than offsetting
declines in Germany and Italy,
Deutsche Bank predicted today in a note to investors.
The Chinese market, the second biggest in 2012, will more than double to 10 gigawatts this
year from 4 gigawatts last year, Deutsche said. The Indian market will more than triple to
4 gigawatts and the U.S. will rise 29 percent to 4.5 gigawatts, the bank’s analysts,
led by Vishal Shah,
predicted in the note. Those gains will help offset declines in European markets, led by
Germany and Italy, where demand will be cut in half, according to the bank. Those two
countries were the biggest and third-largest markets in 2012, it said."
Solar Market to Rise 22 Percent in 2013, Deutsche Bank Predicts
Bloomberg,
10 January 2013 |
"Renowned innovator and futurist
Ray Kurzweil predicts that within 20 years we will have our energy
problem licked. It’s solved. We just don’t know it yet. As he told Lauren Fenny
of PBS: 'One of my primary theses is that information technologies grow exponentially in
capability and power and bandwidth and so on. If you buy an iPhone today, it’s twice
as good as two years ago for half that cost. That is happening with solar energy — it
is doubling every two years…Every two years we have twice as much solar energy in the
world. Today, solar is still more expensive than
fossil fuels, and in most situations it still needs subsidies or special circumstances,
but the costs are coming down rapidly — we are only a few years away from parity. And
then it’s going to keep coming down, and people
will be gravitating towards solar, even if they don’t care at all about the
environment, because of the economics. So right now it’s at half a percent of the world’s
energy. People tend to dismiss technologies when they are half a percent of the solution.
But doubling every two years means it’s only eight more doublings before it meets a
hundred percent of the world’s energy needs. So that’s 16 years. We will increase our use of
electricity during that period, so add another couple of doublings: In 20
years we’ll be meeting all of our energy needs with solar, based on this trend
which has already been under way for 20 years.' Of
course, there are huge integration and storage issues that will need to be addressed. But
his point about solar echoes what has occurred with 'green' technologies such as the
Prius. Consumer Reports recently found the Prius to have the lowest cost of ownership of
any car. People buy it 'because of the economics.' Similar things are happening with
electric vehicles. Motor Trend just named the Tesla Model S it’s car of the year, and
competitive in price with other luxury car peers. 'At its core, the Tesla Model S is simply a damned good car you happen to plug in to refuel.' For Motor
Trend, the environmental benefits are beside the point.... The
next area where solar may make huge gains is integration into the skin of buildings, what
is know as Building Integrated Photovoltaics, or BIPV. A recent report from Pike research
see BIPV growing from just over 400 MW in 2012 to 2,250 by 2017, with annual value
increasing from just over $600 mn to $2.4 bn. 'In the future, BIPV will no longer be confined
to spandrel or overhead applications. Rather, the entire building envelope will be able to
put it to use, allowing the structure to produce its own power and feed additional power
into the grid system.' ...But what about the enormous fleet of existing buildings? How to
attack that? Stanford scientists may have just found the answer. In tackling the vexing
problem that most solar panels are rigid and thereby limited in their applications,
Stanford researchers came up with a technology to create decal-type panels that can be
stuck to virtually any surface. Including window panes..."
More Solar Innovation: Stanford's Peel and Stick Flexible Application
Forbes,
10 January 2013 |
| 2012 |
"It takes outside-the-box thinking to
outsmart the solar spectrum and set a world record for solar cell efficiency. The solar
spectrum has boundaries and immutable rules. No matter how much solar cell manufacturers
want to bend those rules, they can’t. So how can we make a solar cell that has a
higher efficiency than the rules allow? That’s the question scientists in the III-V
Multijunction Photovoltaics Group at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National
Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) faced 15 years ago as they searched for materials they
could grow easily that also have the ideal combinations of band gaps for converting
photons from the sun into electricity with unprecedented efficiency. A band gap is an
energy that characterizes how a semiconductor material absorbs photons, and how
efficiently a solar cell made from that material can extract the useful energy from those
photons. 'The ideal band gaps for a solar cell are determined by the solar spectrum,' said
Daniel Friedman, manager of the NREL III-V Multijunction Photovoltaics Group.
'There’s no way around that.' But this year,
Friedman’s team succeeded so spectacularly in bending the rules of the solar spectrum
that NREL and its industry partner, Solar Junction, won a coveted R&D 100 award from
R&D Magazine for a world-record multijunction solar cell. The three-layered cell, SJ3,
converted 43.5% of the energy in sunlight into electrical energy — a rate that has
stimulated demand for the cell to be used in concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) arrays for
utility-scale energy production. Last month, that record of 43.5% efficiency at 415 suns
was eclipsed with a 44% efficiency at 947 suns. Both records were verified by NREL. This
is NREL’s third R&D 100 award for advances in ultra-high-efficiency multijunction
cells. CPV technology gains efficiency by using low-cost lenses to multiply the sun’s
intensity, which scientists refer to as numbers of suns."
Solar PV's 44% Efficiency Record, Thanks To NREL & Solar Junction
CleanTechnica,
30 December 2012 |
"Solar
panels that can be integrated right into rooftops and the walls of buildings is a new
market that is set to grow dramatically over the next five years, according
to a new report from Pike Research, a part of Navigant. The report says that the
energy capacity of solar panels that are built into the structures of buildings will grow
from 400 MW in 2012 to 2.25 GW in 2017, or a five-fold increase worldwide. The solar industry calls this technology “building-integrated
photovoltaics” or BIPV. Some of this new capacity will come from thin film solar
panels that will be able to be printed right onto building materials, like shingles, steel
roof casing, and windows. A lot of companies have been gunning for this market, and many
have been held back by the difficult solar production market in 2012. There are at least
53 companies working on this tech, says Pike."
Building integrated solar panels set to boom over the next 5 years
Gigaom,
27 December 2012 |
"Bloomberg reported last week that a
number of solar developers in Spain have
applied for permits to connect to the country’s electric grid and sell solar power at
market prices. Taken together the permit requests
total 37,5
gigawatts (GW = 1,000 megawatts). Clearly, not all of these proposed facilities will
get built. To put it into context, Spain has about 4.2 GW of installed solar capacity at
present (representing almost 10% of the country’s peak power generating capability).
If even a fraction of these plants were to be built, it would crush the market and
bankrupt the developers. However, if the amount is limited, the first few actors are
likely to see a profit. The proposed installations are enormous – the largest eyed
for Europe to date, ranging from 150 to 500 MW – with costs coming in as low as $.073
to .079 (.055 to .060 Euros) per kilowatt-hour. These plants compare in size to the 290 MW
NRG/First Solar Agua Caliente
facility in Arizona, and Exelon‘s
230 MW Antelope Valley project in Southern California, but they are considerably less
expensive. This is a far cry from a snapshot of solar in Europe just a half decade ago. At
that time, Spain was looking at subsidized prices for solar coming in at 9X traditional
fossil plants. These prices surely stimulated the market, resulting in Spain installing more
solar than the entire rest of world in the boom days in 2007-2008. However, the
Spanish economy and ratepayer paid a significant price – transfers from ratepayers to
solar developers totaled $3.3 bn before the program was axed this year. It is that kind of
program which fuels conservatives’ anger. But it is also this type of program which
sometimes sparks a technological revolution. The rest of the world has Spain to thank for
inching so far out into traffic that they lost the hood ornament on the car: the stimulus
effect from that program (and that of Germany
– which has spent a couple billion Euros for 30,000 MW of solar – and other
European countries) helped create a global industry with rapidly falling costs and
increasing efficiencies. As a consequence, we are now
able to talk seriously about grid parity of solar resources, and sun-drenched Spain has
gotten to the point that utility-scale programs can be envisioned without subsidies."
Solar Grid Parity Comes to Spain
Forbes,
26 December 2012 |
"Fabrication
of thin-film solar cells (TFSCs) on substrates other than Si and glass has been
challenging because these nonconventional substrates are not suitable for the current TFSC
fabrication processes due to poor surface flatness and low tolerance to high temperature
and chemical processing. Here, we report a new peel-and-stick process that circumvents
these fabrication challenges by peeling off the fully fabricated TFSCs from the original
Si wafer and attaching TFSCs to virtually any substrates regardless of materials, flatness
and rigidness. With the peel-and-stick process, we
integrated hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) TFSCs on paper, plastics, cell phone
and building windows while maintaining the original 7.5% efficiency. The new
peel-and-stick process enables further reduction of the cost and weight for TFSCs and
endows TFSCs with flexibility and attachability for broader application areas. We believe
that the peel-and-stick process can be applied to thin film electronics as well."
Peel-and-Stick: Fabricating Thin Film Solar Cell on Universal Substrates
Scientific
Reports, 20 December 2012 |
"There is huge potential in solar power.
The sun is a giant ball of burning hydrogen in the sky, and it’s going to be sticking
around for at least a few more billion years. For all intents and purposes, it’s a
free source of energy. Sadly, humanity hasn’t been very good at harnessing its power
directly. Our current methods of capturing the sun’s energy are very inefficient. For
example, modern silicon and indium-tin-oxide-based solar cells are approaching the
theoretical limit of 33.7% efficiency. Well, a
research team at Princeton has used nanotechnology to create a mesh that increases
efficiency over organic solar cells nearly three fold. Led by Stephen Chou, the team has made
two dramatic improvements: reducing reflectivity, and more effectively capturing the
light that isn’t reflected. As you can see by
the illustration below by Dimitri Karetnikov, Princeton’s new solar cell is much
thinner and less reflective. By utilizing sandwiched plastic and metal with the nanomesh, this so-called 'Plasmonic Cavity with Subwavelength Hole array' or
'PlaCSH' substantially reduces the potential for losing the light itself. In fact, it only
reflects about 4% of direct sunlight, leading to a 52% higher efficiency than
conventional, organic solar cells. PlaCSH is also
capable of capturing a large amount of sunlight even when the sunlight is dispersed on
cloudy days, which results in an amazing 81% increase in efficiency under indirect
lighting conditions when compared to conventional organic solar cell technology. All told,
PlaCSH is up to 175% more efficient than conventional solar cells. As you can see in the
image to the right, the difference in reflectivity between conventional and PlaCSH solar
cells is really quite dramatic."
Princeton’s nanomesh nearly triples solar cell efficiency
Extreme
Tech, 11 December 2012 |
"There
wasn’t much coverage earlier this month of the Saudi Arabia‘s decision to
invest $100 billion in solar power. Instead there was a lot of frothy coverage of an International Energy Agency report suggesting the USA could
overtake Saudi Arabia as an oil producer by 2020 if a lot of dubious assumptions panned
out. Likewise there wasn’t a lot of interest earlier this year when Warren Buffett, through MidAmerican
Holdings, put over $2 billion into one solar project in California. Instead there was a lot of noise and grandstanding when the US government
picked the wrong bet and lost a quarter as much in Solyndra. The reality is that solar
power has come of age and is now a bankable technology attracting the likes of Buffett and
Google and KKR and Blackstone and
Walmart and MetLife because it garners double-digit returns on investment. Smart money and
the Saudi’s know solar works; why don’t we? Take only the news from King
Abdullah City for a moment, where spokespeople say they’re targeting around 41,000
megawatts of solar capacity within two decades. Can you imagine the hype if 41 nuclear
power plants were seriously canvassed to be built anywhere in the next 20 years? Did you
realize more solar panels were installed in Europe last year than all the gas, coal and
wind power installations combined? That’s from the Global Market Outlook to 2016 of
the European Photovoltaic Industry Association – a great read full of charts “up
and to the right” for a region otherwise beset by doldrums. Germany has had days this
year where 50% of the electrons consumed were solar power from its 27,000 megawatts of
capacity... One analyst, who wants to remain anonymous expects solar power to be
competitive with gas-fired power on the eastern seaboard of China by this time next year.
The economics will reach that point when it costs $1 to install a watt of solar power
capacity – the current market rate is $1.25/w in China down from over $2/w this time
last year... There’s not a lot of coverage of the phenomenon of the technology cost
curve that is driving down the price of solar power, even though it’s as American as
Apple. Instead there’s still a lot of buzz about the latest oil or gas boom, even
though we know busts follow those and are already stalking the shale plays."
Saudi Arabia Makes Big Bet On Solar
Forbes
(Blog), 10 December 2012 |
"A
nanostructured 'sandwich' of metal and plastic may be a way to nearly triple the
efficiency of organic solar cells, those cheap and flexible plastic energy devices that
could be the future of solar power. The researchers were able to increase the efficiency
175 percent and the technology should increase the efficiency of conventional inorganic
solar collectors, such as standard silicon solar panels, but that is another research issue. Any solar solution needs to to
overcome two primary challenges that cause solar cells to lose energy; light reflecting
from the cell, and the inability to fully capture light that enters the cell. With their
new metallic sandwich, the researchers were able to address both problems. The
subwavelength plasmonic cavity can dampen reflection and trap light. The new technique
allowed the team to create a solar cell that only reflects about 4 percent of light and
absorbs as much as 96 percent. It demonstrated 52 percent higher efficiency in converting
light to electrical energy than a conventional solar cell. That is for direct
sunlight, but the structure achieves even more efficiency for light that strikes the solar
cell at large angles, which occurs on cloudy days or when the cell is not directly facing
the sun. By capturing these angled rays, the new structure boosts efficiency by an
additional 81 percent, leading to the 175 percent total increase."
Subwavelength Plasmonic Cavity: Metallic Sandwich May Make Solar Power Delicious
Science
20, 9 December 2012 |
"Computer
simulations by researchers in the US and China could lead to solar cells that work
efficiently across a broad range of the solar spectrum. Dubbed a 'solar energy funnel', the new concept offers a way of using
strain to modify the band gap of a semiconductor so that it responds to light within a
range of different wavelengths. However, the funnels have yet to be made and tested in the
lab – some researchers suggest using them in practical devices could prove
problematic."
Semiconductor funnel could boost solar cells
PhysicsWorld,
4 December 2012 |
"The
reality of solar panels is that those on the market today aren’t very efficient
– most of the solar cells, which make up an entire panel, convert less than a fifth
of the sunlight into electricity. But researchers at MIT said on Monday they have come up
with a funnel-like design that will manipulate the incoming electrons to engineer more
efficient solar cells. The research, just published
in the journal, Nature Photonics, used computer modeling to look at how to stretch the
semiconductor molybdenum disulfide to change its physical properties to make use of a
broader spectrum of sunlight than what silicon, the most common solar cell material, can
manage today. Whether the design will work as well in real life will require further
research."
A solar funnel that could lead to more efficient cells
Gigaom,
26 November 2012 |
"Qatar’s effort to expand its solar
industry is being held up by issues including the scale of the projects planned and dust
that blows in from desert areas, one of the nation’s most senior leaders said. 'We
are one of the biggest believers in solar,' said Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, a former
energy minister who is chairman of Qatar
Electricity & Water Co. (QEWS), said at a press conference in Doha today. 'We have
some technology problems. I am a big believer that technology will solve it.' He said
Qatar’s projects will cover huge areas and require careful planning and that 'we are
receiving a lot of dust from the frontier areas, and the dust is one of the challenges. It
reduces sharply the efficiency of solar.' Qatar,
which is hosting this year’s United Nations climate talks, plans to install 1,800 megawatts of solar
power capacity by 2014, government-backed venture said on Oct. 17."
Qatar Says Solar Program Held Back by Issues of Scale, Dust
Bloomberg,
26 November 2012 |
"What
if we could use solar energy when the sun has set, or wind energy when the air is calm?
Donald Sadoway is working on a way to make that happen. The professor of materials
chemistry at MIT is leading an effort to develop a new kind of battery -- a 'liquid metal
battery' -- that would enable the economical storage of energy from solar, wind and other
sources so that it could be used when homes and businesses need it.... Inspired by the technique developed in the 19th century to produce
aluminum at very low cost, Sadoway came up with the idea of using such commonly available
materials as magnesium and antimony to create the battery. He said a battery of this type
housed in a 40-foot shipping container could store enough power to meet the daily needs of
200 American households. Sadoway got enthusiastic applause when he told the audience at
TED: 'If we're going to get this country out of its current energy situation, we can't
just conserve our way out; we can't just drill our way out; we can't bomb our way out.
We're going to do it the old-fashioned American way, we're going to invent our way out,
working together."
Solar power when the sun has set
CNN, 19
November 2012 |
"The
average combined savings and income households made from installing solar PV panels has
increased by nearly £100 a year, according to the Energy Saving Trust. Figures collated by the EST showed that the annual net benefit from solar
PV panels has risen to £635 from around £540 per year. The average size of solar PV
installed has increased, said the EST, meaning households generated more electricity and
consequently more savings and feed-in tariff income. However, of the third of Brits
approached with solar panels last year only 4 per cent chose to purchase them."
Household annual benefits of solar panels 'have risen by nearly £100'
Utility
Week, 6 November 2012 |
"Construction
has started in Puerto Rico on what will soon be the Caribbean's largest solar energy park. The $265 million project is being built in southern Puerto Rico and is
expected to generate enough electricity to power more than 13,000 homes in the U.S.
territory. The park features 270,000 solar panels and is being financed by CIRO Energy
Group and One Planet Caribbean of San Juan and San Francisco-based GCL Solar Energy Inc.
CIRO Group executive Ruben Perez said Friday that the project will help save 236 million
barrels of petroleum a year and reduce greenhouse emissions by 217 billion pounds. Puerto
Rico's government also expects construction to start soon on what will be the region's
largest wind farm. It will be near the island's southern coast."
Puerto Rico begins building large solar park
Associated
Press, 2 November 2012 |
"Scientists
at California's Stanford University have managed to construct the first solar cell made
entirely of carbon. If ultimately brought to market, a carbon-based solar cell could offer
a potential alternative to the expensive materials currently used in photovoltaic devices. 'Unlike rigid silicon solar panels that adorn many rooftops, [our] thin
film prototype is made of carbon materials that can be coated from solution,' she
explained. 'Perhaps in the future we can look at alternative markets where flexible carbon
solar cells are coated on the surface of buildings, on windows or on cars to generate
electricity.' As expected, the coating technique also has the potential to reduce
manufacturing costs. 'Processing silicon-based solar cells requires a lot of steps,'
Stanford graduate student Michael Vosgueritchian confirmed. 'But our entire device can be
built using simple coating methods that don't require expensive tools and machines.'"
Scientists design first all-carbon solar cell
TG
Daily, 1 November 2012 |
"The
Saudis are raising $100 billion for solar-power development, which could ease its rapidly growing demand for electric power. Though
natural gas would be cheaper, the Saudis may prefer solar. Prince Turki bin Faisal Al
Saud, an important member of the Saudi royal family, announced last week that his hope was
that Saudi Arabia would replace 100 percent of its power generation with
renewables within his lifetime. This follows public announcements earlier in the year that
the kingdom was in the process of raising $109 billion in investments for solar power and
was already in the process of constructing 100 megawatts of solar generation in Mecca
as part of a larger renewable energy plan for the city. It's important to note that the
energy proclamation by Prince Turki (a classmate of Bill Clinton's
at Georgetown) needs to be taken in context. He has never held an energy related position
in the Saudi government, but has held very high-profile government roles, including
director of intelligence and ambassador to the United States.
The 100 percent claim is clearly aspirational, but the $100 billion investment,
representing enough solar to meet roughly one-third of current Saudi power demand, appears
to be entirely serious. Saudi Arabia's interest in renewables, and solar in particular,
highlights a handful of important points: * Power demand growth in the Middle East * Saudi
Arabia is bullish on future oil prices * Saudi's limited access to natural gas *
Oversupplied solar market may have a new demand base."
Why Saudi Arabia is taking a shine to solar
Christian
Science Monitor, 28 October 2012 |
"China
is creating supportive measures to shore up its ailing photovoltaic (PV) industry, which
has been rocked by recent U.S. duties on Chinese exports over alleged dumping. In the latest attempt, State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), the
country's largest state-owned utility company, announced a plan to allow small-scale
distributed solar power generators to connect to its power lines. Under the plan, SGCC
will allow solar power generators with less than 6 megawatts of installed capacity to be
connected to the grid."
New policies support ailing solar industry
Xinhua, 28
October 2012 |
"Clean energy has become a dirty word in
presidential politics. In their second debate, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama each tried to
outdo the other’s love of fossil fuels: Obama extolling his record on oil and natural
gas production, Romney vowing to take 'advantage of the oil and coal we have here.' The
Republican candidate has ridiculed the administration’s $535 million loan guarantee
to Solyndra, the bankrupt California-based solar panel maker, and accused Obama of living
'in an imaginary world where government-subsidized windmills and solar panels could power
the economy.' The candidates’ coolness to
renewable energy comes at a time when the domestic supply of traditional energy sources,
such as oil and natural gas, is at an all-time high. And yet this failure to make the
promise of renewables a keynote in the debate is a huge missed opportunity. In particular,
it ignores the dramatic reduction in the cost of photovoltaic solar power worldwide and
the considerable benefits to U.S. consumers and the environment. The untold story of this
campaign is that what killed Solyndra may turn out to be a boon for the nation.
'Economically and technologically, the game is over,' says Bill Powers, a San Diego
engineer and board member of Solar Done Right, a group that proselytizes for rooftop solar
power. 'The hangups in the U.S. are strictly political.' Over the past five years the
price of photovoltaic panels has plummeted 75 percent, due largely to a glut of
Chinese-made panels. The fall in prices rendered technically advanced photovoltaic panels,
like those produced by Solyndra and other U.S. companies, too expensive to compete. But
cheap panels have been a godsend for consumers...
Nationally, the average cost of residential installations—including hardware,
permits, and labor—has plummeted from $9 a watt in 2006 to $5.46. Averaging in
commercial industrial installations, the national installed price plummets to $3.45 a
watt, says the Solar Energy Industries Association, a Washington-based trade group. The
result is a burgeoning rooftop revolution. The SEIA says almost 52,000 residential rooftop
systems were installed in the U.S. last year, up 30 percent from a year earlier. Total
rooftop installations, including on commercial buildings, grew 109 percent from 2010 to
2011, according to SEIA data. Total photovoltaic installations are projected to grow an
additional 71 percent this year from 2011 levels. Worldwide, the picture is even more
positive. Australia projects that 10 percent of its 8 million houses will have rooftop
systems within the next 12 months—most of that growth coming in the past three years.
European rooftop installations continue to outpace those in the U.S., even as some
countries begin to pare subsidies that have helped spur a continental rooftop boom.
Including residential, commercial, and industrial-scale projects, the world had installed
about 67 gigawatts of photovoltaic power at the end of last year—up from just 1.5
gigawatts in 2000. Despite such breakthroughs, the U.S. economy is harnessing only a
fraction of solar’s potential benefits. Based on U.S. Census Bureau data, about 100
million U.S. residential units could physically hold rooftop systems one day, generating
by one estimate 3.75 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity a year. In 2011, total U.S.
electrical generation from all sources was about 4 trillion kilowatt hours—42 percent
of that from coal, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The trouble
is, many of the big,investor-owned utilities that provide about 85 percent of
America’s electricity see solar as both a technical challenge and a long-term threat
to their 100-year-old profit models. And the lack of a national energy policy means
regulation of solar is up to states, public service commissions, and a wealth of local
governments and bureaucracies—many of whom have a vested interest in maintaining the
status quo."
Solar Energy Is Ready. The U.S. Isn't
Bloomberg,
25 October 2012 |
"Iraq
plans to spend up to $1.6 billion on solar and wind power stations over the next three
years to add 400 megawatts to the national grid to help curb daily blackouts, an official from the ministry of electricity said on Monday. Nine years
after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, investment is needed in most of
Iraq's industries, not least power generation, which produces just 8,800 MW of the 14,000
MW needed."
Iraq plans to invest up to $1.6 bln in solar and wind energy
Reuters,
15 October 2012 |
"The
United States finally has a road map for developing solar energy on
federal land in the West. The big idea: Seventeen solar-energy zones – about 285,000
acres of public lands in six western states – have been set aside as priority areas
for commercial-scale solar development. That way,
instead of approving such large renewable energy projects on a case-by-case basis where
developers want to build them, the energy zones will guide development to areas that are
high in solar energy, close to transmission lines, and have, in the Interior
Department's words, 'relatively low conflict with biological, cultural, and historic
resources.' The road map also excludes 79 million acres of federal land as being
inappropriate for development and another 19 million acres as "variance" areas
where the government would continue to decide solar projects case by case. Secretary
of the Interior Ken Salazar finalized the roadmap at a signing Friday. The six states
are Arizona, California, Colorado,
Nevada,
New Mexico, and Utah."
Renewable energy: US takes new tack with 'solar energy zones'
Christian
Science Monitor, 14 October 2012 |
"Alternative Energy Development Board
(AEDB) Managing Director Arif Alauddin has said prices
of solar panels have dropped 80% over the last five years, making alternative energy attractive for the consumers. 'We should avail
of the opportunity and switch to solar energy to overcome the energy crisis,' he stressed
while speaking at the International Exhibition and Conference on Alternative Energy and
Energy Efficiency, organised by the Renewable and Alternative Energy Association of
Pakistan here on Saturday. As the country was generating power at an average rate of Rs20
per unit, Alauddin said the consumers could have cheaper electricity with the help of
solar applications. Despite the decrease in the cost of battery, the solar panels were
still expensive, but the consumers could take benefit of them in day time, he
suggested."
Solar panel prices drop 80%
The Express
Tribune (Pakistan), 14 October 2012 |
"Silicon nanowire and nanopore arrays
promise to reduce manufacturing costs and increase the power conversion efficiency of
photovoltaic devices. So far, however, photovoltaic cells based on nanostructured silicon
exhibit lower power conversion efficiencies than conventional cells due to the enhanced
photocarrier recombination associated with the nanostructures. Here, we identify and
separately measure surface recombination and Auger recombination in wafer-based
nanostructured silicon solar cells. By identifying the regimes of junction doping
concentration in which each mechanism dominates, we were able to design and fabricate an independently confirmed 18.2%-efficient nanostructured ‘black-silicon’ cell that does not need the
antireflection coating layer(s) normally required to reach a comparable performance
level."
An 18.2%-efficient black-silicon solar cell achieved through control of carrier
recombination in nanostructures
Nature
Nanotechnology, (2012) doi:10.1038/nnano.2012.166 |
"Australia's 800,000 solar-powered homes
should be slugged more to plug into the main electricity grid, so as to reduce costs for
other families, energy distributors say. As
households try to offset skyrocketing bills, an explosion of solar photovoltaic panel
installations has seen an extra 400,000 homes go green in the past year."
Heat is on solar-powered homes
Australia,
7 October 2012 |
"V3Solar
has developed a new way to convert the sun's energy into electricity using traditional
technology in a new way, and in so doing have discovered a way to get twenty times more
electricity out of the same amount of solar cells. Their
new device, called the Spin Cell, does away with the traditional flat panel and instead
places the solar cells on a cone shaped frame which are then covered with energy
concentrators. Once in operation, the whole works spins, making unnecessary the need for
tracking hardware and software.... Because of the great potential of solar energy,
researchers have looked into increasing the efficiency of solar cells by using lenses or
mirrors to direct more of the sun's energy onto them hoping to get more electricity out of
the same number of cells. Unfortunately, doing so tends to create so much heat that the
cells become useless. The engineers at V3Solar took this idea and modified it to prevent
such overheating by mounting the cells on a rotating platform; doing so means that each
cell only receives extra heat for a very short amount of time and is then allowed to cool
as the cone spins. The concentrators form an outer skin creating a hermetically sealed
inner environment for the triangular shaped blue colored solar cells. The cone is situated
on a base of electromagnets powered by some of the energy that has been converted from the
sun's energy by the solar cells, creating a nearly frictionless spin. The result is a
marvel of engineering and an artistic triumph – a means to produce much more
electricity than traditional flat panels in a pleasing, and as the company says, beautiful
way."
V3Solar photovoltaic Spin Cell generates 20 times more electricity per cell than flat
panels
Phsy.org,
3 October 2012 |
"While the contract hasn’t been
finalized, analysts are predicting that First Solar will win the rights to supply NextEra
Energy Inc. with solar arrays for what will be the
world’s largest solar farm. The two companies
are currently working together on the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight solar farm in Riverwide
County, California."
World's largest solar farm coming to California
Christian
Science Monitor, 29 September 2012 |
"Reports
of the demise of the European solar industry have been greatly exaggerated. That is the
central conclusion of a new status report from the European Commission's Joint Research Centre,
which reveals that despite subsidy cuts in a host of key markets two-thirds of the world's
new solar PV panels were installed in Europe last year. It also confirms that solar power delivered two per cent of the EU's
electricity needs in 2011, equivalent to the national electricity demand of Austria.
Writing in the foreword of the report, Arnulf Jager-Waldau, senior scientist for renewable
energy at the Joint Research Centre, said that demand for solar power was being driven by
a drastic reduction in the cost of solar panels. 'From 2008 to second quarter of 2012,
residential PV electricity system prices have decreased by almost 60 per cent in the most
competitive markets, and in some markets, the cost of PV-generated electricity is already
cheaper than residential electricity retail prices,' he wrote. 'Due to falling PV system
prices and increasing electricity prices, the number of such markets is steadily
increasing.' He added that as a result solar energy had attracted almost half of all new
renewable energy investment globally last year, approaching $130bn, with around two-thirds
invested in Europe. 'In 2011, the photovoltaic industry production increased by almost 40
per cent and reached a world-wide production volume of about 35 GWp of photovoltaic
modules,' he wrote. 'Yearly growth rates over the last decade were on average between 40
per cent and 90 per cent, which makes photovoltaics one of the fastest growing industries
at present.' The report acknowledged that European solar firms are facing growing
competition from Chinese manufacturers – a scenario that has prompted threats of
legal action against China by European and US firms."
Europe generating enough solar electricity to power Austria
BusinessGreen,
25 September 2012 |
"First
Solar Inc. (FSLR) Chief Executive Officer Jim Hughes is stepping up efforts to manage power plants that
generate electricity from the sun, helping utilities use the technology in a way his
rivals in China
can’t. The biggest U.S. solar panel maker plans to build new projects from the Middle East to Australia and use
proprietary systems that help power-purchasers manage the amount they buy from solar
farms, Hughes said in his first interview since taking the CEO position in May. The company’s pitch to utilities is that it will help them predict
uneven power flows from solar panels, giving grid operators the ability to integrate the
facilities into their networks alongside those that burn fossil fuels. That’s making
First Solar less dependent on manufacturing, an industry dominated by Chinese companies
led by Suntech Power
Holdings Co. (STP)."
First Solar Beats Chinese by Making Sun Power Predictable
Bloomberg,
13 September 2012 |
"The
solar-power business is expanding quickly in the U.S., helping lift the cloud that has
surrounded the industry since the demise of Solyndra LLC a year ago. But the growth isn't coming from U.S. solar-panel manufacturing, despite
the money and rhetoric devoted to the industry by the Obama administration. Instead, it is
in installations of largely foreign-made panels, whose falling price has made solar more
competitive with other forms of power. 'There should be little emphasis put on where the
panels are made,' said Lyndon Rive, chief executive of SolarCity Corp., which finances and
installs rooftop solar systems."
Sun Peeks Through in Solar
Wall
St Journal, 9 September 2012 |
"China's push into solar energy was
supposed to be a proud example of how the country was advancing into hi-tech
manufacturing. But now the whole sector is on the brink of bankruptcy. Two years ago, LDK
Solar, one of China's largest solar panel makers, built a new, state-of-the-art factory in
the central city of Hefei. It sits in one of the city's industrial parks, a big LDK Solar
logo on its wall, with the New York-listed company's slogan underneath: 'Lighting the
Future'. 'It cost 2.5 billion yuan (£250m) to build, the majority of the equipment was
imported from Germany, and it hired 5,000 staff,' said Jie Xiaoming, a 30-year-old who
works at the plant's quality control and packaging department. Last month, however,
4,500 of the staff were put on gardening leave. They receive 700 yuan a month to stay at
home. The factory has shut down 24 of its 32 production lines. 'There do not seem to be
any orders. People are still turning up for work, but mostly just sleeping. The management
has not said much, just that the United States has a new policy that is stopping our
exports,' said Mr Jie. .... in Europe and the US,
governments provided subsidies to buy Chinese-made panels as part of commitments to boost
renewable energy. But the incentives created a glut of suppliers, and since 2010, the
price of polysilicon wafers has fallen by nearly three-quarters. The price is now below
the production cost - in the latest quarter, LDK Solar's gross margin was -65.5pc.
Meanwhile, the debt crisis in Europe has cut government subsidies to the sector and the US
imposed a 31pc tariff in May on Chinese wafers, complaining that manufacturers were being
underwritten by the government. In July a group of
25 European solar companies followed suit, filing an anti-dumping complaint with the
European Union. At the same time, the quality of the solar equipment being made by Chinese
companies, even by the biggest companies, is often not export-grade. While the Chinese
government has promised to hugely increase its purchases of solar panels, there is a
significant excess capacity in the domestic market that has kept prices low. China's big
five firms are all reporting disastrous trading and heavily indebted balance sheets."
Dark clouds gather over China's once-booming solar industry
Telegraph,
29 August 2012 |
"Princeton
Satellite Systems announced on Friday an electric car charging station integrated with a
stationary solar power system. The company claims
the SunStation is the first 100% green charging station for electric vehicles, because all
power comes from the Sun. The SunStation has a built-in battery pack that enables
recharging electric cars 24 hours a day, even when the Sun has set. It provides a 240 volt
charging voltage for charging an electric car at it's normal rate, namely the Nissan Leaf
in 8 hours, a Chevy Volt in 4 and a Toyota Prius Plugin Hybrid in 1.5. The system is
installed simply by pouring a concrete base and bolting the station to the base. The
SunStation does not require a wired connection to the electricity grid, because of the
battery pack. Other electric vehicle charging stations require an electricity grid
connection to provide the power. It does wirelessly connect via the cell phone network for
a payment system, and allowing Princeton Satellite Systems to remotely manage the
station."
Solar powered electric car charging from Princeton Satellite Systems
Torque
News, 26 August 2012 |
"New
research out of Berkeley Lab and the University of California suggests that it is possible
to make solar cells from any semiconductor, opening the door to solar panels made from
cheaper, more abundant materials. Until now,
phosphides and sulfides of metals have been judged ill-suited for solar cells because of
the near-impossibility of chemically doping them with the quality of p-n junctions
required. The new approach, dubbed 'screening-engineered field-effect photovoltaics'
(SFPV), sidesteps the problem by inducing p-n junctions in semiconductors by applying an
electric field."
Discovery opens door to cheaper solar panels
ArsTechnicha,
10 August 2012 |
"Abu
Dhabi has installed the first rapid charging station in the Middle East, reducing the time
taken to recharge electric cars by over 90 percent, it was announced this week. The CHAdeMO-certified Rapid Charger, the first of its kind in the region,
has been installed at Masdar City, the low-carbon development backed by the Abu Dhabi
government, and was in collaboration with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries."
Abu Dhabi launches region's first rapid electric car charger
ArabianBusiness,
2 August 2012 |
"Researchers
from UCLA have developed a new transparent solar cell that is a significant step towards
giving the windows in homes and other buildings the ability to generate electricity while
still being transparent. The research team 'describes a new kind of polymer solar cell
(PSC) that produces energy by absorbing mainly infrared light, not visible light, making
the cells nearly 70% transparent to the human eye.' They
created the device from a photoactive plastic that generates an electrical current from
infrared light. 'These results open the potential for visibly transparent polymer solar
cells as add-on components of portable electronics, smart windows and building-integrated
photovoltaics and in other applications,' said study leader Yang Yang, a UCLA professor of
materials science and engineering, who also is director of the Nano Renewable Energy
Center at California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI). Yang also said that there has been a
definite world-wide interest in polymer solar cells. 'Our new PSCs are made from
plastic-like materials and are lightweight and flexible,' he said. 'More importantly, they
can be produced in high volume at low cost.'... The new study appears in the journal ACS
Nano.”
Solar Cells for Windows Take Another Step Forward
CleanTechnica,
22 July 2012 |
"Researchers
from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have launched a four-year research
program that aims to improve the efficiency of organic solar cells to more than 10
percent. Organic solar cells are cheaper to produce, lighter and more flexible than
traditional silicon-based solar cells, opening new perspectives in particular for the
architectural design of buildings. Solar modules can be integrated in facades and even
windows. The downside is that the efficiency rate of
OPV cells remains much lower than inorganic solar cells, demonstrating 15-20 percent
efficient. Led by Dr. Alexander Colsmann, at KIT's Light Technology Institute, the
newly-launched project uses tandem architectures. Two solar cells with complementary
absorption characteristics are stacked directly on top of each other to achieve better
sunlight harvesting and more efficient energy conversion. The KIT scientists said they use
novel materials, develop innovative device architectures, optimize their stability, and
test the solar cells in a real-life environment. They also intend to transfer
manufacturing processes from the laboratory to an industry-compatible production
environment so as to promote future commercial use of their results. ... Recently, Heliatek GmbH (Dresden, Germany) claimed it had pushed the
record efficiency for organic solar cells higher, achieving an efficiency of 10.7 percent
in a 1.1 square centimeter tandem cell. Measurements, led by independent test house SGS SA
(Geneva Switzerland), showed that the cell improved efficiency under low light conditions
and that the efficiency remains constant with temperature."
Scientists to push organic solar cell efficiency
EE
Times, 4 July 2012 |
"Riding
on the crash in photo voltaic (PV) panel prices, the solar power sector in
India had a dream run last year with capacity ballooning to 940MW in 2011-12 from a paltry
20MW in 2010-11. That's just statistics. What's significant and not borne out by these
statistics is the fact that the cost of power from solar is now on a par with the cost of
power from new coal-based plants. In industry
parlance, it's referred to as grid parity, considered the holy grail of solar power.
Grid-parity is the point where the cost of electricity generated from sunshine becomes
competitive with that of power produced from coal, gas, wind and hydro-based plants. ....
'If we compare the cost of power from new coal-based plants, it will be at par with that
of solar. If one takes into account the total duration of the power purchasing agreement,
which is 25 years, grid-parity is already there. Solar power needs only a one-time
investment in the form of land and PV panels. Its fuel, which is sunshine, is free unlike
coal where price will head only northwards,' said Gaurav Sood, managing director,
Solairedirect, a solar power producer. ... Three years ago, the cost of generating a unit
of solar energy was around Rs 18. In fact, solar has already taken over diesel as a
cheaper form of energy and a lot of telecom towers are now being run on solar power. In
recent years, there has been a sharp decline in capital costs for solar PV plants. PV
module prices have fallen a sharp 80% in the last five years and 30% during last year
alone."
Solar power shines on photo voltaic panel price crash
Times
of India, 25 June 2012 |
"Invisible solar cells have been a
popular subject in the realms of science and technology lately. The prospect of a solar
energy system that is imperceptible to the eye is alluring because of its many possible
applications. Invisible solar cells could be used on nearly any surface, such as windows,
enabling them to harvest solar energy. New Energy Technologies, a company specializing in
the research and development of transparent
solar panels, has been a pioneer in this sector and has announced its latest
breakthrough. The company has made a breakthrough in
the manufacturing technique it uses to create its invisible solar cells. With the aid of
researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, New Energy Technologies was
able to lower the materials costs of its production method as well as adopt a new
technique that is expected to increase the efficiency of the solar cells the company
produces. More efficient solar energy technology is
expected to bring more attention and support to the alternative energy."
Invisible solar cells may be moving closer to mass production
Hydrogen
Fuel News, 24 June 2012 |
"Developers
installed 85 percent more solar panels in the U.S. in the first quarter than a year
earlier, led by strong growth in commercial projects
and demand in New
Jersey, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Total U.S.
installations were 506 megawatts in the quarter and may reach 3,300 megawatts this year,
about 11 percent of the 2012 global market, the Washington-based trade group said today in
its quarterly market report. That will make the U.S. the fourth-largest solar market this
year, and one of the few countries where growth is expected to continue for the
foreseeable future, according to GTM Research, a Boston consulting company that prepared
the report with SEIA. Falling prices are making solar energy an economical energy choice
for U.S. homeowners and businesses. 'The economics have improved dramatically, with
companies realizing it’s a good hedge against rising energy prices,' Rhone Resch, chief
executive officer of SEIA, said in an interview."
U.S. Solar Grew 85 Percent in First Quarter, SEIA Says
Bloomberg,
13 June 2012 |
"Global
investment in renewable energy reached a record $257 billion last year, with solar
attracting more than half the total, according to a U.N.
report released Monday. Investment in solar energy
surged to $147 billion in 2011, a year-on-year increase of 52% thanks to strong demand for
rooftop photovoltaic installations in Germany, Italy, China and Britain. China was
responsible for almost a fifth of the total investment volume, spending $52 billion on
renewable energy last year. The United
States was close behind with investments of $51 billion, as developers sought to
benefit from government incentive programs before they expired. Germany, Italy and India
rounded out the top five. Large-scale solar thermal installations in Spain and the United
States also contributed to growth during a fiercely competitive year for the solar
industry. Several large American and German manufacturers fell victim to price pressure
from Chinese rivals that helped to halve the cost of photovoltaic modules in 2011.
The report's authors said the demise of companies such as Solyndra, Evergreen Solar,
SpectraWatt, Solar Millenium and Solon was a sign that the solar industry is maturing. 'In
1903, the United States had over 500 car companies, most of which quickly fell by the
wayside even as the automobile sector grew into an industrial juggernaut,' the report
said. 'Today, the renewable energy sector is experiencing similar growing pains as the
sector consolidates.' Wind power investment slipped 12% to $84 billion due to uncertainty
about energy policy in Europe and fewer new installations in China, according to the
report. Overall investment in renewable energy grew 17%, a slowdown from the 37% increase
in 2010. Still, the head of the U.N. Environment Program claimed the latest figures are an
indication that renewable energy is drawing level with fossil fuels in some markets.
'These trends are real, they are substantive and they are transformative,' Achim
Steiner told reporters in a conference call."
China topped USA in renewable energy investment in 2011
USA
Today, 11 June 2012 |
"Australia
will go ahead with a A$450 million ($446 million) large-scale solar energy project to be
built at two sites in New South Wales state,
Resources Minister Martin Ferguson said on Saturday. The 159 megawatt project will be
undertaken by solar photovoltaic manufacturer First Solar and gas retailer AGL Energy and
should be completed by the end of 2015, Ferguson said in a statement. The project will
benefit from a government grant of nearly A$130 million, announced on Saturday, and will
be built at the inland towns of Broken Hill and Nyngan. It should produce enough
electricity to power about 30,000 homes, the minister said."
Australia to go ahead with A$450 million solar energy project
Reuters,
9 June 2012 |
"One of the biggest challenges facing the
silicon photovoltaic industry is making solar cells that are economically viable. To meet
this goal, the module cost, which is currently about $1/watt, needs to be decreased to
just half that. Much of this cost comes from the silicon material and the expensive
fabrication processes often used. In a new study, a team of scientists and engineers has
demonstrated that a hybrid solar cell covered in silicon nanocones and a conductive
organic polymer can address both cost-cutting areas while providing excellent performance.
The researchers, led by Professor Yi Cui and Professor Michael D. McGehee from Stanford
University, have published their study in a recent issue of Nano Letters..... After testing the solar cell and making some improvements, the
researchers produced a device with an efficiency of 11.1%, which is the highest among
hybrid silicon/organic solar cells to date. In
addition, the short-circuit current density, which indicates the largest current that the
solar cell can generate, is only slightly lower than the world record for a
monocrystalline silicon solar cell, and very close to the theoretical limit. Due to the
hybrid silicon nanocone-polymer solar cells’ good performance and inexpensive
processing, the researchers predict that they could one day be used as economically viable
photovoltaic devices."
Nanocones could be key to making inexpensive solar cells
Phys.org,
5 June 2012 |
"German
solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour - equal to
20 nuclear power stations at full capacity - through the midday hours on Friday and
Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said. The German government decided to
abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants
immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022. They will be replaced by
renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and bio-mass. Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy
Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the
national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs. 'Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic
electricity,' Allnoch told Reuters. 'Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt
(GW) mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over.'...The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world's
leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work
day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed....Government-mandated support for renewables has helped Germany became a
world leader in renewable energy and the country gets about 20 percent of its overall
annual electricity from those sources. Germany has nearly as much installed solar power
generation capacity as the rest of the world combined and gets about four percent of its
overall annual electricity needs from the sun alone."
Germany sets new solar power record, institute says
Reuters,
26 May 2012 |
"An
experimental solar-powered airplane took off from Switzerland on its first
transcontinental flight Thursday, aiming to reach North Africa next week. Pilot Andre Borschberg planned to take the jumbo jet-size Solar Impulse
plane on its first leg to Madrid, Spain, by Friday. His colleague Bertrand Piccard will
take the helm of the aircraft for the second stretch of its 2,500-kilometer (1,554-mile)
journey to the Moroccan capital Rabat. Fog on the runaway at its home base in Payerne,
Switzerland, delayed the take off by two hours, demonstrating how susceptible the
prototype single-seater aircraft is to adverse weather. 'We can't fly into clouds because
it was not designed for that,' Borschberg said as he piloted the lumbering plane with its
63-meter (207-foot) wingspan toward the eastern French city of Lyon at a cruising speed of
just 70 kilometers an hour (43.5 mph). Before landing in Madrid in the early hours of
Friday, Borschberg will face other challenges, including having to overfly the Pyrenees
mountains that separate France and Spain. Just in case things go disastrously wrong,
Borschberg has a parachute inside his tiny cabin that he hopes never to use. 'When you
take an umbrella it never rains,' he joked in a satellite call with The Associated
Press."
Experimental solar-powered plane, Solar Impulse, begins flight across Europe
New
York Daily News, 24 May 2012 |
"California
is poised to more than double its targeted electricity output from rooftop solar panels.
The state Public Utilities Commission on Thursday tweaked its rules to authorize an
increase in the number of residential, commercial and government buildings that can
participate in a program that allows solar users to lower their electricity bills by
getting credit for excess power sent back to the grid. The move raises the maximum total capacity of all the state's rooftop
solar systems to about 5,200 megawatts from a current 2,400 megawatts. That's enough new
electricity to power about 2.1 million homes."
Utility regulators more than double California's solar power goal
Los
Angeles Times, 25 April 2012 |
"Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil
exporter, may finally be getting serious about overcoming the technical and financial
hurdles for tapping its other main resource: sunshine. Thousands of solar power panels
have sprung up across Europe over the past few years, thanks to generous subsidies that
make the technology an attractive alternative to conventional energy. Saudi Arabia too,
wants to generate much more solar power as it lacks coal or enough natural gas output to
meet rapidly rising power demand. Doing so would allow it to slash the volume of oil it
burns in power plants bankrolled by billions of dollars worth of saved oil earnings. 'At world market prices,
solar is competitive if you use crude oil to generate electricity,' said Maher al-Odan, a
senior consultant at King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Research (KA-CARE) which
was set up to plan Saudi Arabia's energy mix. Saudi
Arabia has said it wants to become a major solar producer before, but its investments
amount to much less than 50 megawatts versus several countries which have added thousands
of megawatts a year. This month, KA-CARE set forth a much more ambitious plan,
recommending that the kingdom aim to get more than a third of its peak-load power supply,
or about 41 gigawatts (GW), from the sun within two decades at an estimated cost well over
$100 billion. Making the plan work economically
rests on three assumptions: that technology improvements will cut costs, that a domestic
solar industry will emerge and create jobs for a booming population, and that many
billions of dollars worth of exportable oil will be saved. An average of 700,000 barrels a
day of crude were used in Saudi power stations during the peak air-conditioning demand
period from May to September last year, according to official data supplied to the Joint
Organisations Data Initiative (JODI)."
Saudi battles excess heat, dust to build solar power
Saudi
Arabia, 23 May 2012 |
"An
Israeli solar company says it has raised more than $200 million to build eight solar
energy fields in the country's southern desert. Arava
Power Co. says the deal is by far the biggest ever in Israel's solar power industry. Arava
Power's chief executive, Jon Cohen, said Tuesday the installations, to be built in
southern Israel's Negev desert, are 'another step toward energy independence for Israel
and a greener future for generations to come.' The company says the fields will generate
58.5 megawatts of power. Investors include the Noy investment fund, French energy company
EDF, Bank Hapoalim, Israeli insurer Migdal and pension fund manager Amitim. Israel hopes
to generate 10 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020."
Israeli solar firm raises $200 million
Associated
Press, 22 May 2012 |
"Electric cars are far more expensive to
buy than their petrol equivalents, largely because the cost of the lithium-ion battery
that powers the vehicle is so high – currently about $12,000. But the fuel costs of electric vehicles are already far lower than
for petrol-powered ones. In the US, for example, the petrol for an average car costs about
8 cents per kilometre, compared with less than 2 cents for the electricity to power an
electric car. In Europe, where fuel tax is higher,
the numbers are 12.5 cents and 2.5 cents, respectively. Either way, that is a huge gap. So
for electric vehicles to compete on price, battery costs need only fall far enough to be
swallowed by that gap, and Galves believes that it is likely to happen sooner than most
people think. First, he expects the costs of
batteries to plummet as mass production ramps up – just as they did for laptops
– to less than $7000 by 2015. Second, the gap is likely to widen with most analysts
expecting oil prices to keep rising. 'On a 10-to-15-year view, it’s almost impossible
for electrification not to carve out a decent portion of the market,' says Galves, who
expects electric vehicles to be economic within a decade even without the subsidies that
many governments currently give. The effect of falling electric vehicle costs will
be reinforced by strengthening fuel efficiency and emissions policies in the world’s
most important car markets. The policies of the
world’s biggest gas guzzler will soon be among the toughest. In 1975, US president
Jimmy Carter passed a law forcing vehicle manufacturers in the US to meet average fuel
efficiency standards. For cars, that number has languished at around 27 miles per gallon
(11.5 kilometres per litre) since the early 1990s, but recent legislation means average
fuel economy must double to 54.5 mpg by 2025. The standard has been rising since 1978, and
by 2020 the targets become so demanding, says Galves, that car manufacturers will not be
able to meet them without selling a significant number of electric vehicles. Galves
expects them to make up a fifth of US car sales in 2020. The impact will be dramatic. Every day, US vehicles guzzle about 9 million barrels of oil
– the biggest single element in our daily global consumption of almost 90 million
barrels (see chart, top left). Deutsche Bank oil analysts expect US petrol consumption to
plummet, almost halving by 2030. The story is the
same in the European Union, which regulates carbon dioxide emissions per kilometre rather
than miles per gallon. Cars manufactured there in 2020 must reduce their average emissions
by more than a quarter compared with models made in 2015. Such standards will especially
encourage electrification because they govern 'tailpipe' emissions pumped out in the
day-to-day running of car engines and not those emitted while they are being built. By
this measure, electric vehicles are zero emission.
Deutsche Bank expects them to make up 25 per cent of Europe’s car sales in 2020,
accelerating the decline in demand for petrol. So
much for the world’s richer nations. In China, where the developing car market is
booming, the demand for petrol will continue to rise for at least a decade. Yet the global
impact will be limited because the size of China’s car fleet is currently just a
fifth of that of the US. The Chinese government too is strongly committed to electric
vehicles as one way of tackling appalling air quality in the cities and the country’s
dependence on imported oil. Deutsche Bank forecasts
that Chinese petrol demand will start to fall from 2025, as electric vehicles become more
common. The net effect is that global petrol demand will peak as early as 2015. 'From that
point forward,' writes Deutsche Bank’s lead oil analyst Paul Sankey in a research
note. 'We believe gasoline demand will be on an inexorable and accelerating decline.' And
as a result, he argues, global demand for crude oil will go the same way in about 2020.
Others disagree with Deutsche Bank’s analysis. The International Energy Agency has
long been dismissive about predictions of an early peak in the global oil supply. It is
just as dismissive that demand will decline within the next couple of decades. It
forecasts that daily oil demand will rise to 107 million barrels by 2035 on the basis of
current government policies. Fatih Birol, the agency’s chief economist, believes that
there are simply too many cars in the world – about a billion and rising – for
electric vehicles to have a meaningful impact in the short term. Although most governments
have policies to encourage electrification, they are very unlikely to achieve their
targets. Even if they do, says Birol, the number of electric vehicles on the road in 2020
will be just 20 million – about 2 per cent of the total fleet. Stefanie Lang, a London-based automobile analyst at investment-research
firm Sanford C. Bernstein, agrees that electric vehicles will make only limited progress
over the next 10 to 15 years. She argues that they will struggle because they will remain
far too expensive and will face fierce competition from the incumbent technology –
the internal combustion engine. Even after a century
of development, the internal combustion engine has the capacity to make major improvements
in fuel economy, says Lang, rattling off three examples. .... So what does the motor industry itself think lies ahead? That the
internal combustion engine’s days are numbered, for one thing. In a recent survey,
consultants KPMG asked 200 top executives of car companies how long they thought the
traditional engine would continue to prevail over electric vehicles. Some 70 per cent
answered 1 to 10 years, but only 18 per cent thought 10 to 20 years. One reason for the
result could be that electrification is now widely seen as the best way to make major
reductions in transport emissions, even taking into account the emissions from generating
the electricity in the first place. That is because electric
vehicles are far more efficient than petrol cars. Take the Nissan Leaf. It is responsible
for just 99 grams of CO2 per kilometre, even when charged on electricity generated by the
average mix of coal, natural gas, nuclear and renewables. That makes it 40 per cent
cleaner than a typical petrol car in Europe. And as electricity generation becomes
cleaner, the emissions of electric vehicles will fall further still – unlike those of
cars powered by biofuel or natural gas (see New Scientist, 25 February, p 48)."
Dump the pump: could peak oil be voluntary?
New Scientist, 17 May 2012 |
"The
world's solar power generating capacity will grow by between 200 and 400 percent over the
next five years, with Asia and other emerging markets overtaking leadership from Europe, a
European industry association said on Monday.
'Europe has dominated the global PV (photovoltaic) market for years but the rest of the
world clearly has the biggest potential for growth,' the European Photovoltaic Industry
Association (EPIA) said in its market outlook until 2016. The fastest PV capacity growth
is expected in China and India, followed by the southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle
East and North Africa in the next five years, said the report distributed at a PV
conference in northern Italy. Global installed PV
capacity, which turns sunlight into power, is expected to have risen to between 207.9
gigawatts and 342.8 GW in 2016, depending on the level of political support, from 69.7 GW
in 2011, the report said. This year, the world's
total PV capacity is expected to rise to between 90 and 110 GW, EPIA's Secretary General
Reinhold Buttgereit told the conference."
Asia to overtake Europe as global solar power grows - EPIA
Reuters,
7 May 2012 |
"German
solar installations may have more than tripled in the first quarter from a year ago, the country’s deputy environment minister said. 'The first quarter
had big installations,” Katherina Reiche said today in an interview during an
informal meeting of ministers in Denmark. 'It is assumed that nearly 1,800 megawatts were installed.' Germany added 513 megawatts
in the same period last year, according to the Bundesnetzagentur grid regulator."
Germany Solar Installations May Have Tripled in First Quarter
Bloomberg,
19 April 2012 |
"China,
the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases,
said it will provide financial support and individual subsidies to promote the use and
development of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.
The government will broaden pilot programs, build recharging facilities and develop a plan
to recycle batteries, as part of a drive to have 500,000 such vehicles by 2015, rising to
5 million by 2020, the State Council, or cabinet, said in astatement
posted on its website yesterday."
China to Give Stimulus for Development of Electric Vehicles
Bloomberg,
19 April 2012 |
"Thin-film
solar panels may perform better in hot climates than rival crystalline products, based on
half a year of data from the first Indian projects, an executive at the nation’s
largest contractor on the developments said. 'The last six months for which we have data
show that the performance of crystalline in hot climates is not as efficient as thin
film,' said S.N. Subrahmanyan, senior executive vice president of construction at Larsen & Toubro Ltd.
(LT) 'Of course, it’s still early days. But
that’s what we’re seeing.' Concerns over use of thin-film panels were raised as First
Solar Inc. (FSLR), the largest supplier, in February boosted provisions for warranties
by $37.8 million due to potential for 'increased failure rates in hot climates.'
Developers and their lenders are seeking data on how technologies fare in warmer
conditions as Europe, the
biggest solar market, cuts renewables subsidies. Traditional crystalline modules are
silicon-based, while thin-film technology coats panels with materials such as cadmium
telluride, copper indium gallium selenide and amorphous silicon. Crystalline’s
competitiveness matches thin-film when placed on trackers to rotate panels with the
sun’s movement, boosting output as much as 20 percent, Subrahmanyan said in an
interview."
Solar Thin-Film Panels May Outperform Rival Technology in India
Bloomberg,
18 April 2012 |
"The
average price of an electric vehicle-grade battery fell 14 percent year-on-year to $689
per kilowatt hour in the first quarter as manufacturing capacity outstripped demand, a
report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance said on Tuesday.Lower battery costs for electric
vehicles could improve their commercial uptake, which has been slow. The United States wants to see up to 1 million electric and plug-in
hybrids on its roads by the middle of next decade. To help achieve this goal, the U.S.
government has spent over $2 billion under President Obama to underwrite domestic battery
production and billions more to finance
electric car development to cut U.S. oil imports and reduce pollution. But electric
vehicles such as Mitsubishi Motor Corp.'s iMiEV, Nissan Leaf or Tesla Model S to travel
longer distances need to store 16 to 85 kWh at a cost of $11,200 to $34,000, which is
around 25 percent of the total cost of the vehicle. A Tesla car with an 85 kWh battery,
for example, has a range of about 300 miles before it needs to recharge. Battery prices
for plug-in hybrid vehicles such as GM's Volt are on average 67 percent higher than those
for electric-only vehicles, mainly due to the greater power-to-energy performance required
for plug-in hybrid vehicles."
Q1 electric car battery prices drop 14 percent on year
Reuters,
17 April 2012 |
"Solar
energy is gaining momentum around the world, especially in Japan, where the solar market
is experiencing a period of rapid growth. Japan has
long been interested in alternative energy because of its economic and environmental
implications. The country is home to one of the most ambitious and powerful hydrogen
energy systems, the ENE-FARM, and has been using geothermal energy for decades. Solar
power is not new to the Land of the Rising Sun, but it has been growing in popularity over
the past year. The Kyocera Solar Corporation, a leading manufacturer of solar panels, has
released information concerning the growth of the solar industry."
Japan’s solar energy growth
Hydrogenfuelnews,
8 April 2012 |
"California
may be the solar Promised Land but Delaware is where those big green dreams go to die. On
Monday, Solar Trust of America became the latest solar developer to file for bankruptcy in
Delaware federal court, putting into jeopardy photovoltaic power plant projects utilities
were counting on to generate 2,000 megawatts of electricity – enough to light
hundreds of thousands of homes at peak output. Among
the projects was what would have been the world’s largest solar station, the Blythe
Solar Power Project, a 1,000-megawatt power plant to be built in the Mojave Desert
that had received a $2.1 billion federal loan guarantee offer. Solar Trust’s parent
company, German developer Solar Millennium, filed
for bankruptcy in Germany in December and moved to sell its U.S pipeline of projects
to a German photovoltaic power plant developer called Solarhybrid. Then late last month
Solarhybrid itself sought bankruptcy protection, citing a cutback in German subsidies for
solar energy. According Solar Trust’s bankruptcy filings, the company has liabilities
of $20 million and missed a $1 million rent payment on April 1 to the U.S. Bureau of Land
Management for the 7,025-acre Blythe site. Solar Trust this week faces deadlines to pay
$30.9 million in security deposits to related to its right to connect its projects to the
power grid."
Collapse of German Solar Companies Threaten California's Big Solar Projects
Forbes,
3 April 2012 |
"President
Obama
visited a dusty, desert town 30 miles outside Las Vegas Wednesday to declare he's doubling
down on federal efforts to boost the solar industry.
Republicans believe Obama is gambling with taxpayer dollars as he continues to
aggressively push alternative forms of energy after the failure of Solyndra, which
resulted in the loss of half a billion dollars in taxpayer dollars."
President Obama doubles down on efforts to boost solar industry
News,
22 March 2012 |
"In
a move with potential to spark a trade war, the Commerce
Department ruled Tuesday that US solar panel manufacturers are being victimized by
Chinese manufacturers dumping cheap panels in North America
that were unfairly subsidized by the Chinese government. Amid an ongoing investigation, Commerce determined that Chinese producers
and exporters have received subsidies ranging from 2.90 percent to 4.73 percent, a smaller
advantage over US manufacturers than many analysts had expected. Commerce will now direct
tariffs to be collected on Chinese imports. The Obama
administration argues that dumping of under-priced solar panels is a violation of World Trade Organization rules that has come at a high cost to US panel
manufacturers. Several have already been forced to close domestic manufacturing facilities
even though 2011 was one of the best years ever for US solar panel sales. While the US
remains a leader in the production of thin film – an advanced type of solar-electric
panel technology – at least 12 US manufacturers that made more conventional
photovoltaic panels have laid off employees, shut down plants or filed for bankruptcy
during the past two years, according to the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing.
The group of seven US manufacturers filed trade petitions last year against two Chinese
silicon solar PV manufacturers, leading to the Commerce investigation."
China subsidized solar panels, US finds. Are tariffs the right response?
Christian
Science Monitor, 20 March 2012 |
"The
national solar industry installed a record number of panels in 2011, more than double
2010, and is likely to see strong growth again this year, according to a new report.Solar
installers built 1,855 megawatts of photovoltaic projects in 2011 for a total of $8.4
billion, up from 887 MW in 2010, according to a report released by GTM Research and the
Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). The
growth in U.S. demand comes as the makers of the panels that turn light into electricity
have struggled to earn profits amid a glut of supplies on the global market that eroded
margins."
Solar power growth jumps to new record
Reuters,
14 March 2012 |
"China
is aiming to reduce the cost of domestic solar power and expand the domestic market to
better develop the photovoltaic (PV) industry during the 12th Five-Year-Plan period
(2011-15), said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Friday. According to the industry plan announced by the ministry, the country will
reduce the cost of solar power to 0.8 yuan (12 US cents) per kilowatt-hour by 2015 and 0.6
yuan per kWh by 2020 and increase production of solar panels."
China's domestic solar market to expand
China
Daily, 25 February 2012 |
"Solar-power
capacity in Ukraine is
forecast to double this year, spurred by the completion of Europe’s biggest
photovoltaic plant in December and incentives a third higher than anywhere else in the
region. Developers in the former Soviet republic may
add panels with 300 megawatts of capacity after last year installing about 200 megawatts,
according to the Association of Alternative Fuels and Energy Market Participants, the main
lobby group tracking PV installations in the nation. It had just 2.5 megawatts in 2010.
.... President Viktor Yanukovych’s efforts to develop Ukraine’s renewable energy
industry contrast with steps to rein in solar subsidies in Germany, Italy and Spain after incentives for
the industry pushed installations past government targets."
Europe’s Biggest Solar Power Incentive Bolsters Ukraine: Energy
Bloomberg,
22 February 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."
Energy storage economically viable within five years
Business
Green, 25 January 2012 |
"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."
Solar-powered jacket means Kindle lasts forever - as long as the sun keeps shining
Mail,
9 January 2012 |
"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."
Germany reports record 60 per cent surge in solar generation
BusinessGreen,
4 January 2012 |
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