Solar // Current TV

Solar power Record, Germany produced the equivalent of 20 nuclear plants

Yes, you got it right, a small non so sunny country was able to produces that much,... more

alexandrekBack
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40 minutes ago
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World’s Largest Solar PV Power Plant Added to India’s Grid

Worlds largest solarplant

armtrack
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1 month ago
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Mindshift needed - Energy efficiency, not the ability to waste it, should be point of pride

http://bit.ly/ITPeFQ Speak to Liebreich for an extended period, and you sense that his... more

Danbethrach
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SunShot: On target for competitive, subsidy-free CSP

Within the next few weeks the US department of Energy’s (DOE) SunShot Initiative... more

Danbethrach
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1 month ago
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The long and short of it is good projects do get funded, but it's not easy

"Well, just as in the case of conventional energy project, good renewable energy... more

Danbethrach
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1 month ago
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Potential investors in renewables are everywhere, but debt finance is hard nut to crack

http://bit.ly/H0fUzT Why should energy-intensive corporations invest in green power... more

Danbethrach
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2 months ago
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Despite Europe's economic woes, hunger for renewables project investment remains

How was it that in the worst possible days for the continent’s banks and... more

Danbethrach
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2 months ago
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Keep Your Ion Solar Panels!

Wish we would focus on the development of solar, as hard as we do the search for fossil fuels, before it's too late! No more drillin' and spillin' of Oil, Corporate can't beat solar's delivery logistics-angular perspective, planetary rotation is all you need. No more tankers, trucks, pumps, gas stations, tank farms, or wars of acquisition fought; disguised as liberation. Just pure sunlight, we are using oil to consume ourselves (...and all life, for that matter) right out of a perfectly good planet,

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"A small Mississippi solar panel factory that, until this week, had been working in semi-secrecy, claims that its unique manufacturing process allows photovoltaic panels to be produced at almost half the cost of conventional methods. The key, according to Twin Creeks Technologies, is in the thinness of its monocrystalline wafers, dramatically reducing the material required.

Where conventional solar wafers can be sliced down to about 180 micrometers in thickness, Twin Creeks is able to produce laminas only 20 micrometers wide using what it calls its "Hyperion" manufacturing system.

This system employs a technique Twin Creeks calls Proton Induced Exfoliation. During this process, hydrogen ions are embedded into layers within standard silicon monocrystalline wafers without altering the wafer's inherent characteristics. The ions are embedded using a high-voltage, high-current ion accelerator which Twin Creeks CEO Siva Sivaram told Technology Review is "10 times more powerful" than any accelerator commercially available. The embedded depth is precisely controlled via the voltage of the accelerator beam.

When the ion layer is heated inside a furnace, a thin lamina of the host wafter is separated from the rest. The process can be repeated with the same wafer to extract up 10 usable layers. A metal-coating is applied to each layer to add strength.

Twin Creeks claims that only 10 percent of a standard wafer performs useful work. Though the company has not announced specific performance figures for panels created with its technology, it says that solar cells, LEDs and other devices made with its skinny laminae have "similar or better levels of performance" than those made using conventional wafers.

Though conventional solar wafer thickness has come down over the years, the 20-micrometer wafer available now is a disruptive breakthough. But rather than position itself as usurper, Twin Creeks seems to be pitching its manufacturing technology to established solar panel manufacturers rather than selling solar cells itself. The company claims that a factory equipped with its technology can manufacture solar cells for 40 cents per Watt. By comparison First Solar, which positions itself as the "premier provider of comprehensive PV solar systems", announced only last month that it had cut costs to 73 cents per Watt.

Research technologies (thin-wafers included) that threaten to multiply the efficiency of photovoltaic panels emerge with clockwork regularity, but generally such developments are far from proven at the commercial level. By contrast, Twin Creeks claims its Hyperion 3 systems are available for shipment immediately, and can individually produce 1.5 million skinny wafers—sufficient for over 6MW of solar cells—per year.

The exfoliation method is also applicable to germanium, silicon carbide, gallium nitride and other III-V compounds. Though Twin Creeks' initial focus is on solar cells, it claims its process is suitable in the manufacture of LEDs, power electronics equipment, image sensors and 3D packaging."Wish we would focus on the development of solar, as hard as we do the search for... more

thetrimsmith
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2 months ago
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12 comments

Why aren't UFOs drawn to renewable energy sites? Or are they?

Witnesses says they've seen them near nuclear facilities, oil rigs and even... more

Danbethrach
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3 months ago
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Alone in the Dark - EMP doom

Yesterday’s X5 Flare released a coronal mass ejection (CME) that will hit Earth... more

R3zn8D
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3 months ago
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1 comment

The Rural Women Solar Engineers of Africa

This needs to spread around the world.... more

11dim
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3 months ago
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3 comments

Italian engineer invents floating solar panels

Rays of the winter sun bounce off gleaming mirrors on the tiny lake of Colignola in... more

JanforGore
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3 months ago
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20 comments

Tongan government moves on its goal of 50% renewable energy by 2015

Urgent economic need is driving a transformation of Tonga’s energy system
by Zachary Rybarczyk

Can you even imagine the United States setting a 50% target for renewable energy production by 2015?

Perhaps the U.S. could look toward the Kingdom of Tonga for some inspiration.

Tonga is one of many Pacific island nations that have set very ambitious renewable energy goals. Officials have set a goal of procuring 50% of power from renewable sources by 2015. Ambitious? Absolutely. But the transition is a matter of economic necessity.

Launched in 2010, the Tongan government laid out its Tonga Energy Road Map (TERM) in order to reduce carbon emissions, improve its electrical grid, and cut its dependence from foreign energy sources. Because Tonga is so dependent on imported resources for its energy needs — particularly diesel, which is used for 98% of electricity production — renewable energy systems are attractive:

The Tongan economy and electricity consumers have been exposed to high and volatile electricity prices linked to oil prices over the last ten years. Between 2001 and 2004, the average price of crude oil increased from around US$25 per barrel to around US$40 per barrel, an increase of 60%. In the next 4 years to 2008, the average price of crude more than doubled to a peak of around US$100 per barrel. In late 2008, crude oil prices dropped and continued fall into early 2009 averaging around US$62 per barrel during 2009. Diesel prices tracked the price of crude oil and led to Tongan electricity rates exceeding TOP1.00/kW-h in late 2008. Crude oil price is expected to increase in the future based on projections from the United States Department of Energy.

During the oil price spike in 2008, Tonga’s economy screeched to a halt. And since then, with oil prices continuing to rise, many consumers are not able to afford electricity at all.

In order to combat this problem, the island state recently received support from different organizations to execute on the roadmap for 50% renewable electricity.

With grants from the government of New Zealand to upgrade and expand outdated grid distribution, and technical support from the Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Program (REEEP) to expand its renewable energy portfolio, Tonga could very well become “a blueprint for other Pacific Island states that are grappling with similar challenges,” said Martin Hiller, the Director General of REEEP.

In January, Tonga signed an MOU with project developer Madsar and the Abu Dhabi Fund for construction of a 500-kilowatt solar PV project on Vava’u Island. The project will provide affordable, clean power for over 13% of Tonga’s 110,000 citizens.

The government has already broken ground on a large solar farm on its main island of Tongatapu with the help of another New Zealand grant, which will result in significant “diesel savings of around half a million liters a year, and around two-thousand tons of carbon emissions will be reduced per year as well.”

That’s one of the major differences between inertia in the U.S. and swift action in a place like Tonga: economic urgency. Until America faces an acute crisis, political leaders will likely continue to drag their feet on clean energy.Urgent economic need is driving a transformation of Tonga’s energy system by... more

JanforGore
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3 months ago
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In Benin, solar powered irrigation pollutes less and produces more

In 2007, the nonprofit Solar Electric Light Fund began helping women’s collectives in the west African nation of Benin water their vegetable gardens using solar power. The system they used was simple enough: solar-powered water pumps, paired with drip irrigation. Each of these two technologies have been shown to improve the lives of people living in poverty, off the grid. But few people had ever tried combining them.

“Neither of them were particularly innovative in their own right, but bringing them together truly was,” says Bob Freling, SELF’s executive director. “I found precious few examples of solar drip irrigation. Frankly, it was puzzling, because it seemed like a perfect fit.”

This technological innovation means the women’s collectives can keep producing crops during the region’s six-month dry season, provide greater food security to their families, and start thinking about sending their kids to school. It also could help communities survive and adapt to climate change. The project is now expanding: At least eight more villages in Benin will start using the solar irrigation systems.

Drip irrigation delivers water directly to plant roots, increasing crop yields and using 40 to 80 percent less water than traditional irrigation systems. It’s particularly well suited for dry places, like the semi-arid Sahel region of which Benin is part. But it also requires power inputs, which can be hard to come by in off-the-grid communities. When SELF began working on the project, one of the pioneers of drip irrigation, Dov Pasternak, was working to spread the irrigation technology across west Africa. Pasternak had designed a vegetable garden that used diesel generators to pump water into the irrigation system, but Freling says “That was going to be a non-starter for us.”

Although Pasternak was skeptical of the affordability and longevity of solar systems, he agreed to work with SELF, and soon, Freling says, became "a die-hard believer in solar." The system installed in the pilot villages pumps water into a holding tank from a surface stream in one and from an underground source in the other. Gravity pulls the water to the plants, a mix of vegetables like tomatoes, carrots, okra, and cabbage. Because it’s powered by the sun, the system self-regulates: more water goes to the plants when it’s sunny, which is when they’re most thirsty.

Since the beginning of the pilot program, SELF has worked with researchers at Stanford’s Center for Food Security and the Environment to monitor the impacts of the program on the communities using the irrigation systems. The women involved the project document their plantings, their haul from the gardens, the portion they feed to their families, and the portion they sell. Already, the women report that they’re better able to provide for their families: Women growing vegetables with the technology fed their families 3 to 5 more servings of vegetables each day during the project's first year. The women in the project use the extra income to buy staples for their families, and the community as a whole benefits from the increased availability of vegetables during the dry seasons.

More at the linkIn 2007, the nonprofit Solar Electric Light Fund began helping women’s... more

JanforGore
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3 months ago
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6 comments

Bright days: How India is reinventing solar

In 2009, when policymakers in New Delhi set a goal to produce 20,000 megawatts of solar energy by 2020, few gave India more than a slim chance. The world’s solar-savvy countries put together were generating that much solar power at the time, and India was contributing virtually nothing. But today, with acres of land in its arid, sun-drenched northwest carpeted with thousands of gleaming solar panels, analysts say India is poised to exceed its target. And the most tangible indicator of this makeover is money. In the last year, funding for solar projects in India increased seven-fold, from $0.6 billion in 2010 to $4.2 billion in 2011, a new Bloomberg New Energy Finance report said.

On paper, India has always had a good case for going solar. Several parts of the country are endowed with an abundance of raw material – as many as 300 days of sunshine a year – much to the envy of cloud-enveloped Germany; it has vast tracts of under-utilized land on which to embed rows upon rows of solar panels; the country’s growing and grossly underserved population and expanding industry are hungry for electricity. But the deal breaker, solar’s classic Achilles’ heel, had always been the cost factor; solar is expensive – considerably more expensive than the alternatives, coal and wind – and a seemingly extravagant venture for a developing nation struggling with double-digit poverty and ruinous public health. For years, the global solar industry has piggybacked on generous subsidies from governments – inevitably developed and wealthy – willing to foot an enormous bill to develop clean energy. India never quite fit into this elite club.

But last year, the promise of affordable solar came one step closer to becoming a reality. First, the global price of solar panels and modules that turn sunlight into electricity plummeted 30 to 40 percent, triggered by a massive expansion in China – home to the world’s leading panel makers – and a supply surplus owing to tepid demand from Europe. While this brought doom to American manufacturers unable to compete with China’s prices, it proved transformative for the industry by making solar infrastructure more accessible. Germany added a record 7.5 gigawatts of panels in 2011, more than double the government’s target. In the United States, grid-connected solar installations in the third quarter of 2011 grew 140 percent over the previous year. Indian developers too decided to join the party.

Enthused by the buzz in the industry, the Indian government decided to step outside the box. It veered from the global story by sidelining the fixed-price subsidy framework. In countries like Germany, Spain, the U.K. and U.S., governments subsidize solar power by agreeing to buy it at fixed prices for several years – a model described by solar skeptics as unsustainable and wasteful, the Economist writes. Backed by the government, solar capacities have been ramped up exponentially over the years. But this arrangement began to buckle when governments, faced with growing budget deficits and an economic crisis, started cutting subsidies, pulling the rug from under solar’s feet.

As early as 2009, Spain rolled back its subsidy program by reducing the money it paid for solar electricity and capping the amount of subsidized solar power installed each year, the Wall Street Journal reported. Following the crash in panel prices, Germany and the U.K. have been wrestling industry lobbyists to accelerate subsidy cuts. The U.S. too grapples with solar’s classic chicken and egg conundrum: developers say prices of solar energy will get competitive soon, but to achieve this they need to scale-up, for which they need generous government subsidies. Hitting at the heart of the matter, Spanish minister Jose Manuel Soria recently said, “What is today an energy problem could become a financial problem.”

MORE: The China U.S. Solar War Heats Up

India imported all these debates and problems when it entered the solar subsidy game. Driven by its ambitious new solar policy, the government agreed to buy solar power at 17.91 rupees (36 cents) for a kilowatt-hour. (India’s coal-generated energy costs 3 to 4 rupees, one-fourth the cost of solar.) But to their surprise, they received an overwhelming response from developers – Indian and overseas alike. That’s when India set up a reverse auction process, making developers compete for its business. In an auction in December – the second of two — over 100 producers bid to sell solar power to a state-owned utility. The lowest bid was 7.49 rupees (15 cents) per kilowatt-hour, less than half of what the government had offered in the beginning and about 30 percent cheaper than the global average for solar projects, Bloomberg writes. The average bid price was 8.77 rupees (18 cents) per kilowatt-hour. Germany, the world’s biggest solar-power user, pays upwards of 17.94 euro cents (23 American cents) per kilowatt-hour, according to the New York Times.

“The Indian experiment has been very successful,” says Tobias Engelmeier of Bridge to India, a New Delhi-based consultancy. Not only has India made its solar program viable, he said, but has also set a precedent by increasing competitive pressure on developers who he believes have been far too comfortable for way too long. He expects solar power in India to become competitive as early as 2016.
By Niharika Mandhana

Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2012/02/13/bright-days-how-india-is-reinventing-solar/#ixzz1mrjyo7x1
More at the linkIn 2009, when policymakers in New Delhi set a goal to produce 20,000 megawatts of... more

JanforGore
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3 months ago
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Solar panels from grass clippings-biophotovoltaics

It’s chore day. You’ve raked the leaves, taken out the recycling, and emptied out the old junk in your garage. But wait — don’t toss it all out! You have all the ingredients for your very own homemade solar system.

If new advances in “biophotovoltaics” research are any indication, you may someday be able to create your own solar “goo” from plant matter and apply it to metal or glass.

A group of researchers has found a way to break down plant matter, isolate photosynthetic molecules, and then spread those molecules on a metal or glass substrate. So theoretically, you could take a bag full of leaves and grass, pour in a mixture of chemicals to break them down, and then finish your chores by painting the liquid on your windows to produce electricity. Not bad for a day’s work.

Researchers have been working on biophotovoltaics for many years, only to be hindered by low efficiencies, rapid degradation, and difficulties in spreading the photovoltaic “goo” onto a substrate. But nine scientists have just published research on new advances that boost performance and may allow for inexpensive substrates like recycled glass and metal to be used:

To improve photovoltaic performance we increased the light absorption cross-section without changing the footprint by departing from the traditional flat electrode geometry in favor of mesoscopic, high-surface area semiconducting electrodes (TiO2 nanocrystals and ZnO nanowires). Finally, we showed how high affinity peptide motifs10 bioengineered to promote selective adsorption to specific substrates can enhance photovoltaic performance. These materials, geometries and design resulted in simple, robust biophotovoltaic devices of unprecedented performance.

In short, the researchers have created a method to stabilize the photosynthetic molecules. And by coating a substrate with titanium dioxide and zinc oxide nanowires, they can now turn any sort of glass or metal material into a working solar cell with efficiencies better than ever before.

It’s a fascinating discovery. But don’t get too excited yet. Efficiencies are still extraordinarily low — only at .01%. They’d need to be about 10 times that in order to power a light or charge a cell phone. So for the foreseeable future, don’t expect to be painting your house with a bag of grass clippings.

However, as research advances and performance continues to improve, MIT physicist Andreas Mershin says it could be perfect for remote applications in developing countries. In the video below, Mershin explains the significance of the findings:

More at the linkIt’s chore day. You’ve raked the leaves, taken out the recycling, and... more

JanforGore
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4 months ago
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12 comments

NASA Report: Greenhouse Gases, Not Sun, Driving Warming

A recent, prolonged lull in the sun's activity did not prevent the Earth from absorbing more solar energy than it let escape back into space, a NASA analysis of the Earth's recent energy budget indicates.

An imbalance like this drives global warming — since more energy is coming in than leaving — and, because it occurred during a period when the sun was emitting comparatively low levels of energy, the imbalance has implications for the cause of global warming.

The results confirm greenhouse gases produced by human activities are the most important driver of global climate change, according to the researchers.

They found that the Earth absorbed 0.58 watts of excess energy per square meter than escaped back into space during the study period from 2005 to 2010, a time when solar activity was low. By comparison, the planet receives 0.25 watts less energy per square meter during a solar minimum, than during a period of maximum activity in the sun's 11-year cycle. (Currently, the sun is in the midst of Solar Cycle 24, with activity expected to ramp up toward solar maximum in 2013.)

"The fact we still see a positive imbalance despite the prolonged solar minimum isn't a surprise given what we've learned about the climate system," lead researcher James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in a statement. "But it's worth noting, because this provides unequivocal evidence that the sun is not the dominant driver of global warming."

However, in an email to LiveScience, Hansen noted that "the sun is a small but not negligible factor," in determining the size of the imbalance. Over the past decade, the imbalance declined slightly due, in part, to the solar minimum, according to Hansen. [Gallery: Our Amazing Sun]

Solar activity refers to the activity of the sun's magnetic field. Fluctuations in solar activity, including magnetic field-powered sunspots and solar flares, have been linked to past changes in climate, including, controversially, the Little Ice Age. Some skeptics have attributed contemporary climate change to natural fluctuations in solar activity, rather than human-emitted greenhouse gases — the explanation endorsed by nearly all climate scientists, including those convened by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Incoming solar radiation is measured by satellites; the recent minimum set records for the reduction in solar radiation since satellite measurements began in the 1970s.

http://www.livescience.com/18255-solar-cycle-climate-change-warming.htmlA recent, prolonged lull in the sun's activity did not prevent the Earth from... more

pjacobs51
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4 months ago
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56 comments

Israeli scientists/activists bring green power to West Bank village Susya, South Hebron Mountains

Residents of a West Bank village with no electricity have been helped out of the... more

worrg
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4 months ago
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Green energy opponents are real job killers.

Green energy works when applied properly.... more

11dim
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5 months ago
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Electric Charging Stations In San Francisco

I went to my local Walgreen's today and got a surprise. They had a charging... more

baghdadbythebay
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5 months ago
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