Showing posts with label Solar panel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Solar panel. Show all posts

Monday, June 24, 2013

Conventional Crystalline Silicon


Solar is sexy.

What Tech Is Next for the Solar Industry?
conventional crystalline silicon ..... would bring the direct cost of solar power to six cents per kilowatt-hour, which is cheaper than the average cost expected for power from new natural gas power plants ..... screen-printing techniques can produce lines as thin as 30 micrometers .... the ability to make them on a flexible sheet of glass raises the possibility of continuous roll-to-roll manufacturing (like printing newspapers), which can reduce the cost per watt by increasing production. ... a two-sided solar cell that can absorb light from both the front and back. .... during some parts of the day, sunlight falls on the land between rows of solar panels in a solar power plant. That light reflects onto the back of the panels and could be harvested to increase the power output. ... Where a one-sided solar panel might generate 340 watts, a two-sided one might generate up to 400 watts. .... Such solar panels could be mounted vertically, like a fence, so that one side collects sunlight in the morning, and the other in the afternoon. That would make it possible to install the solar panels on very little land—they could serve as noise barriers along highways .... Adding one semiconductor could boost efficiencies from the 20 to 25 percent range to around 40 percent. Adding another could make efficiencies as high as 50 percent feasible, which would cut in half the number of solar panels needed for a given installation. The challenge is to produce good connections between these semiconductors, something made challenging by the arrangement of silicon atoms in crystalline silicon.
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Monday, July 30, 2012

Pragmatic Solar

English: Solar panel installation at an inform...
English: Solar panel installation at an information center adjacent to Ögii Lake (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Cheaper than fossil fuels is that magical line.

Ultra-Efficient Solar
Semprius's solar panels use glass lenses to concentrate incoming light .... using materials other than silicon, the most common semiconductor in solar panels today. ....... a highly efficient material called gallium arsenide ..... maximizes their power production by putting them under glass lenses that concentrate sunlight about 1,100 times. ..... Semprius's small cells produce so little heat that they don't require cooling, which further brings down the cost. ..... make enough solar panels annually to deliver six megawatts of electricity. The company hopes to expand that to 30 megawatts by the end of 2013 .... conventional silicon panels, whose prices fell by more than half in 2011 alone.

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Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Microgrid

Solar Panel - Labatts Plant in Background
Solar Panel - Labatts Plant in Background (Photo credit: chucka_nc)
Microgrid Keeps the Power Local, Cheap, and Reliable
ties together power from fuel cells, solar panels, wind turbines, and diesel generators ..... to form a microgrid that can operate independently of large, centralized power plants. ..... an emerging smart-grid technology that's providing a cleaner, more reliable, and, in some parts of the country, significantly cheaper alternative to the conventional grid. ..... special software and power electronics to integrate multiple sources of power and energy storage to provide electricity around the clock, even when the sun isn't shining or regulations limit the use of diesel generators ..... If the utility experiences a large spike in demand, the microgrid can respond by selling excess power to the utility. .... The first customers for microgrids are businesses and organizations that can't afford even short power outages—such as jails, hospitals, data centers, and military bases—or remote areas that don't have access to the grid.
This philosophy has to be applied to the growth and consumption of food. Not all of it. But at least some parts of it. People should have the option.


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Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Solar Panels To Roll Out

Solar cellsImage via Wikipedia
Technology Review: Clearing the Way for Cheap, Flexible Solar Panels: lightweight, flexible panels that are cheap to ship and easy to install (by unrolling them over large areas). .... The protective film is a multilayer, fluoropolymer-based sheet that can replace glass as the protective front cover of solar panels ..... Glass has been the armor of choice because it's cheap, weather-resistant, and durable enough to last decades. .... Blending solar panels into roofs also can overcome aesthetic objections .... a plastic film that is 23 micrometers thick, much thinner than the 3,000-micrometer glass typically found on solar panels today .... Flexible solar panels also can be larger than glass panels
Slow but sure innovation in clean tech is happening. One just wishes it were happening much faster.

Offshoring The Wind Harvesting: Google Wind

A Simpler Route to Plastic Solar Cells
Giving Plastic Solar Cells an Energy Boost
Pushing Plastic Solar Cells

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