The Green Optimistic

A team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology have invented a new type of solar cell whose active ingredients are nanometer-sized silicon wires. The solar cell they prototyped thus uses only a small fraction of the silicon used to make conventional solar cell, the rest being made of a polymer.

Using cheaper materials and latest technology scientists have managed to create a new type of concentrating array, three times cheaper and four times more efficient than any other solar cells. Researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology have explained why this technology is so efficient by listing some key components and explaining how they work.

Europe’s largest solar plant (an area as large as 120 football pitches) will go online in Italy later this year. Located in northeastern Italy, in the province of Rovigo, the plant will generate 72 megawatts and will take up 850,000 square metres.

Sundrop Fuels, a Louisville, CO, -based company has developed a method of using concentrated solar power to heat the biomass to 1200 or 1300 ºC, and even produce syngas more efficiently than the standard technology, which uses only 30 to 35 percent of the biomass.

Trying to imitate the plants and the way they produce energy when hit by light, Prof. Nathan Nelson of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Biochemistry discovered a complex membrane protein and founded a new model for developing “green energy”, having this membrane at its core.

1366 Technologies, a company based in Lexington, MA, shows how a new manufacturing process can make silicon solar cells 80 percent cheaper. The company dreams that within 10 years they will be able to improve the technology so as the solar cells built by them to compete with coal in price.

ComEd, a Chicago-based utility company has come up with a new solar energy pilot that will outfit about 100 Chicago-area homes with solar panels and “at least 50 of those with battery backup, ’smart’ meters, net metering and a grid-tied status that enables them to send unused electric energy from their solar energy systems back to the grid.”

The world’s largest photovoltaic solar power plant will be built by the French energy giant EDF. The company hopes to open the plant by 2012, being located at an abandoned NATO air base (415 hectare site in Toul-Rosieres, near the eastern city of Metz).

Besides its search engine activities, Google focused on producing alternative energy technologies, or improving the existing ones. So is the case now, when Google developed a new mirror technology that could help solar companies like eSolar or BrightSource make cheaper and better solar thermal plants.

The world’s biggest vessel powered entirely by solar energy has been unveiled in Germany. Measuring about 31m in length, the new catamaran called PlanetSolar is able to achieve a top speed of about 25 km/h (15 knots) and can carry 50 people.

They managed to increase the efficiency with almost 40% of their solar cells, from 6,7 percent to 9,6 percent. To reduce even more the costs, these solar cells are build with an inexpensive ink-based process.

CalTech researchers discovered a new way to make silicon solar cells that not only use 1 percent of the material needed to make conventional cells, but which are also thin and flexible, making them suitable for a much larger palette of uses in all kinds of applications. And let’s not mention the fact that the price will be considerably lower, respectively.

Concentrated photovoltaic systems are usually more effective than regular, flat ones, because a lens focuses the sunlight on a smaller surface of some efficient and more expensive solar cells 500 times stronger than the cells would receive in regular operation. Heat is mostly a problem with concentrated PV systems, since it has to be efficiently dissipated through complex and expensive cooling technique.

University of Michigan engineers developed the smallest solar powered sensor system, having only 9 cubic millimeters, that can harvest energy from ambient light to operate.

A team of scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have developed the world’s first circuit powered by solar energy that can power itself, as long as it’s left in a beam of sunshine. It could eventually power a new line of consumer devices or even model the human brain.

Professor Greg Scholes, the lead author of the study published recently in Nature, says: “There’s been a lot of excitement and speculation that nature may be using quantum mechanical practices. Our latest experiments show that normally functioning biological systems have the capacity to use quantum mechanics in order to optimize a process as essential to their survival as photosynthesis.”

Up to now, the most used antireflective coating method has been the vapor deposition of a silicon nitride film by using a highly-flamable silane gas, which can ignite when exposed to air. Transporting, storing, ventilating silane gas and other safety-keeping operation make the process very expensive.

The partnership that took place a few days ago between United States Air Force and Fotowatio Renewable Ventures of San Francisco could lead to the construction of United State’s largest solar project that will be able to produce 500MW of green electricity.

A group of scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a way to produce artificial photovoltaic and photochemical cells by infecting the tobacco plants with a genetically engineered virus. Unlike traditional methods of making solar cells, this new technique is more environmentally friendly (because the cells are biodegradable) and cheap.

Usually, heat and light cannot be separated, because heat is a also a form of energy that we can’t ignore. Weidlinger Associates, a NY-based company, received a $150,000 grant this week to develop better, more durable hybrid solar roof panels.