CalTech Researchers Creating Near-Perfect Silicon Nanowire Solar Cell

CalTech Researchers Creating Near-Perfect Silicon Nanowire Solar Cell

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.

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CUESS: 3 Times Cheaper, 4 Times More Efficient Concentrated Photovoltaic/Thermal Array

CUESS: 3 Times Cheaper, 4 Times More Efficient Concentrated Photovoltaic/Thermal Array

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.

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Europe’s Biggest Solar Power Plant to Open in Italy This Year

Europe's Biggest Solar Power Plant to Open in Italy This Year

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.

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Colorado Company Uses Concentrated Solar Power to Transform Biomass into Gasoline

Colorado Company Uses Concentrated Solar Power to Transform Biomass into Gasoline

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.

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Pea Plants Providing Inspiration for Artificial Solar Cells

Pea Plants Providing Inspiration for Artificial Solar Cells

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.

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Saw-Free Manufacturing Process Makes Solar Cells 80% Cheaper

Saw-Free Manufacturing Process Makes Solar Cells 80% Cheaper

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.

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ComEd’s New Solar Energy Project for Chicago Homes Proposes Smarter Grid

ComEd's New Solar Energy Project for Chicago Homes Proposes Smarter Grid

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.”

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France’s Largest Photovoltaic Solar Power Plant to be Built In Abandoned NATO Site

France's Largest Photovoltaic Solar Power Plant to be Built In Abandoned NATO Site

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).

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Google Improving Mirror Technology For Making Solar Concentrators 2x Cheaper

Google Improving Mirror Technology For Making Solar Concentrators 2x Cheaper

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.

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PlanetSolar: The World’s Biggest Solar-Powered Multi-Hull Vessel Released

PlanetSolar: The World's Biggest Solar-Powered Multi-Hull Vessel Released

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.

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IBM’s Efficient Thin Film Solar Cell Made of Cheap Materials

IBM's Efficient Thin Film Solar Cell Made of Cheap Materials

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.

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New Flexible Silicon Solar Cells Use 99 % Less Material With Same Efficiency

New Flexible Silicon Solar Cells Use 99 % Less Material With Same Efficiency

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.

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Semprius’s Micrometric Solar Cells Efficient in Concentrated Photovoltaic Systems

Semprius's Micrometric Solar Cells Efficient in Concentrated Photovoltaic Systems

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.

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World’s Smallest Solar Powered Sensor Invented by University of Michigan Researchers

World's Smallest Solar Powered Sensor Invented by University of Michigan Researchers

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.

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Self-Powered Solar Circuit Could Help Computing Become Greener and Faster

Self-Powered Solar Circuit Could Help Computing Become Greener and Faster

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.

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Astounding Discovery: Marine Algae Using Quantum Mechanics Principles for Light Harvesting

Astounding Discovery: Marine Algae Using Quantum Mechanics Principles for Light Harvesting

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.”

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Sixtron’s Antireflective Coatings Solve Safety and Efficiency Issues in Solar Cell Technology

Sixtron's Antireflective Coatings Solve Safety and Efficiency Issues in Solar Cell Technology

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.

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USAF Solar Project to Generate up to 500MW of Green Electricity

USAF Solar Project to Generate up to 500MW of Green Electricity

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.

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Scientists Hack Tobacco Plants to Grow Synthetic Photovoltaic Cells

Scientists Hack Tobacco Plants to Grow Synthetic Photovoltaic Cells

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.

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Weidlinger’s Hybrid Roof Solar Panels Delivering Both Electricity and Heat

Weidlinger's Hybrid Roof Solar Panels Delivering Both Electricity and Heat

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.

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