Posts Tagged solar
EU Planning on Building An European Renewable Energy "Supergrid"
Posted by Ovidiu Sandru in Energy news on January 5, 2010
The first electricity grid dedicated to renewable power becomes a political reality this month, because nine European countries draw up plans to link their clean energy projects around the North Sea.
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Japan Plans to Deploy Space-Based Solar Power Station
Posted by Ovidiu Sandru in Solar Power on November 10, 2009
JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, wants to compete with the United States’ PG&E project for collecting solar power from outer space and beam it on Earth through clusters of lasers and microwaves.
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Nano-Abrasive Material Makes Self-Cleaning Solar Cells
Posted by Ovidiu Sandru in Solar Power on March 27, 2009
Scientists from GIT (Georgia Institute of Technology) have invented a new solar cell surface treatment that could be applied to existing solar cells technology, and that could boost the light absorption into the cell. It also has self-cleaning capabilities.
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How to use solar energy at night or during rainy days
Posted by Cristi in Solar Power on February 22, 2009
In Granada- Spain, German scientists of Solar Millennium AG, have developed a solar-thermal power plant called Andasol 1. The most interesting thing about this power plant is that it can produce energy even when the sun is not shining: at night, on clouding or even rainy days.
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Jim Duke`s Free Electric Car Solar Charging Station
Posted by Cristi in Solar Power on January 29, 2009
A great man on a great mission: Jim Duke, a known environmentalist of the tiny Aspen community El Jebel , Colorado, gives free of charge electricity to electric car owners.
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German Solar Cells Prove New Efficiency Record
Posted by Cristi in Solar Power on January 22, 2009
Recently, German scientists have broken a new record in solar cell efficiency: 41.1%. It seems like the scientific world is in a continuous race towards more and more efficient harvesting of solar energy, but few use it at its maximum power.
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Ian`s Solar-Heated Air Balloons Could Harness 500kW Each
Posted by Ovidiu Sandru in Experiments, Solar Power on January 18, 2009
How would you like an engine producing your dear electricity? How would you like that engine to have pistons as high as heat-powered balloons? Well, an environmental consultant from Solartran in Brisbane, Australia, by his name Ian Edmonds, has designed such an energy producing “engine” from the classic and romantic air balloon.
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Gold Nanoantennas Could Harvest Solar Power at Night Time
Posted by Ovidiu Sandru in New Inventions, Solar Power on August 13, 2008
While the most high performance classic solar cells only use up to 20% of the solar power falling onto them, researchers from DoE, the laboratory from Idaho, found out a way to capture much more from the Sun’s energy, the invisible light spectrum, even at night.
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Nanotube Solar Cells Improve Efficiency 10 Times
Posted by Ovidiu Sandru in Solar Power on June 19, 2008
Nanotechnology seems to help a lot in solar cells improvement. Recent research in solar cell technology shows that a film of carbon nanotubes could replace two of the layers normally used in a solar cell, with improved performance and reduced costs.
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New Solar Panels: 80% Efficient
Posted by Ovidiu Sandru in Solar Power on May 29, 2008
A team of scientists from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has been developing a brand new solar energy technology that is about to revolutionize the way we collect and distribute solar energy.
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Solar Cells Now Cheaper Than Coal!
Posted by Ovidiu Sandru in New Inventions, Solar Power on March 26, 2008
Nanosolar has created a thin film solar battery, much more efficient than anything existing on the market nowadays. Its thin film technology transfers the sun light in a very efficient way. The Nanosolar power plant will begin producing energy in 2008 and will cover 430 megawatts/year. That’s more than all the capacity of the currently [...]
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Moth Eyes Inspiration For New Generation Solar Cells
Posted by Ovidiu Sandru in New Inventions, Solar Power on February 26, 2008
Most moth eyes are made up of adjacent hexagonal sectors. Each sector is filled with thousands of orderly rows of miniscule bumps, or nipple-like protrusions. Though formed so perfectly they appear almost manufactured, each protrusion measures less than 300 nanometers, or 300 billionths of a meter – a size that renders them invisible to all [...]
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Bluenergy: Wind and Solar Power in One Piece
Posted by Ovidiu Sandru in Solar Power, Wind Power on February 26, 2008
The BSWT is a vertical wind turbine based on sailing engineering. The wind rotor is rotated by two spiral-formed vanes. For best performance, these vanes are covered in solar cells, so that sun and wind produce electricity as one element. The BSWT installation costs relatively little, produces no noise or significant shadowing, can be easily [...]
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How Solar Parabolic Dish Concentrators Work
Posted by Ovidiu Sandru in Solar Power on February 25, 2008
Parabolic dish concentrating systems use parabolic dish shaped mirrors to focus the incoming solar radiation onto a receiver that is positioned at the focal point of the dish, like it’s illustrated in the image below: The fluid in the receiver is heated to very high temperatures of about 750oC. This fluid is then used to [...]
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A Soda Can Powered Solar Garage Heater
Posted by Ovidiu Sandru in Solar Power on February 24, 2008
I found out the ingenuity of some people exceeds “common sense” and their inventions are really helpful to humanity. Not on large scale, but for those tech-guys who do nothing but sit all day long in their garages and invent crazy things nobody would have imagined. Most of these inventions stay there, in the respective [...]
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