sun power Archives – The Green Optimistic

Shanghai Railway Station Benefits 6.8 MW Solar Power Plant Since Sunday

Ovidiu Sandru — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:43:00 +0000

Germany and Spain may be the leaders in solar photovoltaics, but China comes from behind and amazes everyone with an enormous power station just above the Beijing-Shanghai railway station. The plant is able to produce 6.3 MWh (megawatt-hours) of electricity and can provide the needs of 12,000 households in Shanghai.

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EU Plans to Import Solar and Wind Generated Electricity from North Africa

Cristi — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:34:24 +0000

In order to reach the 2020 target of having at least 20% of energy produced from renewable sources, The European Union will invest in solar and wind energy in North Africa. The resulted clean power will be imported in the EU via a new electricity interconnector design. Electricity will be carried via these cables running under the Mediterranean Sea directly to Europe.

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First Solar Signs Agreements With Major Energy Utilities to Provide Solar Power

Cristi — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 07:17:21 +0000

First Solar Inc. has recently announced that it will start working on a huge photovoltaic project called Desert Sunlight in Southern California. The facility will produce 550 MW from solar power, of which 300 MW will be sold to California's Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and 250 MW to Southern California Edison (SCE).

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Google Improving Mirror Technology For Making Solar Concentrators 2x Cheaper

Ovidiu Sandru — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:31:15 +0000

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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Fraunhofer's Very Efficient Solar Cell Concentrator

Cristi — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 20:13:01 +0000

Solar cell system which concentrate solar light through lenses seem to be the most efficient and advantageous. The concentrator enables the system to work with cheaper lens system instead of expensive semi-conductor materials, making it as well more efficient.

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ElectraWall Photovoltaic System Working Even at Night Time

Cristi — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:38:26 +0000

Your safety is the thing that counts most while being behind the wheel on the highway. And when the night falls the situation is getting critical. But Solaroad Technologies Group has thought of a system that can light the roads using the daylight energy.

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Solar Cooking "Kyoto Box" Reduces Pollution and Deforestation

Cristi — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 19:30:51 +0000

Jon Boehmer, a Norwegian based in Kenya, developed a solar powered cooker that can reduce greenhouse gases at a large scale. The cardbox named the "Kyoto Box", costs 5 Euro($ 6,60) to make, and is designed for the usage of 3 billion people that use firewood as a heating source for cooking.

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BOINC Software to Cut 20 Years in Solar Cell Development

Ovidiu Sandru — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:31:56 +0000

Everyone knows two are more powerful than one. On the same principle, IBM and Harvard University researchers launched a joint project today in an effort to search for the optimum combination of materials to create the most efficient solar cells ever.

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New Electron Cooling Discovery to Extract More Energy from Solar Cells

Ovidiu Sandru — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:05:40 +0000

Do you know that electrons can be "cooled"? The cooling of an electron, in lay language, is the transitory state in which the electron passes from a high-oscillation state to a low-oscillation, normal state. The high oscillation state is given by an external stimulus, i.e. electric voltage.

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Hydrogen to be Produced Cheaply With 19th Century Invention

Ovidiu Sandru — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:51:14 +0000

G.D. Botto, an Italian inventor and physicist, performing experiments on a technique for hydrogen generation, has discovered that a chain of iron and platinum wires, wrapped around a wooden stick and alternately connected as thermocouples, can be used to convert a temperature difference into an electric voltage.

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New Anti-Reflective Coating Make Solar Panels Absorb 96.2% Sunlight

Ovidiu Sandru — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:19:29 +0000

I like the way science evolves and still, for years, nobody seems to look at the new inventions. This may be the case with solar, because almost weekly we discover news about useful inventions in the area of solar power. Instead, old and inefficient methods are still being commercialized and "promoted", at their high prices, like it's wanted to decrease their real usage in real life conditions, not promote it.

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Video: How a Solar Furnace Melts a Piece of Steel

Ovidiu Sandru — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 08:20:05 +0000

By writing the previous article and doing some research on steel and solar power, I came across a YouTube video showing what a solar furnace (or solar concentrator) can do to a piece of steel. While cooking a hot dog is "a child's play", melting steel is something you must seriously think about.

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First Chinese Solar Powered Cars Unveiled

Ovidiu Sandru — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:41:41 +0000

Unlike the Americans or the Europeans, the Chinese know their way into the cleaner future everybody dreams of. They probably began understanding a long time ago and now bringing into practice the cleanest possible way of transportation: a solar powered electric car.

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Solyndra Cylindrical Solar Panels: Cheaper and Powerful

Mike Sandru — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:50:07 +0000

Solyndra, a company situated in Fremont, CA, has invented a new type of cylindrical solar panel, cheaper to install and more powerful compared to the conventional panels, which are made of flat solar cells.

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Highly Efficient Flexible Silicon Solar Cells Invented

Ovidiu Sandru — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:26:12 +0000

Scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University invented a silicon solar cell. The interesting fact is that it's flexible and it can be printed on a curved surface or a fabric. Although solar paint has been produced, there are a few situations where you'd rather use more solid solar cells (like porous surfaces, where paint cannot be applied well).

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Vatican Started Installing Their New Solar Panels

Ovidiu Sandru — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:32:06 +0000

The workers say that the newly installed solar panels will save about 200 tons of CO2 in just 2 weeks (the equivalent of 70 tons of oil). It's just nice. In fact, the Vatican is the only place I don't think these expensive things will get stolen. The project is estimated to about $1.5 million.

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Solar Paint soon to be Marketed as The Cheapest Source of Energy

Ovidiu Sandru — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:28:50 +0000

Some recent partnership between UK university researchers and Corus Colours, also a UK-based firm, brought to the surface a promise of future commercialization of cheap dye-based solar panels.

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Satellite Solar Power Demonstrated Between Hawaii Islands

Ovidiu Sandru — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:41:16 +0000

If you remember, not a long time ago we had an article talking about NASA's plans to send a satellite to space which could capture pure Sun energy and resend it to Earth in the form of microwaves.

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Hydrogen Produced by Mimicking Photosynthesis

Ovidiu Sandru — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:01:20 +0000

MIT researchers found out a way to create energy by mimicking the photosynthesis process that green plants acquire their energy from. Prof. Daniel G. Nocera and former MIT graduate student Alan F. Heyduk invented a hydrogen-producing compound. They also use a catalyst and small amounts of light.

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65kW Solar Powered Micro-Turbine

Ovidiu Sandru — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 19:45:02 +0000

HelioFocus has ordered Capstone Turbine Corporation to develop and modify their C65 (65 kW) MicroTurbine to operate on solar power. HelioFocus has been founded in 2007, is based in Israel, and it produces modular, high efficiency Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) systems to convert the sunlight to electricity. They use a parabolic concentrator which focuses the light onto a solar receiver. The solar receiver is heat-based, and it drives Capstone's modified turbine.

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Solar Power Satellite: Green Energy or Ultimate Mass Destruction Weapon?

Ovidiu Sandru — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:41:08 +0000

Based in the 1960s, the idea of sending a solar powered satellite into outer space to provide electricity to ground stations has been brought up over the years several times by the Department of Energy (DOE) and The Department of Defense (DOD) of the United States.

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Cheapest Way to Get Hydrogen: the Photoelectrochemical Diode

Ovidiu Sandru — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:59:28 +0000

Penn State researchers have found a cheaper method of producing hydrogen from water by the same old effect of electrolysis aided by the Sun's rays. They do not use classic solar cells, because these are expensive, but made a nanotechnology-based solar cell, called photoelectrochemical diode, that is simplistically said on the bottom of the water holding recipe.

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Shell Oil Company to Open 1 GigaWatt Solar Power Plant

Ovidiu Sandru — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:20:34 +0000

Showa Shell Sekiyu, a Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary, the one of Japan largest oil company will invest 100 billion yen($938 mil) in a giant solar panel powered plant, AFP says.

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An Interesting Approach to a Wave Powered Electricity Generator

Ovidiu Sandru — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:25:53 +0000

I received a message today from a reader suggesting a particular website. I read the information on that particular website, and there was presented a hybrid energy producing system by using the waves as a "catalyst" for the operation of a diesel-powered generator.

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