Advanced Solar Panels Coming to Market

Photo: Cheaper solar: Nanosolar’s thin-film panels.
Credit: Nanosolar

From Technology Review:

Nanosolar's new factory could help lower the price of solar power, if the market cooperates.

A promising type of solar-power technology has moved a step closer to mass production. Nanosolar, based in San Jose, CA, has opened an automated facility for manufacturing its solar panels, which are made by printing a semiconductor material called CIGS on aluminum foil. The manufacturing facility is located in Germany, where government incentives have created a large market for solar panels. Nanosolar has the potential to make 640 megawatts' worth of solar panels there every year.

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China's Potent Wind Potential

Photo: Wind power: Wind power plants in Xinjiang, China. Credit: Chris Lim

From Technology Review:

Forecasters see no need for new coal and nuclear power plants.

China has doubled its installed wind power capacity every year for the past five, and is on pace this year to supplant the United States as the world's largest market for new installations. But researchers from Harvard University and Beijing's Tsinghua University suggest that the Chinese wind power industry has hardly begun to tap its potential. According to their meteorological and financial modeling, reported in the journal Science last week, there is enough strong wind in China to profitably satisfy all of the country's electricity demand until at least 2030.

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China Plans World's Largest Solar Power Plant

First Solar: Here the company installs a 2 megawatt solar plant in California. Up next, one that's one thousand times the wattage, in China. First Solar

From Popular Science:

First Solar just signed an agreement with China to build the biggest solar power plant yet, according to a statement released today by the company. The 2-gigawatt plant in the Mongolian desert will generate enough electricity to power three million homes.

That's a heck of a lot of cadmium telluride, the semiconductor they use for their thin film cells.

The largest solar plant currently in operation is a mere 60-megawatt plant in Spain, according to pvresources.com.

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Cairo Slums Get Energy Makeover

Solar CITIES project leader T.H. Culhane (right) and organization intern Omar Nagy stand next to a solar-powered water heater on the roof of an apartment building in the Zabaleen neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt. The project offers people in Cairo's slums clean energy through solar panels and biogas reactors and a chance to improve their lives, according to Culhane. Photograph courtesy T.H. Culhane

From National Geographic:

In the ghettos of Egypt's largest city, solar panels are sprouting on apartment rooftops, providing residents with clean power and water and a chance to directly improve their lives.

Since 2003 the nonprofit Solar CITIES project has installed 34 solar-powered hot water systems and 5 biogas reactors in Cairo's poor Coptic Christian and Islamic neighborhoods.

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Chevron Wants To Power Oil Fields With Solar Energy

Mirror Power: BrightSource Energy

From Popular Science:

In a move that might seem oxymoronic on the surface, Chevron has plans to install a solar steam plant which will power one of their oil fields in Central California. The 29-megawatt power source uses 7,000 mirrors spread across 100-acres to focus light on a boiler tank sitting 323-feet high.

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Solar Industry: No Breakthroughs Needed

Photo: Cheaper solar: First Solar’s improvements in manufacturing photovoltaics have helped lead to big drops in cost. A worker at a First Solar factory in Frankfurt, Germany, moves one of the company's solar panels. Credit: First Solar

From Technology Review:

The solar industry says incremental advances have made transformational technologies unnecessary.

The federal government is behind the times when it comes to making decisions about advancing the solar industry, according to several solar-industry experts. This has led, they argue, to a misplaced emphasis on research into futuristic new technologies, rather than support for scaling up existing ones. That was the prevailing opinion at a symposium last week put together by the National Academies in Washington, DC, on the topic of scaling up the solar industry.

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The U.S. Army's Solar Enewrgy Program

Acciona solar thermal plant in Nevada.
(Credit: Acciona)

Army Starts Solar Plant; Next Step: Care About Climate Change -- The Danger Room

The U.S. Army is about to start building a 500 megawatt solar thermal plant in the California desert. When it’s done, the facility will be one of the largest renewable energy plants in the world. Which is kind of ironic, since the Army doesn’t pay all that much attention to climate change. Turns out, sustainable energy is safer, said Dr. Kevin Geiss, the program director for the project.

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More News On the Army's Solar Program

Sun power: Army unveils giant solar project -- CNET
Army Green: Ft. Irwin Has Builders for 500 MW Solar Project -- Wall Street Journal
Clark Energy hired for Defense Department solar job -- Business Journal
Army Plans 500 MW of Solar Power at Fort Irwin by 2022 -- Treehugger

Swiss Boat Aims To Be First To Circumnavigate The Globe Under Solar Power

Planet Solar courtesy Planet Solar, via CNN

From Popular Science:

In 2007, the first solar electric boat crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Now a Swiss group wants to cover that distance and keep going, circling the globe on nothing but the sun's power for the first time.

The team of engineers and scientists has embarked on the building of its 98-foot long vessel, dubbed Planet Solar, in Kiel, Germany. The boat's power will come from the 5,000 square feet of solar panels, about the size of two tennis courts, covering its broad deck. When the sun is shining bright above, they will convert 23 percent of the sun's rays to energy -- six percent more than average solar panels.

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Is Solar Power Dead In The Water?

From The Washington Post:

Congress's rush to embrace solar power is having some unintended consequences. It will turn over a large chunk of federal land to private energy companies, and it may involve withdrawing billions of gallons of water from sensitive desert habitat.

By 2015, Congress wants the Interior and Energy Departments to place, on federal land, renewable energy projects that can generate at least 10,000 megawatts of electricity. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 has set off a frantic land grab as solar and wind energy companies rush to obtain permits for projects in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

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Solar Panels In The Sahara 'Could Power The Whole Of Europe'

A solar power plant in the Mojave Desert. (Solar Systems/AP)

From Times Online:

All of Europe’s energy needs could be supplied by building an array of solar panels in the Sahara, the climate change conference has been told.

Technological advances combined with falling costs have made it realistic to consider North Africa as Europe’s main source of imported energy. By harnessing the power of the Sun, possibly in tandem with wind farms along the North African coastline, Europe could easily meet its 2020 target of generating at least 20 per cent of its energy from renewable sources.

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U.S. Becomes Top Wind Producer, Solar Next

Vail Resorts said Tuesday that it would buy credits for wind power like that generated by the turbines at the Gray County Wind Farm in Kansas. Orlin Wagner/Associated Press

From Scientific American:

LONDON (Reuters) - The United States overtook Germany as the biggest producer of wind power last year, new figures showed, and will likely take the lead in solar power this year, analysts said on Monday.

Even before an expected "Obama bounce" from a new President who has vowed to boost clean energy, U.S. wind power capacity surged 50 percent last year to 25 gigwatts (GW) -- enough to power more than five million homes.

Political and business leaders worldwide have urged "green growth" spending on clean energy to fight both recession and climate change.

German wind power capacity reached nearly 24 GW, placing it second ahead of Spain and fourth-placed China, which doubled its installed wind power for the forth year running, said the Brussels-based Global Wind Energy Council.

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Will Solar Power Ever Be As Cheap As Coal?

Wafer handlers: Senior photovoltaic engineer Adam Lorenz works on some solar wafers. The company he works for, 1366 Technologies, aims to convert sunshine into power as cheaply as coal-burning power plants do. (Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Some predict that within five years, it could rival fossil-fuel energy.

Lexington, Mass.

“Solar power is the energy of the future – and always will be.”

That tired joke, which has dogged solar-generated electricity for decades due to its high cost, could be retired far sooner than many think.

While solar contributes less than 1 percent of the energy generated in the United States today, its costs are turning sharply downward.

Whether using mirrors that focus desert sunlight to harvest heat and spin turbines or rooftop photovoltaic panels that turn sunshine directly into current, solar is on track to deliver electricity to residential users at a cost on par with natural gas and perhaps even coal within the next four to seven years, industry experts say.

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World’s Largest Concentrated Solar Project in Spain

From Clean Technica:

Earlier today, concentrated solar company SolFocus announced that it has signed a deal to install over 10 MW of its systems in Spain for EMPE Solar. Upon its completion in 2010, the $103 million, multi-site project will be the largest concentrated solar deployment in the world. SolFocus estimates that the project will be able to meet the domestic energy requirements of 40,000 homes.

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Could Solar Power Satellites Beam Down Gigawatts of Energy?

Image from NASA

From Treehugger:

How pie-in-the-sky is Ben Bova's space satellite scheme? Mr. Bova, the president emeritus of the National Space Society and a prolific science fiction author, penned a column in last Sunday's Washington Post calling on the next president to build an armada of solar power satellites (SPS) -- basically large accumulations of solar cells -- to help meet a substantial chunk of our energy needs. The idea of building orbiting solar systems in space is nothing new (see my posts about Japan's Space Solar Power Systems and India's space plans); the concept, as described by its creator, aerospace engineer Peter Glaser, would be a satellite in high orbit (where sunshine is always present) that would use microwave transmission to beam solar power to receiving stations on Earth.

The obvious benefit: a continuous 24-hour, 365-day supply of solar energy. Powered by solar energy itself, a single SPS could generate up to 10 gigawatts of power continually, according to Bova. If that's even remotely true, just imagine how much continuous power a group of these SPSs could provide.

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The Solar Revolution is Near

From The Futurist:

I have long been optimistic about Solar Energy (whether photovoltaic or thermal) becoming our largest energy source within a few decades. Earlier articles on the subject include :

A Future Timeline for Energy

Solar Energy Cost Curve

Several recent events and developments have led me to reinforce this view. First of all, consider this article from Scientific American, detailing a Solar timeline to 2050. The article is not even Singularity-aware, yet details many steps that will enable Solar energy to expand by orders of magnitude above the level that it is today. Secondly, two of the most uniquely brilliant people alive today, Ray Kurzweil and Elon Musk (who I recently chatted with), have both provided compelling cases on why Solar will be our largest energy source by 2030. Both Kurzweil and Musk reside in significantly different spheres, yet have arrived at the same prediction.

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