Free Republic

Residents of the U.S. Southwest could one day power their homes with solar energy generated across the border — if a multi-pronged plan from the Mexican government comes to fruition. A 120-megawatt capacity photovoltaic (PV) plant in the Sonoran seaside city of Puerto Peñasco already began feeding the national grid last month, while another 300 megawatts are expected to be online next year. “Who could have told me that a state like Sonora, a net importer of energy that has historically been a net importer, now has the potential to be an energy-exporting state?” Sonora Gov. Alfonso Durazo asked at...

Solar energy has the potential to supply up to 40% of the nation’s electricity within 15 years — a 10-fold increase over current solar output, but one that would require massive changes in U.S. policy and billions of dollars in federal investment to modernize the nation’s electric grid, a new federal report says. The report by the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy says the United States would need to quadruple its annual solar capacity — and continue to increase it year by year — as it shifts to a renewable-dominant grid in order to address the...

The EU has completed the biggest photovoltaic solar field in Gaza, the European Commission announced on Thursday. The field will provide 0.5 Megawatts of electricity per day to fuel the Southern Gaza Desalination Plant. The EU-funded Southern Gaza Desalination Plant currently provides drinking water to 75,000 inhabitants in the Khan Younis and Rafah governorates. With the new energy field and new investments foreseen it will eventually reach 250,000 people in Southern Gaza by 2020. Johannes Hahn, EU Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, commented, “Limited energy supplies in Gaza are one of the main challenges when improving access...

Plants grown in this 'smart' greenhouse fared as well or better than plants grown in conventional greenhouses. The first crops of tomatoes and cucumbers grown inside electricity-generating solar greenhouses were as healthy as those raised in conventional greenhouses, signaling that "smart" greenhouses hold great promise for dual-use farming and renewable electricity production. "We have demonstrated that 'smart greenhouses' can capture solar energy for electricity without reducing plant growth, which is pretty exciting," said Michael Loik, professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and lead author on a paper that appears in the current issue of the...

A new MIT study offers a way out of one of solar power's most vexing problems: the matter of efficiency, and the bare fact that much of the available sunlight in solar power schemes is wasted. The researchers appear to have found the key to perfect solar energy conversion efficiency—or at least something approaching it. It's a new material that can accept light from an very large number of angles and can withstand the very high temperatures needed for a maximally efficient scheme. Conventional solar cells, the silicon-based sheets used in most consumer-level applications, are far from perfect. Light from...

If you ask the people who run America's electric utilities what keeps them up at night, a surprising number will say solar power. Specifically, rooftop solar. That seems bizarre at first. Solar power provides just 0.4 percent of electricity in the United States — a minuscule amount. Why would anyone care? But utilities see things differently. As solar technology gets dramatically cheaper, tens of thousands of Americans are putting photovoltaic panels up on their roofs, generating their own power. At the same time, 43 states and Washington DC have "net metering" laws that allow solar-powered households to sell their excess...

IBM and Your Changing Energy World BY Dana Blankenhorn | NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- If I had a technology that could cut the cost of solar energy production to as little as 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (KwH), I'd be dropping everything to get it to market. But I'm not IBM (IBM_). IBM announced last week it will spend a $2.4 million grant from Switzerland studying a solar energy technology called High Concentration PhotoVoltaic Thermal (HCPVT). HCPVT combines the concentrated solar energy system used in the newly opened Ivanpah plant in California, where mirrors direct sunlight to a central point and...

New solar photovoltaic power installations in the United States totaled 723 megawatts (MW) during the first quarter, up 33 percent over the same period in 2012,

Finding could lead to new photodetectors or energy-harvesting devices.Graphene, an exotic form of carbon consisting of sheets a single atom thick, exhibits a novel reaction to light, MIT researchers have found: Sparked by light’s energy, the material can produce electric current in unusual ways. The finding could lead to improvements in photodetectors and night-vision systems, and possibly to a new approach to generating electricity from sunlight. This current-generating effect had been observed before, but researchers had incorrectly assumed it was due to a photovoltaic effect, says Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, an assistant professor of physics at MIT and senior author of a...

San Jose-based SunPower, Silicon Valley's dominant solar panel manufacturer, on Monday announced three power purchase agreements with Southern California Edison to deliver 711 megawatts of solar power. The deal, one of the largest for photovoltaic solar power in the United States, would produce enough power for about 460,000 California homes. "This is an unprecedented time for solar photovoltaic," Marc Ulrich, the utility's vice president of renewable and alternative power, said in a statement. "We're seeing growth in technological advances and manufacturing efficiencies that result in competitive prices for green, emission-free energy for our customers." ... California's three largest utilities have...

In 2007, outside Bangalore, India, an explosion decapitated an industrial worker, hurling his body through a brick wall. In 2005 a routine procedure at a manufacturing plant in Taiwan caused a spontaneous explosion that killed a worker and ignited a blaze that ripped through the factory, shutting down production for three months. Both incidents shared a common cause—silane, a gas made up of silicon and hydrogen that explodes on contact with air. And both incidents occurred in the same industry—solar power. Among other environmental black marks, the process of manufacturing photovoltaic (PV) cells from silicon relies on this dangerous pyrophoric...

You think solar electrical generation is going to save you or the Planet? Think again. While it is true that photovoltaic solar panels do not pollute while they are producing electricity -- what about the manufacturing process? What happens when these panels reach the end of their projected lifecycle in twenty-five years? (This is, by the way, an optimistic view of their useful life.) Those questions are addressed in a study by the watchdog group Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. "Green Power" is being hyped as the "Safe Solution." It is anything but safe -- when all factors are considered. Here...

MIT team increases efficiency of solar panels Boston Globe, United States - 42 minutes ago said Jonathan Mapel, an author of the study and MIT graduate student who has co-founded a startup called Covalent Solar to turn the idea into a product. ... See-Through Solar Hack Could Double Panel Efficiency Wired News - 1 hour ago Towards that end, colleagues of his at MIT have spun out a new company, Covalent Solar, to commercialize the technology. Dyeing for More Solar Power Greentech Media, MA - 1 hour ago A team of MIT researchers is starting a new company, Covalent Solar,...

A 'sun tower' is one of the concepts being considered by researchers Scientists are assessing the possibility of embarking on a space engineering project that would eclipse the effort to construct the International Space Station. Researchers from Europe, Japan and the US are considering the viability of building giant solar panels in a low earth orbit that would supply cheap, inexhaustible energy to industry and homes. Building a huge array outside the Earth's atmosphere would have the advantage of having no clouds to interrupt the flow of solar energy to the arrays. Yet the sizeable downside would be the...

When the Costco managers at the headquarters in Issaquah, Wash., decided it was time to embrace solar photovoltaic technology, they selected the Costco warehouse in Lancaster - from among their 480 warehouses worldwide - for the prototype project. At the completion of the project the last week of August, the Lancaster facility will be the site of one of the largest privately owned commercial photovoltaic systems in the United States, said the builders. According to Craig Peal, assistant vice president, when powered up, the system will reduce 44% of the building's peak electrical load on a peak day and "if...

PHOENIX, April 19 /PRNewswire/ -- RoseStreet Labs announced today a Solar Cell Commercialization Agreement to develop full spectrum photovoltaics, commonly referred to as PV's or solar cells, utilizing licensed technology jointly developed by Cornell University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. These solar cells will be the first commercialized that capture the broad spectrum of the sun's energy utilizing thin film technology, a single material system and with potential efficiencies exceeding 55%. RoseStreet Labs plans on leveraging FlipChip International, its high volume semiconductor bumping foundry in Phoenix, to produce an excellent low cost renewable energy solution with this technology. The...

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Solar power is one of the world's fastest-growing renewable energy sources, offering a potentially endless supply of power generation capable of meeting the electricity demands of the whole planet. Yet two billion people in developing countries lack access to modern energy services, while solar power -- a possible solution because of its availability anywhere on the globe -- accounts for just 0.1 percent of the world's primary energy demand. "Solar power is all capital costs. What we are struggling with is how to get the capital -- how do we get the investment -- to these people...