| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Technology Review on Solar Energy |
HenryTo
Site Admin
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 11742
Location: Los Angeles, California
|
 Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 12:14 am Post subject: Technology Review on Solar Energy |
 |
|
Assembly line should be ready by sometime next year:
| Quote: | | Much more efficient solar cells may soon be possible as a result of technology that more efficiently captures and uses light. StarSolar, a startup based in Cambridge, MA, aims to capture and use photons that ordinarily pass through solar cells without generating electricity. The company, which is licensing technology developed at MIT, claims that its designs could make it possible to cut the cost of solar cells in half while maintaining high efficiency. This would make solar power about as cheap as electricity from the electric grid. |
Story here: http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18415/ |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
| Author |
Technology Review on Solar Energy Replies |
HenryTo
Site Admin
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 11742
Location: Los Angeles, California
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
rffrydr
Moderator
Joined: 30 Oct 2005
Posts: 16939
Location: Sunny California
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 4:56 am Post subject: |
|
|
TAN bumping along it's 60% IPO falloff for most of the past two years. When it comes to investing, always dangerous reaching for the sky--or is this Lockheed by another name?
_________________
Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
HenryTo
Site Admin
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 11742
Location: Los Angeles, California
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
HenryTo
Site Admin
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 11742
Location: Los Angeles, California
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
rffrydr
Moderator
Joined: 30 Oct 2005
Posts: 16939
Location: Sunny California
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
HenryTo
Site Admin
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 11742
Location: Los Angeles, California
|
| Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2010 12:37 am Post subject: |
|
|
GE gets back into solar panels:
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/24851/?nlid=2844
| Quote: | | GE has confirmed long-standing speculation that it plans to make thin-film solar panels that use a cadmium- and tellurium-based semiconductor to capture light and convert it into electricity. The GE move could put pressure on the only major cadmium-telluride solar-panel maker, Tempe, AZ-based First Solar, which could drive down prices for solar panels. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
HenryTo
Site Admin
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 11742
Location: Los Angeles, California
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 9:54 pm Post subject: |
|
|
SunEdison to build a 60 megawatt installation in northern Italy. In other news (not mentioned in this article), solar power is expected to first reach "grid parity" in Italy sometime next year:
| Quote: | SunEdison to build major solar park in Italy
U.S. solar company SunEdison plans to build a major photovoltaic installation in Italy with capacity exceeding 60 megawatts as it aims to expand in Italy's booming solar market, a source familiar with the project said.
"The facility, which will be on operating by the end of this year, will surpass Spain's Almedilla de Alarcon which has a 60 MW capacity and is considered the biggest operating in the world," the source said.
The project, which will use ground-mounted PV systems that turn sunlight into power, has already obtained all necessary authorizations and the facility will be built in the northern Italian province of Rovigo, the source said.
Top managers of SunEdison, a unit of Silicon maker MEMC Electronic materials Inc, and local Italian authorities will make a presentation for the project on March 11. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
rffrydr
Moderator
Joined: 30 Oct 2005
Posts: 16939
Location: Sunny California
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:14 am Post subject: |
|
|
Good luck with that. I tried on my place in Hollyweirdland and, let's just say, solar is province of the revenuers and bureaucratic sclerosis. It begins with the utilities who (or reasons legal and otherwise) really only want "their" power in the "their" lines. Your home's output, though fine to run everything in it, is not up to grid snuff. The conditioning and cycle purification elements throw on another $4000 on an already overpriced install (cannot do it yourself--have to use state sanctioned (kicked-back?) contractor). And then the meter maid can't get his ass out of car: there must be an observable meter run to the street he can see with his "periscope." That's nice if you have driveway to get under.
And then it only works if you amortized your bill far longer than the average 7yr turnover on the American Dream. But that too is changing.
Maybe things are getting more stream-lined now that we need it. --Doubt it.
_________________
Today is the Tomorrow you worried about Yesterday! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
HenryTo
Site Admin
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 11742
Location: Los Angeles, California
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2010 2:05 am Post subject: |
|
|
New California law expected to allow more Californians to sell the electricity they produce back to their utilities at retail prices:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-solar-metering26-2010feb26,0,4702597.story
| Quote: | At least 10 times a day Andrew Kin clicks onto the Internet for the pure joy of watching his electricity meter run backward.
The 30-year-old business consultant placed an array of rooftop solar panels on his Westwood duplex last fall, and thanks to a website provided by his installer he has watched his monthly electricity bills drop, in real time, from $50 to about $10.
"I make up a little chart every day," Kin said. "This past week was sunny, so I was electricity neutral about every other day, which I'm excited about."
Friday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to sign legislation that will make it possible for more Californians to sell the electricity they produce back to their utilities at retail prices.
The legislation, written by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), doubles to 5% the overall amount of energy that California's investor-owned utilities must buy back.
Previously, state law required electric companies to sign so-called net-metering contracts for up to only 2.5% of their load.
Solar advocates said the net-metering boost would allow consumers to recoup their investment faster, which is critical to California's goal of installing a million rooftop arrays by 2017.
Some 50,000 California homes benefit from net-metering today, a number that would need to grow rapidly if the state is to reach its goal of obtaining 3,000 megawatts from rooftop solar.
California leads the nation in solar energy, accounting for more than 65% of all the solar installed in the U.S., Skinner said. "Net metering has been absolutely fundamental to that success," she said.
But both public and private utilities have been wary of encouraging rooftop solar installations, preferring large, centralized arrays.
Many of these big plants -- which are proposed to be built in environmentally fragile desert regions and require transmission lines through populated areas -- have attracted controversy. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
HenryTo
Site Admin
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 11742
Location: Los Angeles, California
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 2:05 am Post subject: |
|
|
Solar power capacity doubled in Japan last year:
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20100217p2a00m0na008000c.html
| Quote: | Solar power capacity in Japan rose to 483,960 kilowatts in 2009, 2.1 times more than the 2008 total, according to the Japan Photovoltaic Energy Association (JPEA).
The new total -- based on shipments of solar energy systems -- marked a record jump in the nation's installed solar power base, with the previous highest increase coming in 2005.
The growth in solar power can be traced to both national and local body support for installing solar power systems, and feed-in tariffs through which households with solar power systems can sell surplus energy back to the electric grid. With both installation subsidies and feed-in tariff systems continuing, 2010 also looks to be a good year for solar power growth.
Some 88.6 percent of solar battery shipments in 2009 were for home systems, and the new installations cover the power needs of more than 100,000 households at normal consumption rates. Installations by governments and companies also increased sharply compared to 2008, with public bodies raising their solar capacity by between 55.9 and 83 percent, and the private sector by 37.5 percent.
Solar power system shipments reached their previous peak in 2005 before government subsidies for installations were cut, and solar power capacity growth had been sluggish since. However, the government reinstated subsidies in January 2009 as both an environmental measure and to stimulate the faltering economy.
Including support from local governing bodies, subsidies can cover 30-50 percent of the more than 2 million yen cost of installing a solar power system. Meanwhile, in November electric companies began buying excess power from households with solar systems installed at twice the normal consumer rate, spurring sudden demand for solar panels. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
HenryTo
Site Admin
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 11742
Location: Los Angeles, California
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 1:52 am Post subject: |
|
|
An inside look at Applied Materials - specifically its role as an equipment supplier to manufacturers of solar panels:
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/24582/
| Quote: | 2006, semiconductor-equipment giant Applied Materials got into the solar-power market in a big way. At the company's headquarters in Santa Clara, CA, you can see just how big: a ceiling-mounted crane lifts a piece of glass the size of a garage door onto a table for testing. The glass sheet, covered with a thin orange film of amorphous silicon, is destined to become one of the world's largest solar panels.
Applied Materials developed the equipment to produce these extremely large photovoltaic panels in order to lower the price of solar power--crucial if solar is to compete on price with fossil-fuel electricity. The value of a solar installation comes down to the cost of each watt of power it can produce over the lifetime of a panel, and Applied Materials' panels bring down costs in two ways. The equipment for manufacturing thin-film solar cells operates more efficiently when the panels are bigger. And larger modules need less hardware and labor to wire them together and support them.
Applied Materials, which was already the largest equipment supplier to the semiconductor and liquid-crystal-display industries, brought its expertise to solar power in 2006. The company's photovoltaics and its display backplanes are both based on glass panels coated with amorphous silicon. Its production facilities were already set up to make those panels in 10 sizes, so achieving the best cost per watt was simply a matter of picking the right surface area, says Jim Cushing, senior director of the photovoltaic-equipment line. The result was "by far the fastest ramp to production in the PV industry," he says--from lab to market in just under two years.
Applied Materials now sells a complete set of equipment for transforming large glass panels into thin-film solar cells, transporting it to manufacturers in several shipping containers. The company claims that each factory using its equipment can produce enough solar cells every year to generate 80 megawatts of power, enough to provide energy for 35,000 U.S. homes during peak hours of electricity use.
.....
When Applied Materials started producing equipment for making the large modules, many in the business assumed that each panel would be sliced into smaller pieces, says John Benner, manager of PV-industry partnerships at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. But the company made a good case for leaving them intact. Because of their large area, the modules have among the highest power outputs in the industry--about 500 watts. The large size leads to savings on installation costs that help the panels compete with other thin-film systems on the market. The cost of electricity generated by the giant panels is $3.50 a watt, including installation.
Panels of this size are best suited for use in massive ground-based solar farms. Several such facilities have already been built, including a 500-kilowatt farm in Neustadt, Germany, that contains thousands of modules. Seven factories equipped with the technology are up and running at full volume and have manufactured more than a million of the modules.
The next challenge Applied Materials has set itself is to bring manufacturing costs down to $1 per watt by the end of this year. Its thin-film modules will have to compete with those made by other companies that are exploring alternatives to silicon--alternatives that are expected to reduce manufacturing and materials costs even further. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
HenryTo
Site Admin
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 11742
Location: Los Angeles, California
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 1:39 am Post subject: |
|
|
German government set to further trim subsidies to its solar industry on July 1st:
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9E20UK80.htm
| Quote: | Germany is planning a deep cut into solar power subsidies this summer in a move aimed at lowering consumer costs, the governing coalition parties said Tuesday.
The price paid for electricity from solar panels on roofs will be cut by 16 percent and that from larger solar power stations by 15 percent starting July 1, Hans-Peter Friedrich of the governing CSU said.
Currently, the power grid owners are forced by law to buy solar power at 39 euro cents (53 U.S. cents) per kilowatt hour, while the market price is only about 5 euro cents per kilowatt hour. They are allowed to pass the difference on to consumers.
The prices were already cut by 9 percent at the beginning of the year.
The new cut is meant to bring down the subsidy's cost for consumers by euro1 billion a year, according to Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen.
The solar industry protested against the plans, saying yet another decrease would drive companies into bankruptcy and cost thousands of jobs.
The decision puts the survival of the whole industry at risk, the German solar power federation BSW said on Tuesday.
Plans to further trim solar subsidies were first presented by Roettgen in January. Initially, he had planned to make the cuts effective three months earlier, by April 1.
Germany has been heavily subsidizing solar power and other renewable energies since 2000, prompting an industry boom.
The production of photovoltaic energy rose from 32 million kilowatt hours in 2000 to 4.4 billion kilowatt hours in 2008, according to industry reports.
Solar subsidies rose from almost nothing to euro1.5 billion ($2 billion) in 2007. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
HenryTo
Site Admin
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 11742
Location: Los Angeles, California
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 1:25 am Post subject: |
|
|
Texas (finally) taking a hard look at solar power:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/healthscience/stories/DN-solarhomes_22met.ART0.State.Edition1.4bb1d54.html
| Quote: | Texas already leads the nation in producing wind power, and given its sunny climate, scientists say it has the capacity to dominate solar, too.
To help make that happen, solar advocates are urging the Texas Public Utility Commission to set solar usage requirements for electric retailers.
"We actually are a perfect environment, economically and thermodynamically, as a raw resource for solar, but it hasn't taken off," said Michael E. Webber, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas.
"However, I think it's about to," said Webber, who is also associate director of UT's Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy.
The PUC, an agency run by three gubernatorial appointees, is considering a plan to give solar power the same kind of boost that the state gave to wind power in 1999.
The Legislature first told the PUC to boost solar power and other nonwind renewable energy sources in 2005, and the agency is now taking steps to implement those instructions.
North Texas homebuilder Jim Sargent says those are steps in the right direction.
His Waxahachie company is building solar-equipped houses that both conserve energy and generate it.
Some of the homes generate so much solar power and use so little electricity overall that they end up taking no net energy from the state's electric grid, Sargent said.
One of the company's net-zero homes is a high-end project in Farmers Branch with 23 kilowatts of solar-generating panels on its roof, plus a solar water-heating system.
"The smart money is that [solar power] is going to be a growing source of our electricity," said Cyrus Reed, conservation director of the Sierra Club's Texas chapter.
The PUC's solar program would be based on the existing renewable portfolio standards, a requirement dating to 1999 for electric companies to include sources such as wind, solar and other renewable sources in their energy mixes.
Texas' renewable energy standards, among the most aggressive in the country, have been so successful that electric companies met the 2009 goal by 2005. The Legislature responded in 2005 by setting more ambitious targets for 2015 and 2025.
Nearly all of Texas' growth in renewable energy has been in wind power, which increased fourfold over 10 years. Other renewable power sources remained afterthoughts.
Solar power was especially held back by its cost, technological challenges and lack of transmission lines from sun-rich West Texas to energy-hungry cities.
Legislators recognized the lag with a 2005 mandate that Texas energy include at least 500 megawatts of new power from sources other than wind by 2015. The state also took steps to provide more electric transmission lines.
.....
Texas has about 102,000 megawatts of generating capacity from all sources. Natural gas and coal combined for about 85 percent of Texas' generation in 2008, followed by nuclear with 10 percent, wind with 4 percent, and all other renewables, including solar, with just 1 percent.
Although Texas leads the nation by far in the potential for solar power, it trails many smaller states such as New Jersey in putting solar power in service. "New Jersey?" Webber asked in mock disbelief. "A small, cloudy state outdoes Texas?"
.....
If Texas embraced big solar plans, advocates say, a 30-by-30-mile patch of remote, desolate West Texas covered with mirror-aided concentrated solar receptors could theoretically power the whole state, slashing air pollution. That prediction could be too optimistic, but the city-owned utilities in Austin and San Antonio are investing in large solar facilities. |
Last edited by HenryTo on Thu Feb 25, 2010 1:57 am; edited 2 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
HenryTo
Site Admin
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 11742
Location: Los Angeles, California
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 1:19 am Post subject: |
|
|
This project in the Mojave Desert alone will double the U.S. solar power generation capacity almost overnight:
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/02/energy-department-backs-worlds-largest-solar-power-complex/1
| Quote: | The Obama administration gave preliminary approval Monday for $1.4 billion in federal loan guarantees to help build what it says will be the world's largest solar power complex -- in California's Mojave Desert.
The Department of Energy is offering to back the loans of California-based BrightSource Energy so it can build three solar-energy plants capable of powering 140,000 homes. It says the project could nearly double the amount of solar power generated in the United States.
.....
The project's loan guarantees are the largest the Department of Energy has offered for solar power but are far smaller than the $8.3 billion ones President Obama announced last week for two new nuclear power reactors in Georgia.
.....
Before the solar loan deal is final, BrightSource Energy must meet financial requirements and the project -- to be located on federally-owned land -- must clear state and federal environmental reviews.
Environmentalists have objected to the project's site in the Ivanpah Valley, saying it will harm the imperiled desert tortoise and other rare plants. BrightSource has offered to reduce the plant's size, but Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife say it should still be relocated.
BrightSource estimates that the project's construction will employ about 1,000 people, and its operation will create 86 permanent jobs.
It plans to use thousands of mirrors, known as "heliostats," that track the sun in two dimensions and thus capture more solar energy than other solar technologies.
The first plant is expected to begin commercial operation in 2012, the second one in mid-2013 and the third, in 2013. |
Last edited by HenryTo on Thu Feb 25, 2010 1:53 am; edited 2 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
HenryTo
Site Admin
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 11742
Location: Los Angeles, California
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Please log in to view without the ad banners |
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Statistics
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
