Solar

One of the biggest problems with solar energy is that the sun doesn’t shine 24 hours a day. This means that unless users are only planning on using electricity when the sun is shining, some form of energy storage system is required. Since storing excess electricity in rechargeable batteries isn’t really practical for large-scale solar power plants, another storage system is needed. U.S. utility-scale solar project developer SolarReserve has now received approval for the first solar power plant in California that uses molten salt technology to store the sun’s thermal energy as heat so it can generate electricity when needed, at any time of the day or night. Read More

The Voyager 1 spacecraft launched by NASA on September 5, 1977 continues to add to its impressive list of accomplishments. Its “Grand Tour" through the Solar System has seen it become the first probe to provide detailed images of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and earn the title of most distant human-made object in the cosmos. After a 33-year journey, Voyager 1 has now crossed into an area at the edge of our Solar System where there is no outward motion of solar wind. Read More

At the Eco Products 2010 exhibition in Tokyo this past weekend, Sony showed intentions to bring new meaning to the phrase "flower power" with this beautifully designed Hana Mado, or "Flower Window." The device is actually a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) which converts light into electrical energy. Read More

Fujitsu Laboratories today announced a two-in-one energy harvesting device that can convert both light and heat into electricity. With no electrical wiring or batteries to replace, Fujitsu says that this sort of device can be manufactured from organic materials keeping costs to a minimum. Read More

San Diego residents can feel particularly warm and fuzzy this festive season as their Purdy Farm Christmas trees have been lovingly trimmed and lit up via solar power. In what is believed to be a world first, Stellar Solar's Mobile Solar Station has been contracted to power the Purdy Farm Christmas tree lots in Del Mar, Carlsbad, and San Diego. The Mobile Solar Station is being used to power the compact fluorescent lights (CFL) on the lot perimeter and the electric chain saws used to trim customer's trees. Read More

Hybrid vehicles are becoming more and more commonplace on our roads and now the world's first hydrogen powered hybrid ferry is set to take to the water off New York. Following on from the 2008 launch of the San Francisco Hornblower Hybrid that runs on a combination of solar, wind and diesel power, the new 1,400-hp New York Hornblower Hybrid adds another energy source to the mix with hydrogen fuel cells to complement its clean Tier 2 diesel engines, solar panels and wind turbines. Read More

While they offer much lower efficiencies than inorganic photovoltaic cells, organic solar cells are cheaper to produce and are lightweight and flexible. This makes them suitable for a wider range of applications than rigid solar cells, including clothing and bags. Konarka has been producing its organic based photovoltaic (OPV) solar cells under the name of Power Plastic for a number of years now and the National Energy Renewable Laboratory (NREL) has just announced that Konarka’s latest organic based photovoltaic (OPV) solar cells have demonstrated a record breaking 8.3 percent efficiency. Read More

The idea of boosting the performance of solar cells by coating them with a textured substrate is commonly used in silicon-based cells. The idea is to traps more light so that it bounces around inside the cell instead of reflecting back out, but for a number of reasons, attempts to use textured substrates in polymer solar cells have failed. Now researchers from Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory have developed a process of producing a thin and uniform light-absorbing layer on textured substrates that improves the efficiency of polymer solar cells by 20 percent. Read More

The large roof areas of factories and production plants are an obvious choice for the installation of solar cells and Audi has just announced it will install additional photovoltaic modules on a 7,500 square meter (80,729 sq. ft.) area of the roof of its main plant in Ingolstadt, Germany. The expanded solar capacity will be used to charge the batteries of Audi’s e-tron models using new electric car charging stations and will also be used to provide green electricity to the plants’ production facilities. Read More