8bitfuture:

New solar cell technique could more than double efficiency.

A joint Australian/German research team have developed a way to boost efficiency of solar cells up to a record breaking 40% efficiency. Current panels have around 12-17% efficiency.

Called photochemical upconversion, the process captures energy that is normally lost in solar cells.

“We are able to boost efficiency by forcing two energy-poor red photons in the cell to join and make one energy-rich yellow photon that can capture light, which is then turned into electricity,” Associate Professor Schmidt said.

“We now have a benchmark for the performance of an upconverting solar cell. We need to improve this several times, but the pathway is now clear.”

(Source: sydney.edu.au)

prostheticknowledge:

Japanese Solar Power System

What looks like a metallic flower art installation is new solar tech. From National Geographic:

Rising electricity prices and limited supply threaten to hamper the recovery for manufacturers. So it makes sense that Solar Techno Park, the first solar-power research facility focusing on multiple technologies in Japan, is operated not by the government but by a unit of the Tokyo-based JFE, the world’s fifth-largest steelmaker. Given the energy-intensive nature of steel production, reliable power will be key to the future of Japan’s steel industry. The facility, which opened in October last year, is developing advanced technology in solar light and thermal power generation that it aims to apply both in Japan and overseas. 

More Here

realcleverscience:

8bitfuture:

New research could increase solar cell efficiency.

Current photovoltaic cells work by absorbing photons from the sun, and converting each one photon into one electron - enough electrons in a stream is then used as electricity. This system is only capable of converting up to 34% of the available sunlight into electricity.

New research at the University of Cambridge has allowed two electrons to be generated for every photon, enabling up to 44% efficiency. 

The Cambridge team, led by Professor Neil Greenham and Professor Sir Richard  Friend, has developed a hybrid cell which absorbs red light and harnesses the extra energy of blue light to boost the electrical current.

By adding pentacene, an organic semiconductor, the solar cells can generate two electrons for every photon from the blue light spectrum.  This could enable the cells to capture 44% of the incoming solar energy.

The team also says that the new cells would be cheaper to produce, because “Organic and hybrid solar cells have an advantage over current silicon-based technology because they can be produced in large quantities at low cost by roll-to-roll printing”.

Awesome. I hadn’t heard any big solar news in a few weeks, so very happy to read this. Increased efficiency at a lower cost - that’s a winner. (And 44% efficiency! Woah!) Pretty soon solar is going to hit that tipping point where it becomes cheaper than fossil-fuels, and that is when the business sector will join environmentalists and start to adopt solar on a wide scale. In other words, big changes on the horizon. I’m looking forward to it.

And this is why we need to invest more in solar instead of digging a deeper hole for ourselves for fossil fuels - figuratively and literally.

(Source: cam.ac.uk)

Orbiting solar power plants might be possible in a decade

How’s this sound: giant solar arrays in orbit around the Earth, harvesting undiluted and virtually endless power from the sun and then beaming it straight down to the ground with lasers. Badass, right? And according to a three-year, ten-nation, peer-reviewed study by the International Academy of Astronautics, we could make it happen within ten years. Can you name solar power’s biggest downside? Sure you can! It doesn’t work when the sun isn’t out, which is the case most of the time when it’s cloudy and all the time at night. This is why satellites all rely on solar panels: unless something catastrophic happens (in which case eco-friendly power will be the least of your worries), it’s always sunny and never cloudy up in space. The obvious solution, then, is to move all of our solar power generating capacity into orbit, where we can rely on it 24/7. The International Academy of Astronautics has been researching a plan that would put a bunch of several-mile wide solar arrays into Earth orbit above the equator. These arrays would be able to collect as much as twice the amount of power as their earthbound kin, and using either microwaves or lasers, they could beam electricity to anywhere on Earth. While this all might seem a bit far-fetched, according to the IAA research, we’ll have the technology to do it within 10 years, and it’ll make economic sense to do it within 30. The up-front expense is a completely different issue, but if we’ve got a handy fleet of private launch vehicles all trying to undercut each other by then, a test project could be launched in about 20 years for just a few tens of billions of dollars. IAA, via Physorg

DVICE

jtotheizzoe:

Here Comes Solar Energy - Paul Krugman

Is there a “Moore’s Law” taking over for solar energy?

These days, mention solar power and you’ll probably hear cries of “Solyndra!” Republicans have tried to make the failed solar panel company both a symbol of government waste — although claims of a major scandal are nonsense — and a stick with which to beat renewable energy.

But Solyndra’s failure was actually caused by technological success: the price of solar panels is dropping fast, and Solyndra couldn’t keep up with the competition. In fact, progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, “there’s now frequent talk of a ‘Moore’s law’ in solar energy,” with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.

This has already led to rapid growth in solar installations, but even more change may be just around the corner. If the downward trend continues — and if anything it seems to be accelerating — we’re just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal.

And if we priced coal-fired power right, taking into account the huge health and other costs it imposes, it’s likely that we would already have passed that tipping point.

But will our political system delay the energy transformation now within reach?

(Source: jtotheizzoe)

thebib:

This XD Design Solar Window Charger, with big USB and small USB output, is easily attachable to your window. The outside of the charger catches sunlight, while the smooth designed inside spices up your interior and charges your electronic equipment.

smarterplanet:

IBM brings solar power to data centers | Green Tech - CNET News

A solar technician at IBM’s Bangalore, India research facility.

(Credit: IBM)

IBM is bringing electric power—in the form of solar panels—to data centers with trouble getting power in the first place.

The company tomorrow will detail a pilot project which couples solar power with water-cooled servers that run on high-voltage direct-current. The method results in about a ten percent energy savings by reducing the losses that normally happen in converting from alternating power from the grid to the direct current servers run on, according to Murali Kota, the chief scientist of nanotechnology at IBM India who developed the pilot as a side project.

That level of energy reduction is significant for large data centers with many servers, but the implications of solar and servers are potentially profound for places that don’t have access to reliable power, Kota said.

A bank, for example, that wanted to set up a remote branch and operate a data center could use solar power as a way to supplement power from the grid and on-site generators. IBM plans to offer the system in custom engagements next year. Clients in developing countries have already shown an interest.

“Everybody is talking about getting connectivity from the grid. The cities are already overloaded so they need ways to generate local power,” Kota said. “You can start connecting unconnected parts of the world using this kind of system.”

poptech:

Paul Needham is interested in why and how people buy things. As a doctoral student at Cambridge, he specialized in a field of economics that asked questions like “What does it cost a buyer to find a seller?” Does the buyer have to travel a great distance, for instance? Does she have to pay a fee to a middle man? So when he started thinking about energy access—how to improve the way people in places without strong electricity infrastructure get their power—one of the questions he asked himself was “Why don’t I own solar panels?” 

GOOD profiles 2011 Social Innovation Fellow Paul Needham who founded Simpa Networks, which sells high quality solar energy systems on a pay-as-you-go basis to underserved people in emerging markets.

jtotheizzoe:

Solar Fuels Take Two Steps Forward

Two papers out this week show huge leaps forward in the two most important aspects of adopting solar energy and fuel cells:

Cheapness and efficiency.

(via ScienceNOW)

smarterplanet:

Energy-Harvesting Displays - Technology Review

Polarizing power: This film, which could be used in an LCD, lets through light of one polarization and can convert into electricity some of the rest. 
Credit: UCLA

Adding solar cells to screens could prolong the battery life of many electronic gadgets.