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.”

Photon enhanced thermionic emission could double efficiency of solar cells

Engineers at Stanford have developed a process which can harness the light and heat of the sunsimultaneously, which could lead to solar cells that are twice as efficient as those currently available. Called photon enhanced thermionic emission — or PETE for short — the process differs from traditional cells which lose efficiency as temperatures rise, and the materials needed to build the cells are cheap and widely available. The engineers got around the lower efficiencies by coating a piece of semiconducting material with a thin layer of the metal cesium, which enables the material to use both heat and light simultaneously. While the materials as currently demonstrated work best in very high temperatures, the researchers indicate that in the near future, the materials could have wide enough application to make them competitive with traditional forms of energy. Hit the source for the full story.

Engadget

trendd:

This is a HUGE upgrade in efficiency. We’re almost there.

“And, now, with new developments from chemist Xiaoyang Zhu at the University of Texas, solar cells can upgrade from their solar efficiency current limit of 30% to more than 60%. To increase the cells efficiency, Zhu studied capturing hot electrons (energy that is too high to be turned into usable electricity which then escapes) with quantum dots.”

(via Quantum Dot Research leads to More Efficient Solar Cells | ArchDaily the best of Architecture)

I have posted about this already but I did not know that there was going to be that much of a jump in efficiency.  There are still kinks to be worked out but its a jump in the right direction.