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Vancouver BC company Day4 Energy says they have developed a design and manufacturing process for a new line of solar cells with efficiency up to 19%. The company says the new design also lowers production costs by up to 25% using existing manufacturing infrastructure.

Sanyo Electric Company of Japan says they have developed new technology that boosts their solar cell efficiency to 23%. It is still in the research phase, but the company expects to begin mass production of 22% or better efficiency solar cells in 2010.

MIT News Office

Imagine windows that not only provide a clear view and illuminate rooms, but also use sunlight to efficiently help power the building they are part of. MIT engineers report a new approach to harnessing the sun's energy that could allow just that.

The work, to be reported in the July 11 issue of Science, involves the creation of a novel "solar concentrator." "Light is collected over a large area [like a window] and gathered, or concentrated, at the edges," explains Marc A. Baldo, leader of the work and the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering.

As a result, rather than covering a roof with expensive solar cells (the semiconductor devices that transform sunlight into electricity), the cells only need to be around the edges of a flat glass panel. In addition, the focused light increases the electrical power obtained from each solar cell "by a factor of over 40," Baldo says.

According to the article, three of the inventors have launched a spin-off company to bring the technology to market, hopefully within three years. Other reports say the technology won't necessarily be suitable for windows, but might work as a skylight.

Federal tax credits that cover up to 30% of the cost of installing solar electric systems for businesses and up to $2000 for residential installations are set to expire on December 31st.

According to the Sacramento Business Journal, companies in the industry are concerned about new business next year, and some are looking overseas. :

"Everybody’s making contingency plans," said Steve Kircher, chief executive officer of Solar Power Inc. in Roseville. "I think you’re going to see cutbacks and layoffs in the construction industry. We’re not out soliciting new business."

A bill to renew the credits is stalled in Congress.

Florida Power & Light has announced plans for three new solar energy centers, one of which "will provide 25 megawatts of photovoltaic solar capacity, making it the world’s largest photovoltaic solar facility".

The first project should begin in 2008. The other two projects will begin in 2009. Together, the three sites will prevent the release of nearly 3.5 million tons of greenhouses gases over the life of the projects, which is the equivalent of removing 25,000 cars from the road per year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. FPL is the world's number one producer of solar energy and the nation's top producer of wind power.

Then, on a smaller scale, a couple living in The Villages, in Central Florida, installed 24 solar panels on the roof of their house. They now have monthly electric bills "as low as $3". State of Florida and federal tax incentives dropped the cost of this couples' solar installation nearly in half, from $45,000 to $23,000.

Wired has a cool story about an engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory who is working on a prototype plug-in hybrid that can go 50 miles on a charge, gets 100MPG, and has a solar panel on the roof that will power the car for five miles.

The car is a converted Toyota Prius, with advanced lithium-ion batteries. It's charged using an external solar array. One of their areas of research is li-ion battery efficiency and thermal management.

Pacific Business News reports that a new state law in Hawaii requires all new single-family homes built after Jan. 1, 2010 to have solar hot water heaters. Home sites that do not receive enough sunlight can use some other renewable energy source. Homes may also have gas-powered tankless "instant" water heaters as long as the home has one other gas appliance.

Solar hot water heaters are far less expensive than solar PV (photovoltaic) electric systems, and the payback period is much shorter. According to the DOE, water heating represents up to 17 percent of national residential energy consumption.

EERE News: Solar Power Could Provide 10% of U.S. Electricity by 2025

Solar energy currently provides less than 0.1% of the electricity generated in the United States, but a new report finds that solar power's contribution could grow to 10% of the nation's power needs by 2025. The report, prepared by research and publishing firm Clean Edge and the nonprofit Co-op America, projects nearly 2% of the nation's electricity coming from concentrating solar power systems, while solar photovoltaic systems will provide more than 8% of the nation's electricity. Those figures correlate to nearly 50,000 megawatts of solar photovoltaic systems and more than 6,600 megawatts of concentrating solar power.

As noted in the report, solar power has been expanding rapidly in the past 8 years, growing at an average pace of 40% per year. The cost per kilowatt-hour of solar photovoltaic systems has also been dropping, while electricity generated from fossil fuels is becoming more expensive. As a result, the report projects that solar power will reach cost parity with conventional power sources in many U.S. markets by 2015. But to reach the 10% goal, solar photovoltaic companies will also need to streamline installations and make solar power a "plug-and-play" technology, that is, it must be simple and straightforward to buy the components of the system, connect them together, and connect the system to the power grid.

The report also places some of the responsibility with electric utilities, which will need to take advantage of the benefits of solar power, incorporate it into future "smart grid" technologies, and create new business models for building solar power capacity. The report also calls for establishing long-term extensions of today's investment and production tax credits, creating open standards for connecting solar power systems to the grid, and giving utilities the ability to include solar power in their rate base.

Clean Edge press release here, full report here.

FindSolar.com, operated by solar industry interests and the DOE, has a handy Solar Estimator that calculates an estimated cost for a home solar PV system and provides a list of contractors in your area. It uses some curious formulas that I don't quite understand to calculate positive ROI, but it provides some interesting insights.

Some manufacturers also have calculators, including BP Solar USA, Sharp Electronics, and Kyocera Solar. And the PVWatts.org calculator estimates how much solar power you can generate for any given U.S. location based on a number of variables.

Where I live in Tennessee is listed at the high end of "good" on the "solar scale" of available solar energy. But a 3 or 4 kW system that costs $40K or so will only generate about $35 per month worth of electricity. That's a payback of about 95 years!

(Most of the calculators reduce the payback period based on tax deductions if you finance the system with a home equity loan. I don't understand how that works. It seems like the additional interest v. paying cash would make the system cost more over its life, not less. I'm not very good at math, though, so maybe someone can explain that?)

Folks living in Florida (where we lived for a while) can get a much better deal, because a) they get slightly more solar radiation, but more important b) they have a state rebate incentive that will pay for half the system. Plus they require utilities to provide "net metering" (meaning you can sell excess power back to the grid). The payback period is reduced by half or more, but it's still a stretch.

Conclusion: While good for the environment (assuming "green" manufacturing practices), residential solar PV systems are still too expensive and not yet cost effective. Expect this to change, however, as R&D produces better and cheaper solar panels and manufacturing ramps up.

MIT: Harnessing solar energy like plants do

Much more chemical research will be needed to make solar energy technologically and economically viable. When plants photosynthesize, they produce high-energy sugars such as glucose; the chemists aim to produce hydrogen fuel or hydrocarbons such as methanol.

When sunlight strikes the artificial photosynthesis device, high-energy photons will split water into hydrogen and oxygen. One of the researchers' biggest challenges is developing inexpensive catalysts that can split water efficiently. Platinum does the job, but it is very rare and expensive, so the researchers are focusing on more abundant metals, such as iron, cobalt, nickel and manganese.

With hydrogen fuel cells, the need for hydrocarbon fuels isn't clear, at least to me. Maybe it has to do with the distribution infrastructure we already have in place? With that, maybe the idea is that the ability to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuels would result in more immediate, short-term benefit?

The DOE has selected twelve cities to receive solar energy grants:

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel W. Bodman today announced that DOE will make available up to $2.4 million to 12 cities across the country selected as Solar America Cities, chosen for their commitment and comprehensive approach to the deployment of solar technologies and the development of sustainable solar infrastructures.

[..]

Cities designated as Solar America Cities, which will each receive $200,000 from DOE to integrate a variety of solar energy technologies throughout the city, include: Denver, CO; Houston, TX; Knoxville, TN; Milwaukee, WI; Minneapolis & St. Paul, MN; Orlando, FL; Philadelphia, PA; Sacramento, CA; San Antonio, TX; San Jose, CA; Santa Rosa, CA; and Seattle, WA.

According to the DOE press release, the selected cities will also receive hands-on technical assistance with integrating solar technology into energy planning, zoning, local regulations, best practices, solar financing options, and incentive programs. The grants are part of the DOE Solar American Cities program.

$2.4 million is a rounding error in terms of federal funding for alternative energy research and development programs, but we should be happy and take what we can get.

From an interesting article in Mother Earth News.

Global non-renewable energy resources in terawatt/hours:

• Coal: 6,000,000
• Natural Gas: 1,500,000
• Uranium 235: 1,500,000
• Oil: 1,000,000
• Tar Sands: 800,000
• Total: 10,800,000

Global annual renewable energy sources in terawatt/hours:

• Direct Solar Radiation: 350,000,000
• Wind: 200,000
• Ocean/Thermal: 100,000
• Biofuels: 50,000
• Geothermal: 10,000
• Tidal/Wave: 5,000

According to the article, total world energy consumption in 2004 was 130,971 terawatt hours, and is projected to grow to 205,686 terawatt hours by 2030.

The article also says:

• "The total amount of energy produced by burning all the coal on the planet would only be equivalent to the solar energy that strikes the Earth every six days."

• "The entire recoverable world oil reserve is equivalent to the solar energy that strikes the Earth in one day."

• "The recoverable world reserve of fissionable uranium is equivalent to less than 1 1/2 days of the energy striking the Earth from the nuclear reaction of the sun."

I haven't been able to verify any of the author's numbers, but if they are even close it boggles the mind. You should read the whole article, and ask why we aren't seriously pursuing a distributed solar economy.

Like most states in the South, Florida is heavily dependent on fossil fuels for energy, with 80% of its electrical generating capacity based on non-renewable sources that pollute the environment.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Florida gets 37% of its power from coal, 21% from natural gas, and 22% from petroleum. Clean, renewable sources (wind, geothermal, biomass, and solar) represent only about 3% of Florida's power generating capacity, and the rest (18%) comes from nuclear power plants.

With growing political and environmental opposition to fossil fuel energy sources (not to mention the fact that they will eventually run out), and concerns about the safety and cost of nuclear power, what are the alternatives?

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