Spread across 150-acres on a Portuguese hillside, 52,000 photovoltaic modules sit amid the olive trees generating electricity at one of the world’s largest solar power plants in the town of Serpa. After eight months of construction and testing, GE Energy Financial Services, a unit of General Electric, PowerLight, a subsidiary of SunPower Corporation and Catavento SA dedicated the 11-megawatt (MW) Serpa solar power plant on Wednesday.
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.
Nevada Solar One is the largest concentrating solar power plant to be built in 15 years.
The sun sits high over the Nevada desert in the Eldorado Valley, gleaming off the upside down rows of mirrored parabolic trough collectors at the Nevada Solar One power plant. Gilbert Cohen, senior vice president of Acciona Solar, stands beneath one of the collectors and points to the mountains in the horizon.
“Because of the track record [the parabolic trough industry] had in southern California with the 354 megawatts (MW) operating — and actually improving in performance — I think you’re seeing the financial institutions more willing to embrace trough technology because it’s proven and the risks are less.”
–Thomas Rueckert, U.S. DOE, Program Manager for CSP Managment
“When the sun rises and gets above 10 degrees, the system will start tracking and we stay with it all day,” he says.
That means 180,000 parabolic trough collectors controlled by 760 trackers moving flawlessly in concert, following the sun’s path and collecting the heat to make clean electricity. That’s the beauty of concentrating solar power (CSP), also known as solar thermal.
At 64 megawatts (MW) of generation capacity, Nevada Solar One is the largest CSP plant to be built in 15 years. While the plant won’t come online until April, its construction marks the revival of an industry that has seen almost no market growth in over a decade.
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Internationally, clean energy markets are poised to quadruple in the next decade, growing from $55.4 billion in revenues in 2006 to more than $226.5 billion by 2016 in four key renewable energy sectors, according to a report released this week by the research and publishing firm Clean Edge, Inc.
The “Clean Energy Trends 2007” report highlights a number of factors contributing to this extensive growth, including an influx of venture capital (VC); a new level of commitment by politicians at regional, state and federal levels; and significant corporate investments in clean and renewable energy acquisitions and expansion initiatives.
Thirteen American solar manufacturers are to share up to $168 million of U.S. taxpayers’ money, subject to appropriation from Congress.
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel W. Bodman made today’s announcement while visiting Konarka in Lowell, Massachusetts, one of the selected solar energy projects.
In the future the energy crisis that will face the world will be greater than any challenge we have ever witnessed before. Luckily, we have alternative energy sources to turn too that are not bound by limited resources. The most versatile and usable energy resource that is found literally on every part of the planet is Solar Power, and in recent times many advancements in this technology have been made and the use of this renewable energy resource has skyrocketed in recent years.
The earth receives so much energy from the sun that if we were to capture .02% of this, it would power the entire human races energy need, if 1% of the current land used for crops and pastures were made into solar plants it could also provide enough power to supply the entire world. With Oil, our most major energy producer, about to run out, it is imperative that we convert to Solar and whatever else Renewable energy source we have available to us.
Researchers at University of Notre Dame, in Indiana, have demonstrated a way to significantly improve the efficiency of solar cells made using low-cost, readily available materials, including a chemical commonly used in paints.
The researchers added single-walled carbon nanotubes to a film made of titanium-dioxide nanoparticles, doubling the efficiency of converting ultraviolet light into electrons when compared with the performance of the nanoparticles alone. The solar cells could be used to make hydrogen for fuel cells directly from water or for producing electricity. Titanium oxide is a main ingredient in white paint.
International Automated Systems has finished its first high-volume run of its new breakthrough solar panels. Nearly 1,000 Kilowatts of IAUS’s solar panels were manufactured in a short 24-hour run. On a 24/7 operating schedule, an estimated 350 Megawatts of IAUS panels can be produced annually. In comparison, a traditional photovoltaic (PV) solar module manufacturing plant with a yearly capacity equal to IAUS would cost an estimated $840 Million to construct.
SolarWorld AG is set to establish an integrated solar silicon wafer and solar cell production facility in Hillsboro, Oregon, that will become the largest solar factory in North America once the plant reaches its projected capacity of 500 megawatts (MW) by 2009.
Last Monday, Google announced plans to install a 1.5 megawatt (MW) solar array on its headquarters in Mountain View, California. The project calls for more than 9,000 Sharp solar panels, which will be installed on rooftops and parking lots at the Googleplex.
Solar Hope 