80% Efficient Solar Panel?! Works at Night?!

 This is pretty cool

The most expensive, carefully designed, and complicated solar panels in the world operate at about 40% efficiency. That means that, for every bit of sunlight that hits the panel, only 40% of it is turned into electricity.

Scientists think that this is just about as good as silicon panels can do and are now looking at ways to make it cheaper, instead of making them more efficient. But suddenly, from nowhere, comes Steven Novack of the Idaho National Laboratories with an inexpensive, foldable solar panel that may turn out to be up to 80% efficient.

The trick is nanotechnology. The surface of the material is printed with miniscule nano-antennae that capture infra-red radiation, the kind that the sun puts out in abundance, and is even available at night. Television antennas absorbe large wavelength energy, so in order to absorb ultra-small wavelength energy (photons) they had to create ultra-small antennas.

Start-Up Sells Solar Panels at Lower-Than-Usual Cost

Nanosolar, a heavily financed Silicon Valley start-up whose backers include Google’s co-founders, plans to announce Tuesday that it has begun selling its innovative solar panels, which are made using a technique that is being held out as the future of solar power manufacturing.
The company, which has raised $150 million and built a 200,000-square-foot factory here, is developing a new manufacturing process that “prints” photovoltaic material on aluminum backing, a process the company says will reduce the manufacturing cost of the basic photovoltaic module by more than 80 percent.

Aptera 1000-300mpg

This has nothing to do with SolarTechnology, but it is important to our energy future, as we spend so much on gasoline fore our transportation.

Presenting

(there logo is pretty cool eh?)

 

Google’s Next Frontier: Renewable Energy

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 27 — Google, the Internet company with a seemingly limitless source of revenue, plans to get into the business of finding limitless sources of energy. 

The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., announced Tuesday that it intended to develop and help stimulate the creation of renewable energy technologies that are cheaper than coal-generated power.

Google said it would spend hundreds of millions of dollars, part of that to hire engineers and energy experts to investigate alternative energies like solar, geothermal and wind power. The effort is aimed at reducing Google’s own mounting energy costs to run its vast data centers, while also fighting climate change and helping to reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Smarter energy storage for solar and wind power

Development of the first hybrid battery suitable for storing electricity from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind is now a step closer.

CSIRO and Cleantech Ventures have invested in technology start-up Smart Storage Pty Ltd to develop and commercialise battery-based storage solutions.

Director of the CSIRO Energy Transformed National Research Flagship Dr John Wright said the Smart Storage battery technology aims to deliver a low cost, high performance, high power stationary energy storage solution suitable for grid-connected and remote applications.

“Cost effective, high performance energy storage has been the missing link for renewable energy,” he said.

Current battery storage solutions undergo frequent deep discharging and are unable to meet high power demands. They are also considered expensive due to high initial cost and short battery life.

“The Smart Storage technology is based on CSIRO’s ‘Ultrabattery’ which has been successfully trialled in hybrid vehicles,” Dr Wright said.

Scientists developing clean energy systems from micro-algae

An international consortium established by an Australian scientist is developing a clean source of energy that could see some of our future fuel and possibly water needs being generated by solar-powered bio-reactors and micro-algae while absorbing CO2.

Associate Professor Ben Hankamer, from the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) at The University of Queensland, has established the Solar Bio-fuels Consortium which is engineering green algal cells and advanced bio-reactor systems to produce bio-fuels such as hydrogen in a CO2-neutral process.

New Alliance for space solar power to be announced

On October 10, 2007, leading space advocacy organizations and Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin will announce the formation of a new alliance to “ensure that the benefits of renewable clean energy from space solar power are understood and supported by business, governments and the general public,” according to an alliance statement.
The inaugural event of the new alliance, to be held at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. at 9:00 am, will highlight a study underway by the National Security Space Office (NSSO) on the viability of space-based solar power, presented by Lt. Col. Paul Damphousse, National Security Space Office. John Mankins, President, SUNSAT Energy Council, a leading expert on space solar power, will also speak.

 

Silicon Nanocrystals for Superefficient Solar Cells

Research shows that silicon can wring two electrons from each photon of incoming light. 

A typical solar cell generates only one electron per photon of incoming sunlight. Some exotic materials are thought to produce multiple electrons per photon, but for the first time, the same effect has been seen in silicon. Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), in Golden, CO, showed that silicon nanocrystals can produce two or three electrons per photon of high-energy sunlight. The effect, they say, could lead to a new type of solar cell that is both cheap and more than twice as efficient as today’s typical photovoltaics.