Futurismic

Encouraging advances is solar power technology from the US DoE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory:

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have set a world record in solar cell efficiency with a photovoltaic device that converts 40.8 percent of the light that hits it into electricity. This is the highest confirmed efficiency of any photovoltaic device to date.

But:

The 40.8 percent efficiency was measured under concentrated light of 326 suns. One sun is about the amount of light that typically hits Earth on a sunny day.

Mmm. I wonder what the efficiency will be under normal conditions (once it’s mass produced)? Still, it’s pretty impressive as a proof of concept:

…the new design uses compositions of gallium indium phosphide and gallium indium arsenide to split the solar spectrum into three equal parts that are absorbed by each of the cell’s three junctions for higher potential efficiencies.

Beautiful. Kudos to humanity’s glorious electrical engineers!

[story here via ElectricalEngineer.com and KurzweilAI.net][image from Alex // Berlin on flickr]

Related posts

• Is Solar feasible - absolutely! (0)
• Back of the envelope: is solar power feasible? (0)
• World’s largest solar power plant can now be found in Spain (2)
• Where to put the carbon… (6)
• What can your ink-jet do? (5)

Earlier today TJ wrote a post about the possibility of solar power as an alternative fuel. Now I have to admit to having a vested interest in this field as recently I began work as a Solar Analyst for a renewable energy developer. I’ve spent the last six weeks conducting studies into every aspect of the solar market and its feasibility. Although some more outlandish technologies have been overstated, the future of solar is incredibly bright.

There are four main types of solar power on the horizon. Most people know about silicon photovoltaics, which are now reaching record efficiencies of 23%.  A shortage of silicon in the last few years has stunted the market’s growth, with most installations coming in Germany, Spain and California where the government subsidies are attractive to companies. Silicon companies have invested billions in increasing production however and an increase in supply could lead to much more photovoltaics being available at a cheaper price. Market predictions for 2010 PV production vary between 5.6GW a year at the low end and more than 25GW at the most optimistic, with 12GW+ looking likely. A nuclear power plant typically provides 1GW of power, by comparison.

The shortage of silicon has been good for the other three types of solar power however. Thin-film photovoltaics have been a big hit in the news, with companies like Nanosolar and First Solar promising large scale production at a fraction of the cost of silicon PV, even if it is at lower efficiency. First Solar’s Cadmium Telluride thin-film converts 10.6% of light to electricity and they are aiming for 12% by 2010. NanoMarkets projects a $12Billion thin-film market by 2013, in addition to a $4Billion building-integrated market, most of which use thin-film.

Two types of solar power that aren’t receiving as much attention concentrate the light they receive to stronger concentrations using lenses or mirrors. The first type, concentrated solar thermal (or solar baseload as some are trying to rename it) has actually been producing power in the californian desert since the eighties, by heating water using concentrated sunlight and turning a turbine using the steam produced. Recent developments have replaced the water with molten salt, which can store the heat for up to 16 hours, allowing for production of electricity even when the sun isn’t shining. An incredible 6.4GW of installed solar thermal is predicted by 2012, 14 times what is currently installed. Half of this is in the Southwestern deserts of the US and most of the rest is in Spain. Solar thermal is already cost competitive in some places.

The final piece of the solar puzzle and perhaps the one with the most potential, is concentrating photovoltaics (CPV). By concentrating the sun’s power to between 2 and 1000 times stronger than normal, the amount of photovoltaic needed to generate the same amount of electricity goes down considerably. In addition, this allows you to use the more expensive, higher efficiency III-V photovoltaics currently used by satellites in space, which have efficiencies as high as 40.7%. CPV is the least commercialised of the four technologies, with a 3MW facility in Spain testing the effectiveness of 7 different companies’ products.

Having less reliance on photovoltaic material gives CPV long term cost advantage over both types of flat photovoltaics and the lack of water needs gives a similar advantage over solar thermal.
The future of solar is very bright and with government assistance in the coming few years to help companies build manufacturing capabilities, all four of these technologies could be as cheap if not cheaper than traditional power generation by the middle of the next decade. Solar Power is ready if we are.

[image of Solfocus test CPV array courtesy of SolFocus Inc]

Related posts

• "Major discovery" could spark solar revolution (2)
• US military proposes space-based solar power station (6)
• Turning windows into solar panels (2)
• The Independent reports on the rise of British Sea Power (2)
• Solar pessimism (3)

I’d love to be able to fit solar panels to my home (not that we’ve been getting much sun this year, grouch grouch), but as I live in a flat I don’t have a roof to put them on. Thanks to a crafty hack from the boffins at MIT, that may not be a problem - they’ve found a way to turn windows into solar panels. [image by uqbar]

Sunlight is concentrated in existing solar power devices using large, mobile mirrors that track the sun as it moves across the sky. But these can be expensive to deploy and maintain. In the MIT device, called an “organic solar concentrator” and described in the latest issue of Science, the researchers painted a mixture of organic dyes onto the surface of a pane of glass. The dyes trap different wavelengths of sunlight and then guide the energy along the glass towards the PV cells at the edges.

“The point of all this is to get away with using far fewer solar cells,” said Marc Baldo, an electrical engineer at MIT. “The concentrator collects light over its whole front surface, but the solar cells need only cover the area of the edges.”

Not only does this make solar an option for people who don’t own an entire building, it also makes it a much cheaper proposition in general; solar cells aren’t cheap to make, and the industry can’t keep up with current demand as it stands.

And just to pre-empt someone piping up and saying that solar will never fully replace [energy source x], yeah, you’re probably right. But as one of a suite of renewable sources, it can make a contribution towards doing so - and right now we need every option we can get.

Related posts

• Print and paint your way to cleaner electricty (0)
• Your backyard nuclear plant will be ready in five years (5)
• What can your ink-jet do? (5)
• Is Solar feasible - absolutely! (0)
• Growing clean energy down at the Crowd Farm (0)

And here I thought Xerox was for copying body parts at the office Xmas party.  Turns out, printing technology is very flexible and researchers are trying to adapt it to various applications such as water purification machines and printing solar panels.

There’s also a bit of history on PARC (Palo Alto Research Center):

PARC is one of the older–and more productive–industrial incubators. Xerox founded it in 1970, and 30 companies have been spun out of it. Inventions from the lab include the mouse, Ethernet, the Alto (the archetype of the PC), the laser printer, and, ignominiously, the computer worm. It was also one of the first industrial organizations to employ anthropologists and ethnographers. Xerox wanted to know how people actually interacted with copiers (besides hitting them and swearing at them).

I didn’t know private industry did this, perhaps these centers operate in the background and we just don’t hear about them very often.

(via DailyTech) (image via Zixii)

Related posts

• Turning windows into solar panels (2)
• Print and paint your way to cleaner electricty (0)
• When cybermoths attack! (0)
• Welcome to the United Kingdom of Ubiquitous Surveillance (2)
• Wearable monitors - cyberpunk style for the subway (3)

The Guardian has this interesting snippet of an article that makes sense to me on so many levels. Professor Andy Hopper of the University of Cambridge has been looking at the power usage of computers and made an astute suggestion: locate large processing servers near sources of alternative energy like solar or wind farms. When the power is flowing through the turbine or photovoltaic, computers all around the world can tap into the processors of the server farm. When there’s no wind or sun in one location, the network can call on the processors of somewhere there is.

This kind of synergy is fascinating and I think it’ll be a major feature in our future working lives. Flash drives getting bigger, faster and cheaper all the time and programs like Portable Firefox run straight off a portable drive. I’m writing this post on my portable usb, using only the processor and screen of the laptop I’m borrowing time on. Sooner or later all our computers will be a usb-style stick with all our programs, data and settings stored on it. Plug it into a nearby screen (or project your own), whack out your laser keyboard and dial into any heavy processing power from an external server. Who needs a big computer tower in your room when you can fit it in your pocket?

[story via the Guardian, image by Brent Danley]

Related posts

• Wind power balloons upward (0)
• Where to store wind energy? (1)
• Turning windows into solar panels (2)
• The Energy Island (3)
• Solar pessimism (3)

Two good examples of nanotechnology in action today from Science Daily. The first comes in the field of solar technology. There are two main forms of solar nanotech: thin films of nanoparticles like titanium oxide doped with nitrogen, and so-called ‘quantum dots’, tiny semiconducting crystals that absorb the energy from light to release conducting electrons. Scientists from California, Mexico and China have shown that both methods can be combined into one material that performs better together than either method alone!

The second article discusses LED lights, which use far less energy than even energy-saving flourescent bulbs. However, whilst LEDs work great for smaller uses like book-lights, computers or mobile phones, they aren’t bright enough to light a room. The method to improve this is to make thousands of tiny holes on the bulb itself, allowing more light to escape the LED. Whilst before this process has been extremely time and money intensive, using nanotechnology lithography to imprint the holes makes the process far cheaper - which could lead to a massive growth in usage of LEDs in our homes and gadgets.

EDIT: As Larry mentions in the comments, there’s also been great progress making solar antennas using nanoscale spirals imprinted onto the material. This method could be printed on flexible materials and potentially is as much as 80% Efficient. Thanks for the heads up Larry!

[via Science Daily, image via NIST]

Related posts

• Emergent technology for 2008 (1)
• Centre for Responsible Nanotechnology at five years old (2)
• A Chemical Brain To Control Nanobots (0)
• What can your ink-jet do? (5)
• UCLA researchers design nanomachine that kills cancer cells (0)

Glen Hiemstra of Futurist.com has a video on his home page called ‘Outlook 2008′ in which he discusses his five big stories for the coming year, plus a wild card. He talks about oil prices, the economy and the political changes (or non changes with the presidential elections so close to the end of the year) of 2008. Two more technological comments caught my eye.

He mentioned both Solar and Nano technologies as big movers in the coming year. In particular he highlighted NanoSolar, whose thin-film solar cells have just started reaching commercial grade at potentially cheaper prices than coal. The other company on his watch list was Altairnano, which uses ceramic nanomaterials to create long-living batteries that should see the market in a number of forms in 2008, including in electric cars such as the pictured Tesla Roadster.

His most interesting comment was in the ‘population’ section, talking about young entrepreneurs:

“The leading edge of the digital native generation is now 18-25 or so. The first generation to grow up in the personal computing and internet age is now at work. The venture capital world increasingly focuses on this generation, the very young creatives, for the breakthrough ideas. Thus 2008 marks a change-over to the next generation for innovation leadership.”

It will be interesting to see if these predictions come true. Other turn of the year predictions include a pessimistic James Kunstler and an optimistic 50-year prediction by Climate Progress.

[via Futurist.com, image by Jurvetson]

Related posts

• Using nanotechnology for brighter lights and better solar power (1)
• Stanford creates nanowire batteries with 10 times current charge (0)
• What can your ink-jet do? (5)
• UCLA researchers design nanomachine that kills cancer cells (0)
• Turning windows into solar panels (2)

Now this is very positive. Last week there was talk of a giant ’supergrid’ connecting much of Europe to wind turbines across the continent, to take advantage of whenever the wind was blowing.

Now the Guardian reports on Desertec, the plans to put hundreds of solar concentrating plants on the North African coasts and in the Middle East. Two thirds of the estimated 100 Billion Watts would stay in the countries producing the energy, with another 30 Billion Watts (around of all of Europe’s use) being pumped via underwater cables to the EU, which would provide a chunk of the funding for the project. With the Bali talks now underway to find a new version of the Kyoto treaty, projects like this could be a major facet of reducing carbon emissions. German energy expert Gregor Czeich reckons with new higher efficiency power lines a 100% renewable powered Europe could be possible in the near future without costing much more than the current fossil fuel system.

[via the guardian, picture by TREC]

Related posts

• Study finds little solar link to cloud formation, not the driver of climate change? (29)
• Global warming and the Plague (yeah, that Plague) (4)
• Follow up - Satellite pictures of the ice-free North West Passage (0)
• Expect future resource conflicts as Arctic melts (0)
• CO2 rising 25% faster than previously thought - a SF Call to Arms (3)

Lots of advances have been made in solar energy, as we’ve reported recently.  But solar energy may not be all dandelions and sunflowers, and there are worries not just about efficiency.  Simple production capacity dictates that even if we wanted to, we couldn’t produce nearly enough to meet our current energy needs.  A post by scienceblogger James Hrynyshyn over at the aptly named The Island of Doubt has some more information of solar pessimism.

Just like at that business seminar you attended, constructive criticism is best.  These add a dose of realism and keep us from wondering in five years why we’re still being told we’re just around the corner from a breakthrough.  As Mr. Hrynyshyn said, "Don’t get discouraged guys. Just keep plugging away…."

(image from Rob!)

Related posts

• Is Solar feasible - absolutely! (0)
• Combining computing servers with alternative energy (2)
• Wind power balloons upward (0)
• Where to store wind energy? (1)
• What can your ink-jet do? (5)

Earth 2 Tech has a list of ways the military is using eco-technology. It includes solar power tents, aviation bio-fuel, micro fuel cells, hybrid drive technologies, and personal solar cells for recharging in the field.

There is a great deal of money in the military, and often research and innovation comes out of the military side that trickles down to civilians (night vision, Hummers, etc). It would be intriguing if green technologies are invented in the military industry have an effect on daily life. So far, however, most of these innovations look like they’re being taken from civilian industries and being tested in military arenas.

Now all we need is a eco-DARPA and we might see some very interesting results!

Related posts

• You The Man Now, Dog (0)
• When cybermoths attack! (0)
• What can your ink-jet do? (5)
• Video games make better soldiers (0)
• Using nanotechnology for brighter lights and better solar power (1)

The adoption of renewable energies should really take off when we’re able to print solar panels out at home, or simply paint them onto any solid surface. [Colony Worlds]

Related posts

• Turning windows into solar panels (2)
• What can your ink-jet do? (5)
• Is Solar feasible - absolutely! (0)
• Growing clean energy down at the Crowd Farm (0)
• A magnetic generator that actually works as advertised (3)