Category: Solar Energy

Tesla solar roofing

On By A.P.In Solar Energy, solar powerLeave a comment

by Matt Hickman

When Tesla, the Silicon Valley automaker and energy storage firm founded by billionaire and Mars colonization enthusiast Elon Musk, unveiled its gorgeous solar roofing system back in October, it was assumed that said shingles would be significantly spendier than conventional roofing — you know, roofing that isn’t capable of transforming free and abundant sunshine into a form of home-powering renewable energy.

After all, why would a roof that’s more durable, longer-lasting and flat-out sexier also be comparable in price — or, gasp, even more affordable — than a traditional asphalt roof?

Weeks later, Musk, a clean tech entrepreneur never without a few surprises up his sleeve, is claiming that Tesla’s sleek solar roofing option will indeed be the cheaper option even before the annual energy savings associated with having an electricity-producing roof kick in.

Made from tempered glass, Tesla’s low-cost solar roofing shingles are slated for a widespread rollout at the end of 2017.

Musk made the potentially too-good-to-be-true claim directly following last week’s announcement that Tesla shareholders had voted to merge with SolarCity, the residential solar behemoth founded by Musk’s cousin Lyndon Rive. (Musk himself serves as chairman of SolarCity, which will now operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Tesla).

As noted by Bloomberg, the $2 billion acquisition aims to position Tesla, primarily known to most consumers as a manufacturer of beautiful yet prohibitively pricey electric sports cars and sedans, as “one-stop shopping for consumers eager to become independent of fossil fuels.” In the near future, Tesla showrooms won’t just be places to buy and/or ogle high-end EVs. They’ll also be places where consumers can peruse solar roofing options that will help to power their homes and, of course, that Tesla Model S parked in the garage.

Noting that the tiles’ electricity-producing capabilities are “just a bonus,” Musk goes on to pose the question: “So the basic proposition will be: Would you like a roof that looks better than a normal roof, lasts twice as long, costs less and — by the way — generates electricity? Why would you get anything else?”

To be available in a quartet of styles — Slate, Tuscan, Textured Glass and Smooth Glass — that closely mimic not-so-cheap premium roofing materials, Tesla’s solar shingles are a boon for consumers who have long balked at the thought of installing rooftop solar for aesthetic reasons. (Read: big black patches that invoke the ire of the neighbors). Tesla’s shingles look just like the real deal — even nicer. “The key is to make solar look good,” said Musk during last month’s public debut of Tesla’s solar shingles, which you can watch below in its entirety. “We want you to call your neighbors over and say, ‘Check out this sweet roof.’” You can hear his pitch in more detail in the video below:

As reported by Bloomberg, while Tesla’s inoffensive-looking solar shingles are indeed considered a premium product when compared to non-solar shingles, significant savings kick in when considering the cost of shipping. Traditional roofing tiles are heavy and awkward and, as a result, cost an arm and a leg to transport. They’re also super-fragile and have a high rate of breakage. Tesla’s engineered glass shingles, on the other hand, are durable, lightweight (as much as five times lighter than conventional roofing materials) and easy to ship. The significant cost-savings associated with decreased shipping costs, as anticipated by Musk, will be passed on to consumers.

While there are skeptics who doubt that the savings gained in decreased shipping costs will render Tesla’s solar singles the most affordable option for upfront cost-focused consumers, others are embracing Musk’s claims as a potential game-changer that could potentially usher in the end of “dumb” roofing as we know it.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/energy/blogs/will-tesla-solar-roofing-be-cheaper-normal-roofing

This island is powered entirely by solar panels and batteries thanks to SolarCity

On By A.P.In Kebmodee, Solar Energy, solar powerLeave a comment


Ta’u Island’s residents live off a solar power and battery storage-enabled microgrid.

by Amelia Heathman

SolarCity was applauded when it announced its plans for solar roofs earlier this year. Now, it appears it is in the business of creating solar islands.

The island of Ta’u in American Samoa, more than 4,000 miles from the United States’ West Coast, now hosts a solar power and battery storage-enabled microgrid that can supply nearly 100 per cent of the island’s power needs from renewable energy.

The microgrid is made up of 1.4 megawatts of solar generation capacity from SolarCity and Tesla and six-megawatt hours of battery storage from 60 Tesla Powerpacks. The whole thing took just a year to implement.

Due to the remote nature of the island, its citizens were used to constant power rationing, outages and a high dependency on diesel generators. The installation of the microgrid, however, provides a cost-saving alternative to diesel, and the island’s core services such as the local hospital, schools and police stations don’t have to worry about outages or rationing anymore.

“It’s always sunny out here, and harvesting that energy from the sun will make me sleep a lot more comfortably at night, just knowing I’ll be able to serve my customers,” said Keith Ahsoon, a local resident whose family owns one of the food stores on the island.

The power from the new Ta’u microgrid provides energy independence for the nearly 600 residents of the island. The battery system also allows the residents to use stored solar energy at night, meaning energy will always be available. As well as providing energy, the project will allow the island to significantly save on energy costs and offset the use of more than 109,500 gallons of diesel per year.

With concerns over climate change and the effects the heavy use of fossil fuels are having on the planet, more initiatives are taking off to prove the power of solar energy, whether it is SolarCity fueling an entire island or Bertrand Piccard’s Solar Impulse plane flying around the world on only solar energy.

Obviously Ta’u island’s location off the West Coast means it is in a prime location to harness the Sun’s energy, which wouldn’t necessarily work in the UK. Having said that, this is an exciting way to show where the future of solar energy could take us if it was amplified on a larger scale.

The project was funded by the American Samoa Economic Development Authority, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior, whilst the microgrid is operated by the American Samoa Power Authority.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/island-tau-solar-energy-solarcity

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

New solar power team creates supercritical steam that can drive the world’s most advanced power plant turbines

On By A.P.In Advanced Solar Steam Receiver Project, Kebmodee, Solar Energy, solar power1 Comment

A team of solar thermal engineers and scientists at the Energy Centre in Newcastle have used the ample sunlight flooding their solar fields to create what’s called ‘supercritical’ steam – an ultra-hot, ultra-pressurised steam that’s used to drive the world’s most advanced power plant turbines – at the highest levels of temperature and pressure EVER recorded with solar power.

They used heat from the sun, reflected off a field of heliostats (or mirrors) and concentrated onto a central receiver point to create the steam at these supercritical levels. The achievement is being described in the same terms as breaking the sound barrier, so impressive are its possible implications for solar thermal technology.

Put simply, the temperature of the steam they created (570° C) is about twice the maximum heat of your kitchen oven – or around the point where aluminium alloy would start melting. And the accompanying pressure (23.5 megapascals) is about 100 times as high as the pressure in your car tyres, or roughly what you’d experience if you were about 2 kilometres under the surface of the ocean.

That’s all impressive in itself. But when you take into consideration that this is the first time solar power has ever been used to create these ‘supercritical’ levels on this scale – traditionally only ever reached using the burning of fossil fuels – the real worth of this achievement begins to sink in.

Solar thermal, or concentrating solar power (CSP) power plants have traditionally only ever operated at ‘subcritical’ levels, meaning they could not match the efficiency or output of the world’s most state of the art fossil fuel power plants.

Enter the Advanced Solar Steam Receiver Project. To prove that solar thermal technology can match it with the best fossil fuel systems, they developed a fully automated control system which predicts the heat delivered from every mirror (or heliostat), allowing them to achieve maximum heat transfer, without overheating and fatiguing the receiver. With this amount of control, they were able to accurately recreate the temperature and pressures needed for supercritical success.

So instead of relying on burning coal to produce supercritical steam, this method demonstrates that the power plants of the future could be using the zero emission energy of the sun to reach peak efficiency levels – and at a cheaper price.

Thank to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

http://csironewsblog.com/2014/06/03/our-solar-team-sets-a-hot-and-steamy-world-record/

Desert Farming Experiment Yields First Results

On By A.P.In arugula, Desert, desert farming, farming, Food, Joakim Hauge, Kebmodee, Qafco, Qatar, Sahara Forest Project, seawater greenhouse, Solar Energy, solar power, Yara InternationalLeave a comment

desert farming

A project to “green” desert areas with an innovative mix of technologies—producing food, biofuel, clean water, energy, and salt—reached a milestone this week in the Gulf state of Qatar. A pilot plant built by the Sahara Forest Project (SFP) produced 75 kilograms of vegetables per square meter in three crops annually, comparable to commercial farms in Europe, while consuming only sunlight and seawater. The heart of the SFP concept is a specially designed greenhouse. At one end, salt water is trickled over a gridlike curtain so that the prevailing wind blows the resulting cool, moist air over the plants inside. This cooling effect allowed the Qatar facility to grow three crops per year, even in the scorching summer. At the other end of the greenhouse is a network of pipes with cold seawater running through them. Some of the moisture in the air condenses on the pipes and is collected, providing a source of fresh water.

One of the surprising side effects of such a seawater greenhouse, seen during early experiments, is that cool moist air leaking out of it encourages other plants to grow spontaneously outside. The Qatar plant took advantage of that effect to grow crops around the greenhouse, including barley and salad rocket (arugula), as well as useful desert plants. The pilot plant accentuated this exterior cooling with more “evaporative hedges” that reduced air temperatures by up to 10°C. “It was surprising how little encouragement the external crops needed,” says SFP chief Joakim Hauge.

The third key element of the SFP facility is a concentrated solar power plant. This uses mirrors in the shape of a parabolic trough to heat a fluid flowing through a pipe at its focus. The heated fluid then boils water, and the steam drives a turbine to generate power. Hence, the plant has electricity to run its control systems and pumps and can use any excess to desalinate water for irrigating the plants.

The Qatar plant has also experimented with other possibilities such as culturing heat-tolerant algae, growing salt-tolerant grasses for fodder or biofuel, and evaporating the concentrated saline the plant emits to produce salt.

The Qatar plant—which is supported by Qatari fertilizer companies Yara International and Qafco—is just 1 hectare in extent with 600 square meters of growing area in the greenhouse. The fact that this small greenhouse produced such good yields, Hauge says, suggests that a commercial plant—with possibly four crops a year—could do even better. SFP researchers estimate that a facility with 60 hectares of growing area under greenhouses could provide all the cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and egglants now imported into Qatar. The results “reveal the potential for enabling restorative growth and value creation in arid land,” Hauge says. “I personally think that it is very important that people promote and invest in these ideas. Protected agriculture (I call it “indoor food production”) is an important option for the desert areas, particularly in the Middle East,” says Richard Tutwiler, director of the Desert Development Center at the American University in Cairo. “The big question is economic feasibility. How much did it cost to produce 75 kg of cucumbers per square meter?”

SFP is now engaged in studies aimed at building a 20-hectare test facility near Aqaba in Jordan. “This will be a considerable scaling up from the 1 hectare in Qatar,” Hauge says, and big enough to demonstrate commercial operation.

http://news.sciencemag.org/asiapacific/2013/11/desert-farming-experiment-yields-first-results

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

New Solar Plant in Arizona Powers 70,000 Homes Day Or Night

On By A.P.In Abengoa Solar, Arizona, Arizona Public Service, energy, Mojave desert, Patrick Dinkel, Ray Gaudette, renewable energy, salt battery, Science, Solar Energy, solar power, Solyndra, South Africa, The Future, U.S. Department of EnergyLeave a comment

solar power

Outside Phoenix, Ariz., on Wednesday, a power company turned on one of the largest solar power plants of its kind in the world. But unlike other solar farms, this plant continues giving power to 70,000 Arizona households long after the sunset.

The Solana plant uses 3,200 mirrors that are tilted so they focus the sun’s rays to heat a specially-designed oil. That boils water, which drives turbines and generates electricity. Or, the oil can heat giant tanks of salt, which soak up the energy. When the sun goes down, or when households need more power, the hot salt tanks heat up the oil, which again boils water to drive the turbines.

Whereas conventional solar panels only give power when the sun is up, these giant salt batteries give renewable energy on demand. They can store six hours-worth of energy, which can meet the demands of Arizona customers, according to months of test data.

“That’s the sort of thing you can do with a conventional gas plant that no one had envisioned doing with renewables,” says Patrick Dinkel, vice president of resource management for Arizona Public Service, which is Arizona’s largest utility company.

The company has already bought the power from this plant for the next 30 years, to add to the state’s goal of generating 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025. The plant does mean higher energy bills for APS customers — an extra $1.28 per month for the first five years, $1.09 per month for the next five, and then 94 cents per month after that, according to the company. Dinkel says the state won’t see a lot more of these plants soon because that would cost too much.

“Right now natural gas wins that race (for cheap power,)” Dinkel says. “The challenge is no one knows what those economics look like in five years.”

The U.S. Department of Energy lent Abengoa Solar, the Spanish company that built that plant as well as Europe’s first solar thermal power plant, $1.4 billion, out of the $2 billion price tag. It’s the same program that financed Solyndra, a solar panel firm that went bankrupt in 2011. But this is a different kind of investment, says Armando Zuluaga, general manager of Abengoa Solar. He points out the company already has a public utility buying their output for the next 30 years, so the government will get its money back with interest.

“There’s no market risk here,” Zuluaga says. “It’s just about getting the plant built.”

This won’t be the last we hear of Abengoa Solar and this technology. The company is building a similar, though smaller plant in the Mojave desert in California, which will come online next year, as well as plants in South Africa.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/11/232348077/in-ariz-a-solar-plant-that-powers-70-000-homes-day-or-night

Thanks to Ray Gaudette for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency

On By A.P.In Berlin, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Germany, Kebmodee, Science, Solar Energy, solar power, World RecordsLeave a comment

solar cell

German Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Soitec, CEA-Leti and the Helmholtz Center Berlin announced today that they have achieved a new world record for the conversion of sunlight into electricity using a new solar cell structure with four solar subcells. Surpassing competition after only over three years of research, and entering the roadmap at world class level, a new record efficiency of 44.7% was measured at a concentration of 297 suns. This indicates that 44.7% of the solar spectrum’s energy, from ultraviolet through to the infrared, is converted into electrical energy. This is a major step towards reducing further the costs of solar electricity and continues to pave the way to the 50% efficiency roadmap.

Back in May 2013, the German-French team of Fraunhofer ISE, Soitec, CEA-Leti and the Helmholtz Center Berlin had already announced a solar cell with 43.6% efficiency. Building on this result, further intensive research work and optimization steps led to the present efficiency of 44.7%.

These solar cells are used in concentrator photovoltaics (CPV), a technology which achieves more than twice the efficiency of conventional PV power plants in sun-rich locations. The terrestrial use of so-called III-V multi-junction solar cells, which originally came from space technology, has prevailed to realize highest efficiencies for the conversion of sunlight to electricity. In this multi-junction solar cell, several cells made out of different III-V semiconductor materials are stacked on top of each other. The single subcells absorb different wavelength ranges of the solar spectrum.

“We are incredibly proud of our team which has been working now for three years on this four-junction solar cell,” says Frank Dimroth, Department Head and Project Leader in charge of this development work at Fraunhofer ISE. “This four-junction solar cell contains our collected expertise in this area over many years. Besides improved materials and optimization of the structure, a new procedure called wafer bonding plays a central role. With this technology, we are able to connect two semiconductor crystals, which otherwise cannot be grown on top of each other with high crystal quality. In this way we can produce the optimal semiconductor combination to create the highest efficiency solar cells.”

“This world record increasing our efficiency level by more than 1 point in less than 4 months demonstrates the extreme potential of our four-junction solar cell design which relies on Soitec bonding techniques and expertise,” says André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé, Soitec’s Chairman and CEO. “It confirms the acceleration of the roadmap towards higher efficiencies which represents a key contributor to competitiveness of our own CPV systems. We are very proud of this achievement, a demonstration of a very successful collaboration.”

“This new record value reinforces the credibility of the direct semiconductor bonding approaches that is developed in the frame of our collaboration with Soitec and Fraunhofer ISE. We are very proud of this new result, confirming the broad path that exists in solar technologies for advanced III-V semiconductor processing,” said Leti CEO Laurent Malier.

Concentrator modules are produced by Soitec (started in 2005 under the name Concentrix Solar, a spin-off of Fraunhofer ISE). This particularly efficient technology is employed in solar power plants located in sun-rich regions with a high percentage of direct radiation. Presently Soitec has CPV installations in 18 different countries including Italy, France, South Africa and California.

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-world-solar-cell-efficiency.html

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

Electricity-Generating, Transparent Solar Cell Windows

On By A.P.In California NanoSystems Institute, Engineering, Inventions, Jody Troupe, Nano Renewable Energy Center, polymer solar cell, Science, Solar Energy, solar power, The Future, UCLA, Yang YangLeave a comment

ucla-transparent-solar-windows-537x373

A team from UCLA has developed a new transparent solar cell that has the ability to generate electricity while still allowing people to see outside. In short, they’ve created a solar power-generating window! Described as “a new kind of polymer solar cell (PSC)” that produces energy by absorbing mainly infrared light instead of traditional visible light, the photoactive plastic cell is nearly 70% transparent to the human eye—so you can look through it like a traditional window.

“These results open the potential for visibly transparent polymer solar cells as add-on components of portable electronics, smart windows and building-integrated photovoltaics and in other applications,” said study leader Yang Yang, a UCLA professor of materials science and engineering and also director of the Nano Renewable Energy Center at California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI). “Our new PSCs are made from plastic-like materials and are lightweight and flexible. More importantly, they can be produced in high volume at low cost.”

There are also other advantages to polymer solar cells over more traditional solar cell technologies, such as building-integrated photovoltaics and integrated PV chargers for portable electronics. In the past, visibly transparent or semitransparent PSCs have suffered low visible light transparency and/or low device efficiency because suitable polymeric PV materials and efficient transparent conductors were not well deployed in device design and fabrication. However that was something the UCLA team wished to address.

By using high-performance, solution-processed, visibly transparent polymer solar cells and incorporating near-infrared light-sensitive polymer and silver nanowire composite films as the top transparent electrode, the UCLA team found that the near-infrared photoactive polymer absorbed more near-infrared light but was less sensitive to visible light. This, in essence, created a perfect balance between solar cell performance and transparency in the visible wavelength region.

UCLA Develops Electricity-Generating, Transparent Solar Cell Windows

Thanks to Jody Troupe for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

Are we on the cusp of a solar energy boom?

On By A.P.In Cadmium-Telluride cells, Christoph Steitz, energy, photovoltaic cell, Ray Gaudette, Solar Energy, solar power, Stephen Jewkes, Technology, The Future, U.S. Department of EnergyLeave a comment

Solar_graphsolar

Solar power is getting much easier to store — and at a much cheaper price

The total solar energy hitting the Earth each year is equivalent to 12.2 trillion watt-hours. That’s over 20,000 times more than the total energy all of humanity consumes each year.

And yet photovoltaic solar panels, the instruments that convert solar radiation into electricity, produce only 0.7 percent of the energy the world uses.

So what gives?

For one, cost: The U.S. Department of Energy estimates an average cost of $156.90 per megawatt-hour for solar, while conventional coal costs an average of $99.60 per MW/h, nuclear costs an average of $112.70 per MW/h, and various forms of natural gas cost between $65.50 and $132 per MW/h. So from an economic standpoint, solar is still uncompetitive.

And from a technical standpoint, solar is still tough to store. “A major conundrum with solar panels has always been how to keep the lights on when the sun isn’t shining,” says Christoph Steitz and Stephen Jewkes at Reuters.

But thanks to huge advancements, solar’s cost and technology problems are increasingly closer to being solved.

The percentage of light turned into electricity by a photovoltaic cell has increased from 8 percent in the first Cadmium-Telluride cells in the mid-1970s to up to 44 percent in the most efficient cells today, with some new designs theoretically having up to 51 percent efficiency. That means you get a lot more bang for your buck. And manufacturing costs have plunged as more companies have entered the market, particularly in China. Prices have fallen from around $4 per watt in 2008 to just $0.75 per watt last year to just $0.58 per watt today.

If the trend stays on track for another 8-10 years, solar generated electricity in the U.S. would descend to a level of $120 per MW/h — competitive with coal and nuclear — by 2020, or even 2015 for the sunniest parts of America. If prices continue to fall over the next 20 years, solar costs would be half that of coal (and have the added benefits of zero carbon emissions, zero mining costs, and zero scarcity).

Scientists have made huge advances in thermal storage as well, finding vastly more efficient ways to store solar energy. (In one example, solar energy is captured and then stored in beds of packed rocks.)

Lower costs and better storage capacity would mean cheap, decentralized, plentiful, sustainable energy production — and massive relief to global markets that have been squeezed in recent years by the rising cost of fossil fuel extraction, a burden passed on to the consumer. All else being equal, falling energy prices mean more disposable income to save and invest, or to spend.

The prospect of widespread falling energy costs could be a basis for a period of strong economic growth. It could help us replace our dependence on foreign oil with a robust, decentralized electric grid, where energy is generated closer to the point of use. This would mean a sustainable energy supercycle — and new growth in other industries that benefit from falling energy costs.

Indeed, a solar boom could prove wrong those who claim that humanity has over-extended itself and that the era of growth is over.

Thanks to Ray Gaudette for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

http://news.yahoo.com/cusp-solar-energy-boom-075000286.html

13 year old Aidan Dwyer makes breakthrough in solar power

On By A.P.In Child Geniuses, Science, Solar EnergyLeave a comment

Aidan Dwyer did a much better job on his 7th grade science project than any of us. While on a wintertime hike in the Catskills, he noticed the branches of trees held a spiral pattern as they ascended. He wondered if that could possibly serve some purpose, looked into it, and learned about the Fibonacci sequence, which is a mathematical way of describing a spiral. Then he studied tree branches more closely and found their leaves adhered to the sequence. Then he figured out that if he arranged solar panels the way an oak tree arranged its leaves, they were 20 to 50 percent more efficient than the standard straight-line solar arrays. That is why the American Museum of Natural History gave him a Young Naturalist award, and published his findings on its website.

http://www.amnh.org/nationalcenter/youngnaturalistawards/2011/aidan.html

His write-up concludes:

The tree design takes up less room than flat-panel arrays and works in spots that don’t have a full southern view. It collects more sunlight in winter. Shade and bad weather like snow don’t hurt it because the panels are not flat. It even looks nicer because it looks like a tree. A design like this may work better in urban areas where space and direct sunlight can be hard to find.

Not bad for a kid who hasn’t started high school yet. 

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/08/13-year-old-looks-trees-makes-solar-power-breakthrough/41486/

More Efficient Solar Energy

On By A.P.In Solar Energy, Technology1 Comment

Shown here is an artifical leaf that has been engineered to execute photosynthesis 10 times more efficiently than a real leaf.  It’s a stable and inexpensive advanced solar cell, no bigger than a playing card, that uses sunlight to split water into oxygen and hydrogen.  Oxygen and hydrogen are then stored in a fuel cell to produce electricity.  This artifical leaf can operate continuously for 45 hours with no loss of activity, and when floating in a single gallon of water it produces enough electricity to power a small house for an entire day.

Thanks to Kedmobee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

Read about it at the links below:

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/issues/2009/may/theartificialleaf.asp

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/artificial-leaf/