PhotoVoltaics

Success greets the research team of National Research Council's National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) and the University of Alberta. The plastic solar cells have now an operating life of 8 months instead of mere hours. And they are low-cost, environmentally efficient, unsealed plastic dollar cells - a green energy source. Developing economically viable plastic solar panels and to produce them in large scale has been the long time goal for the scientists as the cost of ultra high-purity silicon used in the traditionally manufactured solar cells is quite prohibitive. These are the solar cells of future - to be available to common man easily. A University of Alberta-NINT team has been focusing on this for quite some time. 8 Comments

Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have come out with positive news about increased efficiency of thin-film solar cells. As we know that scientists are trying to increase the efficiency of the solar cells so that they can be considered as serious alternative to the fossil fuels. Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) too are working at this angle. They opted for the computer simulations to probe deeper into the indium/gallium combination to increase the efficiency of Copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS) thin-film solar cells. Till now CIGS has shown only about 20% efficiency though theoretically they can attain the efficiency levels of 30%. 1 Comment

There has been research work going on to increase the efficiency of the cost-effective amorphous solar panels. TU Delft has been the center where this research work is being developed. The research will directly help in increasing the efficiency of amorphous solar cells - from a 7% to a 9%. Crystalline silicon is most commonly used in silicon solar cells which increases the production cost quite significantly. There is a more economical type of solar panels using amorphous silicon using rather thin films of silicon. The production cost is comparatively less with these panels. 3 Comments

Thermo-photovoltaic (TPV) cells are great for converting radiation from any heat source to power. These cells can generate power from the wasted heat which gets released when glass or steel is produced. Adding these TPV cells to domestic power systems can help generate power along with heating water. TPV systems are also too complex for everyday use. Both of these reasons have made the TPV systems beyond industrial and domestic consumer routine set-up. 3 Comments

The ultimate step in utilizing solar power is to convert maximum energy from sun into electricity. This will make solar power highly cost-advantageous compared to other traditional power sources. Capturing energy wasted as heat from the sun can increase solar conversion efficiency greatly. Research funded by the U.S. Department of Energy is on-going to make this happen. 2 Comments

Japan's Sanyo Electric Company is creating a record by powering the largest solar pant in Italy with its HIT solar cells. The Project funded by a consortium led by Deutsche Bank is expected to be completed by September 2010. Sanyo is successfully on its way to make the dream of a clean-energy society a reality. 1 Comment

The chances of producing solar power as a more commercially viable source of alternative energy seem brighter now with the positive research results pioneered by University of Illinois professors. The Department of Energy and National Science Foundation-funded team led by Professors John Rogers, and Xiuling Li, has been exploring ways to find more optimal ways to reduce the cost of semiconductors other than silicon. 10 Comments

In a market-friendly scenario, Nanosolar claims to be able to produce electricity at 5-6 cents/kilowatt hour almost as cheap as power from coal and at about one-third the cost of other solar power. Nanosolar claims: Nanosolar claims mass production of solar power will now become feasible with their differently manufactured solar panels. Conventional silicon-made solar panels have a stiff competitor from CIGS semiconductor printed solar panels - composed of copper, gallium, indium and selenium - which perform as good as conventional solar panels in lab conditions. An inexpensive printing process makes it ideal for mass production by an automated facility with robots and other hi-fi equipment. 10 Comments

We love the idea of clean and green fuel. But they come with certain disadvantages. First one is they are heavy on pocket of a commoner. Second disadvantage is their power conversion rate is quite low. Last one is you need storage space to save all the power converted by a clean and green technology. Now MIT researchers are coming out of solar cells printed on paper. Though the technology still has to wait for years before it can be converted into a commercially viable entity but it’s an interesting development. 7 Comments

Imagine a greenhouse that is producing solar power and food too. This excellent experiment is being done in Italy. The companies responsible for this project are Renewable energy company Solar ReFeel, CeRSAA and solar panel manufacturer Solyndra. The test site has been constructed at CeRSAA’s Albenga, Italy. The project intends to attain the production of both food and electricity. The research team also wants to validate the crop growth benefits of Solyndra's technology by taking help of independent testing by a leading agricultural research institution. 5 Comments

Researchers at Wake Forest University's Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials are trying to achieve source of clean and green power through pokeberries! Pokeberries could be helpful in making solar power accessible to many. Nanotech Center scientists have extracted the red dye from pokeberries to paint their efficient and low-cost fiber-based solar cells. The dye acted in a desirable manner. It acts as an absorber, helping the cell's minute fibers entrap more sunlight to convert into power. 6 Comments

Solar energy is present in abundance around us. The problem is how to harness a substantial portion of it for human use. How to raise the efficiency bar of solar conversion into electricity? Scientists are continuously engaged in finding a way out for this problem. Recently scientists at the Kyoto Institute of Technology have deviated from the normal path and tried to trap the visible as well as invisible rays of sun for electricity. They tried to create a new photovoltaic cell that can capture visible, infrared and ultraviolet light of the sun. The team now thinks that this photovoltaic will be highly efficient for solar power conversion. 5 Comments

Solar panels need silicon for absorption of light. Silicon doesn't come cheap.This cost-factor is preventing people from using solar energy on a large scale. Scientists utilize another substance i.e. ruthenium for solar cells. Rutheniumcan is cheaper than silicon but ruthenium is a rare metal on Earth. It is as rare as platinum. Naturally it can't be available for mass production. Compared to silicon, carbon is cheap and abundant. The graphene, another form of carbon, is capable of absorbing a wide range of light frequencies. 2 Comments

Conventional solid-state solar cells are suffering from the problem of the bandgap voltage limitation. Scientists are trying to capture more and more of sunlight and convert it into electricity. If scientists are able to increase the efficiency of the conversion rate that will put solar energy into fossil fuel league minus its undesirable effects. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researchers have found a mechanism to deal with the problem of bandgap voltage limitation. In the language of solid state physics, a bandgap is also known as an energy gap. It is the amount of energy needed to release an outer shell electron from its orbit to become a mobile charge holder. This electron can move freely within the solid material. In conductor materials, the two bands often overlap, so they may not exhibit a huge bandgap. 3 Comments

Science continues to amaze and one of the latest discoveries may literally change the world as we know it. This tiny solar-powered sensor can fit on the face of a penny and barely cover up the date. How this little wonder, developed at the University of Michigan, is able to create the power of something 1,000x its size is amazing, and because of this, the applications are quite numerous. When devices like this come to light, one of the first things that anyone thinks of is the effect that they will have on the medical community. Many implants require some type of power source and if a solar-powered sensor can be used to power then, it changes everything that we currently rely on or know in regards to this implants. 10 Comments

As the world continues its quest to use less fossil fuels, the latest possible solution comes from the most unlikely of sources: the tobacco plant. This latest news comes from the University of California, Berkeley. It will be nice to see tobacco used for something other than lung cancer. This new discovery is based on the possibility of literally programming the cells of the plants to get solar cells from tobacco plants. The science behind it is actually pretty simple (at least in explanation form) and pretty amazing. By using a genetically engineered virus, scientists were able to literally transform the cells of the plants to create synthetic solar cells. 13 Comments

What can a scientist do with salad dressing apart from telling you that it increases the taste of salad manifold? But that’s the beauty of this profession. As Newton could give some theories when he saw an apple falling from a tree, salad dressing can inspire scientists towards a brand new type of solar cells. The researchers managed to create a cheap, efficient and very simple method of making solar cells. The USP of these solar cells is that they self-assemble on a variety of substrates. The new technique draws parallel from the fact that oil and water don’t mix at all. Another unique fact is forces the elements of electronic components for example solar cells assemble themselves at the boundaries between the two types of liquids. This work was recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). 7 Comments

Tiny, glitter-sized solar cells have been developed by the Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories. It might turn out to be the perfect alternative energy preference for the holiday season. This project is funded by the American government. The dimensions of the snowflake sized crystalline-silicon photovoltaic cells are merely 14-20 micrometers thick and measure 0.25 to 1 millimeters across i.e. only 10% as thick as regular ones. They also consume an estimated 100 times less silicon to produce the same amount of electricity compared to standard solar cells. Their efficiency level is 14.9%. 6 Comments

Robins has time and again been considered as a pioneer in testing alternative energy technologies. Recently they have installed a solar panel which is a matter of curiosity. Their installed solar panel assumes the dimensions of a drive-in-movie screen. It is the shining example of the state-of-the-art technology. At peak hour it generates 25 kilowatts of electricity. 7 Comments

You can think of it as origami -- very high-tech origami. Researchers at the University of Illinois are working on the same good old silicon but they are taking an entirely different route. They are working on thin films of silicon applying two processes one is photolithography and another is self-folding process driven by capillary interactions. This technique results in the three-dimensional, single-crystalline silicon structures. Their films are only a few microns thick. Their greatest strength is mechanical bendability that is not possible with thicker pieces of the same material. 2 Comments