MidNite Solar - Renewable Energy System Electrical Components and E-Panels. Shed Light on Corporate Political Spending - Union of Concerned Scientists Union of Concerned Scientists Skip to main content Shine a Light on Corporate Political Spending Recent UCS research found that many companies obstruct climate action through their trade and business associations with no disclosure and accountability to policy makers, the public, or even their own shareholders. The public deserves to know who is influencing policies that affect our health and safety. The SEC rule would require publicly traded companies to disclose more about their political spending, including their support for trade and business associations. Help amplify the demand for transparency in policy making and urge the SEC to prioritize passage of this disclosure rule. Please make your letter personal by adding in your own thoughts and concerns. Learn more by reading our Tricks of the Trade report. If you take action and have not already registered, you will receive periodic updates and communications from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Simple Solar Homesteading - Home Energy bill expected to favour nuclear and gas over renewables | Environment The energy bill is likely to favour fossil-fuel sources like gas, for which power stations can be built quickly and cheaply. Photograph: Chris Ratcliffe/Getty Images A dash for gas, a major fillip for nuclear power and blows to renewable energy – these are widely expected to be the contents of the government's much-anticipated draft energy bill, the main contents of which will be outlined by ministers in the afternoon. The nuclear industry is expected to be one of the big winners, with a set of policies designed to favour low-carbon power – which will, controversially, include atomic energy as well as renewable sources such as wind and solar. But renewable companies are concerned that they will lose out, because the current system of subsidies will be replaced with a complex new system of support that could favour big companies over their smaller rivals. This new system – known as contracts for difference – would allow companies to sign long-term contracts to supply electricity.
Big Solar News Thin-film solar panels that can be printed in high-throughput processes could make solar as cheap as electricity from the grid. Or at least that has long been the promise. But while the panels have shown quite a bit of promise in the lab, they’ve been very difficult to make reliably at a large scale. But now one company, San Jose, CA-based Nanosolar, has started to ship printed solar panels. It’s still too early to tell whether the company can meet its goal of producing cells at $1 a watt, and the company isn’t yet disclosing the technical specifications of the panels, except under a nondisclosure agreement. The company is marking the occasion by auctioning off the second commercial solar panel to come off its line.
TECH.BLORGE.com » Blog Archive » New technology offers hope of viable solar energy The First World, and increasingly the Second and Third Worlds, need electricity, and lots of it. Unfortunately a lot of the world relies on coal to fuel electricity generation, which is relatively cheap, but does generate a lot of pollution. Sure nuclear energy produces less atmospheric pollution, but there are safety issues and of course there’s the question of how to dispose of the waste. The only problem with solar power is that solar cells based on current technology are very inefficient, being only able to convert around 15% of sunlight into electricity. However, a new solar cell, recently announced by the US Department of Energy (DOE), might change this situation. The technology was demonstrated by Boeing-Spectrolab, and verified by DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. “This solar cell performance is the highest efficiency level any photovoltaic device has ever achieved,” said Dr.
Global Solar Energy to Produce Thin-Film Solar Cells in Berlin Tucson, Arizona, and Berlin, Germany [RenewableEnergyAccess.com] Global Solar Energy, Inc., plans to invest approximately Euro 30 million [US$39 million] to set up a production facility for thin-film solar cells in Germany. The facility, which will be built at the Berlin-Adlershof science and technology park, will have a production capacity of about 30 megawatts (MW). Global Solar Energy announced that capacity at its site in Tucson, Arizona, will be expanded from its current level of 4 MW to 40 MW. Production is scheduled to commence at the Berlin facility in the first half of 2008. Global Solar Energy uses copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) in the manufacture of its thin-film solar cells, which is not reliant on silicon.
Corn’s Day in the Sun It’s highest priority for national policy to have alternatives to (your choice): a) importing as much oil as we do from the places we get it; b) putting more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere; c) both of the above. Everybody agrees. Corn to ethanol is well-represented in congressional lobbies as just such an alternative and is getting a lot of money. Silicon Valley VCs invest in it; President Bush wants to increase funding for it; tax breaks make ethanol-laced fuel more competitive than it would otherwise be. But is it a good way to achieve whichever noble goal you chose? Some people say more energy goes into making a gallon of ethanol from corn than you get out of it. The questions really are how much of the energy from the sun which falls on an acre of land do we harvest when we make and use ethanol and is there some better way to harvest and use that energy. So, if you owned an acre of farmland (or desert land), would you plant it in corn or in solar arrays?
Actions By "T" SOLAR POWER At the equator, the Sun provides approximately 1000 watts per square meter on Earth's surface. Solar power is the technology of obtaining usable energy from the light of the Sun. Solar energy has been used in many traditional technologies for centuries and has come into widespread use where other power supplies are absent, such as in remote locations and in space. Solar energy is currently used in a number of applications: Energy from the Sun Map of global solar energy resources. Solar radiation reaches the Earth's upper atmosphere at a rate of 1366 watts per square meter (W/m2).[1] The first map shows how the solar energy varies in different latitudes. The second map shows the average global irradiance calculated from satellite data collected from 1991 to 1993. After passing through the Earth's atmosphere, most of the sun's energy is in the form of visible and Infrared radiations. Types of technologies Many technologies have been developed to make use of solar radiation. Solar cooking
The Global Environmental Community - Nature and Technology in Harmony Posted on 27 April 2007. Our original intention is posting “Stossel’s Myths” about global warming was to agree with him in principle, but question one of his outlandish claims. In his ABC News post of April 20th entitled “Global Warming Myths,” citing sources, Stossel believes it would take 1,000 acres of photovoltaic array to power the daily operations at Epcot Center at Disneyland Florida, when if fact it would only require 100 acres of photovotaic arrays, even at a paltry output of 10 watts per square foot and an average 8 hour (full sun equivalent) day. Florida is sunnier than average, last time I checked. Stossel based his PV bashing on calculations that we find completely valid except for the fact he dropped a digit somewhere, therefore decreasing the cost-effectiveness of photovoltaics by one order of magnitude. Certainly an order of magnitude is worth revisiting data on photovoltaic output, wouldn’t you say? That is a safe assumption.
Solar Decathlon is shining example of American ingenuity By Allison Baker, USA TODAY WASHINGTON — As the last truck pulls away and the hardhats come off, 20 solar-powered houses built by university students and associates from around the world will open to the public Friday on the National Mall. The Department of Energy challenged students in the third biennial Solar Decathlon to build their own 800-square-foot homes that offer the style and comfort consumers want and the energy efficiency the world needs. Through Oct. 20, more than 100,000 people are expected to visit the houses that students from the USA, Canada, Germany and Spain have designed, constructed, transported and rebuilt for the competition. The houses "have to be aesthetically pleasing, architecturally stunning, and it has to work," decathlon director Richard King says. Walking down this "solar street" is like a glimpse into the future. Every house is its own electrical conductor. Share this story:
Inside Bay Area - Innovalight uses nanotechnology to improve solar cells Conrad Burke, the CEO of Innovalight, walked into a room with a small solar cell in one hand and a bottle of black liquid in the other. He's betting that liquid will revolutionize the solar panel industry and help his company grab a big share of the booming green energy market. The liquid is silicon ink, a secret nanotechnology recipe it developed that the company says lets it make solar cells that are more efficient than current models, at a lower price. "We have embarked upon ... a new frontier of silicon," said Burke, who joined Innovalight as president and chief executive in 2005. Innovalight came out of stealth mode last week. The company, based in Santa Clara, intends to start selling its solar cells in 2009. It'll enter a booming market. Much of that development is coming from Silicon Valley companies, including SunPower, Nanosolar, MiaSole, Solyndra, SoloPower and others. That combination of new, affordable technology makes Innovalight interesting to the Department of Energy.
Technology Review: Solar without the Panels Investors and utilities intent on building solar power plants are increasingly turning to solar thermal power, a comparatively low-tech alternative to photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight directly into electricity. This month, in the latest in a string of recent deals, Spanish solar-plant developer Abengoa Solar and Phoenix-based utility Arizona Public Service announced a 280-megawatt solar thermal project in Arizona. By contrast, the world’s largest installations of photovoltaics generate only 20 megawatts of power. In a solar thermal plant, mirrors concentrate sunlight onto some type of fluid that is used, in turn, to boil water for a steam turbine. The appeal of solar thermal power is twofold. Solar thermal developers also say that their power is more valuable than that provided by wind, currently the fastest-growing form of renewable energy. In fact, the capacity to store energy is critical to the economics of the solar thermal plant.