Billionaire, Tesla founder, and private space entrepreneur Elon Musk announced yesterday that Solar City, the solar installation company where he is chairman, plans to acquire a startup called Silevo for $200 million (plus up to $150 million more if the company meets certain goals). And with typical bravado, he also said that the company plans to build a huge factory to produce Silevo’s high-efficiency solar panels, a strategy he claims will make solar power “way cheaper” than power from fossil fuels.
For roughly two decades, the most efficient silicon solar cells in the world used a structure invented in Australia at the University of New South Wales. This week, in a packed conference room at the IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference in Denver, Panasonic gave details for the first time about a new structure that allows silicon solar cells to surpass that efficiency, setting a new world record and possibly pointing the way to cheaper solar power that can compete widely with fossil fuels.
The world’s most efficient solar cells are twice as efficient as the ones people put on their roofs, but hardly anyone uses them because the semiconductor materials they’re made of are so expensive. That could be about to change.
Ali Javey, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, has found a far cheaper way to manufacture these better-performing semiconductors. This advance could lower the cost of high-efficiency solar cells, potentially making them as cheap as conventional ones. Javey says the new process could be a “game changer” for solar cells.
Les énergies renouvelables s'imposent progressivement, à mesure de l'aggravation du réchauffement climatique. Parmi elles, l'énergie solaire, qui reste toutefois limitée par le coût élevé des panneaux photovoltaïques et leur rendement relativement faible. Des chercheurs de l'Institut Weizmann travaillent à la création de cellules photovoltaïques très efficaces, faciles à produire et assez économiques pour pouvoir être installées sur tous nos toits. Le secret de ces futurs panneaux solaires : le pérovskite [1]. Ce matériau ressuscite l'espoir de voir l'énergie solaire finalement devenir une alternative crédible aux énergies fossiles pour la production d'électricité.
What if an entire isolated community received all of its power needs from the sun? A remote island off of Africa is about to find out – and the project could be a game changer for solar.
“Ninety-nine percent of solar projects have solar panels dumping [all of their power] into the grid,” Darren Hammell told VentureBeat. He’s co-founder and Chief Strategic Officer of Princeton Power Systems, which, along with GE Power & Water and MAECI Solar, has been chosen by the national government of Equatorial Guinea to build a five-megawatt solar microgrid for the island.
Solar power needs to get cheaper to compete with fossil fuels.
The world’s most efficient solar cells are twice as efficient as the ones people put on their roofs, but hardly anyone uses them because the semiconductor materials they’re made of are so expensive. That could be about to change.
a ville de Turlock, au coeur de la vallée centrale de Californie, a inauguré le 23 mai la première centrale solaire couplée à une batterie en flux redox. La technologie a été développée par la société Enervault dont le siège se situe à Sunnyvale dans la baie de San Francisco. Cette société, créée en 2008, a pour objectif de fournir des solutions de stockage des énergies intermittentes (solaire, éolien) en vue de répondre aux pics de consommation du réseau électrique.
With tens of thousands of miles of solar-power generating roads, parking lots, sidewalks and other open spaces–without needing to clear space in untouched, natural areas–it seems like an ideal, if expensive solution.
It’s one that’s caught the public’s imagination though. The company proposing the idea, Solar Roadways, has smashed its Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign target of $1 million.
It is often overlooked that British Petroleum (BP) was among the commercial solar energy pioneers and one of the largest fully integrated photovoltaics companies. Following the 1970s oil crises, BP built its subsidiary BP Solar. But in 2011, in the wake of changing policy regimes, falling module prices and fierce competition, BP Solar was closed. However, before these developments occurred the company had a “solar business case.” This paper shows how this business case was realised and how BP tried to maintain it. BP’s annual reporting from 1998 to 2011 was studied by means of software-supported text analysis.
When the world’s largest solar thermal power plant—in Ivanpah, California—opened earlier this year, it was greeted with skepticism. The power plant is undeniably impressive. A collection of 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, focus sunlight on three 140-meter towers, generating high temperatures. That heat produces steam that drives the same kind of turbines used in fossil-fuel power plants.
