Solar records are broken left and right. We can’t cover them all, of course, but try to cover the big ones. Recently, researchers ar Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, set a pretty big one. They increased the solar cell efficiency record of flexible solar cells made of copper indium gallium (di)selenide (aka CIGS) from 17.6% to 18.7%, a pretty significant increase.
“Solar power may be cheaper than electricity generated by fossil fuels and nuclear reactors within three to five years because of innovations, said Mark M. Little, the global research director for General Electric Co. (GE),” Bloomberg reports.
In order to advance solar technology and the competitiveness of U.S. solar companies, a whole slew of U.S. solar industry players have banded together to form the U.S. Photovoltaic Manufacturing Consortium (PVMC). Its founding members were announced on Friday.
A lab at MIT, led by Dr. Daniel Nocera, have invented a new and novel form of storing energy that may prove to be an important milestone in the development of alternative energy. In fact, the obvious utility of the process has engendered a bit of excitement, but this excitement has also generated some misconceptions about the process that I would like to clear up, now that I have a more complete understanding of how it works.
California-based HyperSolar has developed a solar panel film that, using “cutting edge photonics techniques,” can move specific light spectra to the places they are needed most in order to increase solar panel efficiency. Using this film instead of traditional solar panel film, efficiency can reportedly be increased 300%!
Solar energy is an extremely popular technology in the US. But, still, only a tiny fraction of the population uses it. Some reasons for that that I’ve discussed in the past are high costs (which are nearly irrelevant for many people now due to generous government subsidies, a decade of … [continued]
If you are a regular CleanTechnica reader, you’ve noticed that we’ve gone through a major site redesign in the last week or so. As time moves one, innovation and better design is a natural (for things people care about). People clearly care a lot about solar power and I think … [continued]
[social_buttons] A new monitoring system from California startup SunReports allows for in-depth but simple monitoring of your solar technology. There are numerous environmental and long-term economic reasons to use solar technology, but once you have solar installed, how do you know what it is actually accomplishing? As its homepage says, … [continued]
[social_buttons] Total Transit already operates the largest Toyota Prius taxi fleet in the nation, but it has just “cleaned up” its operations a lot more by installing 400 solar panels (at a cost of $750,000) on the roof of its headquarters in Glendale, Arizona. Total Transit is the parent company … [continued]
India has been a bit of a wild card on climate change and clean tech issues. Like China (but not to the same extent), India made the Copenhagen climate negotiations more of a challenge, reluctant to commit to internationally binding targets and international transparency. One day they weren’t willing, then … [continued]
