Alternative Energy / Solar Energy

• Is the Solar Energy Bubble Finally Bursting?

  My recent post about the costs of Germany’s policy of subsidizing solar energy inspired predictable attacks by true believers in a future powered by solar energy. I was criticized for citing the German magazine Spiegel, a center-right popular magazine. Well, I cited Spiegel for certain facts, and if you don’t believe Spiegel, perhaps you will believe the reputable environmentalist writer Mark Lynas, whose sources are German government statistics. (And if you think Lynas is discredited because he supports GMOs and nuclear energy, even as he thinks global warming is real and dangerous, then you cannot be reasoned with.)Lynas writes:Solar continued…

• Falling Solar Costs Drive Increase in Number of Large Scale Solar Installations

  Rob Wile uses a graph to point out the obvious, the dramatic fall in the cost of solar power generation. In many countries– Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal — and in parts of the US such as the Southwest, solar is at grid parity. That means it is as inexpensive to build a solar plant as a gas or coal one. The pace of technological innovation in the solar field has also accelerated, so that costs have started falling precipitously and efficiency is rapidly increasing. By 2015, solar panels should have fallen to 42 cents per kilowatt. Reneweconomy.com says that the…

• MIT Create Solar Cells that Beat the Shockley-Queisser Efficiency Limit

  The Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit asserts that the ultimate solar cell conversion efficiency can never exceed 34% for a single optimized semiconductor junction.  Researchers at MIT have shown they have a way to blow past that limit.  That will raise a cheer to an industry in real need of a major boost.Coated Solar Cell Illustration. Image Credit: Christine Daniloff at MIT.Decades of research on solar cells have considered Shockley-Queisser an absolute limit to the efficiency of such devices in converting sunlight into electricity. The MIT work published last week in a report in the journal Science, co-authored by graduate students including…

• Never Mind Oil, Libya could Supply Europe with Solar Power

  A few years back, an article appeared in the Tripoli Post outlining Libya’s energy prospects for Europe. What made the article different, however, was its focus on solar power rather than oil as the Libyan asset appealing to European clients across the sea.It’s not often one hears about Libya’s energy portfolio outside of oil and gas. Since the discovery of oil in 1959, Libya’s economic progress has been driven by hydrocarbon profits. Typically, oil and gas wealth has represented up to 90% of Libya’s income. Nonetheless, renewable energy has been a part of Libya’s energy policy since the 1970’s. Libya’s…

• Buffett Rumor Boosts Beleaguered Suntech

  After filing for bankruptcy and seeing its stock fall 40% when it default on $541 million in bonds, Chinese equity Suntech Power Holdings Co. (STP) has rallied on rumors that Warren Buffett may buy the company. Suntech’s rally brought other languishing Chinese solar companies along with it at it rose 0.4% to 89.44 at the close of trading in New York on 8 April. According to Bloomberg, after falling 40% following the default, Suntech rose as much as 28% after a Hong Kong news service said Buffet’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. might buy the Chinese manufacturer. No one’s quite sure…

• Solar Industry Finally Producing More Energy than it Consumes

  The electricity generated by solar photovoltaic panels has probably just surpassed the amount of energy used to make them, researchers say.The rapid growth of the solar power industry over the past decade may have exacerbated the global warming situation it was meant to soothe, simply because most of the energy used to manufacture the millions of solar panels came from burning fossil fuels. For the first time since the boom started, the electricity generated by all of the world’s installed solar photovoltaic (PV) panels last year probably surpassed the amount of energy going into fabricating more modules, according to Michael…

• Making Recyclable Solar Cells from Trees

  Fabricating new plant-based solar cells on cellulose nanocrystal substrates means that they’re recyclable in water.The researchers report that the organic solar cells reach a power conversion efficiency of 2.7 percent, an unprecedented figure for cells on substrates derived from renewable raw materials.The cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) substrates on which the solar cells are fabricated are optically transparent, which lets light pass through them before being absorbed by a very thin layer of an organic semiconductor.During the recycling process, the solar cells are simply immersed in water at room temperature. Within minutes, the CNC substrate dissolves and the solar cell can be…

• Suntech Bankruptcy Bad News for Solar

  Chinese equity Suntech Power Holdings Co. (STP) filed for bankruptcy last week, with its stock falling 40% after it defaulted on $541 million in bonds, and this having a snowball effect on solar stocks, with other Chinese solar companies plunging.   Solar stocks are extremely volatile right now and unable to deal with the combination of oversupply and declining demand at a time when government subsidies are being slashed. Suntech’s bankruptcy is the straw that is breaking the solar camel’s back. This week, China-based solar wafer maker LDK Solar Co. (LDK) saw its stocks plunge 15% riding the wave of volatility…

• Study Finds Libya has More Solar Resources than Oil

  Libya could generate approximately five times the amount of energy from solar power than it currently produces in crude oil, research by Nottingham Trent University shows.A study led by the university’s School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment found that the oil-rich nation could generate enough renewable power to meet its own demand and a “significant part of the world energy demand by exporting electricity”.Libya is located on the cancer orbit line and is exposed to the sun’s rays throughout the year with long hours during the day. It has an average daily solar radiation rate of about 7.1…

• New Super Thin Solar Cell Reduces Silicon Wastage by 95%

  Erik Marstein, head of the Norwegian Research Center for Solar Cell Technology, head of Research for the solar cell unit at the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) at Kjeller outside of Oslo, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Oslo (UiO) with Professor Aasmund Sudbø in the Department of Physics at UiO are developing the next generation of solar cells to be twenty times thinner than current solar cells.Marstein explains the background with, “The most obvious way ahead is to make very thin solar cell slices, without increasing costs. The thinner the solar cells…