According to team-leader Professor Zhong Lin Wang, “Using this technology, we can make photovoltaic generators that are foldable, concealed and mobile. Optical fibre could conduct sunlight into a building’s walls where the nanostructures would convert it to electricity. This is truly a three dimensional solar cell.”
SOLARIG, a company based in Spain that incorporated about four years ago, just began construction of eight photovoltaic parks in Italy this month. The parks will provide 8 MW of energy in total. Over the next few months, it plans to construct photovoltaic projects producing 30 MW throughout different regions of Italy.
But this is just the beginning. SOLARIG has a more global vision.
Eskom, the South African state owned electricity generator, recently announced that it has budgeted a billion dollars over the next ten years for a demonstration and pilot concentrated solar power (CSP) plant. However, moving from budget to implementation is proving more difficult!
Why Concentrated Solar Power
Two of the widely used alternatives for collecting the suns energy are the concentrated solar power (CSP) plant where sunlight is focussed on a receiver in which a circulating working fluid is heated and used as the heating media for a conventional power station and the photo voltaic (PV) plant where sunlight is converted directly into electrical energy.
Just the other day, I wrote that it was a great time to go solar, especially due to the great rebates and discounts on solar technology. Apparently, I jumped the gun and was a few days early. A new report by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab — “Tracking the Sun II: The Installed Cost of Photovoltaics in the US from 1998-2008” — shows a significant decrease in solar costs over the last ten years and shows that now is a great time to go solar.
Suddenly, “green business” is a little low on green and high on business. Companies that were built to take on Big Oil are now sharpening their elbows in the lobbying fight to make sure that the bottom line does not fall victim to grid enhancements that are built out by someone else.
A Chinese company set a new world record in solar power efficiency this week. According to the company, Suntech Power Holdings, they achieved a 15.6% conversion efficiency on “a commercial grade multi-crystalline silicon PV module.” This breaks a 15-year-old world record set by US company Sandia National Labs.
There’s been a lot of negativity around the solar space in recent weeks because it has been hard going for some companies. And I don’t want to belittle their pain – manufacturers have big stockpiles and if they’re publically listed their share price is down; project developers can’t get bank finance or government cash fast enough, despite the stimulus; and installers may be seeing some consumer sentiment dropping in places.
But please don’t think that’s all she wrote. The future of photovoltaics is bright as the sun!
Just for one example of how serious a contender PV is becoming, consider Spain. Right now that beautiful country is copping a lot of blame because of changes in the incentive structure that have led to a major drop in solar sales there, large and small. Indeed, little old Spain is being held responsible for most of the oversupply currently being experienced by the PV manufacturing industry, which I think could be seen differently…
Exciting developments are occurring in solar PV (photovoltaic) power generation. New technologies are improving manufacturing processes. Thin-film and organic (plastic) films promise to reduce PV power cost. Solar “grid parity,” the time when solar power will cost the same as fossil fuel power, is coming soon.
Solon SE will establish the facility at its Padua warehouse and truck-loading complex, generating an output of up to 15 megawatts when the sun is at its brightest.
