Duke Energy has a few small obstacles to get past before it can move forward with its plan. The company is offering 100 million dollars to any company that can supply the necessary materials, panels, and labor for the project. They hope to get started in early 2009. In addition to finding a supplier, they must also gain the approval of the North Carolina Utilities Commission. It seems likely though that they will obtain approval in the next few months, given the considerable amount of public interest in clean energy projects.

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If you own a big-screen TV, you may have some inkling about the amount of energy that goes into powering it. And while LCD TV’s use significantly less energy than plasma screens, these power-suckers are still nothing to scoff at.

Fortunately, television manufacturers are beginning to realize that rising energy costs mean they have to address this problem. Sharp is presenting their environmentally-friendly way of watching TV at the IFA electronics show in Berlin. The company is also one of the biggest solar panel manufacturers in the world, and it believes that a single panel can provide enough energy to power an LCD TV for four and a half hours a day with no extra electricity from the grid.

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Morgan Solar, a Toronto-based company launched last summer, believes it has the answer to creating simple and cheap solar concentrators.

While other companies are working to make solar cheaper by using mirrors or lenses to magnify sunlight that is directed into solar cells, Morgan Solar takes a different approach. Their system uses a thin sheet of acrylic to concentrate sunlight 750 times. The sunlight is directed to a tiny cell on the edge of the plastic, greatly reducing the amount of material needed.

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Photo courtesy of Sunrise Solar Corp.

Solar power—is there anything it can’t do? British scientists have found a new use for solar technology with the Sahara Forest Project, a proposed plan to combine greenhouses that use seawater to grow crops with solar power installations.

The greenhouse-solar power combination could potentially provide food, fresh water and energy to deserts.

According to the project’s designers, the technology works by having greenhouses use solar farms to power seawater evaporators. Cool air is pumped through the greenhouses, reducing the temperature by about 15 C compared to outside.

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The renewable energy tax credits for wind, solar and other clean energies is set to expire on Dec. 31.

The delay in extending those credits is hindering plans for new renewable energy projects. A study by Navigant Consulting, for example, warns that letting the tax credits expire could jeopardize $19 billion in renewables investment, as well as threaten 112,000 jobs in the clean-energy sector.

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Greenpeace USA rolled through my town, Bloomington, Indiana this weekend as part of its national tour to showcase solar energy. Rolling Sunlight will visit 50 communities across the nation talking to people and filming their own comments on how global warming is affecting their lives or will affect their children’s lives.

Their schedule for the next few weeks follows; the tour will proceed through October 16th where it will end in Washington, DC.

• 9/2 Columbus, OH
• 9/5 Phoenixville, PA
• 9/7 Philadelphia, PA
• 9/10 Elmira, NY
• 9/12 Oneonta, NY

The presence at these events consists of a 26-ft. biodiesel-fueled truck, a video camera, and an “action tent”, plus 256 square feet of solar panelsupplying enough energy to power three homes. At the action tent visitors can learn more about global warming by viewing videos and write a postcard to their local representatives to pressure them to act on climate change legislation.

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This past week was an eventful one for thin-film solar companies Nanosolar and AVA Solar , which received a total of over $400 million in funding.

Nanosolar, which took in $300 million, has now raised nearly half a billion dollars of capital. The company plans to use the money to expand thin-film solar panel production at its San Jose and Berlin factories.

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The reason for the long wait? Israel’s state solar incentives just kicked in on July 1st. They allow home and industrial customers to receive NIS 2.01 per kWh for electricity produced. Household power plants are limited to 15 kW, and business plants are limited to 50 kW.

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Japan’s biggest shipping company – Nippon Yusen KK – is going to be working with Nippon Oil Corp to develop solar panels capable of partially powering their vessels.

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Of course, a solar-powered sun roof does not provide nearly enough energy to power an entire car. It might be enough to keep some ventilation fans blowing, but it couldn’t fully recharge a car’s battery during a single day.

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• Mitsubishi Chemical already produces materials for the solar industry but sees opportunity to produce the cells themselves
• Sanyo is an established producer of crystalline solar cells, but has opened an Advanced PV Development Center in Gifu, Japan to concentrate on developing thin film technology.

This is good news for solar energy advocates, as these companies have the capital and the knowledge base to ramp up production more rapidly than startups, while increasing efficiency and cost savings. According to Sanyo’s Makoto Tanaka:

“‘Our target date for volume production was 2012, but in order to move that up, we’ve decided to invest an additional US $14 million,’ said Tanaka, bringing total investment … to some US $70M through 2010. He noted that the production ramp should be eased because part of the new process is very similar to that already used in Sanyo’s mainstay heterojunction with intrinsic thin-layer (HIT) cells, which sandwich a single-crystal silicon substrate between layers of amorphous silicon thin films.”

Sadly, the United States is not one of the countries competing on this scale with Sanyo and Mitsubishi, who see their main competition coming from China and India. Though the U.S. company Nanosolar has been a leading innovator in thin film, and Open Energy is making big inroads in the production of Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) modules using thin film tech, they are still comparatively small players in the space, along with FirstSolar. Let’s hope that the U.S. steps up to provide the kind of legislative support that U.S. companies need to move forward at a faster pace in developing new solar technologies.

Image Credit: Ovonic.com

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Solar Thin-film Ready to Ramp Up Production?

Solar power usage is growing in the United States, Europe, and Australia, but what about developing areas that don’t even have access to basic electricity? Now that University of NSW PhD student Nicole Kuepper has developed a cheap and simple way of producing solar cells in a pizza oven, these areas might get a chance to use solar power too.

Photovoltaic cells are generally expensive to produce and require large manufacturing plants. But Kuepper’s technology needs relatively low-cost items such as ovens, ink-jet printers, and nail polish. Her iJET solar cells also use a low-temperature process.

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State regulators in Colorado have given the green light to plans by Xcel Energy to shut down two coal-powered energy plants in the state, and build one of the world’s largest utility-scale solar-power facilities.

Following discussions lasting several days, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) backed the power company’s voluntary decision to close the two coal-fired plants at Denver and Grand Junction, making Xcel the first utility in the U.S. to make such a move solely in an effort to reduce emissions.

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Essentially, the organization uses the power of community as a bargaining chip to make solar more accessible to homeowners.

With this initial solar campaign, 1BOG was able to negotiate up to 48% off 2 kW solar systems from the market price for its participants. According to 1BOG Founder and Managing Partner Sylvia Ventura, 2 kW is the average size of a home-based solar system in San Francisco.

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That’s the plus that Fuel Outdoor Holdings LLC is bringing to Miami. Through its subsidiary, Fuel Miami LLC, the New York-based OOH media (that’s “out-of-home” advertising) company is installing 600 solar-powered bus shelters throughout the city. Under the 20-year arrangement, Miami gets the shelters for free and Fuel gets a place to display its customers’ ads, no electrical outlets required.

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Solar-powered clothing could be the next big trend for environmental enthusiasts. Researchers at North Carolina State University have designed a process called digital textile printing that makes it possible for solar panels to be fitted into jackets and ties.

The wearable solar panels act much like batteries when energized. With a consistency similar to paper, the panels shouldn’t weigh its wearers down too much.

However, the researchers did find problems with the neck tie: the solar panels make it extremely difficult to tie knots. They propose using a clip-on tie to remedy this problem.

The research team’s tie design contains a cell-phone pocket and 3.6V plug-in. And no, the solar clothing doesn’t create any dangerous electric shocks.

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