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Don't worry. Boeing is funding it!
The govt. needs to get off their azzes and fund this..1-2 million homes by 2015 is a joke.
New World Record Achieved in Solar Cell Technology
New Solar Cell Breaks the “40 Percent Efficient” Sunlight-to-Electricity Barrier
WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner today announced that with DOE funding, a concentrator solar cell produced by Boeing-Spectrolab has recently achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7 percent, establishing a new milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance. This breakthrough may lead to systems with an installation cost of only $3 per watt, producing electricity at a cost of 8-10 cents per kilowatt/hour, making solar electricity a more cost-competitive and integral part of our nation’s energy mix.
“Reaching this milestone heralds a great achievement for the Department of Energy and for solar energy engineering worldwide,” Assistant Secretary Karsner said. “We are eager to see this accomplishment translate into the marketplace as soon as possible, which has the potential to help reduce our nation’s reliance on imported oil and increase our energy security.”
Attaining a 40 percent efficient concentrating solar cell means having another technology pathway for producing cost-effective solar electricity. Almost all of today’s solar cell modules do not concentrate sunlight but use only what the sun produces naturally, what researchers call “one sun insolation,” which achieves an efficiency of 12 to 18 percent. However, by using an optical concentrator, sunlight intensity can be increased, squeezing more electricity out of a single solar cell.
The 40.7 percent cell was developed using a unique structure called a multi-junction solar cell. This type of cell achieves a higher efficiency by capturing more of the solar spectrum. In a multi-junction cell, individual cells are made of layers, where each layer captures part of the sunlight passing through the cell. This allows the cell to get more energy from the sun’s light.
For the past two decades researchers have tried to break the “40 percent efficient” barrier on solar cell devices. In the early 1980s, DOE began researching what are known as “multi-junction gallium arsenide-based solar cell devices,” multi-layered solar cells which converted about 16 percent of the sun’s available energy into electricity. In 1994, DOE’s National Renewable Energy laboratory broke the 30 percent barrier, which attracted interest from the space industry. Most satellites today use these multi-junction cells.
Reaching 40 percent efficiency helps further President Bush’s Solar America Initiative (SAI) goals, which aims to win nationwide acceptance of clean solar energy technologies by 2015. By then, it is intended that America will have enough solar energy systems installed to provide power to one to two million homes, at a cost of 5 to 10 cents per kilowatt/hour. The SAI is also key component of President Bush’s Advanced Energy Initiative, which provides a 22 percent increase in research and development funding at DOE and seeks to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil by changing the way we power our cars, homes and businesses.
For more information, visit the Solar America Initiative website at: http://www.eere.energy.gov/solar/solar_america/.
Media contact(s):
Chris Kielich, (202) 586-5806
From 1999 - The 1999 Australia Prize
Dean's Awards 2004
Awarded for Excellence in the Field of Energy Science and Technology*
* Please note: This article was written in 1999, and some of the information contained therein may be outdated.
The Race For Solar Cell Efficiency
The winners of the 1999 Australia Prize offered in the field of Energy Science and Technology, Professor Martin Green and Professor Stuart Wenham, say a switch from fossil fuel-generated power to solar power is inevitable because of changes to the world's climate caused by the Greenhouse Effect.
Professor Green and Professor Wenham, of the University of New South Wales, have held the world record for solar cell efficiency for more than a decade and worldwide sales of products using their innovative technology are expected to total billions of dollars over coming decades.
Green and Wenham point to the fact that forty four per cent of Australia's Greenhouse gas production comes from burning fossil fuels for electricity production and say that photovoltaics offers clean electricity to a world grasping for ways to counter Greenhouse.
Photovoltaics are ideally suited to meet the power needs of the two billion people on Earth who presently have no access to electricity.
Before Green and Wenham's ground-breaking work on solar cells in the 1980s, the technology had been in stagnation for more than 20 years with the world's best solar cells converting only 15 per cent of sunlight into electricity. This was thought to be the highest efficiency that practical cells could achieve.
Last year, cells produced by the Green and Wenham team at University of New South Wales' Photovoltaics Special Research Centre achieved 24.5 per cent efficiency, the current world record by a large margin.
Professor Green is the Director of the Centre, and Professor Wenham is the Director of the University's Key Centre of Teaching and Research in Photovoltaics.
The awarding of the 1999 Australia Prize to Martin Green and Stuart Wenham represents only the second time in the ten year history of the Prize that it's been won by an all-Australian team. This is an indication of the pair's dominance in the world of photovoltaic research.
Green and Wenham's research into photovoltaics has not followed trends set overseas. "We've been exploring our own ideas," says Green. "The work that led us to first break the world efficiency record for solar cells involved an unconventional cell design: the buried contact cell. We got ahead of the rest of the world by doing something completely different."
Martin Green established a research program in photovoltaics in 1974 at the University of New South Wales, and soon attracted international attention for his theoretical and laboratory work.
However it wasn't until the company, Tideland, decided to set up a solar cell manufacturing facility in Sydney in 1980 that the results of this work on solar power moved out of the laboratory and into the energy marketplace.
Tideland employed two of Green's former students at its manufacturing facility. One of them was Stuart Wenham.
Wenham had been interested in solar energy since his high school days. Tideland employed him to establish its production line for solar cells and, in 1982, the company's cells achieved a conversion efficiency of 14.3 per cent, a world record at the time for a commercially-produced solar cell.
Meanwhile, Martin Green had become focused on what was termed the "four minute mile" of his field - to produce the first silicon cell capable of converting 20 per cent of incident sunlight energy into electricity, an efficiency then thought to be the absolute limit for solar cells.
Through fundamental research, Green determined that this limit arose from a specific energy loss mechanism in existing cells. To appreciate the significance of this insight, it is necessary to understand the internal workings of a solar cell.
A solar cell is made of a semiconductor, usually silicon, which absorbs sunlight. During absorption, the energy from the sunlight rips free electrons from atoms within the silicon. These energised electrons - electricity - then flow to the negative contact in the cell and from there move through a connected wire to which an electrical appliance can be attached. Electrons passing through an appliance give up their power and then flow back to the positive metal contact in the solar cell, returning to the atoms from which they were released. This process is endlessly repeated.
In his fundamental work in the early 1980s, Green found that the energy loss that limited the performance of silicon solar cells occurred when a photo-excited electron gave up its energy to a neighbour, which was unable to use it in the photovoltaic process to create electricity. Based on this insight, Green predicted that solar cells could eventually achieve an efficiency of 30 per cent. The problem was at that stage solar cells were still less that 20 per cent efficient.
Enter Stuart Wenham, who joined Martin Green in 1983, to begin what has become one of the most productive collaborations in Australian science.
Interestingly, some of the pair's best work came in the hours following their gruelling, twice weekly games of squash. "We'd grind each other into near exhaustion on the squash court," says Wenham. "And after the game, we'd flake out in our chairs and have these great brain storming sessions. They were extremely productive and led to a lot of good ideas. We both find squash a bit demanding these days so we have lunch together instead. That's where we brainstorm now."
Squash may not be a required subject towards a science degree, but perhaps it should be because, in 1983, Green, Wenham and their team boosted the highest independently confirmed solar cell efficiency from 16.4 per cent to 18 per cent.
Soon after, Stuart Wenham began exploring the use of lasers to etch patterns on the surface of a solar cell to reduce light reflection. The work resulted in cells with sophisticated surface geometries, which, in 1985, saw the UNSW team report the production of the world's first 20 per cent efficient solar cell. Green and Wenham had achieved their "four minute mile" and, in doing so, had focused world attention on the Photovoltaics Special Research Centre at the University of New South Wales.
The 20 per cent cell incorporated geometric surface structures based on Wenham's earlier work, a double layer of anti-reflection coating, a thin layer of oxide along the top surface and a smaller contact area to improve the output voltage. The device proved relatively easy to manufacture and is now extensively used on spacecraft and in solar car racing.
Prior to this breakthrough, in 1983, Wenham and Green stumbled on a process which would result in the most successfully commercialised photovoltaic device: the buried contact solar cell.
Like so many advances in science, the buried contact solar cell was something of an accident. One afternoon, Wenham was screen printing metal lines to form contacts on a new type of solar cell that had laser scribed groves running perpendicular to the metal lines. During this process, he found that the viscosity of the metal paste he was using was lower than usual, causing it to ooze down into the grooves in the wafer, rather than bridge across them. "That led us to the idea that relocating the metal contact to within the grooves could solve the limitations imposed by the conventional screen printing approach," says Wenham.
The buried contact solar cell soon achieved efficiency close to 20 per cent - compared with the 14 per cent efficient screen printed cell - and it was no more difficult to make.
Tideland bought licensing rights to the buried contact technology in 1985 and, in the same year, BP Solar purchased Tideland and with it the rights to commercialise the buried contact technology.
Buried contact solar cells, which have dominated some of the major solar car races across the world over the past decade, produce up to 30 per cent more energy than competing technologies. They are 20 per cent cheaper to produce and, last year, they became the largest manufactured solar cell technology in Europe.
Evidence of the superiority of the cells came during the 1993 Sunrayce, a solar car race across the United States in which all leading commercial cell technologies were used. Approximately half of the teams chose to use buried contact solar cells fabricated by BP Solar under licence to the University of New South Wales. Nine of the top ten place getters, including the top five went to teams using buried contact solar cells.
The cells have seen BP Solar emerge from relative market obscurity to international leadership in solar energy sales and the technology has been licensed to many of the world's largest solar manufacturers.
The early 1980s were a very productive time for the UNSW team. In 1984, Green suggested changes to the backs of solar cells which he said might increase their internal light reflectance and thus increase their "light trapping" ability.
The University of New South Wales team spent years improving the contacts at the rear of cells and, in 1995, reported a record 21.5 per cent efficiency for a solar cell of a thickness of only 47 microns - about the diameter of a human hair. The cell had demonstrated a light trapping ability equivalent to a device 50 times its thickness.
Green and Wenham have invented, or co-invented, seven distinct cell technologies over the past 15 years. In 1990, their group once again broke their own world efficiency record with a cell that achieved efficiencies of 23.2 per cent. This cell featured a surface of inverted pyramids to reduce reflection, improve internal light trapping, and was almost completely covered by oxide, with small area contacts on both the front and rear surfaces.
In 1996 the Honda Dream car, powered by these cells, established a new solar race record averaging speeds of 90 kph. The experience gained through building the "Dream" cells enabled the University of New South Wales team last year to increase silicon cell efficiency to 24.5 per cent, the current world record for cell efficiency.
With the commercialisation of their buried contact solar cell well advanced, 1987 saw Green and Wenham start work on a long term project to develop the next generation of low cost solar cells.
This was a technology which incorporated a thin film of multilayered cells set on a solid base. "The holy grail of photovoltaic research has long been to successfully deposit a thin film of solar cells onto a cheap substrate," says Martin Green.
"Other researchers had tried a variety of exotic and expensive materials for use in this thin film technology, but these efforts have problems with the availability and toxicity of these materials," he says. "We decided to simply choose the material we wanted to use and we then looked at how to make a high performance cell using that material."
Green and Wenham chose silicon, the material used in most photovoltaic cells. "We knew a lot about silicon, it's a benign material, and it's the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust after oxygen," says Green.
The resulting technology incorporates buried contact technology with the use of several parallel electricity collection junctions, which allow the whole cell to be active regardless of the material quality. The different layers of silicon are deposited uniformly over a large glass sheet, which is partitioned into individual cells.
The University of New South Wales and Pacific Power formed a company - Pacific Solar - in 1995 to commercialise this multilayer technology, and the establishment of the company's production line is well advanced.
Pacific Solar believes its multilayer cells will be priced to allow a dramatic increase in the number of solar powered residences.
The current cost of powering a house with solar panels is about $30,000, the major expense being the silicon wafers in the solar cells. "Our success in depositing thin layers of silicon cells onto glass changes the economics of solar power," says Green. "There's no longer a massive material cost. No longer do you make the cell on individual wafers. These large sheets of glass become your production unit and that radically reduces manufacturing costs."
Each of the homes in the Athletes' Village for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games will generate its own electricity using solar cells developed by Green and Wenham. In 2002, Pacific Solar will release a home solar power package which will bring a substantial reduction in price for those buying into the technology.
Stuart Wenham says the economics of solar technology, rather than its efficiency, will be the big issue over the next few years.
The cost of producing one watt of solar electricity is presently about $4. Stuart Wenham points to a number of international studies which show that the photovoltaic industry will grow by between one hundred and one thousand fold bringing the cost of solar power down to $1 per watt.
"I expect that within a few years of our new thin film technology coming onto the market, the cost of solar electricity could drop to $1 per watt," says Wenham. "It's then that I'd expect the photovoltaic industry to reach a critical mass which will see an enormous growth in consumer uptake of the technology.
"The next couple of years will see a tripling of the manufacturing capacity for photovoltaic cells," says Wenham, "And as the market grows, the economies of scale will lead to further price reductions which will further stimulate the market. There is positive feedback in the system. Ultimately, most houses will have photovoltaic cells on their roof tops, perhaps imbedded in their roof tiles, generating most of the electricity they require."
Green and Wenham have invented a roof tile with an imbedded solar cell. The University of New South Wales is collaborating with a Japanese company to commercialise the tile. Stuart Wenham says the uptake of photovoltaics will not be universal. "It will always involve a substantial outlay to put the cells on your roof," he says.
Martin Green predicts that, within 30 years, every new house could be photovoltaically active, and the electricity houses produce will be cheaper than that supplied by coal fired power stations "This technology will become even cheaper over time and, of course, it will be even further refined," he says. "We're now working on photovoltaic technology with an efficiency of 30 per cent, but it's hard to see it getting above that and remaining low in cost."
Martin Green says that as the consequences of the Greenhouse Effect become apparent, they will work to speed up the dawning of the photovoltaics era. "I don't see governments' role in photovoltaics as directly investing in the technology," he says, "but government must encourage commercial interests to invest in the technology through tax breaks, appropriate regulations and other incentives."
Professor Wenham says solar cells' big advantage over conventional forms of power generation is that they produce electricity at times when the demand for electricity is highest - in summer, when air conditioners are in high use, and during the day when industry requires a lot of electricity. "Households equipped with photovoltaics will be able to export their excess electricity onto the grid during the peak demand daylight hours," says Wenham, "And draw electricity from the grid at night."
Stuart Wenham pays tribute to Professor Martin Green: "Martin is the world's most successful photovoltaic researcher," he says. "We work with a team of extremely talented researchers at the University of New South Wales, and there are similar teams around the world working on the same problems we're trying to solve. Martin's leadership has given us the edge over all of them."
Martin Green says his 20 year partnership with Stuart Wenham has been extremely harmonious and productive. "We complement each other well in the way we think about things and provide sounding boards for each other's ideas," he says. "It's very hard to see how any of this would have come about if we hadn't been able to work so well together."
Stuart Wenham says winning the Australia Prize is an absolute thrill. "I was flattered that I was considered worthy to be nominated alongside Martin for the Award," he says. "I'm particularly pleased that the award focuses on those areas of science that promote human welfare."
"The researchers I've worked with over the years are all highly motivated by the opportunity to use science and technology in a way that makes a difference, not only to the environment, but also to those less well off around the world. Many of our research group have been attracted to this work because they believe that it can make a difference."
Martin Green says the winning of the Australia Prize will help advance the commercial credibility of the technology he and Wenham invented.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Professor Martin Green and Professor Stuart Wenham
Before Professor Martin Green and Professor Stuart Wenham's ground-breaking work on solar cells in the 1980s, photovoltaic technology had been in stagnation for more than 20 years with the world's best solar cells converting only 15 per cent of sunlight into electricity. This was thought to be highest efficiency that practical cells could achieve.
Martin Green and Stuart Wenham, from the University of New South Wales, have invented or co-invented seven distinct cell technologies over the past 15 years.
These solar cells have held the world efficiency record for converting sunlight into electricity for more than a decade and last year achieved an efficiency of 24.5 per cent, the current world record by a large margin.
Worldwide sales of products using Wenham and Green's innovative technology are expected to total billions of dollars over coming decades.
Professor Green is the Director of the Photovoltaics Special Research Centre and Professor Wenham is Director of the University's Key Centre of Teaching and Research in Photovoltaics.
The awarding of the 1999 Australia Prize in Energy Science and Technology to Professors Green and Wenham represents only the second time in the ten year history of the Prize that it's been won by an all-Australian team. This is an indication of the pair's dominance in the world of photovoltaic research.
Their Buried Contact Solar Cells have dominated some of the major solar car races across the world over the past decade. The cells produce up to 30 per cent more energy than competing technologies, they are 20 per cent cheaper to produce, and last year they became the largest manufactured solar cell technology in Europe.
Each of the homes in the Athletes' Village for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games will generate its own electricity using solar cells developed by Green and Wenham.
In 2002, Pacific Solar, which is partly owned by the University of New South Wales, will release a home solar power package using thin film multilayered solar cells developed by Green and Wenham. This power package will bring a substantial price reduction for those buying into solar power technology.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Web site addresses - http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/ozprize99/default.htm
BA - BOEING!!! THIS IS HUGE!!!
Boeing Spectrolab Terrestrial Solar Cell Surpasses 40 Percent Efficiency
ST. LOUIS, Dec. 06, 2006 -- Boeing [NYSE: BA] today announced that Spectrolab, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary, has achieved a new world record in terrestrial concentrator solar cell efficiency. Using concentrated sunlight, Spectrolab demonstrated the ability of a photovoltaic cell to convert 40.7 percent of the sun's energy into electricity. The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colo., verified the milestone.
"This solar cell performance is the highest efficiency level any photovoltaic device has ever achieved," said Dr. David Lillington, president of Spectrolab. "The terrestrial cell we have developed uses the same technology base as our space-based cells. So, once qualified, they can be manufactured in very high volumes with minimal impact to production flow."
High efficiency multijunction cells have a significant advantage over conventional silicon cells in concentrator systems because fewer solar cells are required to achieve the same power output. This technology will continue to dramatically reduce the cost of generating electricity from solar energy as well as the cost of materials used in high-power space satellites and terrestrial applications.
"These results are particularly encouraging since they were achieved using a new class of metamorphic semiconductor materials, allowing much greater freedom in multijunction cell design for optimal conversion of the solar spectrum," said Dr. Richard R. King, principal investigator of the high efficiency solar cell research and development effort. "The excellent performance of these materials hints at still higher efficiency in future solar cells."
Spectrolab is reducing the cost of solar cell production through research investments and is working with several domestic and international solar concentrator manufacturers on clean, renewable solar energy solutions. Currently, Spectrolab's terrestrial concentrator cells are generating power in a 33-kilowatt full-scale concentrator system in the Australian desert. The company recently signed multi-million dollar contracts for its high efficiency concentrator cells and is anticipating several new contracts in the next few months.
Development of the high-efficiency concentrator cell technology was funded by the NREL's High Performance Photovoltaics program and Spectrolab.
A unit of The Boeing Company, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems is one of the world's largest space and defense businesses. Headquartered in St. Louis, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems is a $30.8 billion business. It provides network-centric system solutions to its global military, government, and commercial customers. It is a leading provider of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems; the world's largest military aircraft manufacturer; the world's largest satellite manufacturer; a foremost developer of advanced concepts and technologies; a leading provider of space-based communications; the primary systems integrator for U.S. missile defense; NASA's largest contractor; and a global leader in sustainment solutions and launch services.
GWDP ==== One to watch ==== Great management ==== Unique niche
http://www.greenwindpower.com/
Israeli-EU collaboration produces 'green' hydrogen fuel with solar energy
By David Brinn September 11, 2005
Hydrogen, the most plentiful element in the universe, has long been viewed as an attractive candidate for becoming the pollution-free fuel of the future.
However, nearly all hydrogen used today is produced by means of expensive processes that require combustion of polluting fossil fuels. Moreover, storing and transporting hydrogen is extremely difficult and costly.
In a breakthrough that has dramatic implications for energy use worldwide, Israeli researchers have shown that hydrogen fuel can be produced with the help of sunlight - propelling the dream forward of using hydrogen as a 'green' fuel.
The innovative solar technology developed at Weizmann Institute of Science that may offer an environmentally sound solution to the production of hydrogen fuel has been successfully tested on a large scale, and also promises to facilitate the storage and transportation of hydrogen.
The chemical process behind the technology was originally developed at Weizmann on a scale of several kilowatts.
It was then scaled up to 300 kilowatts in collaboration with scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, Institut de Science et de Genie des Materiaux et Procedes - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France, and the ScanArc Plasma Technologies AB in Sweden. The project is supported by the European Union's FP5 program. Results of the experiments were presented last month at the 2005 Solar World Congress of the International Solar Energy Society (ISES) in Orlando, Florida.
"After many years of basic research, we are pleased to see the scientific principles developed at the Institute validated by technological development," said Prof. Jacob Karni, Head of the Center for Energy Research at Weizmann.
"Our presentation was very well attended and received. Our colleagues and people involved in this field know our work very well, added Weizmann project leader Michael Epstein in an interview with ISRAEL21c.
The new solar technology developed by the Israelis and their European colleagues creates an easily storable intermediate energy source form from metal ore, such as zinc oxide.
Using Weizmann facilities, the team used sunlight to heat a metal ore, such as zinc oxide, to about 1,200° Celsius in the presence of charcoal. This split the ore, releasing oxygen and creating gaseous zinc, which was then condensed to a powder. The powder was later allowed to react with water, yielding hydrogen to be used as fuel and zinc oxide, which was recycled in the solar plant.
With the help of concentrated sunlight, the ore is heated to about 1,200°C in a solar reactor in the presence of wood charcoal. The process splits the ore, releasing oxygen and creating gaseous zinc, which is then condensed to a powder. Zinc powder can later be reacted with water, yielding hydrogen, to be used as fuel, and zinc oxide, which is recycled back to zinc in the solar plant. In recent experiments, the 300-kilowatt installation produced 45 kilograms of zinc powder from zinc oxide in one hour, exceeding projected goals.
The process generates no pollution, and the resultant zinc can be easily stored and transported, and converted to hydrogen on demand. In addition, the zinc can be used directly, for example, in zinc-air batteries, which serve as efficient converters of chemical to electrical energy. Thus, the method offers a way of storing solar energy in chemical form and releasing it as needed.
"Now we can store and transport solar energy efficiently as zinc, and then convert it to hydrogen whenever we need it," team member Christian Wieckert of the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland told New Scientist.
The concept of splitting metal ores with the help of sunlight has been under development over the course of several years at the Weizmann Institute's Canadian Institute for the Energies and Applied Research, one of the most sophisticated solar research facilities in the world, which has a solar tower, a field of 64 mirrors and unique beam-down optics.
"We get 2000 times the normal sunlight concentration," said Wieckert.
Weizmann scientists are currently investigating metal ores other than zinc oxide, as well as additional materials that may be used for efficient conversion of sunlight into storable energy.
"Over the next few months, there'll be a continuation of tests to cover different process parameters, and the project will finish at the end of this year. We'll have a final meeting with all the partners in the project," said project leader Epstein. "The duration of the project was four years, but we're actually planning to submit a continuation proposal to the next EU Commission."
Reaction to the Weizmann breakthrough has been enthusiastic to say the least.
"The Israelis may save the world if this technique for producing hydrogen pans out and proves practical," wrote Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan on his influential blog Informed Comment.
According to Epstein, the success of the recent experiments brings the approach closer to industrial use.
"We still need to demonstrate the whole process on a larger scale before it could go to commercialization. That can't be done by us, we've done the largest tests we can with our means. But hopefully, industrialists will take it over and demonstrate it if can work one magnitude larger. If that is shown, and the economics are viable, then I'm sure it could be commercialized," he said, adding that he foresaw the building of a commercial plant in six to eight years.
http://tinyurl.com/blww6
Dubi
Public buildings in Tel Aviv to run on solar energy
By Yuval Azoulay
All Tel Aviv public buildings that are refurbished or expanded will be fitted to run on solar energy, the Tel Aviv municipal council decided this week. This means that in the near future, all public institutions that are under construction, being refurbished or expanded will be required to adapt themselves to operate using giant solar receptor panels that are around 20 sq. meters. Nonetheless, while the greens faction is welcoming the decision and referring to it as "revolutionary," experts are cautioning that this is a costly process that will not significantly change electricity consumption.
The decision was enthusiastically received by the greens faction, whose members can already envision the solar panels installed on the roofs of City Hall, Heichal Hatarbut, the Museum of Art, schools and kindergartens. According to faction chairman and deputy mayor Pe'er Wisner, the process will substantially reduce electricity consumption, which he believes will lead to a drop in air pollution stemming from electricity production
"As a result, the incidence of illness due to air pollution will also drop, and the state's spending on treating such illnesses will be reduced," says Wisner.
The greens are already preparing to set up a special committee of experts in the field of solar energy which will try to make the decision applicable within a few months.
"In some of the tenders issued by the municipality, we will require a solar energy solution," says Wisner. "We will not allow the Planning and Construction committee to approve structures without such systems."
Solar energy is relatively developed in countries around the world such as Japan, Germany, Spain and the United States. Tel Aviv municipality officials feel that what is good for them can also be good for us. Wisner dreams of an environmentally sound vision emanating specifically from polluted Tel Aviv, and one of his first targets is the City Hall building which is slated for renovations soon.
"The east side of the building is the hot side, and there's also a debate over who will have offices there," said one official. "It's very hot on this side even when the air conditioning is on. On this side, for example, we will install special receptors and they will provide all the floors with the energy to run the air conditioning."
However Haim Melamed, director of licensing and supervision at the Ministry of National Infrastructure's electricity administration, cast a shadow over the joy of the greens.
"The electricity production capacity of this type of energy will not exceed 10 percent of total electricity consumption," he said. "Even though it's very nice and trendy technology, it's very complicated."
According to Melamed, the price of solar energy is more expensive than that of the electricity currently supplied, and therefore the municipality's decision will not immediately affect the electricity economy. "However, this does signal a green light for the future, and that's already good," he said.
The Greenpeace organization thinks otherwise. They say that in sun-drenched Israel, solar energy can become feasible and efficient.
"The country has the natural resources to operate this technology," said Nili Grossman, director of Greenpeace's energy campaign. "We have three times as much sun as Germany and there this technology is developed."
According to a Greenpeace report, the widespread use of solar energy will yield a surplus of $181 million for the Israeli economy. According to Grossman, this debunks the "outdated" perception that investment in solar energy is not worthwhile.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/621858.html
Dubi
Shortages Stifle a Boom Time for the Solar Industry
Kristen Schmid for The New York Times
Photovoltaic panels in Mike Dewalt's backyard, near Peoria, Ill., feed solar energy into his home. The solar panels are now in short supply.
American suppliers for the solar energy industry say that burgeoning demand both domestically and overseas, a weak dollar and shortages of raw material have created back orders of several months on electricity-generating photovoltaic, or PV, panels.
"For all the years I've been doing this," said Daryl Dejoy, owner of a solar installation company in Penobscot, Me., "I could get all the solar panels in the world and no customers. Now I have all the customers in the world and no product."
Executives of American solar manufacturers and industry groups say the global solar market has grown roughly 40 percent annually in the last five years, driven in large part by Germany. Under an incentive program championed by that country's Green Party, German businesses and individuals with solar equipment can sell power they create to utilities at above-market rates. The utilities pass the excess cost on to their customers.
"It's giving Germans a solid 15 to 20 percent return on equity," said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, the trade group for the American solar industry. "You're seeing a lot of companies in Germany start venture capital units based on solar farm development. People are even putting panels up on barns."
Germany consumes 39 percent of all solar panels in the world, with Japan next at 30 percent and the United States a distant third at 9 percent.
Germany installed nearly 400 megawatts of solar power last year, Mr. Resch said, while Japan, whose government subsidizes solar energy consumption, installed nearly 300 megawatts. Americans, with far less in subsidies, installed 90 megawatts, most of it in California.
Japan had the greatest total solar power capacity by the end of 2004, at 1,100 megawatts, followed by Germany, with 790 megawatts, and the United States, with 730, said Noah Kaye, spokesman for the solar energy association. The American figure was enough to power about 300,000 homes, however, some 120,000 more than in 2000.
Now the Million Solar Roofs legislation in California, passed by the State Senate and under consideration in the Assembly, would subsidize the installation of solar equipment with a goal of putting 3,000 megawatts of solar energy to work by 2018. Assessments on electricity bills would pay for the subsidies.
California is among many states - New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are others - that already provide subsidies to solar power users. But the scope envisioned by the new California bill, whose enactment appears likely, dwarfs all others.
In addition to the state efforts, the energy measure passed by Congress last week offers a tax credit of up to $2,000 for homeowners who install solar equipment.
But the shortage of solar panels has led to long waits and inconvenience for many Americans who are ready to spend $10,000 to $20,000 for residential solar power systems of 2,000 to 5,000 watts. The shortage has been made worse because photovoltaic electricity is used to power not only homes but also businesses, boats, recreational vehicles, highway signs and cellphone towers.
Mr. Dejoy, of Penobscot Solar, said that for the nation's installers, the situation was "brutal." Even orders that were paid for months ago, he said, had no guaranteed date of delivery or even final price. Recently, a customer who had agreed on an order of several thousand watts balked when Mr. Dejoy told her that a panel supplier had increased the price by a dollar a watt.
Matt Lugar, director of solar sales for the Sharp Electronics Corporation's solar division, in Huntington Beach, Calif., said the supply problems were "a natural evolution in any industry that's exploding."
"There's a lot of panic among our customers who have been in solar for a long time," Mr. Lugar said of the installers. "Prices are rising dramatically. Unfortunately, it's the natural movement of supply and demand."
Until early 2004, Mr. Lugar said, the price of solar panels was dropping as technology advanced. Since then, manufacturers' prices have risen as much as 15 percent, he said, adding that the purified silicon at the heart of solar panels and computer semiconductors alike had also been in extremely short supply.
Mr. Lugar said it was difficult to predict when the industry would be able to meet demand, given a possibility of large subsidy increases in Spain, Italy and Portugal.
But Mr. Kaye, of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said that California's incentives could entice suppliers to increase production for the domestic market.
And his boss, Mr. Resch, said the shortage of customary solar resources provided an opportunity for producers of newer "thin film" solar panels. These panels, which can be rolled up for portability or installed on curved surfaces, are now produced in relatively small quantities by several Silicon Valley manufacturers.
"The solar energy industry is diverse," Mr. Resch said, "and will meet the challenges the market presents."
For now, solar installers like William Korthof of Pomona, Calif., can only lament.
"We're getting unannounced price hikes from suppliers," Mr. Korthof said, "and are seeing a complete inability to forecast when they can ship us product. Last year I had waits of two weeks for panels. This year it's two to three months."
Mr. Korthof said that his business, Energy Efficiency Solar, was installing roughly 25 kilowatts of solar power a month for customers. With a reliable supply, he said, he would be installing 50 or more.
Mike Dewalt, who lives outside Peoria, Ill., said he had waited three weeks for a shipment of solar panels for his home. Several weeks later, Mr. Dewalt said, the supplier told him that four more 120-watt panels he wanted would be at least eight weeks in arriving, and that payment would be required immediately.
Mr. Dewalt said that after calling Northern Arizona Wind and Sun, he had his panels in a week. But Eric Phillips, general manager of that business, said its waiting times had also lengthened.
"I'm probably taking 10 to 20 calls a day for modules I can't supply," Mr. Phillips said.
"Only three to four years ago, solar was a really hard sell - trying to convince people to put a system on their home," he said. "These days, we say, 'I can't get the kinds of numbers you need.' "
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/05/national/05solar.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5035&en=bc0bb5dd44e3...
Dubi
Israel plugs in the sun
By JESSICA STEINBERG
Orionsolar plans to produce inexpensive, flexible solar panels that could be purchased and insulated on roofs, providing enough electricity to run a refrigerator, simple lighting and a television.
Israel needs to know how to use its sunny days. With approximately eight months of sun each year, power derived from sunlight can be a vital resource.
In these parts, the most common use of solar energy is for the solar water heaters on the roofs of residential buildings. But with proliferating concepts for adapting solar energy for other uses, including home heating and lighting, about a dozen companies are creating sun-based technologies and tools.
"There's a real environmental drive behind utilizing solar energy," explains Dave Waimann, managing director of Orionsolar, a solar power startup in Jerusalem's Har Hotzvim business park. "There are all the worldwide issues with carbon dioxide, there's the oil issue, political elements. We need to find ways around the unstable resources." Not surprisingly, several startups are looking to create solar power for use worldwide.
In Israel, as in other developed countries, the electrical generating capacity stands at about 1 kilowatt per capita, according to figures from the Ben-Gurion National Solar Energy Center at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
"There are some one billion people worldwide without electricity," says Waimann, whose company specializes in photovoltaic lighting. "They need some kind of cheap option in order to have light in their houses and to watch TV."
Solar power is generated in two ways: Solar thermal, where the sun's heat is used to heat water or another working fluid, which in turn drives turbines to create electricity; and photovoltaic, where electricity is produced directly from sunlight, with no moving parts. The concept behind photovoltaic lighting is fairly simple. Photovoltaic (or PV) systems convert light energy into electrical energy. Most commonly known as solar cells, simple PV systems are already powering small calculators and wristwatches. More complicated systems provide power for communications equipment, electricity for homes, satellites and space vehicles.
The problem, says Waimann, is that silicon - the material most often used to make PV systems - is too expensive. As a result, solar power is generally more expensive than electricity from coal, oil and other fossil fuels. For now, companies are competing to produce renewable power at a price similar to "traditional dirty sources," Waimann adds. At Orionsolar, the plan is to produce relatively inexpensive, flexible solar panels that could be purchased locally and installed on roofs, providing enough electricity to run a refrigerator, simple lighting and a television. Instead of silicon, they're using dye cell photovoltaics - materials that are cheaper and simpler to produce.
Orionsolar's modules look different than the average system, as they are supplied in long flexible sheets. The main ingredients are nano-particles of titanium dioxide, an ingredient commonly found in toothpaste. One 2-meter-long sheet would produce 160 watts of power per hour, and would cost no more than $200 to the consumer.
"Our dream is that one day a family in Africa can walk into their corner store, buy a solar sheet and install a system that will give them electricity the same day," Waimann emphasizes. "When our technology works, it will allow access to clean, cheap electricity for the billion people who don't have it now."
With global sales of solar cells and modules exceeding $3 billion in 2004, the market is growing at over 25% a year, and strong PV programs in California, Japan and Germany are controlling around 83% of the world market. For now, however, the global race is to produce a cell costing less than $1 per peak watt, with a simple production line.
Orionsolar was founded by Jonathan Goldstein, the company's president and chief scientist, and the inventor of the Orion System with 37 patents to his name. Most of Orionsolar's six employees are chemists and consultants, and the company was initially part of a government incubator.
Now the company is working on a $3 million to $5 million round of investment in order to fund the production line once the initial prototype is completed by 2006.
Waimann said he plans to keep the production line in Jerusalem, given the relatively small size of the product.
"The technology has to make prices drop," says Waimann. "If we succeed, no coal power stations will ever be built again."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1120357174260&a....
Dubi
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