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Heavy Buying Expected! Canadian Solar IPO Comes To Trade Thursday. Symbol To Be Posted Wednesday.
$SNPW Sun Pacific Polar "Solar Power to the People" https://sunpacificsolar.net/
New Solar and EV play. MOCI 3. 5 million floater. Legends Solar
Southern California Cities in :
Riverside
San Bernardino
Orange County
Los Angeles
San Diego
ENERGY STORAGE
ALL OUR SYSTEM INSTALLED ARE FROM OUR VETERAN CREWS THAT HAVE BEEN WITH OUR COMPANY FOR OVER A DECADE. WE ARE LOYAL SO WE CAN PASS ON OUR GREAT EXPERIENCE WITH YOU.
SOLAR
WE HAVING OUR OWN EXPERT CREWS, VEHICLES AND TOOLS. WE INSTALL EVERY SOLAR PROJECT... THAT'S WHY WE'RE KNOWN FOR OUR LEGENDARY QUALITY. NO SUB CONTRACTORS
EV CHARGERS
OUR TIER1 GRADE QUALITY SOLAR EQUIPMENT & ELECTRICAL MATERIALS ARE PURCHASED FROM AMERICAN SUPPLIERS OR NORTH AMERICA MANUFACTURERS FOR EVERY PROJECT. WE SUPPORT AMERICA, AS IT IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO BE.
legendssolar.com
$SIRC GROWING !! - New SIRC COO- MoneyTV with Donald Baillargeon
Brazil gives go-ahead to 31 solar parks in push for new energy
I haven't delved deep into these articles, but if someone can identify any of the public companies associated with this "Solar Energy Auction", it would be much appreciated.
http://www.4-traders.com/ELECNOR-SA-4011267/news/Brazil-gives-go-ahead-to-31-solar-parks-in-push-for-new-energy-19314839/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/31/brazil-solar-auction-idUSL5N0SQ5DD20141031?type=companyNews&feedType=RSS
http://www.bing.com/search?q=brazil+solar+power+auction&form=IE10TR&src=IE10TR&pc=ASU2JS
The Crazy Genius Behind Solar Roadways
http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/25/the-crazy-genius-behind-solar-roadways/
QSolar.Net
Trading symbol is (QSL.CNX)
http://www.cnsx.ca/CNSX/Securities/Cleantech/QSOLAR-Limited.aspx
"QSolar Limited manufactures solar PV panels using a proprietary patented technology
called SPRAYTEK99. The manufacturing process results in significantly
reduced cost for solar panels while maintaining the smallest carbon footprint in the industry"
1= QSolar panels are lightweight, therefore can be installed on roofs which do not support the weight of glass
2= QSolar panels are durable, the panel doesn't scratch or nick and extreme temperatures do not affect
performance or durability, even the heat of the desert
3= QSolar panels can be bent up to 30 degrees so it can be used on the top of a scooter to power the scooter-
4= QSolar panels can be made in any colour
5= QSolar panels can be installed on any substrate- there is no other polymer panel on the market today that
QSolar is aware of
6= QSolar panels are non-toxic and carry a carbon footprint approximately 40 times less than
traditional glass panels.
7= QSolar is currently in TUV SUD and TUV SUD UL testing in the United States.
(Initial results expected in April) then QSolar will make applications without testing for CSA (Canada),
CEC (Australia) and CJT (Japan).
----------------------------
SNRY ===> hot! hot! hot!
SNRY running hard today!!! could run harder tomorrow!!! $$$$$$$
Promising Solar Power Technologies
Sunday, June 29, 2008
New cost effective solar energy products are on the near horizon. Let's take a look at some of the promising ones.
MIT reports prototype solar dish passes first tests.
A team led by MIT students this week successfully tested a prototype of what may be the most cost-efficient solar power system in the world--one team members believe has the potential to revolutionize global energy production.
The system consists of a 12-foot-wide mirrored dish that team members have spent the last several weeks assembling. The dish, made from a lightweight frame of thin, inexpensive aluminum tubing and strips of mirror, concentrates sunlight by a factor of 1,000--creating heat so intense it could melt a bar of steel.
MIT Sloan School of Management lecturer David Pelly, in whose class this project first took shape last fall, says that, "I've looked for years at a variety of solar approaches, and this is the cheapest I've seen. And the key thing in scaling it globally is that all of the materials are inexpensive and accessible anywhere in the world."
Pelly adds that "I've looked all over for solar technology that could scale without subsidies. Almost nothing I've looked at has that potential. This does."
Raw Solar
The website Raw-Solar has this diagram explaining the practical application.
A solar thermal dish reflects the rays of the sun onto a small receiver using specially curved mirrors, concentrating the sunlight 1000 times. The high concentration increases the efficiency of the energy collection by reducing the surface area for thermal losses. A robust tracking system keeps the dish pointed directly at the sun all day, maximizing the available sunlight.
Water is pumped through the receiver where the high intensity sunlight heats it to 212-750F (100-400C), making steam. The steam can then be piped into an existing steam system, such as a district energy system or food processing plant.
What makes this system special vs. its competition is that it can use small flat flexible mirrors that can bend in exactly the right shape to concentrate the reflected sunlight on a precise spot. The materials are all easily produced and the team could put this dish together by hand.
Inquiring minds will want to consider this MIT video demonstration of their solar power dish.
http://techtv.mit.edu/file/1076/?skin=popup&file_type=flv
Following is a photographic clip from the demonstration. In the clip below a wooden beam was held where the rays were being concentrated and it immediately caught fire.
http://www.raw-solar.com/img/media/zenphoto/rawsolar-thermal-dish/6.jpg.php
Hot Thin Roofs
Let's now turn our attention to Hot Thin Roofs.
A new solar energy product, thin enough to be built into shingles, may finally make the technology competitive.
With energy prices soaring, affordable solar power would be welcomed by any entrepreneur looking to trim the electric bill. Trouble is, power generated by the most widely available technology - panels covered with photovoltaic (PV) systems, which translate sunlight into AC current - still costs two to three times more than electricity generated from coal and other fossil fuels. That may be about to change.
Several startups, including HelioVolt in Austin, Miasolé in Santa Clara, Calif., and Nanosolar in Palo Alto, are working on a new technology called flexible thin film that's on the brink of making solar more competitive. Nanosolar has just begun to ship its thin-film solar systems to a German utility.
Made from pliant sheets of foil, the solar panels can be molded onto roof shingles, which are at once more attractive than clunky, heavy glass panels and less expensive to produce. In fact, the cost of making thin film is so much lower than traditional solar panels that experts say it could produce electricity for about the national average of 10.4 cents a kilowatt hour.
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/06/promising-solar-power-technologies.html
invest at your own risk, based on your own due diligence, at your own risk tolerance
The TAN index looks a little better than the one you have posted as an FYI..
SOLAR = $$$$$
A very hot sector for this fine summer season .... green is in ...green is global
(record oil today too, I might add)
so....
Let the SUN SHINE .... Good Luck Friend(s)
JT
and a few others to consider ....
and a "new" solar ETF ... KWT
April 21, 2008
Researchers Boost Silicon Cell Efficiency
Petten, Holland [RenewableEnergyWorld.com]
Researchers at the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) have developed a method to improve the solar cell efficiency for a new generation of crystalline silicon industrial solar cells. Crystalline silicon solar cells are predominantly made from p-type silicon wafers and the researchers have shown that significantly higher efficiencies can be obtained by making the solar cells from n-type silicon wafers.
"We believe that n-type cell technology may offer several important advantages for commercial cell production. For example, the tolerance for some common impurities may be important for companies that want to employ new lower grades silicon feedstock."
-- Paul Wyers, Manager, ECN Solar Energy
A major breakthrough was a novel method for passivating the emitter of their n-type solar cells, which increases the efficiency significantly over the values obtained for p-type ones, when using cell processes of comparable cost and simplicity. For single-crystalline silicon the advantage is approximately 1%, while for multicrystalline silicon the gain depends on the quality of the silicon wafer, ECN says.
The researchers add that since the new cell process can be carried out using the same manufacturing equipment as the p-type cell process, it will allow rapid implementation, possibly even by modifying existing process lines. Together with other advantages and improvements based on this new cell process, low-cost screen printed n-type cells are potentially capable of becoming a strong new technology in the solar market. ECN intends to further develop and bring to commercialization several solar cell types based on this technology on short and medium time frames.
“We believe that n-type cell technology may offer several important advantages for commercial cell production. For example, the tolerance for some common impurities may be important for companies that want to employ new lower grades silicon feedstock. But there are also advantages inherent to the cell process, for any quality of wafer, such as the excellent blue response. We are well on our way to develop several cell processes that should be an interesting proposition to industry,” said Paul Wyers, Manager of ECN Solar Energy.
----------------------------------------------------------------
keep the new tech coming,
Solar Stocks: Nine That Will Shine in a Bull Market
by: Rick Shea
posted on: April 21, 2008
As the market rebounds, investors continue to reward the large cap growth leaders, and alternative energy led by solar has been one of the prime beneficiaries. The need for alternative energy continues to be a main focus for all governments as oil continues it's climb to over $110 a barrel. Solar stocks are getting the most headlines because they are farther along the commercialization continuum and they are more prevalent than their wind and alternative fuel counterparts.
Any discussion about solar companies must start with First Solar (FSLR). Clearly, the leader in the sector according to Wall Street based on its thin film technology, First Solar's stock price has resumed its climb to near record levels as investors await its Q1 earnings report.
Suntech (STP) and SunPower (SPWR) are the next two leading players based on market cap, but they primarily use silicon-based technology for their products. SunPower just released strong first quarter 2008 numbers but some analysts had some concerns about slowing sales growth for the next quarter based on a single comment during its conference call.
Additional players include LDK Solar (LDK), Trina Solar (TSL), Evergreen Solar (ESLR) and Canadian Solar (CSIQ).
There are two main questions when investing in solar stocks:
First, which technology (thin film vs. silicon) is likely to offer the best long term business model for cost and efficiency. Again, based on market cap and relative performance the market is betting that customers will prefer thin film technology led by First Solar. While I tend to agree I am certain that the market will be large enough for both technology forms to compete and provide strong sales and profits.
Second, which stocks offer the best values and are likely to maintain the growth rates that investors need to drive higher market capitalizations.
The following chart analyzes the top players with the key growth rates and relative value.
You can see that Wall Street believes that First Solar will prevail based on a market cap that is three times the next largest competitor. You can also see its stock is priced for perfection. First Solar has a history of trouncing estimates and will likely do so again this quarter.
SWPR and STP are the next largest competitors with STP actually showing the largest sales estimate for Q1 2008. Both are well-positioned to lead the silicon based technology and sport reasonable valuations with forward P/E's of 27 and 18 respectively. Their PEG's (price to earnings growth) is actually very attractive and lower than most slower growing companies.
Both Canadian Solar (CSIQ) a Chinese company and LDK are interesting plays. Both are showing strong growth with below average valuations. LDK's PEG is ridiculously low vs. the other solar companies and vs. the overall market. So what's this all mean for the average investor looking to buy alternative energy and solar stocks. I believe FSLR will deliver on Q1 earnings and lead the group to new highs.
I will continue to maintain my long positions in FSLR, SPWR and STP until their valuations get too high. At that point it may be worthwhile to switch into some of the smaller names particularly LDK and CSIQ. The leaders will lead the sector up until valuations get out of hand and then others will play catch up shortly after.
FYI: I also like Cree Inc. (CREE) and Zoltek Companies Inc. (ZOLT) as additional long-term plays in the alternative energy sector.
Disclosure: The author is long FSLR, STP & SPWR.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/73087-solar-stocks-nine-that-will-shine-in-a-bull-market
MIT unveils new solar energy project
April 22, 2008 08:29 AM
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Chesonis Family Foundation said today that they are launching a "solar revolution" project with the ultimate aim of making solar energy America's primary carbon-free fuel.
The Solar Revolution Project, funded by a $10 million gift from the Chesonis Family Foundation, aims to transform solar power from a "'boutique' option to an affordable, dependable, mainstream energy solution," MIT said.
The project will complement and interact with other large solar projects at MIT, creating one of the largest solar energy clusters at any research university, MIT said.
The Chesonis Family Foundation is a private philanthropic foundation whose benefactor is Arunas Chesonis, an MIT graduate and chairman and chief executive of PAETEC Holding Corp., a New York company that provides communications services and solutions.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)
Energy alliance targets solar power
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 04/21/2008 11:54:18 PM MDT
The Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory on Monday announced creation of the Center for Revolutionary Solar Photoconversion to find ways to directly convert the sun's energy to low-cost electricity and fuels.
The Collaboratory is a joint venture of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University and University of Colorado at Boulder.
Twelve companies also are founding members: Applied Materials, Ascent Solar Technologies, DuPont, Evident Technologies, Konarka, Lockheed Martin, Motech Industries, QuantumSphere, Sharp, Solasta, Sub-One Technology and SunEdison.
ReneSola Ltd. (SOL)
website http://www.renesola.com/
ReneSola, Ltd., through its subsidiaries, engages in the manufacture and sale of solar wafers and related products in the People's Republic of China. It offers feedstock, ingots, and wafers for the solar industry. The company sells solar wafers to Chinese and international PV cell manufacturers. ReneSola was founded in 2005. It was formerly known as ReneSol, Ltd. and changed its name to Renesola, Ltd. in April 2006. Further, the company changed its name to ReneSola, Ltd. in June 2006. ReneSola is based in Jiashan, China.
Share Statistics
Average Volume (3 month)3: 1,238,560
Average Volume (10 day)3: 1,445,670
Shares Outstanding5: 100.00M
Float: N/A
% Held by Insiders1: N/A
% Held by Institutions1: 0.80%
Shares Short (as of 26-Mar-08)3: 1.05M
Short Ratio (as of 26-Mar-08)3: 1.8
Short % of Float (as of 26-Mar-08)3: N/A
Shares Short (prior month)3: 770.57K
Energy Boost
Solar and Wind Businesses Powered by Tax Breaks
By Anita Huslin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 14, 2008; Page D01
For Tony Clifford, president of Standard Solar, the threats of climate change and high energy prices have been great for business. His Gaithersburg firm, which installs solar panels for homes, has tripled its revenue in the past year and raised new funds for expansion.
Last week, he got another piece of good news. The Senate agreed to extend solar and wind energy tax breaks as part of a housing bill that is likely to win approval in the House. An elimination of the tax incentives would have been a blow to Clifford's business, forcing him to cut his staff of 20 and tell subcontractors he no longer needed them.
"We just raised $3.5 million in new capital with the expectation that the incentives were going to get extended," Clifford said. "If the [federal tax breaks] do not happen, that's going to be a significant disincentive for a lot of venture capital."
Although the solar business is booming across the United States, federal tax incentives remain key to fueling the industry's continued growth, utilities and solar firms say. Solar energy is still more expensive than more conventional sources, such as coal or natural gas, and is likely to remain so for a few years.
But solar costs are coming down while coal and gas plant construction costs are going up, and the solar industry says the eight-year extension of tax breaks in the Senate legislation would help create a cleaner, more reliable source of energy.
For 31 years, the federal government has subsidized new wind and solar projects. A tax break that provides up to 30 cents on every dollar it costs to build solar facilities and one for operating wind turbines are set to expire this year. The Senate last week voted to renew them. Now, proponents are pressing the House, which passed a stand-alone tax package with similar extensions, to do the same.
Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.) sponsored the renewable energy tax incentives as an amendment to a housing bill last week. The measure provides up to $500 for consumers to install energy-efficient products in their homes and extends a production tax credit for electricity produced from wind, solar and other renewable sources. Businesses that manufacture and install solar or photovoltaic fuel cells would get a 30 percent investment tax credit.
"We are not only providing certainty to these industries, infusing money into our economy, but creating high-paying, long-term jobs to help Americans get through these tough economic times," Cantwell said.
This makes bankers, solar panel and wind turbine manufacturers, and contractors happy. Without the subsidies, they say, companies would start putting projects on hold, freezing contractors out of the new work and companies and governments out of ways to buy more clean technology.
Indeed, in February, Arizona Public Service Co. announced its intention to build a 280 megawatt solar installation using parabolic mirrors to concentrate heat and steam turbines to generate electricity. But the plant needs regulatory approval and isn't expected to come online until 2011. Don Robinson, the utility's senior vice president of planning and administration, said the plant will be built only if the federal tax incentives are extended.
The alternative-energy industry has learned not to take the tax credits for granted. The wind industry, for instance, has had its production tax credits lapse three times -- in 1999, 2001 and 2003. According to the American Wind Energy Association, new installed wind capacity declined 93, 73 and 77 percent, respectively.
Matt Cheney is chief executive of MMA Renewable Ventures, a subsidiary of Baltimore-based Municipal Mortgage & Equity, a real estate investment company that finances and invests in facilities that generate renewable energy. He said the wind-power industry can handle such funding uncertainty a little better than the solar industry can because wind facilities receive a production tax credit that is not an upfront incentive but is applied over the time the facility operates.
The wind industry appears be confident that the credits will be extended "because there are a lot of [wind] turbines being sold well into 2009, 2010, 2011," Cheney said. "But still, wind farm developers can't bridge any particular [subsidy] gap if it's a long one. And if it's not renewed at all, companies will start unraveling."
With the tax breaks up in the air, banks are telling solar companies such as SunEdison in Beltsville to hold off on any projects that wouldn't get done this year, said SunEdison senior vice president Chris Cook.
"If you lose 20 percent of the [tax break], first we'll look toward state incentives to cover the gap," Cook said. "If you hit a cap with that, we'll once again have to go back to the customer and ask if they will make up the difference. My guess would be . . . they'll say no, and the deal will fall apart."
Maryland this year increased its grants for solar power projects and requirements that businesses buy 20 percent of their power from clean energy sources by 2020. The District is looking to set similar standards, while Virginia offers cash incentives for installation of renewable energy technologies.
To lawmakers weighing the merits of the tax breaks, wind and solar industry representatives stress the incentives as a job creation measure in a time of economic weakness.
"In the absence of an extension by Memorial Day, we're looking at 116,000 jobs at risk -- 76,000 in wind and 40,000 in solar -- and $19 billion in clean energy investment," said Greg Wetstone, a lobbyist for the American Wind Energy Association. "We have a lot of friends in the House, and we need to make them understand that time is imperative."
SOEN anyway this company can make your solar list in the i box? Its up almost 50% in the last couple of weeks. Thanks
SPWR - posts strong earnings
SunPower's annual revenue for 2006 was $236.5 million, a three-fold increase from 2005 revenue of $78.7 million. GAAP net income for 2006 was $26.5 million, compared to a 2005 GAAP net loss of $15.8 million.
The Website for this company is www.sunpowercorp.com
A Company that you need to add to your list is "Sun Power" put a f California, www.sunpower.com
GiraSolar (OTC:GRSR)
RECENT EARNINGS
On November 17, 2006, GiraSolar filed with the SEC their earnings for the 9 months ending September 30, 2006. GiraSolar reported total sales revenue of $51,901,980, a gross profit just above $1 million, or 2% of total revenues. For the nine month period the company posted a net loss of ($321,184), or ($0.02) per share.
Revenues consisted of 80% from the sale of solar panels and power products, with the remaining 20% of revenue derived from the buying and selling of poly-silicon to strategic partners.
Ludlow Capital feels the company would have turned a profit and positive EPS for the period if not for associated costs of going and being public in the US. If the company can also reduce the cost of sales and increase their gross profit margin from 2% to say 4% to 5%+ of revenue the company could begin to show strong growth to the bottom line and profitability.
REVENUE PROJECTION
In a recent article interview with SolarForecast, Mr. Wieland Koornstra, the CEO of GiraSolar, B.V. projected $60 to $80 million in revenue for fiscal year 2007. The company expects to book a total of $60 million in total revenues for fiscal year ending Dec. 31, 2006. At 6 times sales of projected revenues GRSR could have a valuation of $360 million for fiscal year 2006.
http://www.ludlowcapital.com/reports/grsr.htm
Holographic Solar
A novel approach to concentrating sunlight could cut solar panel costs.
By Prachi Patel-Predd
Rows of silicon solar cells alternate with rows of transparent holograms in Prism Solar's concentrators. (Courtesy of Prism Solar)
The main limitation of solar power right now is cost, because the crystalline silicon used to make most solar photovoltaic (PV) cells is very expensive. One approach to overcoming this cost factor is to concentrate light from the sun using mirrors or lenses, thereby reducing the total area of silicon needed to produce a given amount of electricity. But traditional light concentrators are bulky and unattractive -- less than ideal for use on suburban rooftops.
Now Prism Solar Technologies of Stone Ridge, NY, has developed a proof-of-concept solar module that uses holograms to concentrate light, possibly cutting the cost of solar modules by as much as 75 percent, making them competitive with electricity generated from fossil fuels.
The new technology replaces unsightly concentrators with sleek flat panels laminated with holograms. The panels, says Rick Lewandowski, the company's president and CEO, are a "more elegant solution" to traditional concentrators, and can be installed on rooftops -- or even incorporated into windows and glass doors.
The system needs 25 to 85 percent less silicon than a crystalline silicon panel of comparable wattage, Lewandowski says, because the photovoltaic material need not cover the entire surface of a solar panel. Instead, the PV material is arranged in several rows. A layer of holograms -- laser-created patterns that diffract light -- directs light into a layer of glass where it continues to reflect off the inside surface of the glass until it finds its way to one of the strips of PV silicon. Reducing the PV material needed could bring down costs from about $4 per watt to $1.50 for crystalline silicon panels, he says.
The company is expecting to pull in another $6 million from interested venture capitalists and start manufacturing its first-generation modules by the end of the year, selling them at about $2.40 per watt. Next-generation modules with more advanced technology should bring down the cost further.
In their ability to concentrate light, holograms are not as powerful as conventional concentrators. They can multiply the amount of light falling on the cells only by as much as a factor of 10, whereas lens-based systems can increase light by a factor of 100, and some even up to 1,000.
But traditional concentrators are complicated. Since the lenses or mirrors that focus light need to face the sun directly, they have to mechanically track the sun. They also heat up the solar cells, and so require a cooling system. As a result, although they redirect light with more intensity than the hologram device, "they're unwieldy...and not as practical for residential uses," says National Renewable Energy Laboratory spokesperson George Douglas.
Holograms have advantages that make up for their relatively weak concentration power. They can select certain frequencies and focus them on solar cells that work best at those frequencies, converting the maximum possible light into electricity. They also can be made to direct heat-generating frequencies away from the cells, so the system does not need to be cooled. "In this way, you are efficiently using only that part of the sunlight that really matters," says Selim Shahriar, director of the atomic and photonic technology laboratory at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.
Also, different holograms in a concentrator module can be designed to focus light from different angles -- so they don't need moving parts to track the sun.
Prism Solar's system incorporates these advantages. Nevertheless, to be competitive with other solar technologies available today, the company might need to reduce its price below $2.40 a watt, says Christo Stojanoff, professor emeritus of engineering at the Aachen University of Technology in Germany.
CEO Lewandowski says the holographic modules will cost about $1.50 per watt in a few years, using their second-generation technology, which will have solar cells sandwiched between two glass panels containing holograms. At that price, they'll start to compete with fossil fuel-generated electricity, which now costs almost three times less than conventional solar electricity, according to San Francisco, CA-based research and consulting company Solarbuzz.
The modules' intensive use of glass could be adding to their cost, says Douglas. Still, such a novel idea for a concentrator, using holograms, could be a lucrative investment because it needs less silicon than flat-panel modules and therefore saves money. The high demand for solar cells in Germany and other European countries "has now outstripped the supply, which has [led to] a silicon shortage and a shortage of manufacturing in the photovoltaic world," he says.
Although the idea of holographic solar concentrators has been around since the early 1980s, no one has developed them commercially yet, according to Professor Stojanoff, who has investigated the technique extensively. His company, Holotec GmbH in Aachen, Germany, researches and manufactures holographic materials. Also, Northeast Photosciences, a Hollis, NH-based company, came close to manufacture, before it went defunct for reasons unrelated to the technology or to finance, he says.
So, if all goes according to plan, Prism Solar could be the first company to manufacture and sell holographic solar concentrator modules.
(To contuinue reading:)
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=biztech&sc=&id=16736&pg=2
THE HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN POWER
Can A Home Solar Energy System Fit Your Budget?
Most homeowners think of solar energy this way: It's something they've heard of, it's something that's good for the environment, and it's something that has about as much bearing on them and their houses as an Alien-Broadcast Rejection System made of aluminum-foil wallpaper. But solar energy is no longer just for hippies, dippies, satellites, and remote vacation properties—it's getting mainstream.
In the last Eco-Logical, we learned about the different types of solar-energy systems and how they work. In today's article, we see how solar might be a good bet for our own houses—and can be affordable.
Household Solar Energy Overview
Solar power is one of the most environmentally benign energy sources available. Just 20 days picture of the sun of sunshine produces the same amount of energy as everything stored in earth's reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas—yet does not come close to producing the same amount of environmental damage as even one of those options.
The solar energy that reaches earth can be captured and utilized in your home. One simple way is to design homes to take advantage of natural lighting during the day—opening or closing blinds and curtains to reject or allow in the sunlight, depending on whether you're in a cooling or heating cycle. Solar-energy systems can also be installed that will collect and store enough energy to heat and cool your home, heat your water, and generate electricity.
Solar Energy Installation in the US and Elsewhere
Solar collectors were very popular in the US in the early 1980s, in the aftermath of the energy crisis. Federal tax credits for residential solar collectors also helped. In 1984, 16 million square feet of collectors were sold in the United States. When fossil fuel prices dropped in the mid-1980s and picture of solar array for generating electricity; CAPTION: A solar array can be placed in your yard or on your roof. President Reagan did away with the tax credit in 1985, demand for solar collectors plummeted. In 1987, sales were down to only 4 million square feet. Most of the more than one million solar collectors sold in the 1980s were used for heating hot tubs and swimming pools.
In other countries, solar collectors are much more common. Israel requires all new homes and apartments to use solar water heating. In Cyprus, over 90 percent of homes have solar water heaters. In the United States, the low cost of natural gas undercuts active solar water and space heaters. But in homes with electric water heaters, solar collectors make sense, saving between $250 and $500 per year.
Is Solar Energy Right for Your House?
Converting a home's electricity to run on solar power has become much more cost-effective than when the technology was first introduced. The cost of solar power has declined nearly 90 percent over the past two decades, and studies suggest that the price will continue to fall. Although the up-front costs of conversion are not insignificant—a typical household system can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $40,000—the energy generated can meet all or part of your future energy needs, lowering your utility bills and helping to pay for the initial cost of the system over time. In fact, homes that generate cartoon of happy sun more power than they need and remain connected to the energy grid may actually put that extra energy into the grid and receive a rebate from the local electric company. (Contact your utility to see if this option is available in your area, or see a map of state programs at the Union of Concerned Scientists' web site.)
Incentive programs also help make solar power more affordable. These programs can include personal-, sales- and property-tax incentives, rebates, grants, loans, and leasing. By taking advantage of these incentives, you could reduce the overall cost of solar power by 50 percent or more. DSIRE—the Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy—offers a comprehensive listing of state and local programs, as well as incentives offered by specific utilities.
Maybe your previous thoughts about all things solar have naturally leaned towards a plan to slather on some Minus-10 suntan lotion and try to get into the Hamilton Book of Tanning Records for "Most Days in a Row of Being Sun-Dazed." But from an energy perspective, the sun is well worth worshiping.
“RAH” FOR RA!
Types of Solar Power and How They Work
Some people enjoy baking cookies in the oven, some people enjoy baking themselves in the backyard. Even if oil-soaked sun-worshiping Saturday afternoons are the most direct experience most of us every get with the energy of the sun, we know picture of the sun instinctively that the sun is essential for life. It turns out it's also essential for just about any type of energy you can think of.
Solar energy is free and inexhaustible, and has been for the 5 billion years or so that the planet has been in existence. In the broadest sense, solar energy supports all life on earth and is the basis for almost every form of energy we use.
* The sun makes plants grow, which are burned as fuel or rot in swamps and are compressed underground for millions of years to become coal and oil.
* Heat from the sun causes temperature differences between areas, causing the wind to blow.
* Water evaporates because of the sun, falls on high elevations, and rushes down to the sea, spinning turbines as it passes.
But the term "solar energy" usually refers to ways the sun's energy can be used as heat, lighting, and electricity.
One simple, obvious use of sunlight is to light our buildings. The sun can also affect a building's heating and cooling costs: If properly designed, a building can capture the sun's heat in the winter and reject it in the summer, while using daylight year round for lighting. With the exception of that guy down in the bowels of the Grinning Planet accounting department who seems to thrive on flickering fluorescent lighting, most of us prefer natural light.
Solar Energy Collectors/Concentrators
Besides using design features to maximize use of the sun, some buildings have active systems to gather and store solar energy. Solar collectors sit on the rooftops of buildings to collect solar energy for space heating, water heating, and space cooling. Most solar collectors are large flat boxes, painted black on the inside, with glass covers. In the most common design, pipes in the box carry liquids that take the heat from the box and bring it into the building. This heated liquid, usually a water-alcohol mixture to prevent winter freezing, is used to heat water in a tank or is put through radiators to heat the air.
Oddly enough, because of the cooling effect moist air has when it evaporates, solar heat can also drive a cooling system. Such systems are currently at work in humid southeastern climates, like that of Florida.
By using mirrors and lenses to concentrate the rays of the sun, solar thermal systems produce high temperatures that can be used to heat water for producing picture a trough style solar energy system steam to drive an electric turbine or for industrial applications, like boiling water to sterilize soup cans.
Solar concentrators come in three main designs: parabolic troughs, parabolic dishes and central receivers. The most common is parabolic troughs—long, curved mirrors that concentrate sunlight on a liquid inside a tube that runs parallel to the mirror. Parabolic dish concentrators and central receivers can produce much higher temperatures and produce electricity more efficiently but are more complicated and are not in common use.
Solar Energy – Photovoltaics (PV)
In 1839, French scientist Edmund Becquerel discovered that certain materials would give off a spark of electricity when struck with sunlight. Solar cells work because the silicon substrate has a weak grip on its electrons. The cells are made of two layers of silicon, one with too many electrons (the n-layer) and one with too few (the p-layer). When light hits the first layer, electrons are knocked loose. As they flow toward the layer with too few electrons, they pass through an electric circuit, the current from which can be used to power equipment and devices.
In the 1970s, a serious effort began to produce photovoltaic panels that could provide cheaper solar power. Experimenting with new materials and production techniques, solar manufacturers cut costs for solar cells rapidly, as the following graph shows.
Many solar panels are used today to power cellular phone transmitters, road signs, and water pumps, as well as millions of solar watches and calculators. But most of the market for solar electric is concentrated in off-grid homes, in the villages of developing countries and the vacation homes of industrial countries. Developing nations see PV as a way to avoid building long and expensive power lines to remote areas.
Recently, even utilities in developed countries have been attaching photovoltaics to their power grids. In some locations, it is less costly and politically difficult to install distributed solar panels than to upgrade the transmission and distribution system needed to meet ever-growing electricity demand.
This distributed-generation approach provides a new model for the utility systems of the future. Small generators, spread out in a city and controlled cartoon drawing of a solar panel by computers, could replace the large coal and nuclear plants that dominate now.
As the cost of photovoltaic systems continues to decline, they will find increasingly larger niches. No other electrical generator is as easy to install or maintain. Even among the various types of renewable energy, photovoltaics have great potential. The cells are made of silicon, one of the most plentiful materials on earth, and they draw power from the everlasting sun, so they will never run into the problem of fuel scarcity. As PV prices continue to fall, solar power will become a significant source of electricity in the 21st century.
Solar Energy Wrap Up
We now pause to remember our dear departed surfing Uncle Sandy, who once started a referendum in Beach City to annex "the warmth of the sun and all of the gnarly waves." We suspect that all those years of sunlight striking his head must have knocked loose a few cranial electrons.
How Plastic Solar Cells Turn Sunlight Into Electricity
December 13, 2006
Science Daily — A new analytical technique that uses infrared spectroscopy to study light-sensitive organic materials could lead to the development of cheaper, more efficient solar cells. Using infrared (IR) spectroscopy to study the vibrations of atoms within the material, the technique provides information about the movement of electrons within a film of carbon-based materials.
Obtaining this information is a critical step in the development of a new class of solar cells, which promise significant savings in production costs compared to conventional silicon-based cells. The new analytical technique, published as the cover story in this week's issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry B, was developed by a team led by Penn State University researcher John B. Asbury, assistant professor of chemistry.
Organic photovoltaic devices (OPV) have become important because they are much less expensive to produce than silicon-based solar cells. The material consists of a film made of two different types of chemicals: a polymer that releases an electron when it is struck by a photon of light and a large molecule that accepts the freed electrons, which is based on the soccer-ball-shaped "buckminsterfullerene" carbon molecules popularly known as "buckyballs."
Because the electrical interactions needed to produce an electric current occur at the interfaces of the two components of this polymer blend, materials scientists need to understand the arrangement of molecules in the film. Asbury's new analytical technique provides a closer look at this arrangement than the techniques that traditionally have been used. Previous studies, using atomic-force microscopy, supply general information about the packing of the molecules, but they provide very limited information about the interfaces where the molecules actually come together. IR spectroscopy, on the other hand, provides a more detailed picture of the interface by tracing the exchange of electrons between two molecules of the film.
"The problems with OPVs today are that they are not efficient enough and they tend to stop working over time," says Asbury. In order to develop a useful electric current, the flow between the two components must be optimized. "To improve performance, we need to understand what happens at the molecular level when light is converted to electrons," Asbury explains.
When the film is exposed to light, each photon excites an electron in the polymer. If an interface between the polymer molecule and the functionalized buckminsterfullerene exists, a current can be produced. However, in the materials developed to date, many of the electrons appear to become sidetracked. Asbury exposes the film to light using ultrashort laser pulses, which causes photons of light to be converted to electrons across the entire surface at the same time. Two-dimensional IR spectroscopy is used to monitor the vibration of the molecules within the film. "The vibrations of the molecules are strongly affected by the presence or absence of electrons," says Asbury. "We use these vibrations as a probe to track the movement of electrons. By varying the structures of the materials, we expect to identify the side paths that reduce efficiency and ultimately to use that information to guide material design." The ultimate goal is a solar cell that is sufficiently inexpensive and efficient that it can be used on a rooftop to provide the electrical energy needed in a building.
In addition to Asbury, the Penn State research team includes graduate students Larry W. Barbour and Maureen Hegadorn. The work was funded by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, the Petroleum Research Fund, and Penn State.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Penn State.
A Boost For Solar Cells With Photon Fusion
October 13, 2006
Science Daily — An innovative process that converts low-energy longwave photons (light particles) into higher-energy shortwave photons has been developed by a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz and at the Sony Materials Science Laboratory in Stuttgart. With the skillful combination of two light-active substances, the scientists have, for the first time, manipulated normal light, such as sunlight, to combine the energy in photons with particular wavelengths (Physical Review Letters, October 4, 2006). This has previously only been achieved with a similar process using high-energy density laser light. The successful outcome of this process could lay the foundation for a new generation of more efficient solar cells.
The efficiency of solar cells today is limited, among other reasons, by the fact that the longwave, low-energy part of the sunlight cannot be used. A process that increases the low level of energy in the light particles (photons) in the longwave range, shortening their wave length, would make it possible for the solar cells to use those parts of light energy that, up to now, have been lost, resulting in a drastic increase in their efficiency. The equivalent has only been achieved previously with high-energy density laser light which, under certain conditions, combines two low-energy photons into one high-energy photon - a kind of photonic fusion.
This is a significant step forward for the scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research and at the Sony Materials Science Laboratory. In developing this process, they have succeeded, for the first time, in pairing up photons from normal light, thus altering the wavelength. They used two substances in solution, platinum octaethyl porphyrin and diphenylan-thracene, which converted the longwave green light from a normal light source into shortwave blue light. Similar to the process in laser light, this also pairs up photons, but in a different way.
When a molecule is manipulated by laser light to take up two photons, which is only probable if it is literally bombarded with a laser beam of photons, the molecules in this case only receive one photon. Two photon partners are brought together between the molecules via a different mechanism called triplet-triplet annihilation. By selecting different, corresponding "matchmaker" molecules, it is possible to combine the energy from photons from the entire sunlight spectrum.
The two substances developed by the researchers as "photon matchmakers" have quite different properties. Whereas one serves as an "antenna" for green light (antenna molecule), the other pairs the photons, connecting the two low-energy green photons into one high-energy blue photon, which it transmits as an emitter (emitter molecule).
This is what happens in detail: first the antenna molecule absorbs a green low-energy photon and passes it to the emitter molecule as a package of energy. Both molecules store the energy one after the other in "excited" states. Then, two of the energy-loaded emitter molecules react with each other - one molecule passes its energy package to the other. This returns one molecule to its low-energy state. The other, conversely, achieves a very high-energy state that stores the double energy package. This state rapidly collapses when the large energy package is sent out in the form of a blue photon. Although this light particle is of a shorter wave length and higher in energy than the green light emitted initially, the end effect is that no energy is generated, but the energy from two photons is combined into one.
The process is very interesting in chemical terms as the molecules must be carefully matched to allow the energy to be transmitted efficiently, and neither the antenna nor the emitter molecules are allowed to lose their energy through shortcuts. The researchers therefore had to synthesize an antenna molecule that absorbed longwave light and store it for so long that the energy could be transferred to an emitter. Only a complex metal organic compound with a platinum atom in a ring-shaped molecule was suitable for this purpose. The emitter molecule, on the other hand, must be able to take the energy package from the antenna and hold on to it until another excited emitter molecule is found for the subsequent photon fusion.
As this procedure allows previously unused parts of sunlight to be used in solar cells, the scientists are hoping that it offers the ideal starting point for more efficient solar cells. To optimize the process and to bring it closer to an application, they are testing new pairs of substances for other colors in the light spectrum and are experimenting with integrating them in a polymer matrix.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.
New World Record Achieved In Solar Cell Technology
December 7, 2006
Science Daily — U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner has 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/.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by U.S. Department Of Energy.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061206123954.htm
Nanoparticles Used In Solar Energy Conversion
Science Daily — MANHATTAN, KAN. -- An enormous source of clean energy is available to us. We see it almost every day. It's just a matter of harnessing it.
The problem with solar energy is that it has not been inexpensive enough in the past. David Kelley, professor of chemistry at Kansas State University, developed a new type of nanoparticle -- a tiny chemical compound far too small to be seen with the naked eye -- that may reap big dividends in solar power.
Kelley's team is studying the properties and technical problems of gallium selenide nanoparticles. The properties of the nanoparticle change as the size changes. One of those properties is the part of the light spectrum it absorbs.
"You can make dramatically different colors just by changing the size of the nanoparticles," Kelley said.
Kelley is developing nanoparticles that are just the right size for solar cells -- they can absorb all visible light but nothing from the invisible light at the red end of the spectrum, which would reduce voltage.
"The correct-sized nanoparticles look dark red to black. There is an optimum size and that's what you want to shoot for," Kelley said.
Today's solar panels are made with silicon. The silicon usually has impurities, which limits its efficiency. Purifying a chemical is too expensive. For that reason, smaller is better. One can fit as many nanoparticles into a golf ball as one can fit beach balls into the earth.
Only a tiny percentage of a piece of material has impurities. If the entire chunk of material makes one crystal in a solar panel, the crystal will not work. But if that chunk is broken up into 100 tiny nanoparticles, then only the few unlucky nanoparticles with the impurities will not function. All the other nanoparticles will be pure and therefore will work.
Kelley said he is a long way from developing compounds that are comparable to today's silicon solar cells, because the physics of nanoparticles is so poorly understood. By using gallium selenide, Kelley is laying the groundwork for a similar, but more complex and potentially more effective nanoparticle called indium selenide. It is difficult to make silicon nanoparticles, but indium selenide has great potential for nanoparticle solar cells, Kelley said.
"The idea is to make large, high-output solar voltaic panels that are dirt cheap to produce. It's only then that the price starts to become competitive with burning fossil fuels," Kelley said.
He nearly had to start from scratch. His team invented gallium selenide nanoparticles. Kelley said he knew six years ago that many semiconductor materials had potential use in solar power, but were not being studied because there were no methods to make them into nanoparticles.
"All these really interesting materials were being ignored and I thought it just can't be allowed to stay that way," Kelley said.
The study on the methods to produce the nanoparticles was published in the journal "Nano Letters" this year. The project was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Photochemistry Program in Basic Energy Sciences.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Kansas State University.
Solar Breakthrough Will Help Spur Viability Of Alternative Energy
October 9, 2005
Science Daily — SANTA FE -- Imagine being able to paint your roof with enoughalternative energy to heat and cool your home. What if soldiers in thefield could carry an energy source in a roll of plastic wrap in theirbackpacks?
Those ideas sound like science fiction -- particularly in the wake of the rising costs of fossil fuel.
But both are on the way to becoming reality because of abreakthrough in solar research by a team of scientists from New MexicoState University and Wake Forest University.
While traditional solar panels are made of silicon, which isexpensive, brittle and shatters like glass, organic solar cells beingdeveloped by this team are made of plastic that is relativelyinexpensive, flexible, can be wrapped around structures or even appliedlike paint, said physicist Seamus Curran, head of the nanotechnologylaboratory at NMSU. Nanotechnology, or molecular manufacturing, refersto the ability to build things one atom at a time.
The relatively low energy efficiency levels produced byorganic solar cells have been a drawback. To be effective producers ofenergy, they must be able to convert 10 percent of the energy insunlight to electricity. Typical silicon panels are about 12 percentenergy conversion efficient.
That level of energy conversion has been a difficult reach forresearchers on organic solar technology, with many of them hittingabout 3 to 4 percent. But the NMSU/Wake Forest team has achieved asolar energy efficiency level of 5.2 percent. The announcement was madeat the Santa Fe Workshop on Nanoengineered Materials andMacro-Molecular Technologies.
"This means we are closer to making organic solar cells that are available on the market," Curran said.
Conventionalthinking has been that that landmark was at least a decade away. Withthis group's research, it may be only four or five years before plasticsolar cells are a reality for consumers, Curran added.
The importance of the breakthrough cannot be underestimated, Curran said.
"We need to look into alternative energy sources if the UnitedStates is to reduce its dependence on foreign sources," the NMSUphysics professor said.
New Mexico Economic Development Department Secretary RickHomans added, "This breakthrough pushes the state of New Mexico furtherahead in the development of usable solar energy, a vital nationalresource. It combines two of the important clusters on which the stateis focused: renewable energy and micro nano systems, and underlines thestrong research base of our state universities."
A cheap, flexible plastic made of a polymer blend would revolutionize the solar market, Curran said.
"Our expectation is to get beyond 10 percent in the next fiveyears," Curran said. "Our current mix is using polymer and carbonbuckyballs (fullerenes) and good engineering from Wake Forest andunique NSOM imaging from NMSU to get to that point."
NSOM or near-field scanning optical microscopy allows them to scan objects too small for regular microscopes.
The development is an outgrowth of the collaborative's workdeveloping high-tech coatings for military aircraft, a programsupported by Sens. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.,Curran said.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by New Mexico State University.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/Solar_panel/
Think Solar Not Nuclear For The Energy Of The Future, Say Scientists
March 6, 2006
Science Daily — Solar rather than nuclear energy should be the UK government's priority in planning future energy production, according to scientists writing today in the journal Nature Materials.
Challenging advocates of the nuclear option, researchers from Imperial College London argue in their Commentary article that photovoltaics, the direct conversion of sunlight to electricity, could match and exceed the nuclear industry's current output before any new reactor could begin operating.
The UK currently generates 12 gigawatts of electricity from nuclear power stations, around one sixth of the country's total electricity output. This is the same amount of electricity that it is predicted Germany will generate through photovoltaics by 2012 if it continues to expand its solar energy programme at its present rate.
The researchers write that the UK, which has a similar sunshine profile to Germany, could produce 12 gigawatts of solar electricity by 2023 if production is expanded by 40% per year, less than the world increase of 57% in 2004.
However, in contrast to other developed countries, the UK has recently halted its programme of solar panel installation on 3,500 rooftops halfway through. This compares to the completed installation of 70,000 installations in Japan and 100,000 in Germany. Lead author Professor Keith Barnham of Imperial College London says:
"The UK is clearly taking a very different decision to its industrial competitors and, I believe, a less sensible one. The sun is our largest sustainable energy source and the technology needed to tap into it is very simple. As research continues, this will become an increasingly cheap and efficient way of meeting our energy needs."
One obstacle to the development of a competitive solar energy industry in the UK, according to the article, is a pro-nuclear bias within its scientific and government establishments. Pointing out that the UK Research Councils spent seven times more in 2004-2005 on nuclear fusion research and development than it did on photovoltaic research, Professor Barnham says:
"Fusion is still perhaps 40 years away from being effectively developed and in any case is likely to produce electricity at one quarter the electrical power density which the solar cells that we are working on are already producing in London. It's absurd that these funding bodies are putting huge amounts of money into something that may not deliver rather than supporting something that already does."
The next generation of photovoltaic cells, known as quantum well cells, now under development convert direct sunlight and can track the sun to keep light focussed on the cell. Early testing suggests that these concentrated systems could produce twice as much electricity per unit area as the conventional systems now in use. Professor Barnham adds:
"These new cells are highly efficient and are based on technologies similar to those used for the amplifiers in mobile phones, so the ability to manufacture them on a large scale is already in place. This is the kind of technology the UK should be investing in if we are serious about producing pollution-free energy."
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Imperial College London.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060306090838.htm
Bright Days for NanoSolar
BusinessWeek
JUNE 26, 2006
By Justin Hibbard
The Silicon Valley startup has just lined up $100 million in venture capital and plans to manufacture affordable solar panels using proprietary technology
When NanoSolar was founded in 2002, the Palo Alto (Calif.) solar-energy startup drew plenty of skepticism. After all, the dot-com bubble had been reduced to a soap stain two years earlier, just months after 34-year-old NanoSolar founder and Chief Executive Officer Martin Roscheisen had sold his e-mail list service eGroups to Yahoo! (YHOO ) for $450 million. Now he was jumping right into the next hyped-up sector: alternative energy.
It didn't help that NanoSolar's investors included Google (GOOG ) founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Benchmark Capital, the venture-capital firm that struck e-gold with eBay (EBAY ). What did a bunch of dot-com millionaires know about solar energy?
Quite a bit, it turns out. Three years later, things are looking much brighter. In the next six weeks, NanoSolar plans to begin building a factory in the San Francisco Bay area that could pump out as many as 200 million solar cells—semiconductors that convert sunlight to electricity—each year. That will be enough to fill 2 million average-sized panels.
The company expects to assemble the cells into more than 1 million solar panels annually in another factory near Berlin that it plans to open next year. It figures that making its panels will cost as little as 10% of what it costs to turn out current panels, eventually putting them within financial reach for lots more consumers.
Without a doubt, the promise is popular with financiers. NanoSolar announced this week that it has raised $100 million in a third round of venture-capital financing, one of the 10 biggest VC fundings in the U.S. so far this quarter, according to Standard & Poor's CapitalIQ Div. That brings the startup's total funds raised since inception to $125 million.
CAPITAL-INTENSIVE BUSINESS. Of course, that money could prove to be as much a curse as a blessing. The more money goes into a startup, the more it takes to produce a return for investors. "History says you want to be very measured about spending money," cautions Erik Straser, a general partner at Menlo Park (Calif.) VC firm Mohr Davidow Ventures, which has invested in NanoSolar. "I think the company has been very good about that."
But the NanoSolar game plan takes money. Solar-cell manufacturing is capital-intensive, demanding a lot of money before it throws off cash. That's why so much of NanoSolar's strategy is focused on efficiency.
Since the 1970s, most solar cells have been made of silicon and manufactured like computer chips—a costly process. By contrast, NanoSolar plans to produce so-called "thin-film" solar cells, making them by printing special-purpose ink on sheets of lightweight foil. "The major breakthrough here is we move the solar business from the economics of the semiconductor business to the economics of the printing business," Straser says.
That move, Straser figures, will allow NanoSolar to operate 5 to 10 times more efficiently than traditional solar-cell manufacturers, measured by the ratio of capital expenditures to revenues. If all goes as planned, Wall Street analysts should eventually be able to predict how much additional revenue NanoSolar will generate for every dollar it spends to increase manufacturing capacity—a heretofore difficult feat in the solar industry.
TINY BEADS. But NanoSolar still has to prove itself. Past attempts at producing thin-film solar cells have disappointed. In 1997, Cambridge (Ont.) manufacturer ATS Automation Tooling Systems acquired thin-film technology that bonds tiny silicon beads to foil.
The company spent about $90 million on a new plant to commercialize the technology, which was originally developed by chipmaker Texas Instruments (TI ). In May, news that ATS plans to write down nearly the entire cost of developing the technology lopped 25% off its stock price. "They thought they could get the process up quickly, and we're still waiting," says Tom Astle, an analyst at National Bank Financial in Toronto. "Building a commercial process to manufacture these things is more challenging than some people think."
Another problem: Thin-film solar cells historically have produced electricity less efficiently than silicon cells when measured by dollar per watt. So, while thin-film cells may cost less than silicon cells, consumers may have to buy and install more of them to produce enough power.
PORTFOLIO OF PATENTS. NanoSolar's management isn't worried. They claim the company's printing process is less expensive and more efficient than vacuum-based processes that have been used to make most thin-film cells in the past. And they say their cells will generate as much electricity as silicon cells—at one-fifth to one-tenth the cost. "We will be the cost leader," says Brian Sager, co-founder and vice-president of finance and corporate development.
What makes him so sure? First, a recent worldwide shortage of polysilicon has caused a scarcity of silicon solar cells and driven up prices. Second, NanoSolar has assembled a fortress-like portfolio of patents and trade secrets to keep its ink, product design, and printing process proprietary. The company believes no one will be able to copy what it is doing.
Sager won't say when NanoSolar expects to turn profitable but doesn't anticipate the company will need to raise more venture capital to get there. Even at low initial manufacturing volumes, the outfit will earn more money from sales of its products than it spends making them, he says. NanoSolar already has several orders from large system integrators, which will install the company's solar panels at power plants, big-box retailers, and homes.
GERMAN BACKING. Another big plus for the company is the talent that comes along with its latest financing. Investors in the round include heavy hitters from the solar industry. Stuttgart private-equity firm Grazia Equity previously funded the world's largest installer of solar panels, Hamburg-based Conergy. Dimbach (Germany)-based Beck Energy designs and builds solar-power plants. And Christian Reitberger, a Munich-based partner at global private-equity firm Apax Partners, was an early investor in Thalheim (Germany)-based Q-Cells, the world's largest independent maker of silicon-based solar cells.
The keen German interest is no coincidence. With a 47% share, Germany is the world's largest solar heating market. The country's Environment Ministry subsidizes about 40% of the outlay for solar plants that heat drinking water. About one-quarter of NanoSolar's recent $100 million financing consists of subsidies and incentives from various governments, including Germany's. Now, NanoSolar just needs to make all that support pay off.
http://www.benchmark.com/news/sv/2006/06_26_2006.php
Major Solar Cell Breakthrough Announced
The Department of Energy says Boeing-Spectrolab has created a solar cell with 40.7% sunlight-to-energy conversion efficiency.
By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek
Dec 6, 2006 02:00 PM
A breakthrough in solar cell technology promises to make solar power a cost-competitive energy option and to reduce U.S. dependence on oil.
With funding from the Department of Energy, Boeing-Spectrolab has managed to create a solar cell with 40.7% sunlight-to-energy conversion efficiency, said DoE assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy Alexander Karsner on Tuesday.
The solar cell represents "the highest efficiency level any photovoltaic device has ever achieved," according to David Lillington, president of Spectrolab. That claim has been verified by the DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo.
Most of today's solar cells are between 12% and 18% efficient. Some of the ones used to power satellites are around 28% efficient. In 1954, 4% efficiency was state of the art.
High energy prices and environmental concerns are prompting businesses to consider solar power. In October, Google said it planned to install 9,200 solar photovoltaic panels at its Mountain View headquarters in 2007. Google's solar panels, made by Sharp, are 12.8% efficient. It expects to generate 30% of its peak energy usage during the summer from solar power.
http://www.informationweek.com/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196602062
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