Light Cue 23

Solar Sunday is my weekly roundup of renewable energy and energy efficiency news from around the web.

Solar Speeds Up

Several major U.S. utility companies may accelerate plans to integrate solar power into their electricity mix following a fact-finding trip to Germany.

Twenty-three electric utilities were represented on the trip to Germany, the world’s leading producer and installer of photovoltaic (PV) solar cells. All of them may now advance solar projects in the United States, a trip leader said, further expanding a growing solar market.

“Every single utility would decrease the time they said it would be before solar would be a significant part of their utility mix,” said Julia Hamm, the executive director of the Solar Electric Power Association, which organized the trip, covered some participants’ travel expenses, and conducted a poll on solar power upon the trip’s conclusion.

San Francisco implements a Graceful Solar Project

Taking a cue from eco-friendly skyscrapers and cars, religious places have started adopting sustainable technologies in the right earnest. The latest to join the green bandwagon is San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. The San Francisco landmark will install a solar photovoltaic power system to meet its energy requirements, bringing yet another green idea to boost the city’s eco credentials.

The state-of-the-art photovoltaic system would be designed and supplied by SolarCity, a company with a vast experience of solar system design and installation. A partnership between the cathedral and Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) would be instrumental in financing the entire project. The Pacific Gas and Electric would provide $65,000 for the purchase and installation of the photovoltaic. It was the hard work of Reverend Canon Sally Bingham, the president of California Interfaith Power and Light that initiated the deal between Grace Cathedral and PG&E.

Wind (power) changes direction

If we told you that a free-flying kite could provide enough energy to power your house, you might consider us crazy. How about all the homes on your block, or even an entire city? Scientists at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands recently tested just such a technology, tethering a 10 square meter kite to a generator to produce 10 kilowatts of power (enough energy for 10 homes). They are currently planning to scale the experiment with a 50 kilowatt kite and a 100 megawatt array called the Laddermill that could potentially power 100,000 homes!

Next-Gen Solar is more than meets the eye

Today’s solar cells absorb only visible light, wasting the infrared that makes up half of the Sun’s output that reaches Earth. But a new material developed in Spain can absorb infrared too, and should make it possible to hike the power solar cells can produce, say researchers.

Conventional solar cells are based on a semiconductor such as silicon. But their inability to soak up infrared gives them a theoretical absorption limit of just over 40% of solar energy. In practice, they only absorb about 30%.

The new material, though, can harness both visible and infrared photons, so it has a theoretical maximum efficiency of 63%, it creators say, and should give significantly better real-world performance.

Tags: futrism, religion, solar power, solar sunday, wind power

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 16:26 and is filed under solar sunday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.