Light Cue 23

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

Guess What Markets My Investment Money Is Going To

The election of Barack Obama has put the wind back into the sails of the renewable energy sector, where investor confidence had been badly punctured by the credit crisis. Clean technology and green energy stocks have soared as City analysts predict a major boost from the incoming president.

Solar Integrated Technologies rose by 30% yesterday after increases of 22% by Renewable Energy Corporation and 16% by the wind turbine maker Vestas in the 24 hours before, when they were helped upwards by oil prices returning to above $70 a barrel.

Obama has promised to invest $150bn over 10 years in renewables as part of a wider plan to increase US energy security amid fear of oil shortages, while also reducing the country’s carbon emissions in a bid to tackle global warming – and create jobs during an economic downturn.

LEDs Go Solar

Thanks to rapid improvements in photovoltaic and LED lighting technology, solar-powered LED lighting is now suitable for a range of illumination applications, according to Sean Bourquin and Anthony Tisot of Carmanah Technologies.

Against a climate of rising energy costs and escalating environmental concerns, today’s advanced LED technology is creating new opportunities in solar-powered area lighting. Thanks to a new generation of bright and efficient LEDs, solar-powered lighting is expanding from its role in signal lights and flashing beacons to offer a renewable energy alternative for general illumination applications.

Shrinking Solar

Some of the tiniest solar cells ever built have been successfully tested as a power source for even tinier microscopic machines. An article in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy (JRSE), published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP), describes an inch-long array of 20 of these cells — each one about a quarter the size of a lowercase “o” in a standard 12-point font.

The cells were made of an organic polymer and were joined together in an experiment aimed at proving their ability to power tiny devices that can be used to detect chemical leaks and for other applications, says Xiaomei Jiang, who led the research at the University of South Florida.

Traditional solar cells, such as the commercial type installed on rooftops, use a brittle backing made of silicon, the same sort of material upon which computer chips are built. By contrast, organic solar cells rely upon a polymer that has the same electrical properties of silicon wafers but can be dissolved and printed onto flexible material

Solar Gets More Efficient

No matter which way you look at it, the notion of harvesting energy from the sun to power our homes and businesses is more absorbing than ever.

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered and demonstrated a new method for overcoming two major hurdles facing solar energy. By developing a new antireflective coating that boosts the amount of sunlight captured by solar panels and allows those panels to absorb the entire solar spectrum from nearly any angle, the research team has moved academia and industry closer to realizing high-efficiency, cost-effective solar power.

“To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun’s position in the sky,” said Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer and a member of the university’s Future Chips Constellation, who led the research project. “Our new antireflective coating makes this possible.”

Fungal Diesel

A unique fungus that makes diesel compounds has been discovered living in trees in the rainforest, according to a paper published in the November issue of Microbiology. The fungus is potentially a totally new source of green energy and scientists are now working to develop its fuel producing potential.

“This is the only organism that has ever been shown to produce such an important combination of fuel substances,” said Professor Gary Strobel from Montana State University. “The fungus can even make these diesel compounds from cellulose, which would make it a better source of biofuel than anything we use at the moment.”

The fungus, which has been named Gliocladium roseum, produces a number of different molecules made of hydrogen and carbon that are found in diesel. Because of this, the fuel it produces is called “myco-diesel”.

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Tags: architecture, biofuel, futrism, leds, solar power, solar sunday, technology

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 9th, 2008 at 18:15 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.