Solar Power advances for Sept. 2008

I have seen some very interesting solar power articles so far this month.  By far the most unusual are these solar balloons.

The article at Metaefficient.com presents a pretty good case as to why these could be a good idea.  In addition some other folks agree as the company Cool Earth just received $21 million in additional funding! The whole article is here: http://www.metaefficient.com/news/solar-balloons-get-21-million-in-funding.html

Excerpt: “They look like foil party balloons, but they are actually very efficient solar concentrators. These solar “balloons” were developed by a company called Cool Earth, based in California, and it has just received $21 million dollars in investor funding. The company is now planning to build a 10-megawatt plant of solar balloons in the next couple years. This power plant would be comprised of 10,000 balloons, and cover roughly 80 acres!”

The company website can be found here: http://www.coolearthsolar.com/faq

My vote for the best humanitarian use of solar power technology is this solar ice maker.  It isn’t waht you might think as it has no moving parts and is an idea intended for disaster relief situations.

The whole article can be found on greenupgrader.com (http://greenupgrader.com/3680/solar-ice-maker-no-moving-parts-no-electricity/)

Excerpt: “Intended for disaster relief situations, refugee camps, and developing nations the bright minds at San Jose State University have created an ice making machine that uses the heat from sunlight to power a chemical reaction. What happens is the tubing (or heat exchanger) is filled with a liquid refrigerant material. The convex reflective panel focuses light and heat energy from the sun onto the piping which vaporizes the refrigerant. So far, no ice. When the sun goes down however the vapor goes through massive heat loss due to pressure differences and roughly 14 pounds of ice are produced depending on the design.“

Lastly some folks at the University of Utah have come up with a way to slice thin wafer of the material used to make the most efficient solar cells with less breakage and waste. (http://www.unews.utah.edu/p/?r=070308-1)

On a related note it looks like congress is finally getting around to renewing the tax credits for alternative energy that si set to run out later this year.  A good articel with all of the details can be found here on Plantsave.com: http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/09/18/bipartisan-senate-bill-to-extend-renewable-tax-credits/

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