Askthefm’s Weblog

Solar water heating is a pretty mature technology at this point. I suppose that it isn’t surprising that it might become a standard feature of new residential construction.  However ti has now become mandatory for all new construction in Hawaii.  That is residential construction, new homes.

I think that overall I am in favor of this for a couple of reasons.  First is that it will generate economies of scale by making it a requirement and thereby making the overall cost less. Second is that it simply makes sense to employ every affordable technology to reduce our footprint on the planet. the fact that it can be packaged as a selling point is a bonus.  The full article is here on Metaefficient.com (http://www.metaefficient.com/news/solar-water-heaters-now-mandatory-in-hawaii.html#more-1519)

For those of you who might need a primer on solar hot water here is the government’s site that covers it pretty well: http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/water_heating/index.cfm/mytopic=12850

There is also another way to harness the thermal energy for your building.  There is a new product called Solar Duct that allows you to pre-heat air that would then be used to heat the building.  (http://solarwall.com/posts/from-solarwallr-to-solarduct-conserval-launches-new-rooftop-line62.php)

Also from the same company is a configuration that combines the heating of air and conventional solar panels.  This setup helps the effciency of the panels by lowering their overall temperature. (http://solarwall.com/media/download_gallery/SolarWallPV-T_Spec.pdf)

As always I thank you for your time and interest. Please take the time to Digg, Stumble Upon or add to the other social network of your choice to help me spread the word about these issues. Please forward any questions or suggestions to: askthefm@gmail.com

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Recently high technology companies are all seeming to be jumping into the solar area.  Okay I know that 2  of the 3 I am referring to today are both very experienced in silicon technology so this sort of makes sense I guess….

IBM, that bastion of computing power has not one but two initiatives in the news lately. The first has to do with light concentrating and more importantly solar cell cooling technology. The press release for this one is dated May 15, 2008 and can be found here: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/24203.wss

The second venture by Big Blue is joining up with Tokyo Ohka Kogyo (TOK) a semiconductor processing company to work on the technology where you essentially print solar cells (copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) cells).  This is similar to the technology put forwad by Nanosolar and others.  (Previous post: http://askthefm.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/new-solar-technologies-on-the-horizon/)  Full story via Ecogeek.org (http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1768/83/)

Not to be left out of the party, Intel the giant computer chip maker has created a spin off company with some other investors called SpectraWatt, Inc.  Construction has already started on a factory located in Oregon that expects to be shipping product and parts in a year.  Full story at CNET.com (http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9969631-54.html)

Lastly Google recently announced that it was investing $10 million in a company called eSolar.  eSolar’s claims are very concise:

“To serve the renewable electricity needs of utility-scale energy providers, eSolar has developed a market disrupting solar thermal power plant technology. Generation can be scaled from 25 MW to over 500 MW at energy prices competitive with traditional fossil fuels.”

Full story here (WWW.Solveclimate.com) http://solveclimate.com/blog/20080117/breakthrough-concentrated-solar-power-all-over-southwest-us

The claim seems pretty strong to me, but I have been surprised before.  All in all pretty exciting stuff!

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And not enough to power my house affordably? At least not yet. There are loads of different approaches being tried and everyday a new story comes out. This may be more of a steam of consciousness post but I am going to put a few somewhat unconnected links out there for your information.

First of all if you are a believer in solar power you might want to join the American Solar Energy Society who offer a good magazine on the subject called “Solar Today”.

Next, can you imagine your windows as solar panels? No I don’t mean gray windows, but clear like the glass you would normally expect. A company going by the name Dyesol is developing what they refer to as solar windows. The process is as follows: (excerpt and story via ecogeek)

Dyesol’s solar cells use innovative technology called “artificial photosynthesis,” where a dye works in much the same way as chlorophyll to absorb light and produce electricity. Panels are made up of “an electrolyte, a layer of titania (a pigment used in white paints and toothpaste), and ruthenium dye sandwiched between glass. Light striking the dye excites electrons, which are absorbed by the titania to become an electric current.”

Lastly tonight we have a technology called an “organic solar cell”.

As solar cells are relatively expensive, researchers are working on using plastics to harvest solar energy and accordingly, a discovery has been made at the Center for Polymers and Organic Solids at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Researchers here have worked together to create a new “tandem” organic solar cell that has increased efficiency in harnessing solar energy.

These tandem organic solar cells are made of two multilayered parts that work together so that together, they will be able to gather a wider range of the spectrum of solar radiation of both shorter and longer wavelengths.
These solar cells produce six and a half percent efficiency in solar energy, which is the highest level that has been achieved in solar cells that have been made from organic materials. Though these solar cells are in the developmental stage, they are expected to hit the markets in about three years.”

You can read the full article here: http://www.thinksolarenergy.net/70/creation-more-efficient-organic-solar-cell/solar-energy-solar-system/

So you can see there are lots of promising technologies out just over the horizon and I just wish that at least one of them would hurry up and go mass market so I could stop having to be so patient!

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Further evidence that the total cost of installing solar power in a wide variety of applications is coming down. A report by the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development (http://www.prometheus.org/) supports the conclusion that both the cost to purchase and the cost to install will be coming down in the next few years. The report calls it an “economic inevitability” so strong is their conclusion.

As always I thank you for your time and interest. Please take the time to Digg, or add to the other social network of your choice to help me spread the word about these issues. Please forward any questions or suggestions to: askthefm@gmail.com

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I have written some about the recent improvements in solar power technology but the real exciting news hiding behind all of these announcements is that very soon the supply problem with silicone is going to get much better. The article on Fox Business News is just an example:

“BSI and CSI have together achieved certain milestones with respect to delivery, consistency and quality of BSI’s solar grade silicon. CSI is expected to purchase up to 5,000 metric tons of solar grade silicon through 2011 at a price substantially less than the current contract prices for polysilicon. BSI has delivered 16 metric tons of solar grade silicon in 2007 and expects to deliver 450-500 metric tons to CSI in 2008.

Dr. Shawn Qu, Chairman and CEO of CSI commented: “BSI is a leading silicon producer and we are pleased to have collaborated with them on solar grade silicon since early 2007. In making this announcement we have together achieved a technical landmark in the PV industry.”

The full article can be found here: http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/energy/timminco-announces-supply-relationship-canadian-solar/-1395865961

This is only the tip fo the iceberg as other large companies like Dow Chemical become interested and partner with other more pioneering companies as mentioned here: http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Global_Solar_Energy_Selected_By_Dow_Chemical_For_Developing_Energized_Building_Products_999.html

This is where the smaller company get the financing it needs to ramp up production and really get this party started. Global Solar specializes in making CIGS on a flexible substrate perfect for solar roofing tiles and the like. This type of application will be well suited for the home and small business application.

I mentioned this in another post but it bears repeating here about IBM developing solar technology designed for large power farms and that they are already showing proof of possible efficiencies that compare very well to conventional power generation methods. The press release can be found here: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/24203.wss

Lastly there is a story on EcoGeek.com about the zero footprint city being developed in Abu Dhabi at a cost of 22 billion dollars. As a part of this project they are setting up 2 billion thin film solar manufacturing to make the solar panels for this city. http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1691/83/

This level of manufacturing capacity will very soon make itself felt in the cost to purchase solar panels and other generation equipment hopefully bringing it down where it will be affordable everywhere.

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As I have been writing this blog for about 2 weeks now I am beginning to get a feel in part for the path I would like to be on. Yesterday I started the first in an on going series about disaster preparedness, which will have additional installments every Thursday.

I would like to devote Fridays to technology, up and coming, existing and under used and the simply neat.

That brings us to a couple of new solar photo voltaic (PV) technologies that have made the news recently.

The most recent is from a company called Sunrgi who panels use an interesting configuration and process to focus the light on the panels generating a much more efficient cost per kilowatt.

“What differentiates SUNRGI’s XCPV system from any other solar energy system includes: a proprietary, integrated low profile technology for concentrating sunlight; a proprietary technology and methodology for cooling solar cells; a low cost, modular system optimized for mass-production; less land area or “roof top” requirements than typical solar energy systems; a technology road map for continuous improvement; low-cost field installation; and, a custom-designed system for easy operation and maintenance.” - Sunrgi Website

The other recent player is a company called Nanosolar that uses a method that relies on a spay technology to greatly increase manufacturing efficiency and drive down overall purchase costs.

Here is the description of the process from the company’s own blog:

“At Nanosolar, we have taken the highest-performance and most durable photovoltaic thin-film semiconductor, called CIGS (for “Copper Indium Gallium Diselenide”), and innovated on all seven critical areas necessary to reach a breakthrough cost reduction in solar cells, panels, and systems.

As opposed to using slow and expensive high-vacuum based thin-film deposition processes, we developed a proprietary ink (1) to allow us to use much simpler and higher-yield printing (2) for depositing the solar cell’s semiconductor.

We use a highly conductive yet low-cost foil as a substrate (3), which allows us to avoid the need to separately deposit an expensive bottom electrode layer (as required for a non-conductive substrate such as glass).

The foil furthermore allows us to

• apply the superior economics of high-yield continuous roll-to-roll processing (4),

• achieve a lower-cost high-performance top electrode (5),

• assemble cells by individually matched electrical characteristics (6), and

• develop high-power high-current panels (7) with lower balance-of-system cost.

The result sets the standard for cost-efficient solar electricity.” - Nanosolar Weblog

Both of these are very exciting, especially when you consider that SUNRGI is saying that they will be in production in about 15 months and Nanosolar is already delivering panels to utility companies overseas.

As always I look forward to your comments and questions. Please feel free to contact me directly at:

askthefm@gmail.com

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