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Solar-powered cell towers bring off-grid energy to remote communities
Derek Markham
Technology / Clean Technology
February 25, 2013

The mobile revolution is empowering developing communities by enabling real-time communication and access to the internet, and the number of cell towers (base stations) is rapidly growing, especially in areas that are off-grid. In fact, in many areas of the developing world, mobile phones are so important that people purchase them before they have a place to charge them.

Most of the off-grid cell towers that service remote communities are powered by diesel generators, which can be expensive, unreliable, and dirty to run. But a different approach is powering these base stations with wind and solar power, and then developing 'micropower' or community power grids, which can then offer extended access to clean, reliable, and cheap electricity.

http://www.treehugger.com/clean-tech...mmunities.html
http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compas...ity-power.html

Lanco Seeks Investors to Boost Solar Capacity: Corporate India
26 February 2013

Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) — Lanco Infratech Ltd., India’s second-biggest non-state power generator, is seeking private- equity investors to help expand its solar capacity fivefold as a coal shortage roils its thermal business and payment defaults by state utilities widen the group’s losses.

Lanco needs funds to meet a plan of adding 500 megawatts annually in three years, with 350 megawatts to be built for customers and the rest coming from its own plants, V. Saibaba, chief executive officer of the New Delhi-based company’s Lanco Solar unit said in a telephone interview. Government policies to promote alternative energy sources will make the investment attractive, he said.

“The political intent in India is very strong,” Saibaba said, speaking from his office in Gurgaon near New Delhi. “Constraints like coal availability and fuel import bills will ensure India will have to focus on renewable energy.”

Lanco is joining Tata Power Co., India’s biggest non-state utility, which said Feb. 5 that it is scouting for investors and planning to sell shares at its solar unit as India extends grants to cut solar project costs and ease curbs on equipment imports. A plan announced last year by the Lanco group to raise $750 million selling stake in its conventional power unit to private-equity funds has stalled amid losses that have surged nine times in the first three quarters of the financial year.

http://about.bnef.com/bnef-news/lanc...orate-india-4/

Uruguay Plans 200 Megawatts of the World’s Cheapest Solar Energy
25 February 2013

Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) — Uruguay will offer contracts next month to buy power from 200 megawatts of solar farms at the world’s cheapest rates as the South American nation seeks to add low-cost generation.

President Jose Mujica plans to sign a decree in two weeks that will require Uruguay’s national power utility Administracion Nacional de Usinas y Transmisiones Electricas to purchase electricity from the projects at a set rate of about $90 a megawatt hour, Ramon Mendez, director of energy at the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining, said today in a telephone interview.

Uruguay will produce some of the world’s cheapest wind energy and expects to do the same with solar power as the cost of photovoltaic panels fall, he said.

The price the government is offering is probably the lowest in the world and may not attract developers, according to Jenny Chase, an analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance in Zurich.

“That level of compensation is very optimistic,” Chase said in a telephone interview today. “Most countries where solar is being built offer higher rates than that, or extra tax incentives, as in the U.S.”

China, which has some sites that receive as much sun as Uruguay, offers $160 a megawatt hour and cloudy Germany offers 118 euros ($154.53) a megawatt hour, Chase said.

http://about.bnef.com/bnef-news/urug...-solar-energy/

Japan’s Quarterly Domestic Solar Shipments More Than Double
25 February 2013

Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) — Japan’s domestic shipments of solar cells and modules more than doubled to 1,003 megawatts in the three months to December 31, the Japan Photovoltaic Energy Association said today.

Local shipments were 406 megawatts in the same quarter in 2011. Imports, counted in domestic shipments, more than tripled to 342 megawatts from a year. Exports fell 66 percent to 111 megawatts, the association said in a statement on its website.

http://about.bnef.com/bnef-news/japa...than-double-2/

Two Record-Holding Solar Tech Companies Join Forces
February 26, 2013

The solar power industry just got a little more interesting this week, with the announcement that Solar Junction and Amonix have signed an agreement to work together on the next generation of low cost, ultra-high efficiency concentrated photovoltaic systems. If you’re expecting another long slog through the R&D phase, guess again. According to Amonix CEO Pat McCullough, “The results of this collaboration, and its lower levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), will be revealed soon.”

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/02/26/...t-solar-power/

PV Grid Integration Database Exposes Implementation Shortfalls
February 26, 2013

A major update to the PV grid integration database has taken place, shedding light on the relative ability of differing European countries to integrate PV into their electricity distribution grids.

The database allows installers and developers to drill down into the obstacles which impede different countries’ progress in delivering PV grid integration, such as legal and administrative requirements.

For example, it can take four times as long to get residential and commercial systems online in France as it can in Germany, with the legal requirements taking up to ten times longer.

Similarly, whilst Greece is nearly three times quicker to install residential systems than France, it is twice as slow at installing commercial systems. This is despite the manufacturing, delivery, and installation phases of a project being markedly quicker in Greece.

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/02/26/...on-shortfalls/

Deutsche Bank: Sustainable solar market expected in 2014
26. February 2013 | Global PV markets, Industry & Suppliers, Investor news, Markets & Trends | By: Becky Beetz

Buoyed by bullish demand forecasts, and increasing utilization rates and pricing, Deutsche Bank forecasts a solar market transition from subsidized to sustainable in 2014.

The German bank has raised its 2013 global solar demand forecast to 30 GW – representing a 20% year-on-year increase – on the back of suggestions of strong demand in markets including India, the U.S., China (around 7 to 10 GW), the U.K. (around 1 to 2 GW), Germany and Italy (around 2 GW).

Rooftop installations are, in particular, expected to be a main focus, says Deutsche Bank. A trend for projects being planned with either "minimal/no incentives" has also been observed, despite the belief that solar policy outlooks are improving, particularly in the U.S., China and India, and "other emerging markets".

Looking at India, Deutsche Bank predicts that due to state and RPO programs, demand is likely to be strong, at between 1 to 2 GW. Meanwhile, it says, "grid parity has been reached in India even despite the high cost of capital of ~10-12%."

http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...014_100010338/

US announces $27 million in solar funding
26. February 2013 | Industry & Suppliers, Markets & Trends | By: Becky Beetz

Under its SunShot Initiative, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced that up to US$15 million will be paid out to the solar manufacturing industry. It has also made up to $12 million available under the Solar Rooftop Challenge II.



By providing up to $15 million in funding, SolarMat’s goal is to support those technologies that can make a "significant market or manufacturing impact in 1 to 4 years," with a primary focus on cost reduction and efficiency gains. Both photovoltaics and concentrating solar power will be focused on.

With regards to photovoltaics, the proposed technologies must address three areas: (i) how they differentiate from what is already available; (ii) how they affect key manufacturing metrics at the photovoltaic module level; and (iii) how these translate into cost per Watt cost reductions.

http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...ing_100010343/

EuPD Research: Germany to add 3.9GW of new capacity in 2013
By Mark Osborne - 26 February 2013, 11:12
In News, PV Modules, Power Generation

A significant reduction in new PV capacity in Germany has been forecasted by EuPD Research for 2013.

The market research firm has guided that it expects only 3.9GW of new capacity to be installed in the country this year, compared to 7.6GW installed in 2012.

Reductions in FiT rates have been cited by many industry observers to finally curtail new installations in Germany, yet to date this has not happened as module prices have declined to compensate for the ROI shortfall.

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/eupd_res...pacity_in_2013

Panasonic introduces 100 Thousand Solar Lantern Project
By Julia Chan - 26 February 2013, 12:05
In News, Power Generation

Electronics giant Panasonic has launched its 100 Thousand Solar Lantern Project which will see the company donate a total of 100,000 solar LED lanterns to people around the world with no access to electricity.

As part of the first phase of the project, Panasonic has donated 3,000 compact solar lights to four non-profit organisations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for distribution to people in Myanmar. The four organisations are Bridge Asia Japan, Greater Mekong Initiative, Japan Heart and Myanmar Red Cross Society.

In March, the electronics giant will donate an additional 5,000 compact solar lights to an NGO in India as well as 2,000 lights to a refugee camp in Africa.

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/panasoni...antern_project

400MW Chinese modules exported to Japan in Q4 2012; JA Solar sees a huge leap
By Huangye Jiang - 25 February 2013, 19:47
In News, PV Modules, Finance

According to China-based Solarzoom, nearly 400MW of Chinese modules were exported to the Japanese domestic market in the fourth quarter of 2012.

In the list of top sales for the whole year, Suntech won first place with module sales of US$100 million, followed by JA Solar with US$70 million in sales, presenting itself as the most mentioned brand in the Japanese market. Canadian Solar earned third place with US$60 million in sales, according to Solarzoom.



According to the updated export data from the customs office, in the past two months, JA Solar had an imposing performance in Japan, and has raised its shipment guidance for the fourth quarter and full-year 2012. The company said that it expected fourth quarter shipments to be in the range of 480MW to 500MW, significantly exceeding its previous guidance of shipments being between 380MW and 420MW. Solarzoom’s data shows that the company’s shipment has doubled several times, and its growth in Q1 this year remains strong.

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/Module_s...pany_were_clos

NEWS RELEASE
UC Santa Barbara Scientists Develop A Whole New Way of Harvesting Energy from the Sun
February 25, 2013

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– A new method of harvesting the Sun's energy is emerging, thanks to scientists at UC Santa Barbara's Departments of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, and Materials. Though still in its infancy, the research promises to convert sunlight into energy using a process based on metals that are more robust than many of the semiconductors used in conventional methods. The researchers' findings are published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

"It is the first radically new and potentially workable alternative to semiconductor-based solar conversion devices to be developed in the past 70 years or so," said Martin Moskovits, professor of chemistry at UCSB.

In conventional photoprocesses, a technology developed and used over the last century, sunlight hits the surface of semiconductor material, one side of which is electron-rich, while the other side is not. The photon, or light particle, excites the electrons, causing them to leave their postions, and create positively-charged "holes." The result is a current of charged particles that can be captured and delivered for various uses, including powering lightbulbs, charging batteries, or facilitating chemical reactions.

http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=2950

Research to Probe Deep Within a Solar Cell

Feb. 25, 2013 — Engineers and scientists from the University of Sheffield have pioneered a new technique to analyse PCBM, a material used in polymer photovoltaic cells, obtaining details of the structure of the material which will be vital to improving the cell's efficiency. The findings are published in Applied Physics Letters.

Working with the ISIS pulsed neutron and muon source at the Science and Technology Facilities Council Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, the researchers are the first to use a cutting-edge neutron scattering technique called SERGIS to analyse PCBM. The technique -- still very much in development -- has so far only been tested on samples with well-known, regular structures, such as diffraction gratings.

The experiment focused on crystallites of PCBM which were on the surface of a thin film of the solar cell material as the researchers could then verify their findings using other analysis techniques, such as atomic force microscopy. But they believe the technique could in future be used to analyse the material's structure deep inside the active layers of a solar cell. This will enable them to understand how different fabrication methods impact on the cell's structure, and therefore its efficiency.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0225102553.htm