[amor de cosmos]

Sol Voltaics' Nano Process May Boost Solar Efficiency 25%
10 April 2013

Sol Voltaics unveiled SolInk, an economical nanomaterial that promises to increase the efficiency of crystalline silicon or thin film solar modules by up to 25% or more, leading to solar power plants and rooftop solar arrays that will generate far more electricity than today's best commercially available systems.

The increase in efficiency will allow SolInk-enhanced panels to deliver power at prices that competes directly against electricity from fossil fuel plants while improving the economics for manufacturers. Global demand for solar energy is expected to grow from 29.8 gigawatts of new solar installations in 2012 to 50.8 gigawatts in 2016, according to Greentech Media.

To date, Sol Voltaics has raised $11 million from private investors including Industrifonden, Foundation Asset Management of Sweden, Teknoinvest, Provider, Nano Future Invest and Scatec Energy of Norway. The company additionally has received public funding from the European Union, Vinnova, Nordic Innovation Center, and others. Sol Voltaics will raise $10 to $20 million this year.



Aerotaxy: A New Way to Manufacture Materials

Aerotaxy represents a new paradigm for mass producing the smallest structures inside electronic devices. Nanowires and nanotubes are typically produced through an epitaxial process, i.e. slowly grown as crystals on substrates. Because of the inherent physical limits of the epitaxial process, nanoparticles often need to be grown in place or harvested and sorted in batch processes that can be both time-consuming and expensive.

Aerotaxy creates nanomaterials by suspending and mixing active materials in carrier gas streams. The active materials bond to form larger, uniform structures while in flight: nanowires are literally grown in air. In this way, Aerotaxy can generate tens of billions of nanowires per second on a continuous basis.

The finished nanowires can be integrated into a solar panel or other products, or can be stored indefinitely. A 2012 paper published in Nature details how professor Samuelson and his team manufactured gallium arsenide nanowires with Aerotaxy.

http://www.solarnovus.com/index.php?...rticle&id=6437

US installed 537MW of PV capacity in Q1 2013
By Julia Chan - 11 April 2013, 11:12
In News, Power Generation

A total of 537MW of PV capacity, representing 38 large-scale solar power projects, was installed in the US during the first three months of 2013, according to statistics published in the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s March Energy Infrastructure Update.

Compared with the first quarter of the previous year, just 264MW of PV was installed representing a total of 61 solar power plants.

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/us_insta...ity_in_q1_2013

PV predicted to produce 110 TWh in 2013
10. April 2013 | Top News, Applications & Installations, Global PV markets, Industry & Suppliers, Investor news, Markets & Trends | By: Becky Beetz

According to a new report issued by the International Energy Agency (IEA), already installed photovoltaic systems will produce "at least" 110 TWh, or 110 billion kWh in 2013, thus representing 0.5% of global electricity demand. This corresponds to the annual energy consumption of the Netherlands, it says.

In line with figures from NPD Solarbuzz, "A snapshot of global PV 1992-2012," released by the IEA, through its Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (PVPS), states that nearly 29 GW of photovoltaic systems were installed in 2012.

This brings cumulative capacity to around 96.5 GW, write the report’s authors, who remain skeptical that the 100 GW capacity mark has been passed, as the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) claimed back in April.

Nevertheless, it states that photovoltaic technology has become a "major actor" in the global electricity sector. "At least 110 TWh, or 110 billion kWh will be produced in 2013 by PV systems already installed," write the report’s authors. "If this represents about 0.5% of the electricity demand of the planet, some countries have reached rapidly significant percentages. These 110 TWh represent the annual consumption of countries such as The Netherlands or Egypt."

http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...013_100010851/

Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities
By David Roberts

Solar power and other distributed renewable energy technologies could lay waste to U.S. power utilities and burn the utility business model, which has remained virtually unchanged for a century, to the ground.

That is not wild-eyed hippie talk. It is the assessment of the utilities themselves.

Back in January, the Edison Electric Institute — the (typically stodgy and backward-looking) trade group of U.S. investor-owned utilities — released a report [PDF] that, as far as I can tell, went almost entirely without notice in the press. That’s a shame. It is one of the most prescient and brutally frank things I’ve ever read about the power sector. It is a rare thing to hear an industry tell the tale of its own incipient obsolescence.

I’ve been thinking about how to convey to you, normal people with healthy social lives and no time to ponder the byzantine nature of the power industry, just what a big deal the coming changes are. They are nothing short of revolutionary … but rather difficult to explain without jargon.



Now, into this cozy business model enters cheap distributed solar PV, which eats away at it like acid.

First, the power generated by solar panels on residential or commercial roofs is not utility-owned or utility-purchased. From the utility’s point of view, every kilowatt-hour of rooftop solar looks like a kilowatt-hour of reduced demand for the utility’s product. Not something any business enjoys. (This is the same reason utilities are instinctively hostile to energy efficiency and demand response programs, and why they must be compelled by regulations or subsidies to create them. Utilities don’t like reduced demand!)

It’s worse than that, though. Solar power peaks at midday, which means it is strongest close to the point of highest electricity use — “peak load.” Problem is, providing power to meet peak load is where utilities make a huge chunk of their money. Peak power is the most expensive power. So when solar panels provide peak power, they aren’t just reducing demand, they’re reducing demand for the utilities’ most valuable product.

But wait. Renewables are limited by the fact they are intermittent, right? “The sun doesn’t always shine,” etc. Customers will still have to rely on grid power for the most part. Right?

This is a widely held article of faith, but EEI (of all places!) puts it to rest. (In this and all quotes that follow, “DER” means distributed energy resources, which for the most part means solar PV.)

Due to the variable nature of renewable DER, there is a perception that customers will always need to remain on the grid. While we would expect customers to remain on the grid until a fully viable and economic distributed non-variable resource is available, one can imagine a day when battery storage technology or micro turbines could allow customers to be electric grid independent. To put this into perspective, who would have believed 10 years ago that traditional wire line telephone customers could economically “cut the cord?” [Emphasis mine.]

Utility investors are accustomed to large, long-term, reliable investments with a 30-year cost recovery — fossil fuel plants, basically. The cost of those investments, along with investments in grid maintenance and reliability, are spread by utilities across all ratepayers in a service area. What happens if a bunch of those ratepayers start reducing their demand or opting out of the grid entirely? Well, the same investments must now be spread over a smaller group of ratepayers. In other words: higher rates for those who haven’t switched to solar.

That’s how it starts. These two paragraphs from the EEI report are a remarkable description of the path to obsolescence faced by the industry:

The financial implications of these threats are fairly evident. Start with the increased cost of supporting a network capable of managing and integrating distributed generation sources. Next, under most rate structures, add the decline in revenues attributed to revenues lost from sales foregone. These forces lead to increased revenues required from remaining customers … and sought through rate increases. The result of higher electricity prices and competitive threats will encourage a higher rate of DER additions, or will promote greater use of efficiency or demand-side solutions.

Increased uncertainty and risk will not be welcomed by investors, who will seek a higher return on investment and force defensive-minded investors to reduce exposure to the sector. These competitive and financial risks would likely erode credit quality. The decline in credit quality will lead to a higher cost of capital, putting further pressure on customer rates. Ultimately, capital availability will be reduced, and this will affect future investment plans. The cycle of decline has been previously witnessed in technology-disrupted sectors (such as telecommunications) and other deregulated industries (airlines).

If nothing is done to check these trends, the U.S. electric utility as we know it could be utterly upended. The report compares utilities’ possible future to the experience of the airlines during deregulation or to the big monopoly phone companies when faced with upstart cellular technologies. In case the point wasn’t made, the report also analogizes utilities to the U.S. Postal Service, Kodak, and RIM, the maker of Blackberry devices. These are not meant to be flattering comparisons.

Remember, too, that these utilities are not Google or Facebook. They are not accustomed to a state of constant market turmoil and reinvention. This is a venerable old boys network, working very comfortably within a business model that has been around, virtually unchanged, for a century. A friggin’ century, more or less without innovation, and now they’re supposed to scramble and be all hip and new-age? Unlikely.

http://grist.org/article/solar-panel...u-s-utilities/
http://inhabitat.com/us-utilities-fe...-obsolescence/

NRG Skirts Utilities Taking Solar Panels to U.S. Rooftop
By Christopher Martin and Naureen S. Malik - Mar 25, 2013

NRG Energy Inc. (NRG), the biggest power provider to U.S. utilities, has become a renegade in the $370 billion energy-distribution industry by providing electricity directly to consumers.

Bypassing its utility clients, NRG is installing solar panels on rooftops of homes and businesses and in the future will offer natural gas-fired generators to customers to kick in when the sun goes down, Chief Executive Officer David Crane said in an interview.

NRG is the first operator of traditional, large-scale power plants to branch into running mini-generation systems that run a single building. The endeavor strikes at the core business of utilities that have earned money from making and delivering electricity ever since Thomas Edison flipped the switch on the first investor-owned power plant in Manhattan in 1882.

Consumers are realizing “they don’t need the power industry at all,” Crane, 54, said in an interview at this year’s MIT Energy Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “That is ultimately where big parts of the country go.”



‘Potential Threat’

“It is obviously a potential threat to us over the long term,” said Jim Rogers, chairman and chief executive officer of Duke Energy Corp. (DUK), the largest U.S. utility owner.

Duke’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization grew 25 percent last year to $6.43 billion, compared with NRG’s 15 percent decline to $1.59 billion.

Other energy companies are challenging traditional utilities by providing rooftop solar panels to power individual buildings. That includes SolarCity Corp. (SCTY), which raised $92 million in its December initial public offering. The San Mateo, California-based company had installed 287 megawatts of commercial and residential solar projects, as of the end of last year.



Disrupting Utilities

Utilities are aware that generating power at customer sites will disrupt their business.

“There’s been a huge effort to build solar on the rooftop, both residential and commercial,” Duke’s Rogers said, as well as systems that generate power at industrial sites. “All of this is leading to a disintermediation of us from our customers.”

Duke is also considering a move into rooftop solar, a business that presents an “opportunity in the short term,” Rogers said.

In the long term, however, he recognizes that his business could become far less important.

“If the cost of solar panels keeps coming down, installation costs come down and if they combine solar with battery technology and a power management system, then we have someone just using us for backup,” he said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/...s-rooftop.html

Case Study
Nano-Manhattan: 3D Solar Cells Boost Efficiency While Reducing Size, Weight and Complexity of Photovoltaic Arrays

Unique three-dimensional solar cells that capture nearly all of the light that strikes them could boost the efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) systems while reducing their size, weight and mechanical complexity.

The new 3D solar cells capture photons from sunlight using an array of miniature “tower” structures that resemble high-rise buildings in a city street grid. The cells could find near-term applications for powering spacecraft, and by enabling efficiency improvements in photovoltaic coating materials, could also change the way solar cells are designed for a broad range of applications.

“Our goal is to harvest every last photon that is available to our cells,” said Jud Ready, a senior research engineer in the Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). “By capturing more of the light in our 3D structures, we can use much smaller photovoltaic arrays. On a satellite or other spacecraft, that would mean less weight and less space taken up with the PV system.”

The 3D design was described in the March 2007 issue of the journal JOM, published by The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society. The research has been sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Air Force Research Laboratory, NewCyte Inc., and IP2Biz®. A global patent application has been filed for the technology.

The GTRI photovoltaic cells trap light between their tower structures, which are about 100 microns tall, 40 microns by 40 microns square, 10 microns apart -- and built from arrays containing millions of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes. Conventional flat solar cells reflect a significant portion of the light that strikes them, reducing the amount of energy they absorb.

Because the tower structures can trap and absorb light received from many different angles, the new cells remain efficient even when the sun is not directly overhead. That could allow them to be used on spacecraft without the mechanical aiming systems that maintain a constant orientation to the sun, reducing weight and complexity – and improving reliability.

“The efficiency of our cells increases as the sunlight goes away from perpendicular, so we may not need mechanical arrays to rotate our cells,” Ready noted.

http://www.gtri.gatech.edu/casestudy...ost-efficiency
http://inhabitat.com/3d-textured-sol...space-station/

2013/4/11
Innovative self-cooling, thermoelectric system developed

Researchers at the UPNA/NUP-Public University of Navarre have produced a prototype of a self-cooling thermoelectric device that achieves “free” cooling of over 30ºC in devices that give off heat. It is a piece of equipment that acts as a traditional cooler but which consumes no electricity because it obtains the energy it needs to function from the very heat that has to be dissipated.

The researchers want to apply this system to power converters and transformers present in power stations that produce renewable electrical power employing, for example, wind, solar photovoltaic, solar thermoelectric and hydraulic energy.David Astrain-Ulibarrena, of the UPNA/NUP’s Department of Engineering, Mechanics, Energy and Materials and head researcher in the project, explains what the system consists of: “When these devices are functioning, they heat up and need to be cooled down.In many cases, heat exchangers with fans are used which naturally need to be powered externally and consume a certain amount of electrical power. What we do is take advantage of the heat flow emitted by the power converter and transformer to produce the electrical power needed to make the fans work. That way we achieve the cooling of the device and control its temperature, but without any energy cost."

http://www.basqueresearch.com/berria...I#.UWbluzfEXd4