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In many the vast steppes of Mongolia, some things have remained unchanged for centuries. But some things have changed, and big time: according to a new report, almost 3 out of 4 Mongolian nomads are now using solar power. Even if your lifestyle is pretty much Medieval, you can still benefit from advanced technology – that’s […]
On an explosive growth trajectory, the total operational solar photovoltaic capacity in the US just passed the 20 GW milestone after 1,393 megawatts of PV were installed last quarter.
An innovative concentrated solar power design called the "Solar Sunflower" was recently demonstrated by Swiss researchers at Airlight Energy and IBM Research in Zurich. The energy generator concentrates 5,000 suns onto a semiconductor chip to generate both electricity and heat at 80% efficiency. This meas roughly 60 times more power generated over the same surface area than a typical roof-mounted solar panel - granted, the parabolic dish array, which is quite big, isn't included. The electricity and hot water generated by one single Solar Sunflower can meet the needs of a couple homes.
India is one of the most polluted countries in the world, but for what it's worth local authorities acknowledge this and are trying to balance their energy mix, currently heavily reliant on fossil fuel. More than 90% of India's energy needs are met by coal, oil and gas. In all this ocean of dirt, particles and toxic fumes, the Cochin International Airport (CIAL) shines like jewel - the first international airport in the world that is 100% served by solar energy.
The Department of the Navy (DON) announced it will make the largest investment in renewable energy by an federal entity. Its plan is to install a huge 210 megawatt (MW) solar facility - enough to power 80,000 Californian homes - in the Arizona desert, which would serve electricity to 14 US Navy installations. The agreement was signed last month and marks the latest in a slew of measures meant to make the Department of Defense less dependent on oil - not just by the navy, but also the military or air force.
Most people have an outdated belief that solar energy is too expensive. For most people living in the United States, this isn't true for some time and Google just released a new project to make a point of this. Called Project Sunroof, the tool uses extensive satellite imagery from Google Maps and superimposes sunlight energy flux data over them.
In only 15 years, renewable energy (wind, solar, hydro) could surpass fossil fuels as the main provider of energy. According to a new International Energy Agency (IEA) report, renewables could provide more than 50% of the energy market by 2050. But even so, they warn, without bolder emission cuts, we'll be blowing past our current climate targets.
Rooftop solar is now cheaper than grid electricity for 30 million people living in 6 cities, a new report writes - even without government subsidies. This includes the cost of installing the solar panels. In other words, the future is here - solar energy is cheaper than the alternative.
University of Michigan researchers have devised what looks like the world's first fully transparent solar cell. Think of all of those tall glass buildings; wouldn't it be nice if all that incoming solar energy was harvested somehow? Likewise, why not let your smartphone charge up a bit while it's taking a tan. Of course this isn't a new idea, but previous attempts are rather unattractive because the compromise makes windows too shady or dark. After all, the purpose of a window is to let light in, not make energy. Ideally, you'd want them harness energy as well, complementary. The new system devised at UM is exciting because it offers exactly this: energy generation, with no compromise in visibility.
The UK boasts 650,000 solar installations across homes, offices, schools, churches, warehouses, farms, police stations, train stations and even a bridge. It's been one of the fastest growing solar markets in Europe. At the end of 2013, there were 2.8GW of solar power arrays installed, but by the end of 2014 this figure climbed to 5GW or nearly double in only 12 months. However, drastic and discriminatory changes in renewable subsidies to come in effect in May of this year are expected to collapse solar development to 1% of its current level.
As global oil prices continue to drastically fluctuate up and down over the years, the Kingdom of Jordan has announced that all of their mosques will soon run on solar energy, in an attempt to save money and promote sustainable development.
The most efficient solar cells are those that convert incoming concentrated solar power via lenses, the sort you see on the International Space Station or in the sun-soaked Middle East where Shams 1, a 100 MW CSP plant – the largest in the world – operates, powering 20,000 United Arab Emirates homes. Because of their complex nature, […]
Amazingly, 19 percent of all Australian households have solar panels or solar water heaters installed, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistic (ABS). The statistic is even more astonishing when you consider only three years ago five percent of the households had rooftop solar panels. A land of sunshine Of the 19 per cent, 14 […]
Australian solar researchers have converted over 40 percent of solar light’s energy into electricity, the highest efficiency ever reported by any team for this kind of system. The key for the design is a custom filter which captures sunlight that is normally wasted by commercial solar cells on tower. “This is the highest efficiency ever reported […]
Solar cell technology has improved dramatically over the past couple of year, yet it will be a long time before multi-junction cells – then kind that can reach efficiency well over 40% – will become affordable to small home owners or even large scale installation. New methods are always explored, however, each with its own angle […]
We keep hearing more about developments made in the photovoltaic field, but we have to keep in mind that this is not the only way in which solar energy can be harvested and used. A multidisciplinary engineering team at the University of California, San Diego developed a new nanoparticle-based material for concentrating solar power plants, absorbing […]
Germany has taken a pioneering role in terms of renewable energy, in Europa and even worldwide. Many countries are now negotiating or even applying renewable energy systems, but in Germany the situation is different – most of renewables are owned by individuals (as opposed to companies), and most of them are produced in the rural […]
Researchers at MIT report they’ve developed a novel material that can absorb almost all incoming wavelengths of light and convert the energy into heat. The radiated heat emitted by the material can then be collected by photovoltaics for later conversion into electricity. The material is cheap to make using currently available manufacturing processes, can absorb […]
The UK’s first floating solar farm has been unveiled in Berkshire; the array features 800 photovoltaic panels and has a capacity of 200W. The project cost £250,000 ($405,400) and has been installed on a reservoir at Sheeplands Farm near Wargrave. Solar energy provides many advantages, but also raises many problems. Among those problems is land area […]
For billions of years, nature has been harnessing the energy from the sun through photosynthesis. This way, plants, algae and cyanobacteria use sunlight to split water and produce energy-rich chemical compounds from carbon dioxide (CO2). This energy is then transferred to animal that eat these plants, and animals that eat plant-eating animals, including us humans. It’s […]
Even though coal is still Germany's number one energy source, renewable energy is developing incredibly fast, with wind and solar energy catching up fast. If the trend continues, they will soon become the dominant energy source.
A new study conducted by Stanford Researchers demonstrates a practical “roadmap” for converting California’s all-purpose energy infrastructure over to renewable sources by 2050. The paper proposes running the state on a mixture of wind, water and sunlight (WWS). To make things even more interesting, the paper does it all with available technologies – of course, […]
Germany has reached a new renewable energy milestone recently after the country announced that on a given day an impressive 50.6% of its energy demand was covered by solar energy alone. Breaching this important psychological barrier means a lot of for renewable energy efforts in Germany, and worldwide as well serving as an example. According to […]
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign report they’ve devised a new type of highly efficient solar cell that is potentially easier to manufacture and cheaper than cells of similar performance. The stacked cell allows photon energy to be garnered from across the whole solar spectrum, and this new design makes use of a […]
The problem with many sources of clean energy is the limited conditions which they can use to produce energy – solar energy doesn’t work during the night, wind energy requires wind (heh), geothermal energy is complicated and can only be applied to some places. But if Solar Wind Energy Tower has its way, Arizona may soon get […]
Japanese authorities have approved the construction of a futuristic farming project in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture, in a part of the land which has been radioactively contaminated. It seems the most unlikely place to try to put a utopian blueprint into practice, since the prefecture was severely contaminated by the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear […]
A British company has developed colored but transparent solar cells which add just 10% to the price of the glass they are attached to. Glass and sunlight Oxford Photovoltaics, a spin-off from the University of Oxford, was able to “print” colourful glass that can generate electricity from the sun’s energy; they reported a £2m funding […]
Two years ago, we were telling you about plans for developing the world’s largest solar thermal energy plant in California – a project in which Google invested $168 million. Now, the much anticipated Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System has finally kicked off! The 14 square km facility (3500 acres) which is backed not only by […]
The World Solar Challenge is a biennial race from Darwin to Adelaide, spanning 3000km of the Australian outback. It attracts teams from around the world, mostly from universities, with 37 teams from 20 countries participating in the 2011 race. What so special about it? All cars need need to be completely solar powered. Innovative and edgy, […]
As solar cells, and obviously the solar energy sector in consequence, become ever more popular spurred by increased demand through out the world, scientists today are currently interested in two major keypoints: increasing efficiency – the most important and immediate goal at hand – and making solar cells as cheap as possible without, obviously, compromising […]
It’s no surprise that Germany is just giving lessons in terms of managing renewable energy sources – year after year, the country features more and more cities and now, even villages, which harness most of their energy from renewable sources. Wildpoldsried, a municipality in the district of Oberallgäu in Bavaria has a population of only […]
Renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, are gaining ground fast against fossil fuels in terms of energy production, but unfortunately not that fast as we’d hoped for. One big obstacle in the way of renewable energy is storage. A refined look at an older idea that dates back from the XIX century seeks to […]
For some years now, scientists have been exploring the use of quantum dots as the basis for a novel type of solar cell. The advantages over conventional solar photovoltaic cells are numerous, minus one aspect: efficiency, which is actually the most important one. A new technique developed at MIT labs that uses quantum dots in […]
One of the biggest hurdles the solar energy industry currently faces is efficiently transforming the incoming energy from the sun’s rays. Vast fields of solar panels are a common sight, but truth of the matter is their energy output is quite low, which puts them at a technical and economic disadvantage from other renewable solutions […]
The only thing that stands between Australia and a future led entirely by renewable energy is the political will to make the change, a new report claims. Australia could be powered entirely by renewable energy in no more than 10 years, using solar and wind energy – two resources which Australia has a lot of. […]
While we all have to recognize the huge potential that solar energy brings us, we also have to say that sadly, so far, we’re not very effective at harnessing this energy. The best modern silicon and indium-tin-oxide-based solar cells are approaching the theoretical limit of 33.7% efficiency. A big breakthrough The team led by Stephen […]
Solar Impulse, the now famous 100 percent solar-powered aircraft, made the headlines after it proved it could fly for 26 hours straight, be it day or night. Now the projects’ initiators want to take the plane and solar power to new dazzling heights – they want to circumnavigate the globe in 20 days and 20 […]
While current solar energy conversion technology is preoccupied with generating electricity with as much efficiency as possible, researchers at Rice University have invented a new technological set-up consisting of nanoparticles smaller than the the wavelength of light that can transform solar energy into steam almost instantly. Their findings show a registered efficiency of 24%, while current […]
In a fantastic breakthrough in solar energy, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have devised solar cells using nanotechnology which have had a recorded efficiency as high as 18.2%. Now, this alone is far from being deemed impressive, considering the current most efficient solar cells are 35% plus. What […]
Tokelau is a small island near Samoa, not far from New Zealand; at a first glance, it wouldn’t seem significantly different from other beautiful atolls in that part of the world, but Tokelau has something very special: they are on track to become the first territory entirely powered by solar energy. The Diesel dependent country […]
A recent study of gargantuan proportions estimated that the technical potential of photovoltaic cells and concentrated solar power (CSP) in the United States, at today’s level of research and with today’s possibilities, is enough to generate about 400,000 TWh of energy annually, significantly more than any other renewable energy source. The study The National Energy […]
Hey, guys! We’ve received some great feedback from our previous contest, when we offered an awesome DNA portrait to one of our readers. Naturally, we’d like to follow with yet another giveaway and hopefully turn this into a frequent feature on ZME Science. It’s the least we can do for all your generous support you’ve […]
According to a recently publicized rapport by the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), renewable energy sources could account for as much as 80% of the US’s electricity demand by 2050. The rapport signals the various difficulties that need to be overcome to reach this goal, and note that while 80% might be very challenging […]
Last week, the U.S. Air Force released a report in which it outlines its technological and energy plans for the forthcoming 15 years. Among others, the Air Force means to deploy a space-based solar power station, which would serve energy wirelessly to both Earth and space satellites, as well as a new generation of spacecraft […]
Researchers have successfully managed to create a “solar paint” made out of quantum dots, which exhibits similar properties to multifilm solar cell architectures. The later are sophisticated, expensive and require a lot of time to deploy; the paint can be easily applied to basically any surface, like a house’s roof, and prepare it to easily generate […]
Space solar stations are not a new idea at all – they have been researched since the 1970; but as years pass, scientists understand more and more the numerous benefits this type of technology could bring – a true revolution in renewable energy. This idea might seem taken out from a scientific novel, but back […]
Here’s how renewable energy can be proliferated easily trough out the world, the developed one at least – scale it and make it cheap for the user. At least this is what Germany did and it’s working incredibly well for them. The country just recently announced that feed-in tariffs for solar energy will be 15% cheaper […]
We’ve become so accustomed to the imagery of huge stacks of solar panel arrays stretching across the scorching desert, that the idea of implementing solar panels in some of the coldest spots on Earth might be quickly judged as feeble. In reality, Japanese scientists claim in a recently published study that the most energy efficient […]
Japan shows us yet again that they are leading the world in terms of renewable energy, in taking a plan that would make solar panels mandatory for all buildings no later than 2030. The plan, expected to be unveiled at the upcoming G8 Summit in France, aims to show Japan’s resolve to encourage technological innovation […]
Researchers from Boston College and MIT have managed to develop a new kind of thermo-solar technology by applying a new technique which involves high-performance nanotech materials arrayed on a flat panel – they’re results have proven to be as much as eight times more efficient than current solar thermo electric generators, at little to no […]
