February 2015 – Page 2 – Solar Magazine

Harvard researchers have discovered how to convert solar energy into liquid fuel

Bacteria used to convert solar energy into liquid fuel

Biologists from Harvard University have developed a way to make burnable liquid fuel out of sunlight, using an artificial leaf and a bucket of bacteria-infested water.

According to the Capital OTC, the research team developed an artificial leaf which can make sunlight divide water into oxygen and hydrogen. This process uses bacteria specially engineered to convert carbon dioxide and hydrogen into isopropanol, which is a type of liquid fuel.

Professor Pamela Silver, one of the researchers involved in the study and scientist specialized in biochemistry and systems biology at Harvard Medical School, explained that the new discovery proves that it’s possible to have liquid fuel by harvesting solar energy.

Professor Silver said that they are trying to develop an easy way of obtaining fuel using natural methods.

The artificial leaf was invented by Daniel Nocera, professor of energy at Harvard. According to him, this special leaf requires inexpensive materials to act as catalysts and convert solar energy into fuel.

Professor Nocera explained that the catalysts he’s invented are very adaptable and have a high level of compatibility with the conditions needed for the bacteria to thrive.

In this new system, Nocera says, once the artificial leaf succeeded in producing oxygen and hydrogen, the hydrogen is then used to feed a bacterium called Ralstonia eutropha.

After this process, the hydrogen is taken back to protons and electrons by an enzyme, combining them with carbon dioxide in order for them to replicate, which leads to the formation of more cells.

The next step is based on the discoveries made previously by Anthony Sinskey, professor of microbiology, health sciences and technology at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This next step involves the bacterium being metabolically engineered in order to make isopropanol.

Professor Silver said that these principles could also be used to produce vitamins in a small amount.

The team of scientists wanted to increase the ability of the artificial leaf to convert solar energy into biomass by optimizing the bacteria and the catalyst.

The scientists’ goal is to achieve an efficiency of 5%, while nature’s rate of efficiency for turning sunlight into biomass via photosynthesis is of 1%.

The new study was published in the journal PNAS.

World’s largest solar plant opens in California desert

Desert Sunlight power plant

The Southern California desert is now home to the world’s largest solar power plant.

According to the USA Today, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell joined state officials on Monday to open the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight solar project in the town of Desert Center, Calif., near Joshua Tree National Park. Built by First Solar, the project generates enough electricity to power 160,000 average California homes.

Desert Sunlight received a federal loan of nearly $1.5 billion, and Jewell called its completion an example of the loan guarantee program’s tremendous importance.

“When you are stepping out with new technology, when you are trying something that has been untested before, a loan guarantee program from an organization like the Department of Energy is what provides you, as a lender, that certainty that you can step up and support the project,” Jewell told The Desert Sun.

Conservative lawmakers have derided the loan guarantee program, arguing that it’s wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. Critics have pointed to the program’s $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, a Fremont-based solar panel manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy in 2011.

But the Department of Energy reported last year that it expects to make a profit of $5 billion to $6 billion from the program. The department funded five traditional, large-scale solar farms, and Desert Sunlight marks the last of those projects to go online.

“They’re all rock-solid, money is good, living up to every kind of condition we put in the loan documents in terms of performance, in terms of commercial operation,” Peter Davidson, executive director of the Department of Energy’s loan programs office, said in an interview last week.

The loan guarantee program did more than fund five solar photovoltaic projects, Davidson added: It helped launch the large-scale solar industry. In 2009, there were no traditional solar farms in the United States larger than 100 megawatts. Now, 17 such projects have been financed, according to a Department of Energy report released Monday.

Solar panels “existed before as a technology, but that technology hadn’t been deployed at a large scale,” Davidson said. “Once we’ve done that, the government steps aside to let the private markets take over.”

Desert Sunlight employed an average of 440 people during more than three years of construction, and it now has about 15 full-time employees. Money provided by the project’s owners — as part of an agreement negotiated with Riverside County — is also being used to fund $400,000 in improvements to the community center in nearby Desert Center.

“The debate’s over — we’re going to be moving to more renewable energy,” Riverside County Supervisor John Benoit said.

Power from the plant will go to Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

Desert Sunlight is the world’s largest solar power plant, although only by a hair.

The Topaz solar project in San Luis Obispo County, Calif. — which, like Desert Sunlight, was built by Arizona-based First Solar — also has a capacity of 550 megawatts. But the desert has more abundant sunlight than San Luis Obispo County, so Desert Sunlight will actually generate more electricity than Topaz, said Georges Antoun, First Solar’s chief operating officer.

“It’s a beautiful sun here, year-round,” he said.

California as a whole has installed more renewable energy than any other state, noted David Hochschild, a member of the California Energy Commission.

“There were a lot of skeptics who actually didn’t believe that renewables could scale, that this cost reduction could happen, that we could introduce it to the grid,” Hochschild said. “They’ve been proven wrong.”

There’s little doubt that California will get more electricity from clean energy in the coming years. The state’s three major utilities are on track to meet or exceed a 33% renewable energy mandate by 2020, and Gov. Jerry Brown is calling for policymakers to increase that target to 50% by 2030.

It’s an open question, though, whether future solar projects will be anywhere near as big as Desert Sunlight.

Developers have been gravitating toward smaller solar farms, which are easier to build and usually have a smaller impact on species and ecosystems in California’s deserts. Desert Sunlight spans 3,800 acres near Joshua Tree National Park, and it faced vehement opposition from environmental activists during its permitting process.

If legislators adopt a 50% renewable energy mandate, it could incentivize massive projects like Desert Sunlight. But Antoun said he’d be surprised to see many more projects 550 megawatts or larger, in California or elsewhere.

“Can we create a bigger project? Of course,” he said. “But it all has to do with how much appetite (states) have for how much land to utilize, and to be committed for 20-25 years.”

Utilities faced with renewable energy mandates, Antoun said, will more likely turn to projects in the 100-megawatt range, located closer to energy consumers. Projects built near cities require far less transmission infrastructure, which is expensive to build and poses a host of environmental concerns.

Solar panels have now a force field that eliminate dust

Self-cleaning solar panels

A new electrostatic material could eliminate dust particles of solar panels in the desert, making them way more efficient.

Dry, arid places are obvious locations for large-scale solar plants because there’s plenty of space and plenty of sun. But there’s a problem: Dust and sand that clings to equipment, reducing its efficiency. In places like Saudi Arabia, some solar reflectors—which concentrate heat to produce steam—have to been cleaned twice a week. That seriously increases maintenance costs and raises water issues, because there’s not a lot of water in the desert.

But there might just be an ingenious solution: an electro-static field. According to fastcoexist.com, a team at Boston University is working on a way to charge dust particles and then push them sideways, so they don’t get in the way. Its transparent “electrodynamic system” is printed on a solar panel or reflector, so it has a sort of force-field around it when it’s turned on. Most creatively, the material has three layers that are activated in phases and create a rippling effect.

“Number one, we want to charge the particle. Number two, we want to lift them up and propel them,” says Malay Mazumder, a Boston University professor of electro-physics. “The dynamic field we apply lifts them up one millimeter and the phases produce a traveling wave that propels the particles, so they are removed from the surface.”

The idea first came from Japan, and Mazumder has developed it for several applications. Between 2001 and 2003, he looked at a way to extract dangerous particles from coal before it’s burned in a power plant. Later, he looked at methods to put charges on drug molecules that treat respiratory diseases so they would go deep into lungs, rather than the stomach where they’re less useful.

The solar project could have the biggest impact, as it might reduce costs for solar operators, especially where they are currently high. It could also make some projects more viable. But there’s still some work to do. Mazumder’s team has only got the fields working with 15-by-15-centimeter panels so far. They need to scale up to at least 1.3 meters to be operational. Plus, they also need to find a material that’s both durable and cost-effective.

“The main barrier is to find materials that we can use outdoors in hot and extreme climates but that are less expensive than the operational cost [of conventional cleaning],” Mazumder says.

He’s confident it can be done, though. He’s got funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and others, as well as help from the large solar company, Abengoa. He hopes the first installations could appear within two to three years.

Recent developments in European solar energy sector

What’s new on European solar sector

Many EU member states have passed laws in recent years to encourage solar energy investment. However, solar energy may have become a victim of its own success. According to industry experts, certain subsidies and tariffs may have been overly generous, particularly given the decrease over the past few years in the cost of producing photovoltaic panels. As a result, several European countries – including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Romania and Spain – are backtracking and modifying their solar energy laws. On the other hand, these changes may contravene applicable bilateral investment treaties or the Energy Charter Treaty, giving rise to claims by investors.

In 2009 the European Union issued a directive setting the goal that by 2020, at least 20% of energy consumed in the European Union shall be from renewable sources.

In conjunction with this directive and the drive towards renewable energy, many EU member states have passed laws to encourage sector investment, including in the solar energy sector.

In particular, many countries offered subsidies or proposed a feed-in tariff system, whereby solar energy investors could sign long-term contracts under which the market operator would commit to purchasing all of the energy that the investor produced at an above-market rate.

As a result of such measures, investment flowed in and many countries witnessed a significant increase in their photovoltaic capacity. For instance, Greece’s photovoltaic capacity increased from 620 megawatts (MW) in 2011 to 2,600MW in September 2013.

According to Intenational Law Office, Italy’s solar energy regulations resulted in an increase in subsidies from €750 million in 2010 to €6.7 billion in 2013. Conversely, investors have invested over €50 billion in the Italian renewable energy sector in the past five years.

Solar energy – a victim of its own success

According to some industry experts, certain subsidies and tariffs may have been overly generous, particularly given the recent decrease in production costs of photovoltaic panels.

In early October 2014 the European Commission noted that certain countries faced high electricity tariff deficits. As a result, several European countries have modified or are modifying their solar energy laws. According to one press report, the Italian government indicated that the changes were “necessary to combat the ‘excessive investments’ into the solar and wind energy sectors”.

Recent changes

The recent changes to solar energy laws have often involved fiscal changes and tariff and subsidy cuts. Often, the only alternative to such cuts is to drastically increase the electricity end price for consumers, which governments are reluctant or unable to do.

In Italy, under Law 116 (which came into effect in August 2014), owners of photovoltaic plants with a capacity of over 200 kilowatt-peak were required by November 2014 to choose between partial deferral of the payment of subsidies or a cut in subsidies (the amount of which would depend in part on the capacity of the plant), with a possible extension of their subsidies from 20 to 24 years.
Plant owners will also be required to pay a 5% general system charge to cover the administrative costs of the solar energy measures. The cuts and additional charges took effect in January 2015.

Bulgaria amended its Renewable Energy Act in December 2013 by imposing a 20% fee on income from wind and solar power installations, effective as of January 2014. It also limited the volume of electricity purchased at feed-in tariff rates. Whereas the national electricity company was previously required to purchase the entire volume of electricity produced via renewable energy technology at applicable feed-in tariff rates, it is now required to purchase only an amount specified by the State Energy and Water Regulatory Commission.

Any additional renewable energy produced must be purchased at the price at which the national electric company sells electricity to end suppliers or distribution companies. These measures led to a decrease in investment in the solar energy sector in 2014.

While Bulgaria’s Constitutional Court invalidated the 20% fee in August 2014, the ruling has not had retroactive effect and solar (and wind) energy producers will not be reimbursed payments made since January 2014. The other part of the law that limits the volume that the national electricity company is required to purchase at feed-in tariff rates, remains in force.

On March 30 2014 Greece enacted a law that retroactively cut solar feed-in tariffs by approximately 30%. Under the new measures, solar energy producers were required to contribute approximately 35% of their 2013 income (by issuing a credit invoice) to the market operator within two months of the law’s entry into force. Unless and until the solar energy producer does so, the market operator is not required to compensate that producer for energy produced following the entry into force of the new law.

Further, under the new law renewable energy providers are required to pay a solidarity tax on their now reduced 2013 income. After the expiration of the extended term of the power purchase agreements, any energy will be sold at market conditions and prices.

Finally, Romania enacted a measure in December 2013 which reduced the number of green certificates awarded to renewable energy producers for projects completed after January 1 2014.

In Romania, renewable energy providers traditionally receive a certain number of green certificates per MW of energy produced for a 15-year period following the commissioning of the plant. Under the amended system, photovoltaic projects completed after January 1 2014 will receive only three green certificates per MW, instead of six.

These recent legislative changes come on the heels of earlier significant changes to the solar energy laws in other European countries (eg, Spain and the Czech Republic). Since 2008, Spain has passed a series of measures resulting primarily in tariff and subsidy cuts and a 7% tax on the sale of electricity, applying to both existing and future projects. Similarly, in 2011 the Czech Republic imposed a levy on electricity generated from solar power plants.

Legal repercussions

Changes to the legal and regulatory frameworks of certain states may not only discourage future investment, but also give rise to legal proceedings by foreign investors. These changes could contravene domestic law, EU law (including EU Directive 2009/28/EC), any applicable bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and the Energy Charter Treaty. Investors may have BIT or Energy Charter Treaty claims for, for instance: expropriation; breach of contract and failure to grant their investments fair and equitable treatment.

They may thus be able to claim specific performance of original contractual agreements or obtain monetary damages.

Certain states are already facing legal action by foreign investors as a result of changes to their solar energy laws. In 2013 foreign investors from Cyprus, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom initiated at least seven arbitration proceedings against the Czech Republic. The cuts in tariffs and subsidies and the imposition of a 7% tax also led to the initiation of a litany of arbitration proceedings against Spain in 2013 and 2014. It has also been reported that arbitration proceedings were initiated in 2014 against Romania and Italy in connection with the changes to their solar energy laws.

International arbitration proceedings

The European Commission has sought leave to intervene as amicus curiae (an interested party) in arbitrations relating to the renewable energy sector. In July 2014 the commission sought leave to intervene in six of the arbitrations against the Czech Republic. The commission also sought, but was denied, leave to intervene in two of the arbitrations against Spain.

In one such recent amicus curiae submission, the commission contended that the exemptions from the payment of certain charges on the consumption of electricity that were in turn used to support the production of renewable energy amounted to a form of state aid that violated Article 107(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It has also been reported that the commission has argued in at least two arbitrators that EU investors cannot rely on the Energy Charter Treaty to bring claims against EU member states, one of which has nevertheless resulted in an award in favour of the claimant.

Investors in EU countries suffering from the effects of these recent legislative changes should consider carefully whether they have recourse under the relevant legislative framework.

Parties seeking to invest in European solar energy should equally study the legal and regulatory framework of the country in question, including whether the Energy Charter Treaty or any BIT would govern their envisaged investment project and what protections it would afford.

Given the commission’s efforts to discourage reliance on intra-EU BITs (and possibly the Energy Charter Treaty, as applied to an investment by an EU investor in a different member state), potential EU investors wishing to invest in other EU countries should consider investing through a non-EU structure.

Conversely, states envisaging changes to their solar energy laws should study carefully the possible legal repercussions, including the risk of violating international treaty obligations and of thereby triggering legal proceedings as a result of such changes.

High-Efficiency solar cells move from space to your rooftop

High-Efficiency solar cells from space

High-efficiency solar cells originally designed for space travel are currently used for better efficiency in home solar systems. This advance is made possible by the development of new microscale solar concentration technologies.

Concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) systems utilize inexpensive optics to concentrate sunlight onto collectors, in order to raise efficiency in the panels.

“Current CPV systems are the size of billboards and have to be pointed very accurately to track the sun throughout the day. But, you can’t put a system like this on your roof, which is where the majority of solar panels throughout the world are installed,” Noel Giebink, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Penn State, said.

According to the Tech Times, the costs of installing solar energy systems includes not just the panels, but also installation, wiring and maintenance. However, prices for panels have fallen significantly in recent years, making solar energy more affordable for owners of homes and small businesses.

Gallium arsenide photovoltaic (PV) cells were fitted with a pair of plastic lens arrays, created on a 3D printer. The top layer acts like a magnifying glass, while a bottom layer, under the cell, further focuses light, like a concave mirror. Energy flowing into these new devices can be concentrated up to 200 times by the layers.

A steerable focusing mechanism is also utilized in the system to concentrate sunlight. Previous attempts to focus sunlight with lenses would only function for around two hours, due to the apparent motion of the Sun across the sky. The new system was able to collect energy eight hours a day during laboratory testing, with minimal movement needed for tracking. This new device is smaller, and easier to install and operate, than any previous CPV system, allowing them to be installed on buildings.

The new solar panels are just four-tenths of an inch thick, and are constructed mostly of plastic and Plexiglass, making manufacture inexpensive.

Despite their high efficiency, CPV systems are not able to collect enough energy in cloudy environments to be practical for home use. However, they could represent a new generation of solar collection devices for users in the American southwest and other sunny locations.

“The vision is that such a microtracking CPV panel could be placed on a roof in the same space as a traditional solar panel and generate a lot more power. The simplicity of this solution is really what gives it practical value,” Giebink told the press.

Development of the new technique for delivering more efficient solar energy at home was profiled in the journal Nature Communications.

Solar power stealing sea slug can be first plant-animal hybrid ever descovered

Elysia chlorotica

Scientists discovered an animal that rely on sunshine for its nutrition. A new study published in The Biological Bulletin belive that Elysia chlorotica might be the first plant-animal hybrid ever discovered, as the emerald green slug steals its solar power by feeding on algae and storing the algae’s photosynthesis performing plastids in its large transparent digestive glands.

According to the Immortal News, the emerald green elysia acquires its solar power by feeding on algae. In the process of feeding on the submerged vegetation, the slug consumes green organelles which capture energy from the sun, combine it with carbon dioxide and water, and produce food. As the chloroplasts are stored in the slug’s digestive glands, it’s able to adopt the plant-like ability of photosynthesis.

Chloroplasts are tiny capsules inside green leaves which use sunlight to power chemical reactions plants require to survive.

Scientific American’s Ferris Jabr wrote that most slugs digest chloroplasts right away, but some species like the emerald green slugs, store the algal chloroplasts for weeks to months.

This storage turns the sea slugs brilliant shades of green. Jabr goes on to say that the chloroplasts inside an alga depend on a lot of genes in the alga’s own nuclear and the proteins for which they code.

“In order to photosynthesize, the chloroplasts inside an alga depend on many genes in the alga’s own nucleus and the proteins for which they code. Tearing chloroplasts out of algal cells and asking them to make food inside a slug’s gut is like expecting the bottom half of a blender to puree some carrots sans the blade and glass jar.”

The research team used fluorescent DNA markers to illuminate the algal genes in the genetic material of adult and larva slugs, the researchers reported in the Biological Bulletin.

Professor Sidney K. Pierce, the study’s co-author and a biologist at the University of South Florida as well as the University of Maryland, indicated that there’s no way the genes from alga should work inside of an animal cell, yet they do.

” There is no way on earth that genes from an alga should work inside an animal cell […] And yet here, they do. They allow the animal to rely on sunshine for its nutrition. So if something happens to their food source, they have a way of not starving to death until they find more algae to eat.”

If the findings in the study are confirmed, this would be the first case of gene transfer from one multicellular organism to another. The report also notes that bacteria do this all the time, however, the sea slug would be the first plant-animal hybrid ever discovered.

Functional gene transfer between multicullular species is the goal of gene therapy which aims to correct genetically-based human diseases.

According to the Daily Mail, Elysia chlorotica is found in salt marshes and shallow pools along the east of the U.S., particularly in New York, Maryland, Florida, Texas, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.

The solar-powered sea slugs can produce carbohydrates and lipids for itself for up to nine months.

Nanogenerator that uses skin as a source of electricity

This tiny patch harvests electricity from your muscle movements

National University of Singapore developed a tiny nanogenerator that uses your skin as a source of static electricity, and converts it to electrical energy — reportedly enough to power a small electronic device.

The invention, presented at the MEMS 2015 conference recently, can generate 90 volts of open-circuit voltage when tapped by a finger. The researchers presented the patch as a self-powered device that can track the wearer’s motion.

According to Extreme Tech, the power generates thanks to the triboelectric effect, which is when certain types of materials can become electrically charged through contact and friction with another material — in this case, the patch gains the charge through fiction with human skin.

When the two materials are pulled apart, they generate a current that can be harvested. An electrode is needed in order to harvest the current, so the research team installed a 50nm-thick gold film to get the job done. The gold film sits below a silicone rubber layer composed of thousands of tiny pillars that help create more surface area for skin contact, which in turn creates more friction.

Thanks to the triboelectric effect, creating the device is easier as well — the skin is one of the triboelectric layers that helps produce the effect, so that layer doesn’t need to be built into the device itself, saving time, money, and materials. It also removes something that can go wrong with the device — having one less layer built in means that’s one less part that can break.

In the researchers’ test, a finger-tap on the device was able to generate enough current to power 12 commercial LEDs.

Aside from the obvious benefit of being able to, in theory, indefinitely power a device so long as you keep moving, this type of generator could remove the need for batteries in certain mobile devices — your smartwatch or fitness tracker could be made even thinner and lighter.

Who knows — one day this type of generator could even generate enough energy to power your smartphone, perhaps even removing the battery entirely, which is one of the biggest constraints to smartphone development and design.

Apple is building a $2 Billion solar-powered data command center

Apple to build a solar-powered data in Arizona

Apple’s power plant project in Arizona didn’t work out, so now Apple is investing another $2 billion to convert the facility into a massive data center.

According to Quartz, the company will employ 150 full-time Apple staff at the Mesa, Arizona facility, which will serve as a command center for its global network of data centers. In addition to the investment for the data center, Apple plans to build a solar farm capable of producing 70-megawatts of energy to power the facility.

The facility with some 120,000 square meters (1.3 million square feet) had been the planned site of a plant to produce sapphire glass screens in a collaboration with GT Advance Technologies.

Sapphire touch screens are a very tough synthetic replacement for the glass currently used on many Apple mobile devices, and are already used in a limited way for particularly sensitive parts of devices, The Sun Daily writes.

The synthetic screens were also expected to be used in the Apple Watch set to hit the market in April.

The collaboration came apart late last year after GTAT filed for bankruptcy and accused Apple of saddling the company with onerous terms in the deal.

State officials said the investment is a good deal for Arizona.

“Apple is a company that we wanted to come to Arizona, previously with a third party,” state Governor Doug Ducey said during a press conference.

“Now, we have Apple itself investing in our state. This is a one-of-a-kind company, they just had a world record quarterly earnings, and they are coming to Arizona.”

Ducey said Apple has made a 30-year commitment with the data center, and that it will sign on about 150 employees along with creating hundreds of construction jobs during the building phases.

Greenpeace senior IT sector analyst Gary Cook lauded Apple’s decision to build an Arizona data center powered by renewable energy.

“Apple remains the most aggressive among major IT companies in delivering on its commitments to be 100% renewable, and has shown the business community that solar is ready, here and now, to power our economy,” Cook said.

He call on other technology industry titans, particularly Amazon and its massive cloud services operation, follow suit.

Singapore’s first 3D-printed urban solar electric car

NTU eco cars

Two solar-powered electric cars, designed by students from the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), were unveiled by the institution on Monday morning.

According to Channel News Asia, one of the two is the first car in Singapore to be made with 3D-printed parts. Its cabin, which can seat one driver, is made of 150 3D-printed components that have been glued together using epoxy adhesive.

“We are extremely proud to have designed and assembled a 3D-printed body shell for the electric car,” Associate Professor Ng Heong Wah said. “The 3D printed car body was pushing existing technology to the limits and we are so pleased that it has paid off.”

“Using the latest engineering techniques learnt from their studies in NTU, the students have developed innovations such as silicon solar cells that can be contoured to follow the car’s shape,” he added.

Undergraduate Ilmi Bin Abdul Wahab, who led the development of 3D-printed NV8, said: “We decided to go with a 3D-printed cabin made from lightweight plastic, as we wanted to maximise the internal space and driver’s comfort while still being able to keeping the weight to a minimum. Despite being an Urban Concept car, it is no slouch and can reach a top speed of 60km/h, while maintaining low energy consumption.”

Co-designer Ng Jun Wen explained the unique honeycomb design for NV8: “For it to be lightweight, thin and yet strong, we integrated a honeycomb structure and a unique joint design to hold the parts together. When seen against the light, the structure has a translucent see-through effect, like a dragonfly wing.”

According to NTU, NV8 will participate in the Shell Eco-marathon Asia competition this year, under the Urban Concept category. Teams with more “roadworthy” fuel-efficient vehicles fall in this category, it said. The competition challenges students to design, build and drive a vehicle that can travel the furthest distance using the least amount of energy.

The second eco-car features hand-made silicon solar cells

The students have also built the NTU Venture 9 (NV9), a three-wheeled racer, which can “take sharp corners with little loss in speed” due to its unique tilting ability inspired by motorcycle racing, the university said.

The car, featuring hand-made silicon solar cells, will be NTU’s entry in the Prototype category at the Shell competition. Teams enter futuristic prototypes focused on maximising fuel efficiency through innovative design elements in the Prototype category.

By developing the silicon solar cells innovation, Prof Ng said it allows for “maximum harvesting of the solar energy and a tilting mechanism” in NV9 that results in avoiding the loss of speed.

Explaining the inspiration behind their prototype, NV9 Team Manager, Winston Tan, said: “We took the tilting mechanism inspiration from motorcycle racing, where racers would lean left or right during sharp turns to maintain their handling and speed. For the car’s body, we aimed for it to be as streamlined as possible.”

The two NTU teams consist of 16 students from the various engineering schools. The cars were designed from scratch and students spent over a year to build them. Shell Eco-marathon Asia will take place in Manila from Feb 26 to Mar 1.