Category: Market News

The world’s first solar power station that generates electricity at night is Gemasolar Power Plant near Seville in southern Spain which consists of an incredible 2,650 solar panels spread across 185 hectares of rural land.

The mirrors – known as heliostats – focus 95 per cent of the sun’s radiation onto a giant receiver at the centre of the plant.

This ingeniously and rather scrupulously conceived £260million ($425 million) power station is actually collaborative effort by Abu Dhabi energy company Masdar and a branch of Spanish engineering firm SENER called Torresol Energy.

Heat of up to 900C is used to warm molten salt tanks, which create steam to power the £260million station’s turbines.

But, unlike all other solar power stations, the heat stored in these tanks can be released for up to 15 hours overnight, or during periods without sunlight.

The sunny weather of southern Spain rather sustains the solar energy during most of the yearly mornings which allows the plant to generate clean and green electricity at an estimated 270 days per year, 3 times more than other renewable solar projects.

It is expected to produce 110 GWh/year – enough to power 25,000 homes in the Andalucia region.

Always scientists around the world have been trying to create a low cost solar cell that is both efficient and easy to manufacture.

The purpose is to make solar energy affordable for the common people.

Swiss researchers from Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology’s (EMPA) Laboratory for Thin Film and Photovoltaics have established a new world record efficiency of 18.7% for flexible copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGGS) solar cells on plastics.

This new discovery has the potential to lower the cost of solar energy drastically because they are cheaper to produce and this latest breakthrough brings them closer to the highest efficiency levels achieved by crystalline silicon and rigid CIGS cells.

These highly efficient solar cells will drop the cost of solar energy and make them ideal for use in demanding applications such as solar facades and portable electronic devices.

Audi wants to build vehicles with clean power and zero- and low-emissions.

The manufacturer plans to use wind power for its upcoming electric and natural gas vehicles.

Like other large companies, Audi is financing the construction of four wind turbines off the North Sea that will generate annually up to 53 GWh of electricity and from this electricity, the manufacturer plans to use a portion of the wind power to charge its electric e-tron vehicles.

Audi can power fuel cell vehicles, including the Audi Q5 HFC by harnessing the power of wind to produce hydrogen through electrolysis.

Audi currently uses e-gas to power a CNG version of the A3.

The A3 TCNG will be even more environmentally friendly; Audi plans to break ground on its own synthetic methane facility in July. Using CO2 from a connected waste-biogas plant, Audi’s facility will produce annually 1,000 metric tons of e-gas.

This fuel will be added to Germany’s natural gas network, which serves 900 CNG stations.