Category: Solar PhotoVoltaics

More solar panels for Scottish homes

Figures showing last month’s sunshine could have powered all the homes in Scotland have sparked calls for more properties to install rooftop panels.

According to Business Green, Scottish homes with solar panels saw more than 100 per cent of their energy needs met by the sun during April, according to data collated by WeatherEnergy, the UK arm of a Europe-wide network of analysts.

The country received enough sunlight to generate 113 per cent of the electricity needs of an average home in Edinburgh, 111 per cent in Aberdeen, 106 per cent in Glasgow, and 104 per cent in Inverness.

Meanwhile, for those homes fitted with solar hot water panels, there was enough sunshine in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness to generate an estimated 100 per cent of an average household’s hot water needs – and 99 per cent for homes in Aberdeen.

“Scotland has long been leading the charge when it comes to wind power,” said Karen Robinson of WeatherEnergy. “However, despite misconceptions, Scotland also has potential for sun-loving renewables too.”

While over 35,000 Scottish homes and 600 business premises currently have solar PV arrays fitted, wind power remains the country’s major renewable electricity source. During April, wind turbines in Scotland generated enough electricity on average to supply the electrical needs of 69 per cent of Scottish households, equivalent to 1.66 million homes.

Prices of solar panels have plunged in the last two years, while efficiency has increased. Tesla’s announcement last week of $3,000 battery to store solar energy could also ensure green electricity on demand for the first time.

“With these sorts of figures, every home or business with a south-facing roof should seriously consider switching on to the full potential of solar power,” said Lang Banks, director of WWF Scotland. “Similarly, there is no reason why Scotland should not be home to commercial-scale solar farms.”

Trina Solar sets new solar panel efficiency world record. Image via pv-tech.org

Trina Solar’s State Key Laboratory of PV Science and Technology of China has set a new world record for high efficiency p-type multi-crystalline silicon solar panels.

According to Energy Matters, Trina says its test Honey Plus multi-crystalline silicon module attained a new module efficiency record of 19.14% with an aperture area of 1.515 m2.

The results were confirmed by the National Center of Supervision and Inspection on Solar Photovoltaic Product Quality (CPVT) in Wuxi, China.

The 60-cell panel features advanced technologies including back surface passivation, local back surface field and half-cell module technologies. Trina says the half-cell module technology is not currently part of the Honey Plus products, but will be incorporated at a later date.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a multi-crystalline Silicon PV module reaches an efficiency higher than 19%. It demonstrates that multi-crystalline Silicon PV modules can reach an efficiency level that was reserved to the most efficient solar cells before, such as mono-crystalline IBC or heterojunction cells,” said Dr. Pierre Verlinden, Vice-President and Chief Scientist of Trina Solar.

”This milestone achievement is the result of a very close collaboration among our silicon crystallization, solar cell and module scientists. We believe that innovation is playing the very essential role to Trina’s sustainable growth and long-term success. Our focus remains on developing innovative and cutting-edge solar power products and technologies to strengthen our leadership in the PV industry.”

In other recent news, the company announced the signing of an agreement with Toyo Engineering Corporation to supply approximately 116 MW of Trina Solar panels for use in Japan’s largest solar power project – a 231-megawatt facility to be built in Setouchi City, Okayama Prefecture.

Approximately 446,000 Trina Solar TSM-260PC05A modules will be used in the project, which will be situated on 1,210 acres of city land on the former Kinkai salt field.

The project is expected to commence commercial operations in the second quarter of 2019.

Trina Solar says Japan is a key market for the company and that solar will play a crucial role in the growing diversification of the country’s energy mix.

Trina Solar panels are also popular choice in Australia, where they are often used in residential solar power system installations.

Solar soda bottle street lights

The streets of San Luis, Bogota, Colombia are now a little safer thanks to low cost solar-powered soda bottles.

Costing just USD $70 to construct, the street lights use a 3 watt LED lamp, controller and battery pack powered by a couple of small solar panels. The protective casing used for the lamp is just a plastic soda bottle – pretty much unbreakable under most conditions.

According to Energy Matters, 14 locations in Colombia have already been illuminated with these solar street lights and there are plans to install another 2,000 across the country in this year.

Quartz reports the super-cheap solar streetlights are a project of Liter Of Light; an organisation that rose to prominence with its promotion of Moser lamps. A Moser lamp is a plastic bottle filled with water inserted into a roof to refract sunlight into the room below; with a with a brightness equivalent to a 55w electric bulb.

Tens of thousands of households in the Philippines capital Manila alone have so far benefited from Liter Of Light’s Moser lamp inspired revolution, which has now also spread across the world.

2015 is International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies (IYL 2015). IYL 2015 isn’t just about increasing access to light, but the right sort of light. Lighting represents almost 20% of global electricity consumption (International Energy Agency). While this has a significant impact on the environment in relation to coal fired power generation, worse still is lighting fueled by kerosene.

“In developing and third-world countries without access to electricity, 1.3 billion people depend on kerosene for light. The burning of kerosene lamps leads to the death of 1.5 million people every year. Inhaling kerosene smoke is the equivalent of smoking 4 packs of cigarettes a day, and commonly induces respiratory illnesses such as asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, and cancer in tens of millions of people,” states the IYL 2015 web site.

It’s also very expensive, with some families spend up to half of their income on kerosene.

An important aim of the International Year of Light will be to promote the use of portable solar-powered LED lanterns in regions where there is little or no reliable source of light. Solar lighting is literally changing lives – enabling extended productivity, enhanced security and without the negative health impacts.

Other low-cost solar powered LED lighting designed specifically for developing nations that we’ve covered in the past include LUCI, Luminaid, Solar Pebble, the Solar Schoolbag and the Australian-designed Mandarin Solar Light and Sunking.

Solar power for Turkish agricultural sector

Solar energy is about to power Turkish agricultural sector, which is among the most significant market sectors in the country. In the upcoming period, the most important innovation for the sector will be clean energy produced by solar panels.

According to Daily Sabah Business, the aim is to use solar energy to cover all energy expenses of agricultural lands that are large enough to support it. The devised system is especially advantageous for farmers using well water, since they have to pay high bills for using electrical engines to pump water from the ground.

The cost of this process decreases nearly one-10th and the system also recoups its costs within two years by operating drip irrigation systems.

The Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, the Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock and the Ministry of Finance are carrying out collaborative work to establish an effective incentive policy on this issue. The fact that the energy surplus obtained from the energy plants will be transferred to the government increases the attractiveness of the project, and the number of Turkish companies specializing in the field is increasing daily.

Solar-powered shelters for disaster zones

Award-winning architect and designer Abeer Seikaly has created a practical yet beautiful solution to the need for lightweight, mobile, and structurally sound shelters for disaster zones.

According to inhabitat.com, the Canadian-Jordanian’s Weaving a Home project not only provides flexible, transportable shelter, but also incorporates water collection, solar power generation and solar water heating into the design.

Drawing inspiration from traditional basket weaving techniques and the flexibility of snake skin, the designer uses weatherproof fabric drawn between durable, curved plastic tubing. This creates a structurally sound tent that can handle both compression and tension loads.

The double-layered fabric tent skins are also hollow, allowing for weatherproof entrances and for water piping and electrical cables to run between the layers. While the design is scalable, the models shown are five meters in diameter and 2.4 meters high.

Solar-powered woven refugee tents. Image via designboom.com

Each tent has its own water collection system, utilizing the natural channels formed by the skin to direct water to the storage point. By using a fabric with strong thermal properties, the tents can also convert solar radiation into power and heat collected water for showering. The strength of convection can also be used to draw fresh water into the heating system from an external source. The flexible design of the tents allow for openings to be made wherever they are needed to allow hot air out and to catch any cross-breezes. The tents also seal up tight in case of wet weather or cold conditions.

Seikaly states: “‘Weaving a Home’ reexamines the traditional architectural concept of tent shelters by creating a technical, structural fabric that expands to enclose and contracts for mobility while providing the comforts of contemporary life (heat, running water, electricity, storage, etc.)” The honeycomb-like design folds up neatly when not in use to allow for easy transportation to wherever the tents are needed. The project was a winning entry in the 2013 Lexus Design Awards.

Pilot results show that solar systems in Oulu produce as much electricity as those in northern Germany. Photo: Kalevi Rytkölä / Yle

Finland’s largest solar power plant, comprising of 1,600 solar panels producing 420 kilowatts of power, will be built in Oulu on the roof of the local printing plant this spring. The northern city of Oulu is quickly making a name for itself as a pioneer in the use of renewable energy sources.

According to yle.fi, Oulun Energia Group has announced plans to build a solar power unit on the roof of the local Kaleva newspaper’s printing plant in Oulu this spring. The 420-kilowatt unit will have 1,600 solar panels, combining to make a total panel surface area of approximately 2,400 square metres. Along with the support equipment, the setup will cover near to 3,200 square metres, which equals nearly half a football field.

System installation will begin in April, and the objective is for the unit to be operational by June 2015.

“On a clear summer day, we expect to gain up to 90 percent of the electricity required to run the Kaleva printing operations via solar. Annually, the solar energy obtained should cover about 10 percent of the printing house’s electricity costs,” says Kaleva’s CFO Esko Jokelainen.

The manufacture of solar panels in Finland is only in its early stages, so the panels for a project this large must be ordered from Germany. All of the other labour for the installation, from transport to assembly, will be carried out by local employees from the northern Finland region.

“Solar energy and other distributed energy production solutions will proliferate in the next few years and therefore create more jobs in northern Finland as well,” says Oulun Energia Group’s Sales Director Seppo Tuomi.

Oulun Energia Group generates, transmits, distributes and sells electricity and district heating in the Oulu region and is owned by the city of Oulu.

Why Oulu?

Located in North Ostrobothnia, Oulu is the largest city in northern Finland and the sixth largest city in the country, with a population over 200,000. It is one of the northernmost larger cities in the world. Situated this far north, one could wonder how a solar plant could be feasible with so many dark winter months in the year.

But the city of Oulu has taken on the role of a ‘living lab’, where residents experiment with new technologies from ICT to cleantech. Consequently, in per capita R&D spending, it ranks first in Finland and fifth in Europe. Oulu also has Europe’s largest technology park.

Oulun Energia Group conducted a pilot project for solar energy, testing the efficacy of 16 customer solar systems installed on local homes.

The pilot was surprisingly successful, producing results that were comparable to solar energy production conditions elsewhere. If properly situated, a 5-kilowatt system of 20 panels produced up to 4,500 kilowatts of electricity, which directly corresponds to a similar system in northern Germany.

In the Oulun Energia Group’s report on the pilot project, Tuomi is confident that there is significant potential for growth for photovoltaic systems in Finland.

“Solar energy systems are suitable for both businesses and consumers. Using them in the summer time to cool down property is particularly profitable. The cost of the panels is low, the payback period is reasonable and in ideal locations, the costs are clearly cheaper than grid electricity.”

The EU has set a climate target that 38 percent of member countries’ electricity consumption should be obtained from renewable energy sources by the year 2020.

Solar power in mines

High oil prices spurred mining companies to look at renewable energy to cut their diesel fuel bills. With crude plunging, it’s a different story today.

According to Bloomberg, an almost 50 percent drop in crude oil in the past year has pushed diesel prices lower, leading mines and other energy users to delay adding solar and wind projects.

“There’s no doubt about it there are a lot of parts of the world that see the drop in price as a reason for them to stall the decision on whether to proceed,” said John Eccles, director of global hybrid generation at First Solar Inc., the largest U.S. solar panel manufacturer.

Global renewable energy investment in mining was forecast last year by Ernst & Young to rise almost twentyfold to $3.9 billion by 2022. Now that target will take longer to reach, according to the consultants.
“While oil prices remain lower, it will slow down the adoption rate of alternative energy,” Mike Elliott, the Sydney-based global mining and metals leader at Ernst & Young, said by phone.

“There will be some of those investment decisions that will still default to a conventional fuel source as opposed to a renewable source,” he said.

As miners expanded into more remote locations during the decade-long commodities boom, they grew more dependent on diesel to generate power at sites that aren’t connected to the electricity grid. Energy accounts for as much as 40 percent of the operating costs at some mines, according to Ernst & Young.

Remote Projects

There are fewer than 12 remote mining projects in the world that get at least half of their power from wind and solar, mostly ones in Chile that have been developed over the past couple of years, Elliott said.
When oil prices surged and renewable energy costs fell, it gave miners in countries from Chile to Australia a strong incentive to increase reliance on wind and solar to offset some of their diesel consumption.

The oil price drop may still benefit renewable energy. At least 27 nations are decreasing or ending the subsidies that hold down costs for fuels used to generate electricity, including coal and natural gas, the International Energy Agency said in November. That’s adding momentum to global efforts to limit greenhouse gases by increasing the use of clean energy.

Efforts globally to reduce carbon emissions will probably continue to lead miners to weigh wind and solar projects when making investment decisions, Elliott said.

Competitive

Even with the drop in oil, total diesel fuel bills remain higher in some regions due to a range of factors from taxes to transportation costs, increasing solar’s appeal as an energy source, said First Solar’s Eccles.
The number of solar-diesel hybrid projects is forecast to increase, according to Tempe, Arizona-based First Solar, which signed a deal last year to bring solar power to a Rio Tinto Group bauxite mine in Queensland state.

Solar photovoltaic technology over time “needs lower and lower fuel prices to be economically competitive,” Eccles said. “There’s a long investment horizon. It needs time to crystallize, and then you’ll see a more rapid uptake.”

About 40 to 50 power projects in remote locations across Australia, the world’s biggest exporter of iron ore, are seeking funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, its chief executive officer, Ivor Frischknecht, said in a phone interview.

“Some projects have slowed down a little bit in terms of how aggressively they are pursuing it” as the price of diesel declines, he said.