WORLD – Page 6 – Solar Magazine

New storage solution developed

Solar energy storage is now more efficient and cost-effective

Bionic leaf for solar energy storage

Researchers from a well-known laboratory in the United States have found a new method of storing solar energy. The solution is called bionic leaf that can transform the energy from the sun into a fuel obtained in a similar way that plants convert light into energy. This leads to much more efficient way of obtaining energy.

The idea is based on an easy process. So the process of using photovoltaic cells to get electric power you cause a chemical reaction that can stock energy the form of hydrogen that can be used in a hydrogen fuel cell to produce electricity.

This method allows you to stock the energy on a long term and in any quantities. The biggest advantage is the fact that this new type of storage is not affected by the unstable nature of solar energy. The concept is simple, you just have to drop a photoelectrochemical cell in a bucket of water and let it go to work stripping out the hydrogen.

This means that there is more way of sustainable way of obtaining hydrogen than the standard that is used at the moment. And if big brands like Toyota and GM set to bring hydrogen fuel cell cars into the light, there is a competition to develop solar powered hydrogen production at scale.

The only thing about this cell is that you have to figure out the perfect combinations of materials that can bring a cost-effective energy.

The general cost of the process is more important than the cell efficiency since in the solar energy market the electricity consumption is very little. The researchers are also taking into account the fact that the performance of the photocathode

Solar energy can also be fun with color solar cells

Colorful solar cells

Researchers from the University of Michigan brought solar industry to a new level as they invented colorful transparent cells with decorations and shades.

The first see-trough colored cells can easily be used to harvest energy from the sun and beautifuly decorate the buildings where they are installed, and boost the solar energy installations.

An electrical engineering and computer science professor, mechanical engineering, and macromolecular science and engineering at U-M, Jay Guo says that “this offers a very different way of utilizing solar technology rather than concentrating it in a small area. Today, solar panels are black and the only place you can put them on a building is the rooftop. And the rooftop of a typical high-rise is so tiny. We think we can make solar panels more beautiful—any color a designer wants. And we can vastly deploy these panels, even indoors.”

Guo, the lead author of a paper about the work newly published, says that solar panels like this could be installed in a large variety of places, such as: side of building, bilboards or windows.

The new technology was demonstrated on an American flag model. “All the red stripes, the blue background and so on—they are all working solar cells,” Guo said. The model has a 2% efficiency. A normal-sized solar panel can produce sufficient energy for lightning and small devices.

The only drawback of this model is the fact that even if the researchers are struggling to improve the figures, the fact that colored panels reflect the light from the sun and not converting it into electricity will never change. So the beautifuly design has its costs. Still, as opposed to other colored cells, these ones don’t use microstructures that can harm the process as they are built to transmit certain light wavelengths

New power station will be installed at Dwarka by Delhi Metro

Delhi metro to install PV at it’s stations

Delhi Metro, which became the country’s first public transportation system, is willing to install pv power plants on the roofs of its stations, in order to attempt preservation of the enviroment in New Delhi.

At Dwarka Sector 21 metro station will be the first 500 kwp solar power plant and it is predicted to become functional within six months.

This remains the largest roof top station with the aforementioned capacity in the Delhi-NCR region. This wiil be set after a PPA (Power Purchase Agreement) has been signed between Delhi Metro Rail Corporation and a multinational company engaged in the installation and management of solar power worldwide, in the presence of DMRC’s officials.

The central financing shall be provided by the developer and DMRC will afterwards pay for the units generated by the plant. This power will be offered to the DMRC at the presented station.

Anuj Daval, Executive Director at Corporate Communications mentioned: “After the installation of this roof top plant, Delhi Metro will also explore the possibility of installing more such plants at its stations, depots, parking lots as well as residential complexes.”
For the preservation of the surrounding environment, Delhi Metro has already got involved with a number of measures of providing sustainable means of energy.

DMRC was confirmed in 2011 by the United Nations to be the no. 1 Rail and Metro Rail based organization in the world to get Carbon Credits for downsizing Green House Gas Emissions, this aided in lowering pollution levels in the city by by 6.3 lakh tons yearly discharges and so reducing global warming.

The SMA Fuel Save Solution authorized in APAC

Diesel gensets and photovoltaics finished in Vava'u islands

The SMA Fuel Save Solution in APAC

Diesel gensets and photovoltaics combined in a hybrid system under the umbrella of SMA Fuel Save Solution , has been commissioned in the APAC region. The infinit benefits of reduced energy costs, and a minimal reliance on fossil fuel are finally available the Tongan island of Vava’u. The hybrid contains the SMA Fuel Save Controller, which enables a smart integration of photovoltaics and leaves diesel gensets unmoved. Moreover, another unit that stores energy makes sure that rainy days are not a problem. The system is able to compensate up to 70 percent of Vava’u’s electricity demand during the day and nearly 13 percent of the total demand of the Island in a year.

The latest solar farm consists of ground-mounted PV and battery storage technology that is mixed in with the island’s diesel power station. The 500kW hybrid can generate 873MWh of energy in a year and it can coutercount approximately 225,000 litres of diesel every year. The system consists of 21 SMA Sunny Tripower 20000TL inverters, 15 SMA Sunny Backup 5000 inverters and the SMA Fuel Save Controller.

The brain of a large-scale power plant, more precisely central solar inverters, have long a primary choice among large-scale solar developers. They can provide all the needs and has a low cost per watt installation rate. Central solar inverters are destined to be a popular technology for utility-scale and large commercial solar power conversion because they bring more and more innovative features.

This type of inverters they recognize the field-proven history of the technology. The best central inverters have been set up in all kind of conditions around the world from the California desert to the Austrian Alps. Such inverters can work extreme heat and cold, sandstorms, maritime air and more. The most reliable central have an output rat of 110% in continuous operation at ambient temperatures up to 25° C.

Mark Twidell, Managing Director of SMA Australia says that “SMA is proud to be an integral part of the system at Vava’u, helping the Tongan government to reduce its fossil fuel dependency. This project benefits from the SMA Fuel Save Solution which stabilises the grid and prevents system failures.”

“The SMA Fuel Save Solution enables state of the art integration of PV into diesel genset systems without compromising operational readiness, reliability or fuel efficiency,” in Rodger Whitby’s words who is General Manager Generation of the Australian solar power company Ingenero that installed the solar farm.

Vava’u is the name of a chain made of one large island and 40 smaller ones in Tonga, in the South Pacific Ocean. The main island of Vava’u hast 90 square kilometres. Until now Vava’u used diesel generators for its electricity needs until but a hybrid energy system was developed for a cleaner energy. The Tonga Energy Road Map (TERM) aims to supply 50 percent of the Kingdom’s power demand from green energy sources until 2020. The project was possible due to Abu Dhabi based renewable energy company Masdar and is financed through a grant provided by the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development.

The SMA Group is the global market leader for solar inverters, presents new key technologies for future power supply structures. It is has main offices in Germany, and is represented internationally in 21 countries.

Researchers found a way to convert solar into fuel

Solar top be converted in fuel for cheaper energy

Solar can be converted into fuel

The Frontier Research Center at UNC-Chapel Hill discovered a way to transform solar into fuel, so that people could have power even when the sun sets.

People could be truly independent with the help of this system and could say goodbye to the pricey solar batteries. U.S solar power researchers say the sun can be used to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. The Research Center recently published two papers about this whole process, papers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Tom Meyer, a chemistry Professor, explains that the system uses solar power until daylight exist, and meanwhile it cheaply separates hydrogen and oxygen from water. The two elements can then be stored separately and burned for power.

Meyer reports that power utilities have already got infrastructure for that: “See, that’s the beauty of it, I think. With this, you can plug into existing engineering, existing technologies. People know how to generate hydrogen. They know how store it. They know how to use it to extract energy in a power plant. So that’s all done. You know, all we want to do is find a way to give it to them in a relatively inexpensive way using the sun.”

Meyer also believes that this method can be used for cheaper power utilities someday:
“This is a basic research project that’s knocking on the door to become a technology. I think the principles are established and it’s really important, but the efficiency of the devices that we have are very low. That is, ‘Here’s all the sun’s energy. How much do you actually use in a useful way?’ And the answer’s about one percent.”

What Mayer says is that right now, only one percent of the solar power that gets to the device is being used to transform water into fuel. He also believes that the procedure won’t be effective for commercial use until that one percent turns into 10. His team also research for a way of separating carbon dioxide into its basic elements for fuel.

PV market is dominated by large-scale PV projects

PV industry is gowing thanks to large scale PV

Global PV growth is related to large scale project, 60% of which belong to China, the U.S. and Japan, a increase of 50% from 2010.China, the U.S. and Japan accounted for some 60% of all large-scale PV projects in 2013, up from less than 10% in 2010.

The large-scale PV market is comprised of rooftop projects larger than 100 kW and ground-mounted installations. As the most recent figures from the solar analysts, NPD Solarbuzz , show that large scale solar PV installations toped 26 GW during 2013 and stand exclusively for the annual development of global PV demand from 30 GW in 2012 to 36 GW in 2013.

Moreover, the solar analysts group say that they discovered that the large-scale solar PV market included also rooftop projects bigger than 100 kW in size and ground-mounted solar PV projects.

China stands for almost one-third of all large-scale solar PV capacity planted in 2013. PV panels installed in China, the United States and Japan stand for almost 60% of large-scale PV projects. This percentage comes after the three countries accounted for under 10% of large-scale PV additions in 2010.

Germany, India and the United Kingdom gathered with China, the U.S. and Japan in reaching or approaching GW status for large-scale PV added in 2013.

NPD Solarbuzz predicts that this trend approaching large-scale PV will carry on in 2014, and nearly 75% of all new solar PV capacity added will exist thanks to this segment. Furthermore, new PV for emerging solar PV regions will provide more upside potential.

Storing soar energy can be more cost-effective

Cheaper energy storage discovered by swiss scientist

If platinum takes the place of molybdenum in photoelectrochemical cells, as scientist from two Swiss labs report, the technique that can increase the hydrogen production through water splitting as a way of solar energy storage.

The only form of renewable that can be explored enough to supply the everybody’s up going needs is solar energy. Still, it is highly necessary to find efficient ways of storing solar energy because there is a need for a consistent energy supply when sunlight is limited.

The most effective way to do this is to utilize solar energy to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen and get the energy back by consuming hydrogen in a fuel cell. Scientist from two labs at EPFL have found a way to create an effective method to obtain scalable solar water splitting device with cheap materials.

Sill, solar systems cannot constantly produce adequate energy since sunlight is not always the same everywhere. This can be solved with another device that is able to store energy for a later use in the form of hydrogen with very little pollution.

Through the most sustainable methods of hydrogen production is photoelectrochemical water-splitting. In this method, they use solar energy to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen with a process called “hydrogen evolution reaction.” This method needs a chemical agent that grows its speed, named catalyst. The most familiar catalyst in this devices is platinum, that is situated on the surface of the solar panel’s photocathode—the solar panel’s electrode that transforms light into electric current.

The team from EPFL discovered that you can make efficient solar-powered water splitting devices even with abundant and cheap materials.

The group of Xile Hu came up with a molybdenum-sulfide catalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction, and the group of Michael Grätzel discovered that copper oxide can be a photocathode. They also found that the molybdenum sulfide can be stored on the copper(I) oxide photocathode for use in photoelectrochemical water splitting by a deposition process.

The method reveals more efficiency then other hydrogen evolution reaction catalysts like platinum. It also preserves the optical transparency for the light-harvesting surface and it offers improved stability under acidic conditions, meaning lower maintenance. Moreover, both the catalyst and the photocathode are made of cheap, earth-abundant materials that can reduce the cost of photoelectrochemical water-splitting devices. As senior author Xile Hu says, the work is a state-of-the-art example for solar hydrogen production devices.

Every hour of the first three months of 2014 a PV plant will be installed

Solar PV demand to reach 49GW in 2014

The PV market data analyst, NPD Solarbuzz, shows that global solar PV request will get to 49 GW next year.

The forecast shows that 5 MW of phtovoltsics are to be installes evey hour, at least in the first trimester, a record for solar installations. Global solar analysts NPD Solarbuzz have predicted that the PV demand will gow to 49 GW in 2014.

Moreover, starting from the final three months of this year and finishing with the first one in 2014, 22 GW of capacity will be planted, meaning a new 5 MW farm will rise every hour. Though 36 GW of estimated capacity is to be installed by the end of next year, that figure is said to be aced by 30%.

“The solar PV industry has reached a critical tipping point, with end-market demand hitting record levels almost every quarter.” said NPD Solarbuzz vice president Finlay Colville. “This growth is being driven by leading module suppliers and project developers that returned to profitability during 2013, and which have now established highly effective global sales and marketing networks,” he added.

The data analyst also says that the last semester of this year will break even more records for solar capacity since the 12GW barrier is set to be broken for the first time in the history of PV, record to be overcome in the first semester of the next year.
At the top of the list with the higher demand are the Chinese market, the Japanese one and U.S is leading,, and most of the panels installed next year will be located in this areas.

“Manufacturing overcapacity and pricing erosion within the PV industry was previously a key factor in limiting annual growth to between 10-20% between 2011 and 2013.With a more stable pricing environment and the prospect of increased end-market globalization, NPD Solarbuzz forecasts a return to annual growth above 30% for the PV industry in 2014.” announced Colville.

Roxana MORARU

Solar Powered Christmas Lights for a Merry Christmas and a small energy bill

Green Christmas lights

At Christmas time we all become little children fascinated by the beauty of the Christmas lights. We see them everywhere. On the street, in stores, in coffee shops, and last but not least in our homes. It’s a natural thing to want your home to express happiness and joy too. Still you can’t keep the lights on all the time as you don’t wants your electricity bill to steal away the light the Christmas gave you. Luckily, there is a solution for this particular problem. The solution is called solar powered lights. They are a beautiful way to light up out home for Christmas for a very inexpensive price.

Solar powered lights are, as you may guess, powered by the sun. How does it work? Well, you just have to set up the lights and the solar panel that is stuck on the ground and at night your house will shine. And most important, you don’t have to worry about tangling hundreds of power cords, paying for a huge electricity bill after the holidays, or anything of the sort. You just have to put the lights up on your trees or roof,, and when the night comes, your house will give away a beautiful Christmas spirit, all thanks to the power of the sun.

You may think this comes at a higher price than you can pay for. But these green lights are very cheap. One string is two dollars or less and has about 50-100 lights. So, you can light your home as much as you like and not worry about bills. The lights have a life expectation of about three years so they can be the best solution when it comes to decorating for this year.
Where can you get this lights? In stores or online even on Amazon. The sets usually have 100-300 lights. The solar panel is included in the set so you do not have to worry about recharging the lights.

So if you want your home to be a fantasy come true you don’t have to worry about anything. Go and have fun buying yourself nice Christmas lights and don’t worry about electricity. Let the sun keep them shining.

Merry Christmas

Concentrated PV solar is to blossom

Concentrated PV is blooming

If in the past few years concentrated PV was having a slow progress, now CPV is advancing towards a momentum and installations and it will grow an important percentage every year through 2020, as the latest IHS report shows.

The concentrated photovoltaic global market is on the edge of a massive explosion and s international installations are arranged to catapult 750% between 2013 and 2020, as the report published on Tuesday by market research group HIS announced.

The report also says that IHS believes that CPV installations will get to 1,362 MW in 2020, given that in 2013 it has 160 MW. Of course , the installations discussed are to Indeed, installations are expected to enlarge to double-digit percentages every year through 2020.

CPV technology makes use of lenses or mirrors to focus sunlight onto solar cells. This process allows a more efficient PV energy generation, the use of additional optics for focusing sunlight has also driven up the cost of CPV compared to conventional PV installations, limiting the acceptance of concentrated solar solutions.

The situation is advancing in a high speed and rapidly changing, still, even though advancements in CPV technology cost effective.

“What is happening in today’s CPV market is very similar to that of the overall PV space in 2007, beset by high costs and an uncertain outlook,” are Karl Melkonyan’s words, a photovoltaic analyst at IHS. “However, the CPV market in 2013 is on the verge of a breakthrough in growth. Costs for CPV have dropped dramatically during 2013 and are expected to continue to fall in the coming years. Furthermore, when viewed from the perspective of lifetime cost, CPV becomes more competitive with conventional PV in large ground-mount systems in some regions.”

Roxana MORARU