/ News and Common Sense Solutions en-gb Hemp4Fuel.com is copyright 2002-2010 J.R. Irvin and http://www.GnosticMedia.com Hemp4Fuel - contact@nospam.com contact@nospam.com Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:43:21 -0700 Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:43:21 -0700 http://backend.userland.com/rss e107 (http://e107.org) 60 Search Hemp4Fuel.com query http://hemp4fuel.com/search.php http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.177.3
Staff Writer Science Daily

A new study on the installed costs of solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems in the U.S. shows that the average cost of these systems declined significantly from 1998 to 2007, but remained relatively flat during the last two years of this period.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) who conducted the study say that the overall decline in the installed cost of solar PV systems is mostly the result of decreases in nonmodule costs, such as the cost of labor, marketing, overhead, inverters, and the balance of systems.

“This suggests that state and local PV deployment programs — which likely have a greater impact on nonmodule costs than on module prices — have been at least somewhat successful in spurring cost reductions,” states the report, which was written by Ryan Wiser, Galen Barbose, and Carla Peterman of Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division.

Installations of solar PV systems have grown at a rapid rate in the U.S., and governments have offered various incentives to expand the solar market.

“A goal of government incentive programs is to help drive the cost of PV systems lower. One purpose of this study is to provide reliable information about the costs of installed systems over time,” says Wiser.

The study examined 37,000 grid-connected PV systems installed between 1998 and 2007 in 12 states. It found that average installed costs, in terms of real 2007 dollars per installed watt, declined from $10.50 per watt in 1998 to $7.60 per watt in 2007, equivalent to an average annual reduction of 30 cents per watt or 3.5 percent per year in real dollars.

The researchers found that the reduction in nonmodule costs was responsible for most of the overall decline in costs. According to the report, this trend, along with a reduction in the number of higher-cost “outlier” installations, suggests that state and local PV-deployment policies have achieved some success in fostering competition within the industry and in spurring improvements in the cost structure and efficiency of the delivery infrastructure for solar power.

Costs differ by region and type of system

Other information about differences in costs by region and by installation type emerged from the study. The cost reduction over time was largest for smaller PV systems, such as those used to power individual households. Also, installed costs show significant economies of scale. Systems completed in 2006 or 2007 that were less than two kilowatts in size averaged $9.00 per watt, while systems larger than 750 kilowatts averaged $6.80 per watt.

Installed costs were also found to vary widely across states. Among systems completed in 2006 or 2007 and less than 10 kilowatts, average costs range from a low of $7.60 per watt in Arizona, followed by California and New Jersey, which had average installed costs of $8.10 per watt and $8.40 per watt respectively, to a high of $10.60 per watt in Maryland. Based on these data, and on installed-cost data from the sizable Japanese and German PV markets, the authors suggest that PV costs can be driven lower through sizable deployment programs.

The study also found that the new construction market offers cost advantages for residential PV systems. Among small residential PV systems in California completed in 2006 or 2007, those systems installed in residential new construction cost 60 cents per watt less than comparably-sized systems installed as retrofit applications.

Cash incentives declined

The study also found that direct cash incentives provided by state and local PV incentive programs declined over the 1998-2007 study period. Other sources of incentives, however, have become more significant, including federal incentive tax credits (ITCs). As a result of the increase in the federal ITC for commercial systems in 2006, total after-tax incentives for commercial PV were $3.90 per watt in 2007, an all-time high based on the data analyzed in the report. Total after-tax incentives for residential systems, on the other hand, averaged $3.1 per watt in 2007, their lowest level since 2001.

Because incentives for residential PV systems declined over this period, the net installed cost of residential PV has remained relatively flat since 2001. At the same time, the net installed cost of commercial PV has dropped — it was $3.90 per watt in 2007, compared to $5.90 per watt in 2001, a drop of 32 percent, thanks in large part to the federal ITC.

“Tracking the Sun: The Installed Cost of Photovoltaics in the U.S. from 1998–2007,” by Ryan Wiser, Galen Barbose, and Carla Peterman, may be downloaded as a PDF. The research was supported by funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (Solar Energy Technologies Program) and Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (Permitting, Siting and Analysis Division), and by the Clean Energy States Alliance.


[[b]Submitted by hempistry[/b]]]]> hempistry<ajingrao@nospam.com> Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:32:15 -0700 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.177.3 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.138.3
A Spanish city has found an unusual place to generate renewable energy - the local cemetery.

Santa Coloma de Gramanet, near Barcelona, has placed 462 solar panels over its multi-storey mausoleums.

Officials say the scheme was initially greeted with derision, but families who use the cemetery eventually supported the idea following a public campaign.

There are now plans to erect more panels at the cemetery and triple the amount of electricity generated.

The cemetery was chosen for the project because it is one of only a few open, sunny places in the crowded city, which has a population of 124,000 crammed into 4 sq km (1.5 sq miles).

The installation cost 720,000 euros (£608,000) but will keep about 62 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere every year, said Esteve Serret, a director of Conste-Live Energy, the company that runs the cemetery and also works in renewable energy.

"The best tribute we can pay to our ancestors, whatever your religion may be, is to generate clean energy for new generations," he said.

Unobtrusive position

At the cemetery row after row of gleaming, blue-grey solar panels now rest on mausoleums which hold five levels of coffins.

The panels will create enough energy each year to supply the needs of 60 homes.

The panels face almost due south to soak up the maximum amount of sunshine and are tilted at a low angle to make them as unobtrusive as possible.

This installation is compatible with respect for the deceased and for the families of the deceased
Antoni Fogue, city councillor
City councillor Antoni Fogue said that public reaction was quite negative when the idea was first mooted three years ago.

"We heard things like, 'they are crazy. Who do they think they are? What a lack of respect!'," he told the Associated Press.

But town hall and cemetery officials then waged a public awareness campaign to outline the benefits of the project and to explain the respectful way in which it would be carried out.

"There has not been any problem whatsoever because people who go to the cemetery see that nothing has changed," Mr Fogue said.

"This installation is compatible with respect for the deceased and for the families of the deceased."

The solar panels cover less than 5% of the total surface area of the cemetery, which holds the remains of about 57,000 people, but there are plans to install more.

Santa Coloma de Gramanet - essentially a suburb of Barcelona that is home to more than 100,000 people - has four other solar parks, mostly on top of buildings, but the cemetery is by far the largest.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7745673.stm
[[b]Submitted by Hemp4Fuel[/b]]]]> Hemp4Fuel<contact@nospam.com> Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:39:14 -0700 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.138.3 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.134.3
Some of the tiniest solar cells ever built have been successfully tested as a power source for even tinier microscopic machines. An article in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy (JRSE), published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP), describes an inch-long array of 20 of these cells -- each one about a quarter the size of a lowercase "o" in a standard 12-point font.

The cells were made of an organic polymer and were joined together in an experiment aimed at proving their ability to power tiny devices that can be used to detect chemical leaks and for other applications, says Xiaomei Jiang, who led the research at the University of South Florida.

Traditional solar cells, such as the commercial type installed on rooftops, use a brittle backing made of silicon, the same sort of material upon which computer chips are built. By contrast, organic solar cells rely upon a polymer that has the same electrical properties of silicon wafers but can be dissolved and printed onto flexible material.

"I think these materials have a lot more potential than traditional silicon," says Jiang. "They could be sprayed on any surface that is exposed to sunlight -- a uniform, a car, a house."

Jiang and her colleagues fabricated their array of 20 tiny solar cells as a power source for running a microscopic sensor for detecting dangerous chemicals and toxins. The detector, known as a microeletromechanical system (MEMS) device, is built with carbon nanotubes and has already been tested using ordinary DC power supplied by batteries. When fully powered and hooked into a circuit, the carbon nanotubes can sensitively detect particular chemicals by measuring the electrical changes that occur when chemicals enter the tubes. The type of chemical can be distinguished by the exact change in the electrical signal.

The device needs a 15-volt power source to work, so far and Jiang's solar cell array can provide about half of that -- up to 7.8 volts in their laboratory tests. The next step, she says, is to optimize the device to increase the voltage and then combine the miniature solar array to the carbon nanotube chemical sensors. Jiang estimates they will be able to demonstrate this level of power with their next generation solar array by the end of the year.

Source: Enviromental News Network
[[b]Submitted by hempistry[/b]]]]> hempistry<ajingrao@nospam.com> Fri, 07 Nov 2008 08:38:24 -0700 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.134.3 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.133.3
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered and demonstrated a new method for overcoming two major hurdles facing solar energy. By developing a new antireflective coating that boosts the amount of sunlight captured by solar panels and allows those panels to absorb the entire solar spectrum from nearly any angle, the research team has moved academia and industry closer to realizing high-efficiency, cost-effective solar power.

“To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun’s position in the sky,” said Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer and a member of the university’s Future Chips Constellation, who led the research project. “Our new antireflective coating makes this possible.”

An untreated silicon solar cell only absorbs 67.4 percent of sunlight shone upon it — meaning that nearly one-third of that sunlight is reflected away and thus unharvestable. From an economic and efficiency perspective, this unharvested light is wasted potential and a major barrier hampering the proliferation and widespread adoption of solar power.

After a silicon surface was treated with Lin’s new nanoengineered reflective coating, however, the material absorbed 96.21 percent of sunlight shone upon it — meaning that only 3.79 percent of the sunlight was reflected and unharvested. This huge gain in absorption was consistent across the entire spectrum of sunlight, from UV to visible light and infrared, and moves solar power a significant step forward toward economic viability.

Lin’s new coating also successfully tackles the tricky challenge of angles.

Most surfaces and coatings are designed to absorb light — i.e., be antireflective — and transmit light — i.e., allow the light to pass through it — from a specific range of angles. Eyeglass lenses, for example, will absorb and transmit quite a bit of light from a light source directly in front of them, but those same lenses would absorb and transmit considerably less light if the light source were off to the side or on the wearer’s periphery.

This same is true of conventional solar panels, which is why some industrial solar arrays are mechanized to slowly move throughout the day so their panels are perfectly aligned with the sun’s position in the sky. Without this automated movement, the panels would not be optimally positioned and would therefore absorb less sunlight. The tradeoff for this increased efficiency, however, is the energy needed to power the automation system, the cost of upkeeping this system, and the possibility of errors or misalignment.

Lin’s discovery could antiquate these automated solar arrays, as his antireflective coating absorbs sunlight evenly and equally from all angles. This means that a stationary solar panel treated with the coating would absorb 96.21 percent of sunlight no matter the position of the sun in the sky. So along with significantly better absorption of sunlight, Lin’s discovery could also enable a new generation of stationary, more cost-efficient solar arrays.

“At the beginning of the project, we asked ‘would it be possible to create a single antireflective structure that can work from all angles?’ Then we attacked the problem from a fundamental perspective, tested and fine-tuned our theory, and created a working device,” Lin said. Rensselaer physics graduate student Mei-Ling Kuo played a key role in the investigations.

Typical antireflective coatings are engineered to transmit light of one particular wavelength. Lin’s new coating stacks seven of these layers, one on top of the other, in such a way that each layer enhances the antireflective properties of the layer below it. These additional layers also help to “bend” the flow of sunlight to an angle that augments the coating’s antireflective properties. This means that each layer not only transmits sunlight, it also helps to capture any light that may have otherwise been reflected off of the layers below it.

The seven layers, each with a height of 50 nanometers to 100 nanometers, are made up of silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide nanorods positioned at an oblique angle — each layer looks and functions similar to a dense forest where sunlight is “captured” between the trees. The nanorods were attached to a silicon substrate via chemical vapor disposition, and Lin said the new coating can be affixed to nearly any photovoltaic materials for use in solar cells, including III-V multi-junction and cadmium telluride.

Along with Lin and Kuo, co-authors of the paper include E. Fred Schubert, Wellfleet Senior Constellation Professor of Future Chips at Rensselaer; Research Assistant Professor Jong Kyu Kim; physics graduate student David Poxson; and electrical engineering graduate student Frank Mont.

Funding for the project was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences, as well as the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.


[[b]Submitted by hempistry[/b]]]]> hempistry<ajingrao@nospam.com> Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:14:03 -0700 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.133.3 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.127.3 The UNSW ARC Photovoltaic Centre of Excellence already held the world record of 24.7 per cent for silicon solar cell efficiency. Now a revision of the international standard by which solar cells are measured, has delivered the significant 25 per cent record to the team led by Professors Martin Green and Stuart Wenham and widened their lead on the rest of the world.

Centre Executive Research Director, Scientia Professor Martin Green, said the new world mark in converting incident sunlight into electricity was one of six new world records claimed by UNSW for its silicon solar technologies.

Professor Green said the jump in performance leading to the milestone resulted from new knowledge about the composition of sunlight.

"Since the weights of the colours in sunlight change during the day, solar cells are measured under a standard colour spectrum defined under typical operational meteorological conditions," he said.

"Improvements in understanding atmospheric effects upon the colour content of sunlight led to a revision of the standard spectrum in April. The new spectrum has a higher energy content both down the blue end of the spectrum and at the opposite red end with, dare I say it, relatively less green."

The recalibration of the international standard, done by the International Electrochemical Commission in April, gave the biggest boost to UNSW technology while the measured efficiency of others made lesser gains. UNSW's world-leading silicon cell is now six per cent more efficient than the next-best technology, Professor Green said. The new record also inches the UNSW team closer to the 29 per cent theoretical maximum efficiency possible for first-generation silicon photovoltaic cells.

Dr Anita Ho-Baillie, who heads the Centre's high efficiency cell research effort, said the UNSW technology benefited greatly from the new spectrum "because our cells push the boundaries of response into the extremities of the spectrum".

"Blue light is absorbed strongly, very close to the cell surface where we go to great pains to make sure it is not wasted. Just the opposite, the red light is only weakly absorbed and we have to use special design features to trap it into the cell," she said.

Professor Green said: "These light-trapping features make our cells act as if they were much thicker than they are. This already has had an important spin-off in allowing us to work with CSG Solar to develop commercial 'thin-film' silicon-on-glass solar cells that are over 100 times thinner than conventional silicon cells."

ARC Centre Director, Professor Stuart Wenham said the focus of the Centre is now improving mainstream production. "Our main efforts now are focussed on getting these efficiency improvements into commercial production," he said. "Production compatible versions of our high efficiency technology are being introduced into production as we speak."

The world-record holding cell was fabricated by former Centre researchers, Dr Jianhua Zhao and Dr Aihua Wang, who have since left the Centre to establish China Sunergy, one of the world's largest photovoltaic manufacturers. "China was the largest manufacturer of solar cells internationally in 2007 with 70 per cent of the output from companies with our former UNSW students either Chief Executive Officers or Chief Technical Officers", said Professor Green.

Source: SceinceDaily.com
[[b]Submitted by hempistry[/b]]]]> hempistry<ajingrao@nospam.com> Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:19:00 -0700 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.127.3 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.119.3 Posted by: Admin in Solar Power, solar

http://energybusinessdaily.com/2008/10/solar-shingles-potential/

Solar shingles (also known as photovoltaic shingles) are photovoltaic cells configured to appear like conventional asphalt shingles. There are a lot of kinds of solar shingles, including shingle-sized solid boards that take the place of a number of established shingles in a strip, semi-rigid blueprints bearing numerous silicon solar cells that are sized more like conventional shingles, and fresher schemes utilizing several thin film solar cell technologies that correspond with conventional shingles both in size and flexibility.

They are fabricated by only a couple of companies globally including SunPower Corporation, Solar Components Corporation, and Atlantis Energy Systems.

The technology has arisen substantially because of their origin for usage for solar water heaters during the 1920s in Florida and California. Lately there has been an upsurge towards mass output of PV systems. In certain parts of the world with significantly high insolation levels, PV output and their economics are enhanced. PV (Photovoltaic) modules are the primary component of most modest solar-electric power generating installations. Since the turn of the century, there have been outstanding progressions in solar power and their efficiency; this includes the 2005 release of solar shingles.

Solar shingles are photovoltaic cells, captivating sunlight and translating it into energy. Most solar shingles are 12 inches wide (when heaped have 5 inches of exposed area) by 86 inches long and can be fastened straightaway to the roofing cloth. Assorted models of shingles that are produced have dissimilar mounting requirements. Some can be employed immediately onto roofing felt intermingled with regular asphalt shingles although others might require special installation. Roof tiles allow for optimal solar cell placement and eliminates shading from upper roof tiles. They also call for less roof space and provides for optimal system arrangement.

Solar-shingled roofs have a deep, dark, purplish-blue color, and consequently look similar to other roofs in most situations. Home-owners may be attracted to solar shingles because of their aesthetic value, allowing for homeowner to employ solar arrays without large panels on their roofs. Contrary to other forthcoming alternative resources for the home, such as wind turbines or home diesel generators (to bring down transmission system costs), they are not evidently solar collectors. Some producers produce solar shingles made of POLYMATRIX. These shingles integrate well into existing roofs and are even compliant to some countries’ historic preservation rules.

The more common setup is photovoltaic shingles with mono or polycrystalline solar cells instantly incorporated with regular asphalt shingles. The primary blueprint of photovoltaic cells, comprise of a large-area, an exclusive layer p-n junction diode, which is capable of engendering functional electrical energy from light reservoirs with the wavelengths of sunlight. These cells are generally made using a silicon wafer. First generation solar cells (also known as silicon wafer-based solar cells) are the dominant technology in the commercialized output of solar cells, accounting for more than 86% of the solar cell market. The typical power output bridges several watts (roof shingles) to about 50 watts (roof tiles with crystalline solar cells).
PV systems connected to the grid can have battery backup systems. PV systems that lack a battery backup are integrally connected with utility power. The system’s power output goes straight into the grid; as a result, this type of system usually saves the owner the most money on electric bills. The other type of PV systems are those that are equipped with battery backups. In these systems, extra power is utilized to charge up backup batteries which can provide equal to eight hours of power in the event of a power failure.
As would be anticipated, these systems call for different hardware in order to serve different functions. Non-battery backup units necessitate an inverter which converts the direct current output from the shingles into alternating current that most home appliances use. A meter would also be beneficial to allow one to track the system’s performance. Then again, battery backup units require an array of additional hardware. This includes batteries, battery enclosures, battery charge controllers, and differentiate sub panels for vital burden circuits.

Solar shingles are less affordable to establish than typical PV panels, but the additional cost is sometimes considered a small price to pay for the aesthetic benefits. Also, the solar shingles offset the cost of traditional shingles for that section of the roof.

Large homebuilders in California like Lennar are partnering with SunPower to provide new construction solar homes that have solar systems installed before moving in. Scaling down the overhead and utilizing solar roof tile technology creates solar a standard option like granite countertops, making solar a low-cost solution to reduce electricity costs.
[[b]Submitted by Hemp4Fuel[/b]]]]> Hemp4Fuel<contact@nospam.com> Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:34:39 -0700 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.119.3 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.75.3 Oregon Solar Plants Power Up, Utilities Prepare to Power Them
By CELESTE LECOMPTE, GigaOm

It’s been a pro-solar week in Oregon. German solar maker SolarWorld is set to open its 480,000-square-foot semiconductor plant in Hillsboro today, and Sanyo broke ground at its 861,000-square-foot factory on Wednesday at the Salem (Ore.) Renewable Energy and Technology Park. As we’ve written before, solar manufacturers are moving into Oregon at a brisk pace, thanks in part to the state’s successful Business Energy Tax Credit. But while the new solar facilities may boost clean energy around the world, what’s their impact on Oregon’s energy supply?

Semiconductor manufacturing is an energy intensive business; such facilities can require 20 to 70 MW of power load, according to Tom Guantt, a spokesman for Pacific Power. While that’s a laughably wide range, none of the solar manufacturers were willing to disclose the specific energy footprint of their facilities. Pacific Power’s service territory includes just one of the announced solar manufacturing plants in Oregon — the Peak Sun facility in Millersburg — while Portland General Electric (PGE) is responsible for servicing the other new developments, including the SolarWorld and Sanyo facilities, as well as the Solaicx, XsunX and Spectrawatt factories.

Whether its 20 or 70, a tens-of-megwatts load isn’t easy to for the grid to absorb, especially when it’s concentrated at one site. Much like turning on too many kitchen appliances at once can overtax your home’s circuit breaker, ramping up heavy industrial manufacturing without prior planning would destabilize the local power grid. To avoid this problem, Oregon utilities have had to prepare, by adding new substations, upgrading distribution and transmission lines — and, potentially, building or buying additional generation. (Yes, that means power plants.)

Solar manufacturing isn’t the only factor driving the region’s need for additional power. According to Steve Corson, a spokesperson for PGE, power demand in the region, currently about 2,500 MW, is expected to grow twice as fast as the national average. That means the utility can say it will be able to meet increased demand with renewable energy. Because solar manufacturing plays a small role in the state’s growing power demand, it’s likely that utilities’ progress toward meeting the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (which requires 25 percent of electric demand to come from new renewables) will be more than sufficient to cover the additional demand.

New generation aside, the need for infrastructure development is likely to play a bigger role in promoting green collar jobs in the state. Sanyo’s plant, slated to open in October 2009, makes it the first company to sign on to the City of Salem’s Renewable Energy and Technology Park (RETP), an 80-acre parcel of land zoned for industrial uses that had been undeveloped since the city acquired the rights in 1992. To meet anticipated power demand at both the RETP and the nearby Mills Creek industrial park, PGE is developing a new substation, says Rick Scott, urban development director for the City of Salem.

Sanyo’s interest in the location, and PGE’s willingness to develop the substation, could pave the way for future green manufacturing. Scott says the city is currently in talks with two other companies interested in siting green industrial operations in the RETP, and the area is also zoned for research and development operations.

While new development is exciting for Salem, another opportunity is more appealing to utilities, as well as to local economic development officials across the state: reusing existing manufacturing capacity. Oregon, like many states in the U.S., has numerous manufacturing and industrial sites that have been closed over the past few decades. Pacific Power told us in an email “In some cases in the Northwest, high capacity lines are already in place because in the past there were large wood products or other industrial plants in an area.” That infrastructure could be key encouraging new development of solar and other green manufacturing operations.

To that end, Pacific Power is upgrading and reactivating a line near Roseburg, Ore., that used to supply a nickel mine. While the utility didn’t specify who would benefit from that specific upgrade, Guantt wrote that “sites like that could be suitable for new large energy users such as polysilicon manufacturers. And it would be great from an economic development standpoint to bring manufacturing jobs back to these areas.”

Copyright 2008 GigaOm. All Rights Reserved.
[[b]Submitted by Hemp4Fuel[/b]]]]> Hemp4Fuel<contact@nospam.com> Thu, 16 Oct 2008 07:07:16 -0700 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.75.3 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.74.3 Photos: Solar power in the Golden state
Posted by Martin LaMonica Post a comment

SAN DIEGO--A walk around the conference floor at the Solar Power International conference will quickly teach you that solar energy comes in more shapes than the flat rooftop panels you see on people's homes.

Click on the image to launch a photo gallery or products and solar installations from this week's Solar Power International conference.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET Networks)

At the conference, there were a number of companies that do solar concentrators of various types, which use lenses and mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto solar cells.

These new-fangled devices are aimed at either businesses with rooftop space or utilities, many of which have to meet state mandates to purchase renewable energy.

The flat panel business is very active as well. Manufacturers are ramping up operations and exploring new thin-film cell technology to lower the cost of delivering a product.

Solar hot water systems, meanwhile, have a quicker payback than solar electric installations.

Outside the conference floor, San Diego is home to a number of corporate solar installations. Conference organizers led a tour of a few solar arrays at businesses and non-profit organizations.

Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin.

[[b]Submitted by Hemp4Fuel[/b]]]]> Hemp4Fuel<contact@nospam.com> Thu, 16 Oct 2008 07:07:03 -0700 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.74.3 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.128.3
Engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have achieved a breakthrough in the use of a one-atom thick structure called "graphene" as a new carbon-based material for storing electrical charge in ultracapacitor devices, perhaps paving the way for the massive installation of renewable energies such as wind and solar power.

The researchers believe their breakthrough shows promise that graphene (a form of carbon) could eventually double the capacity of existing ultracapacitors, which are manufactured using an entirely different form of carbon.

"Through such a device, electrical charge can be rapidly stored on the graphene sheets, and released from them as well for the delivery of electrical current and, thus, electrical power," says Rod Ruoff, a mechanical engineering professor and a physical chemist. "There are reasons to think that the ability to store electrical charge can be about double that of current commercially used materials. We are working to see if that prediction will be borne out in the laboratory."

Two main methods exist to store electrical energy: in rechargeable batteries and in ultracapacitors which are becoming increasingly commercialized but are not yet as popularly known. An ultracapacitor can be used in a wide range of energy capture and storage applications and are used either by themselves as the primary power source or in combination with batteries or fuel cells. Some advantages of ultracapacitors over more traditional energy storage devices (such as batteries) include: higher power capability, longer life, a wider thermal operating range, lighter, more flexible packaging and lower maintenance, Ruoff says.

Ruoff and his team prepared chemically modified graphene material and, using several types of common electrolytes, have constructed and electrically tested graphene-based ultracapacitor cells. The amount of electrical charge stored per weight (called "specific capacitance") of the graphene material has already rivaled the values available in existing ultracapacitors, and modeling suggests the possibility of doubling the capacity.

"Our interest derives from the exceptional properties of these atom-thick and electrically conductive graphene sheets, because in principle all of the surface of this new carbon material can be in contact with the electrolyte," says Ruoff, who holds the Cockrell Family Regents Chair in Engineering #7. "Graphene's surface area of 2630 m2/gram (almost the area of a football field in about 1/500th of a pound of material) means that a greater number of positive or negative ions in the electrolyte can form a layer on the graphene sheets resulting in exceptional levels of stored charge."

The U.S. Department of Energy has said that an improved method for storage of electrical energy is one of the main challenges preventing the substantial installation of renewable energies such as wind and solar power. Storage is vital for times when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine. During those times, the stored electrical energy can be delivered through the electrical grid as needed.

Ruoff's team includes graduate student Meryl Stoller and postdoctoral fellows Sungjin Park, Yanwu Zhu and Jinho An, all from the Mechanical Engineering Department and the Texas Materials Institute at the university. Their findings will be published in the Oct. 8 edition of Nano Letters. The article was posted on the journal's Web site this week.

This technology, Stoller says, has the promise of significantly improving the efficiency and performance of electric and hybrid cars, buses, trains and trams. Even everyday devices such as office copiers and cell phones benefit from the improved power delivery and long lifetimes of ultracapacitors.

Ruoff says significant implementation of wind farms for generation of electricity is occurring throughout the world and the United States, with Texas and California first and second in the generation of wind power.

According to the American Wind Energy Association, in 2007 wind power installation grew 45 percent in this country. Ruoff says if the energy production from wind turbine technology grew at 45 percent annually for the next 20 years, the total energy production (from wind alone) would almost equal the entire energy production of the world from all sources in 2007.

"While it is unlikely that such explosive installation and use of wind can continue at this growth rate for 20 years, one can see the possibilities, and also ponder the issues of scale," he says. "Electrical energy storage becomes a critical component when very large quantities of renewable electrical energy are being generated."

Funding and support was provided by the Texas Nanotechnology Research Superiority Initiative, The University of Texas at Austin and a Korea Research Foundation Grant for fellowship support for Dr. Park.

Source: ScienceDaily.com
[[b]Submitted by hempistry[/b]]]]> hempistry<ajingrao@nospam.com> Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:19:00 -0700 http://hemp4fuel.com/news.php?item.128.3