13-Year-Old Looks at Trees, Makes Solar Power Breakthrough. Update: There's been quite a bit of pushback about the actual scientific merits of Dwyer's experiment.
We've followed up with a roundup of the criticisms. Original: Aidan Dwyer did a much better job on his 7th grade science project than any of us. While on a wintertime hike in the Catskills, he noticed the branches of trees held a spiral pattern as they ascended. He wondered if that could possibly serve some purpose, looked into it, and learned about the Fibonacci sequence, which is a mathematical way of describing a spiral. Then he studied tree branches more closely and found their leaves adhered to the sequence. The tree design takes up less room than flat-panel arrays and works in spots that don't have a full southern view. Not bad for a kid who hasn't started high school yet.
Daniel Nocera describes new process for storing solar energy. MIT researchers create super efficient 'origami' solar panels. MIT researchers have created an origami-like solar structure that is much more efficient than current flat panels.
The three-dimensional solar structure could, at least in principle, absorb a lot more light and generate more power than a flat panel containing the same area footprint. The hope is that all unused light which has been reflected off one panel would be captured by other panels. Panels of this type would be most ideal in circumstances with limited space. "This was a fully 'bio-inspired' idea," said researcher Jeffrey Grossman, a theoretical physicist at MIT. "I was hiking up at Lake Tahoe in California and noticing the shapes of trees, and wondering, 'Why do they have a given shape over another? '" Research into photovoltaic panels has largely kept them flat to prevent any sort of shadow effect. Super Cheap Solar Cells Just Got Cheaper, Switch Gold For Nickel. One of the major drawbacks of most renewable energy sources is high cost.
Some Earthy Figures and Facts About Solar Energy You Have to Know - Phoebe-Elle's blog. Want more facts about solar energy?
The best thing about it is that there are no rising and annoying importation costs of gas, oil or coal, which are by the way, increasing almost half the time. For more earthy figures and facts about solar energy, here they are: * In 2004, the solar cells' global production magnified by 60%. Nevertheless, these cells' materials are made of silicon which has been short in supply since then and has impeded production. Cheaper, Spray-On Solar Panels Could Appear in Three Years. AUSTIN, TX — Researchers at the University of Texas have developed a method to create photovoltaic panels at one-tenth the cost of existing technologies using nanoparticle "inks" to generate electricity from the sun.
The group, lead by Brian Korgel in the University's chemical engineering department, predicts that the technology, which would allow solar panels to be painted on rooftops or the sides of buildings, could be market-ready in three to five years. "The sun provides a nearly unlimited energy resource," Korgel said in a statement, "but existing solar energy harvesting technologies are prohibitively expensive and cannot compete with fossil fuels.
" The technology has been in development for the past two years, with Korgel collaborating with professors Al Bard and Paul Barbara, both of the University of Texas's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Professor Ananth Dodabalapur of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Energy Tower: Power for 15 Earths? Researchers have designed a product that its inventors claim could easily produce between 15 and 20 times the total electricity the world uses today.
Not only that, it could also be used as a desalination device and may be able to reverse the effects of global warming. Those are pretty big claims, but the researchers from the Technion - Israel Institute of Science seem confident that the "Energy Tower" could be a major solution to the world's problems. They've been working on the concept since 1983, and together have spent more than 150 man-years researching, designing, testing, and analyzing.
As project founder Professor Dan Zaslavsky explains, the Energy Tower works on the basic principle of convection: hot air rises and cold air falls. One Per Cent: Green Machine: solar street lamp feeds energy to the grid. Helen Knight, technology reporter (Image: Adam Mørk/SunMast) The humble street light is joining the ranks of wind turbines and solar power plants in supplying renewable energy to the electricity grid.
A street lamp covered in photovoltaic cells, which can generate more energy from sunlight than it consumes to light the street, is being tested in the UK. And the lamp is already supplying electricity to the National Grid. Solar Tower. SOLAR IMPULSE - AROUND THE WORLD IN A SOLAR AIRPLANE. Scientists Develop Affordable Solar Panels That Work In The Dark. It's about damn time, don't you think?
Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced Wednesday that they have been able to confirm a new high-efficiency solar cell design that utilizes nearly the entire solar spectrum. Translation: They figured out a way to make solar panels generate electricity in the dark. CleanTechnica says , In earlier trials, the researchers used different alloys that achieved full spectrum responses but involved very high production costs. The advantage of gallium arsenide nitride is that it is very similar to a conventional semiconductor, gallium arsenide, and it can be produced with a commonly used fabrication method involving chemical vapor deposition. Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy industry. Completely Off The Grid. Mike Strizki says he’s figured out how to store solar energy in a way that could provide the world with an infinite source of year-round, emissions-free power, but also says no one is listening to him.
For more news and information on the rapidly evolving energy industry, please sign up for the Breaking Energy newsletter. For the quickest updates, follow us on Twitter @AOLEnergy. Hot solar cells are the cool way to water and power - tech - 14 April 2011. PUMPING water through micro-channels on the surface of a solar panel not only makes it more efficient but can also make seawater drinkable.
Concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) cells use lenses to focus large areas of solar energy onto a relatively small section of photovoltaic material, so it is not surprising that they can reach temperatures of 120 °C. These high temperatures make the cells less efficient, reducing the amount of electricity they can produce. That is why keeping them cool is so important, says Bruno Michel, head of advanced thermal packaging at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory in Switzerland. Turn Steel Into Solar Panels With Photovoltaic Spray Paint. No, it's not a joke or a crazy awesome futuristic concept .
It's real. Tata Steel Europe (formerly Corus) and Swansea University in Wales, UK are collaborating to develop a spray-on technology that would transform steel sheets into solar panels. Earth and Industry says , The technology has significant applications since it is highly efficient even in diffused sunlight. Therefore, countries at higher latitudes or those with limited solar energy resource can generate significant amounts of solar-powered electricity with going for large-scale power plants. If extended, the technology can find its way to the automobile industry where photo-sensitive dyes can be applied to cars to generate electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen for fuel cells.
What if solar got fossil fuel subsidies? If Solar Were Subsidized like Fossil Fuels. Super Cheap Solar Cells Just Got Cheaper, Switch Gold For Nickel. Think Big! Arizona Solar Tower 2X Taller Than the Empire State Building Will Produce 200 Megawatts. Image: Enviromission 2625 Feet Tall! Solar towers, which are kind of big funnels that generate electricity by using the fact that hot air rises, are too often forgotten when we discuss solar energy. Solar PV and CSP get all the press, but solar towers have attractive power-generating characteristics and I wish more companies were working on perfecting them. EnviroMission is an Australian company working on that very thing, and they've announced that they want to build a gigantic 2625 feet/800 meters solar tower in the Arizona desert that would produce about 200 MW, enough to power 150,000 US homes.
Read on for a video, more photos, and more details. Solar Forest Keeps Cars Cool And Juiced. Solar goes Hyper in the U.S. As the U.S. government continues to heap billions in subsidies to the world's wealthiest coal and oil companies, the solar industry has been struggling to make it in the United States. This is sad for many reasons, not the least of which is that we're missing out on one of the biggest growth industries in the world. Currently there are 16 gigawatts of installed solar power globally. That number will grow to about 1,800 gigawatts in the next 20 years, making it one of the best job creators. U.S. engineers invented the solar panel, and the U.S. should be dominating that market. Instead, foreign manufacturers (particularly in China) have taken our IP and run with it, as we become increasingly dependent on foreign oil and dirty coal operations to meet our power needs.
Fortunately HyperSolar, a new U.S. company, offers a ray of sunny hope on the clean energy frontier.