Amazon Green

Saturday 25 June 2011

ADB targets solar power projects in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Asian Development Bank (ADB) will launch the Asia Accelerated Solar Energy Development Fund with $2.25 billion as it targets solar power projects in countries including China, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Thailand to add another 1,000 megawatts next year and 1,500MW in 2013, said a statement of the ADB.

“By providing an enabling environment for commercial lending and private investment in the solar energy market, we hope to encourage its rapid growth and bring solar energy nearer to grid parity-making solar energy competitive in price to conventional sources,” ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda said at a clean energy forum in Manila.

Asia needs to invest around $10 billion in the next few years to make solar power generation competitive with conventional energy sources and called for radical steps to fight climate change.

ADB wants Asia, home to about two-thirds of the world’s population to add 3,000 megawatts of solar energy capacity by the end of 2013, he added.

Already this year, it has helped countries add 500 megawatts, doubling the region’s solar capacity. Fast-growing Asian economies rely heavily on fossil fuels. ADB has forecast Asia-Pacific imports of fossil fuels will more than double between 2005 and 2030, with oil accounting for more than 90 percent of such imports.

“The total cost of this 3,000 MW is about $10 billion, of which we are planning to commit $2.25 billion,” sais S Chander, Principal Director at ADB’s Office of Information Systems and Technology.

“Our job is to catalyse enough projects to increase volumes and to make sure that the manufacturers (of low-carbon technologies) have an incentive to invest in research and development,” Chander said.

ADB invested $1.76 billion in clean energy across 29 projects last year and said it is on track to meet a goal of $2 billion in clean energy investments annually by 2013. It plans to inject $60 million into three venture capital funds that will provide early-stage financing support for new climate technology products. It expects this initiative to leverage over $400 million in private sector investment.

Kuroda said Asia had a lot to lose from climate change and needed to act quickly to develop alternate energy source. “A big push is needed to accelerate this transition,” he said. “The climate fight will be won or lost by decisions made in this region.” app

(Source: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011\06\25\story_25-6-2011_pg5_10)

Sunday 19 June 2011

Oriental Hornet: Expert Solar Power Harvester



Do you know who is the most competent solar power expert, according to a research team from Tel Aviv University? It is the humble common Oriental hornet found in our gardens! Much to the astonishment of the scientists and researchers, the hornet utilizes solar power much like a plant and it produces electricity. Think how much easier it would be if only we could unravel how the hornet manages it. This discovery could revolutionize future solar power harvesting.

Photosynthesis process
Plants use the photosynthesis process to harvest energy from the sun. Scientists have been trying to mimic this for energy production, but with limited success. Now with hornet showing how to efficiently convert the sun’s rays into electricity, there is hope for other biological and living beings to follow suit and produce electricity themselves. This research opens up a lot of possibilities.

Research team
Tel Aviv University’s School of Physics and Astronomy research team, comprised of Prof. David Bergman, Marian Plotkin and (late) Prof. Jacob Ishay of Sackler Faculty of Medicine. Together they have been busy researching the hornet in an effort to mimic it’s solar harvesting abilities.

Hornet’s unique prowess in photosynthesis
From their research we have learned that the exoskeleton – the outer body shell of hornet, works by converting the abdomen of hornet into tiny solar cells. German journal, Naturwissenschaften, published these newly discovered powers of hornet. Another study has also found that the hornet’s biological harvesting capacity is directly proportional to the intensity of the sun.

What makes hornets remarkable?
The researchers were quite keen to learn more about the activity pattern of hornet. What is the most important aspect that makes the hornet more active in the afternoon, where other insects are more active in the earlier part of the day? Considering temperature, humidity and solar radiation, they found that UV B rays are the reason for the hornet’s activity level increasing along with sun’s intensity.

The photovoltaic pattern
The hornet has some really astonishing brown grooves to split the light into diverging beams. The brown and yellow bands absorb the radiation from sun. While the brown splits the light, the yellow pigments convert it into electricity. In the small pinhole depressions, there is xanthopterin – a pigment which along with the grooves in the brown bands and pinhole depressions makes electricity from sun rays. The outer shell locks in the light which is converted to power by the pigments.

Unique characteristics of the hornet
Along with harvesting solar power, the hornet has its own built-in top quality heat pump structure in its body, which is tuned to the highest grade of efficiency. While it gets more and more busy in the hot afternoon sun, it keeps its body cool – a rather difficult thing to do. The acoustic prowess of hornets guides them to build nests in total darkness but with remarkable accuracy and exactness.

Duplicating the hornet
Though the researchers tried to duplicate the hornet’s body structure in an effort to harvest solar energy for electricity production, they have yet to find success. Efforts are still ongoing to refine the model and seek better ways to emulate the hornet for power solutions. Let us hope that a successful prototype is soon realized, so we can harvest renewable solar energy as effortlessly as the hornet!

(Source: http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/hornet-solar-power/)

Friday 17 June 2011

The Solar Fountain Birdbath by Edwin - on June 16, 2011



Since summer is here for us folks living in the northern hemisphere, it goes without saying that birds would like to come out and frolic as well, and if you set up a birdbath, they would definitely love to have a go at it. However, getting that birdbath’s water to act as a fountain all by itself would require electricity, and you can either use magic, plug it in to your power outlet, or rely on solar energy as the Solar Fountain Birdbath does.
The name itself gives the game away, where your birdbath will perpetually deliver a spring of gently cascading water, courtesy of the solar panel that is located in the center of the fountain that ensures the internal pump remains powered continuously. Only moderate sunlight is required to power the fountain for up to six hours after an eight-hour charge. $179.95 to go green in your garden? Not too shabby at all

(Source: http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/category/solar-powered-gear/)

Monday 13 June 2011

First Polymer Solar-Thermal Device Heats Home, Saves Money (ScienceDaily )


A new polymer-based solar-thermal device is the first to generate power from both heat and visible sunlight -- an advance that could shave the cost of heating a home by as much as 40 percent.
Geothermal add-ons for heat pumps on the market today collect heat from the air or the ground. This new device uses a fluid that flows through a roof-mounted module to collect heat from the sun while an integrated solar cell generates electricity from the sun's visible light.
"It's a systems approach to making your home ultra-efficient because the device collects both solar energy and heat," said David Carroll, Ph.D., director of the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials at Wake Forest University. "Our solar-thermal device takes better advantage of the broad range of power delivered from the sun each day."
Research showing the effectiveness of the device appears in the March issue of the peer-reviewed journal Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells.
A standard, rooftop solar cell will miss about 75 percent of the energy provided by the sun at any given time because it can't collect the longest wavelengths of light -- infrared heat. Such cells miss an even greater amount of the available daily solar power because they collect sunlight most efficiently between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
"On a rooftop, you have a lot of visible sunlight and heat from the infrared radiation," Carroll said. "The solar-cell industry has for the most part ignored the heat."
The design of the new solar-thermal device takes advantage of this heat through an integrated array of clear tubes, five millimeters in diameter. They lie flat, and an oil blended with a proprietary dye flows through them. The visible sunlight shines into the clear tube and the oil inside, and is converted to electricity by a spray-on polymer photovoltaic on the back of the tubes. This process superheats the oil, which would then flow into the heat pump, for example, to transfer the heat inside a home.
Unlike the flat solar cells used today, the curve of the tubes inside the new device allows for the collection of both visible light and infrared heat from nearly sunrise to sunset. This means it provides power for a much greater part of the day than does a normal solar cell.
Because of the general structure and the ability to capture light at oblique angles, this is also the first solar-thermal device that can be truly building-integrated -- it can be made to look nearly identical to roofing tiles used today.
Tests of the solar-thermal device have shown 30 percent efficiency in converting solar energy to power. By comparison, a standard solar cell with a polymer absorber has shown no greater than 8 percent conversion efficiency.
The research team will build the first square-meter-size solar-thermal cell this summer, a key step in getting the technology ready for market.

(Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110404111148.htm)

Wednesday 8 June 2011

China Racing Ahead of U.S. in the Drive to Go Solar (By KEITH BRADSHER Published: August 24, 2009)


(A bit old but good to read...)

WUXI, China — President Obama wants to make the United States “the world’s leading exporter of renewable energy,” but in his seven months in office, it is China that has stepped on the gas in an effort to become the dominant player in green energy — especially in solar power, and even in the United States.
Chinese companies have already played a leading role in pushing down the price of solar panels by almost half over the last year. Shi Zhengrong, the chief executive and founder of China’s biggest solar panel manufacturer, Suntech Power Holdings, said in an interview here that Suntech, to build market share, is selling solar panels on the American market for less than the cost of the materials, assembly and shipping.
Backed by lavish government support, the Chinese are preparing to build plants to assemble their products in the United States to bypass protectionist legislation. As Japanese automakers did decades ago, Chinese solar companies are encouraging their United States executives to join industry trade groups to tamp down anti-Chinese sentiment before it takes root.
The Obama administration is determined to help the American industry. The energy and Treasury departments announced this month that they would give $2.3 billion in tax credits to clean energy equipment manufacturers. But even in the solar industry, many worry that Western companies may have fragile prospects when competing with Chinese companies that have cheap loans, electricity and labor, paying recent college graduates in engineering $7,000 a year.
“I don’t see Europe or the United States becoming major producers of solar products — they’ll be consumers,” said Thomas M. Zarrella, the chief executive of GT Solar International, a company in Merrimack, N.H., that sells specialized factory equipment to solar panel makers around the world.
Since March, Chinese governments at the national, provincial and even local level have been competing with one another to offer solar companies ever more generous subsidies, including free land, and cash for research and development. State-owned banks are flooding the industry with loans at considerably lower interest rates than available in Europe or the United States.
Suntech, based here in Wuxi, is on track this year to pass Q-Cells of Germany, to become the world’s second-largest supplier of photovoltaic cells, which would put it behind only First Solar in Tempe, Ariz.
Hot on Suntech’s heels is a growing list of Chinese corporations backed by entrepreneurs, local governments and even the Chinese military, all seeking to capitalize on an industry deemed crucial by China’s top leadership.
Dr. Shi pointed out that other governments, including in the United States, also assist clean energy industries, including with factory construction incentives.
China’s commitment to solar energy is unlikely to make a difference soon to global warming. China’s energy consumption is growing faster than any other country’s, though the United States consumes more today. Beijing’s aim is to generate 20,000 megawatts of solar energy by 2020 — or less than half the capacity of coal-fired power plants that are built in China each year.
Solar energy remains far more expensive to generate than energy from coal, oil, natural gas or even wind. But in addition to heavy Chinese investment and low Chinese costs, the global economic downturn and a decline in European subsidies to buy panels have lowered prices.
The American economic stimulus plan requires any project receiving money to use steel and other construction materials, including solar panels, from countries that have signed the World Trade Organization’s agreement on free trade in government procurement. China has not.
In response to this, and to reduce shipping costs, Suntech plans to announce in the next month or two that it will build a solar panel assembly plant in the United States, said Steven Chan, its president for global sales and marketing.
“It’ll be to facilitate sales — ‘buy American’ and things like that,” Mr. Chan said, adding that the factory would have 75 to 150 workers and be located in Phoenix, or somewhere in Texas.
But 90 percent of the workers at the $30 million factory will be blue-collar laborers, welding together panels from solar wafers made in China, Dr. Shi said.
Yingli Solar, another large Chinese manufacturer, said on Thursday that it also had a “preliminary plan” to assemble panels in the United States.
Western rivals, meanwhile, are struggling. Q-Cells of Germany announced last week that it would lay off 500 of its 2,600 employees because of declining sales. It and two other German companies, Conergy and SolarWorld, are particularly indignant that German subsidies were the main source of demand for solar panels until recently.
“Politicians might ask whether this is still the right way to do this, German taxpayers paying for Asian products,” said Markus Wieser, a Q-Cells spokesman.
But organizing resistance to Chinese exports could be difficult, particularly as Chinese discounting makes green energy more affordable.
Even with Suntech acknowledging that it sells below the marginal cost of producing each additional solar panel — that is, the cost after administrative and development costs are subtracted — any antidumping case, in the United States, for example, would have to show that American companies were losing money as a result.
First Solar — the solar leader, in Tempe — using a different technology from many solar panel manufacturers, is actually profitable, while the new tax credits now becoming available may help other companies.
Even organizing a united American response to Chinese exports could be difficult. Suntech has encouraged executives at its United States operations to take the top posts at the two main American industry groups, partly to make sure that these groups do not rally opposition to imports, Dr. Shi said.
The efforts of Detroit automakers to win protection from Japanese competition in the 1980s were weakened by the presence of Honda in their main trade group; they expelled Honda in 1992.
Some analysts are less pessimistic about the prospects for solar panel manufacturers in the West. Joonki Song, a partner at Photon Consulting in Boston, said that while large Chinese solar panel manufacturers are gaining market share, smaller ones have been struggling.
Mr. Zarrella of GT Solar said that Western providers of factory equipment for solar panel manufacturers would remain competitive, and Dr. Shi said that German equipment providers “have made a lot of money, tons of money.”
The Chinese government is requiring that 80 percent of the equipment for China’s first municipal power plant to use solar energy, to be built in Dunhuang in northwestern China next year, be made in China.
Dr. Shi said his company would try to prevent similar rules in any future projects.
The reason is clear: almost 98 percent of Suntech’s production goes overseas.

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/business/energy-environment/25solar.html?ref=solarenergy)

Saturday 4 June 2011

United States heavily supports solar power

Solar power is often talked about as the renewable energy source that will build low-carbon future. This is mostly because Sun is the most abundant source of energy available in our planet. According to the latest polls solar power is the most popular renewable energy source in United States, and Americans want more new solar energy projects to replace the need for new fossil fuel stations.
Solar energy sector is the fastest growing renewable energy sector in United States. In the period between 2000-2010 wind power sector led the way but things started to change in 2010, and while U.S. wind power industry has entered a certain period of stagnation U.S. solar power industry is looking better than ever.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has started heavily supporting new solar energy projects. The latest proof to this is Solar Reserve’s Crescent Dunes concentrating solar power (CSP) project in Nevada that will receive a $737 million loan guarantee from the DOE.
This project, once finished should generate around 500,000 MWh annually, enough for 23,000 U.S. homes. It will also use heliostats that focus sunlight onto the molten salt in order to provide uninterrupted electricity delivery because the molten salt is able to store thermal energy for up to ten hours.
Solar energy needs adequate support from government because it is still more expensive energy option compared to fossil fuels, though it also needs to be said that the prices of solar power technologies are constantly declining, bringing solar power technology closer and closer to fossil fuels in terms of cost-competitiveness.
Of course, solar energy still has a long way to go before becoming dominant source of energy. Fossil fuels are still dominant sources of energy and are likely to continue their dominance for at least the next couple of decades. This however doesn't mean that solar power industry should just relax and wait for the moment in which world will run out of fossil fuels. Solar power industry needs to build on its current momentum and continue to develop in order to ensure smooth transition to clean, renewable energy once fossil fuels will no longer be able to satisfy the ever growing demand for energy.


(Source: http://www.renewables-info.com/energy_news_and_reports/united_states_heavily_supports_solar_power.html)

Wednesday 1 June 2011

The Past, Present & Future of Solar Energy [INFOGRAPHIC] by Jolie O'Dell

To help draw attention to its plans to build a thin-film solar panel plant in the U.S., General Electric has published an interesting study on the history and future of solar energy.
Green tech and solar energy have been topics of focus in the U.S. in recent years and months. Last July, for example, President Obama announced the country would be investing around $2 billion in solar energy companies. Google has also been at the forefront of bringing solar energy to the masses with a substantial investment in the world’s largest solar power tower plant.

But we’ve got a long way to go before we reach our collective goals. During his 2011 State of the Union address, Obama promised Americans 80% of their electricity would come from clean energy by 2035.
To help us all understand where we’ve come from and where we’re going in terms of solar and other alternative energy, creative agency JESS3 has created the following heliocentric representation for GE and has shared it with us.

Take a look at the infographic below, and let us know what you think in the comments. Will GE and other U.S. companies be ready to fulfill the president’s 80% mandate by 2035?















(Source: http://mashable.com/2011/04/19/solar-energy-infographic/)

Mobile Popover