Solar electricity generating capacity has on average doubled every two years since 1998

Solar power generating capacity grew 69% in 2008, the fastest rate of growth in our database which goes back to 1996. Total capacity grew by 5.5 GW to reach 13.4 GW. Growth averaged 42% pa over the past 10 years – at that rate solar capacity doubles every two years.
Growth in 2008 was highly concentrated – Spain (2.7 GW) and Germany (1.5 GW) together accounted for more than 75% of the growth, due to continued strong government support for solar power in those markets.

The concept of Spray on Solar Power Cells

Solar energy is one of the many renewable sources of energy that is today used for providing electricity and for use in many consumer products. Though solar energy does not emit harmful gases into the atmosphere; it has a drawback that it works only in the presence of sunlight.

So in a bid to overcome this default of solar energy, scientists have now invented a plastic solar cell that has the ability of turning sun power into electricity even on cloudy days.

These plastic solar cells work based on nanotechnology and is the first solar cell that can harness the energy found in the sun’s invisible and infrared rays.
With this finding, theorists predict that plastic solar cells are basically five more times efficient than the technology that is presently used for solar energy.

Making these plastic solar cells is easy as the composite just has to be sprayed onto the material to make it be able to use solar energy. In other words, with this composite, you have a sort of portable source of electricity.
With a sweater that is coated with this composite, you will be able to power a cell phone or any other wireless device.

Make solar energy economical

Why is solar energy important?

Already, the sun’s contribution to human energy needs is substantial — worldwide, solar electricity generation is a growing, multibillion dollar industry. But solar’s share of the total energy market remains rather small, well below 1 percent of total energy consumption, compared with roughly 85 percent from oil, natural gas, and coal.
Those fossil fuels cannot remain the dominant sources of energy forever. Whatever the precise timetable for their depletion, oil and gas supplies will not keep up with growing energy demands. Coal is available in abundance, but its use exacerbates air and water pollution problems, and coal contributes even more substantially than the other fossil fuels to the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
For a long-term, sustainable energy source, solar power offers an attractive alternative. Its availability far exceeds any conceivable future energy demands. It is environmentally clean, and its energy is transmitted from the sun to the Earth free of charge. But exploiting the sun’s power is not without challenges. Overcoming the barriers to widespread solar power generation will require engineering innovations in several arenas — for capturing the sun’s energy, converting it to useful forms, and storing it for use when the sun itself is obscured.
Many of the technologies to address these issues are already in hand. Dishes can concentrate the sun’s rays to heat fluids that drive engines and produce power, a possible approach to solar electricity generation. Another popular avenue is direct production of electric current from captured sunlight, which has long been possible with solar photovoltaic cells.

How do you make solar energy more economical?

Other new materials for solar cells may help reduce fabrication costs. “This area is where breakthroughs in the science and technology of solar cell materials can give the greatest impact on the cost and widespread implementation of solar electricity,” Caltech chemist Nathan Lewis writes in Science. [Lewis 799]
A key issue is material purity. Current solar cell designs require high-purity, and therefore expensive, materials, because impurities block the flow of electric charge. That problem would be diminished if charges had to travel only a short distance, through a thin layer of material. But thin layers would not absorb as much sunlight to begin with.
One way around that dilemma would be to use materials thick in one dimension, for absorbing sunlight, and thin in another direction, through which charges could travel. One such strategy envisions cells made with tiny cylinders, or nanorods. Light could be absorbed down the length of the rods, while charges could travel across the rods’ narrow width. Another approach involves a combination of dye molecules to absorb sunlight with titanium dioxide molecules to collect electric charges. But large improvements in efficiency will be needed to make such systems competitive.

Residential Applications For Solar Energy

Photovoltaic Systems “PV” or solar electric: Compared to solar hot water, photovoltaic (pronounced: foh-toh-vol-tay-ik) is a relatively new technology. The first photovoltaic effect was discovered by Edmund Becquerel, a 19-year old French experimental physicist in 1839. Albert Einstein received a Nobel Prize in 1923 for explaining the photovoltaic effect. But not until Bell Labs in 1954 did solar PV finally reach a level where its power began to be useful for commercial purposes, such as Western Electric’s dollar bill changer in 1955.
Unlike a solar hot water system, which is essentially a plumbing device, PV uses semi-conductors and sunlight to make electricity. The more solar modules a PV system or array has, the more electricity will be generated. DC electricity can be “inverted” into alternating current (AC), so it can be useable power for a home or business, which can off-set or even eliminate the electric bill.
PV systems to power buildings fall into four general categories:
Grid-Interconnected or “Grid-Tied” PV systems are the most popular and use special inverters to allow electricity to flow safely back into the electric grid. When solar power is generated, this power is typically first used by the building, and then surplus electricity can actually flow back into the grid, giving full retail credit per kilowatt-hour from your utility provider. Since there are no batteries, these systems cannot stored energy and are designed to shut down if the grid is down for safety reasons (mainly to protect utility line workers).
Grid-Interconnected with Battery Back-up systems offer customers continued power when the grid goes down, while still being connected to the grid for seamless power. Newer systems also accept other power sources, in addition to PV, such as wind or even traditional gas-powered generators to provide power and/or charge the battery at night and/or if the grid is not available.
“Off-Grid” PV systems are used when a completely independent or “stand alone” system is needed. Since no grid power is used, the system must be carefully designed based on power usage, peak demand and seasonal solar variations. Batteries are typically used to provide power at night, in low sun or high electric demand conditions. These systems are ideal for remote locations where no utilities exist.
Utility-Scale PV systems, sometimes called “solar farms” provide power for regional users by (or in cooperation) with electric utility providers.
Grid-tied systems may be metered by two different methods:
Net metering is the practice of using a single utility meter that “nets out” both what is “drawn” from the grid and what is “returned” or fed back to the grid. When a PV system generates power beyond what the building is consuming, this surplus power is fed back into the utility grid, making the electric meter actually spin backwards. If you generate more electricity than you consume at the end of the month, the customer will receive full retail credit (and possibly cash) from the utility provider per their policy.
Dual metering configurations use two separate meters. One meter tracks the total energy consumed by the building and the other meter tracks total energy produced by the solar and fed back into the grid. Because this method accurately meters both the total energy consumed and solar energy produced, different billing rates can be applied by the utility. This metering method is used for Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) programs where customers can be paid for solar power generated, typically at a higher rate than the conventional electricity purchased.
Regardless of PV system or metering, most homeowners will install a solar hot water system along with the PV system. Why both? Because a solar hot water system is significantly more cost-effective and requires a fraction of the roof space to create the equivalent amount of energy to heat water. This will also allow the PV system to satisfy a higher proportion of household electric demand, making the PV system even more cost-effective.
PV systems are rated by “standard test conditions” (STC) wattage during peak sun intensity. Most residential grid-tied PV systems will typically range from 2 kilowatts to 8 kilowatts. The total energy per year it generates will vary depending on the part of the country in which it is located and other factors related to design and installation. In Florida, for example, a 5 kilowatt PV system will generate about 700 kilowatt-hours per month of clean, renewable energy on average, based on a one-year period. At 15 cents per kilowatt-hour, this will offset $1,260.00 of electricity. As for carbon dioxide, the EPA reports that each kilowatt-hour of electricity produced from a coal creates 2.3 lbs. of carbon dioxide, so this 5 kilowatt residential PV system in Florida will also offset about 19,320 lbs. (9.7 tons) of carbon dioxide per year.

Spain Energy

Spain


A cemetary in Spain recently installed solar panels above its tall columns of deceased “tenants”. The city of Santa Coloma de Gramanet’s plans were initially met with apprehension (shockingly) when officials announced they would be placing 462 solar panels on top of the cemetary’s mausoleums.
So why would this cemetary be selected as a location for the solar panels?
Well, the city (outside of Barcelona) apparently has a population density of over 82,000 people per square mile and is only 1.5 square miles in area. Thus, the cemetary was one of the only open and sunny spots in the whole city.
The good news is that this installation will keep 62 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the air each year.
The panels cover less than 5% of the cemetary’s surface area and the town government does have plans to install more.

contemplates installing batteries in a standard sized transformer box and assumes that Li-ion batteries will become a dominant technology for PHEVs and EVs, it clearly gives a short-term advantage to Li-ion battery developers who can make products that will fit in a limited volume. I remain skeptical about whether Li-ion battery technology will ever be robust enough or cheap enough for widespread adoption in the automotive industry and I wouldn't be surprised to see the volume constraints relaxed over time to facilitate the substitution of flow batteries and advanced lead-acid batteries. Seriously, does anyone really care whether the ugly green box hiding behind the shrubs is 3' by 3' instead of 4' by 4'? For the time being, the CES program favors Li-ion technology by imposing size constraints that have nothing to do with performance. It will be interesting to see how the program evolves as the cost and performance profiles for various battery technologies become clearer.

The use of solar power has be used for almost 200 years. In the 17th and 18th centuries people used to coat water storage tanks with solar absorbers so they can heat the water for showers.
The last time solar energy was in prominence was during the 70's during the last oil shock. At that time there were many tax incentives to install thermal solar panels used to heat water. The speaker at the conference stated that "These tax credits were one of the worst designed since people were actually able to make money on the credit by installing cheap and poor performing systems." This gave the entire solar industry a bad name during this time frame and it has taken over 20 years to overcome this tax dodge reputation.

SPACE AGE TECHNOLOGY - Solar cells, also known as Photo Voltaic Cells, were rapidly developed to provide electrical energy for space missions. The beauty of solar cells is that provided the Sun shines, they keep on producing free electricity. Well, sort of free. Solar panels are still expensive to manufacture. It is the high purchase price and installation cost that effectively limits their use.
There are many types of solar cell. Polycrystaline (more than one crystal), monocrystaline and thin film. Monocrystaline is presently the most efficient at converting light energy into electricity. Sometimes as high as 20% but more usually 15%. A monocrystaline cell is made from a thin slice cut from a single crystal of silicon. A grid of metal is then embedded over the wafer ending in the contacts and other layers added. Thin film cells are plated onto a plate of glass. They are much cheaper to produce, but only around 5% efficient and heavy. Vehicle designers will normally want to capture as much energy as possible for a given area and weight.

"What is often considered the first genuine solar cell was built around 1883 by Charles Fritts, who used junctions formed by coating selenium (a semiconductor) with an extremely thin layer of gold... These early solar cells, however, still had energy-conversion efficiencies of less than 1 percent. This impasse was finally overcome with the development of the silicon solar cell by Russell Ohl in 1941. Thirteen years later three other American researchers, G.L. Pearson, Daryl Chapin, and Calvin Fuller, demonstrated a silicon solar cell capable of a 6-percent energy-conversion efficiency when used in direct sunlight." - Encyclopedia Britannica

The £6.3million PV-21 programme will focus on making thin-film light absorbing cells for solar panels from sustainable and affordable materials.
The four-year project, which begins in April (2008), is being funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under the SUPERGEN initiative.
Eight UK universities, led by Durham and including Bangor, Bath, Cranfield, Edinburgh, Imperial College London, Northumbria and Southampton, are involved in the project.
They will work together with nine industrial partners towards a "medium to long-term goal" of making solar energy more competitive and sustainable, particularly in light of the recent rise in fossil fuel prices.
At present solar cells -- used to convert light energy into electricity - are made from key components such as the rare and expensive metal indium which costs approximately £320 ($660) per kilogram.
Research Project Aims To Make Solar Energy Technology Cheaper
ScienceDaily (Jan. 17, 2008) — A national team of scientists led by experts at Durham University are embarking on one of the UK's largest ever research projects into photovoltaic (PV) solar energy.

­You've probably seen calculators that have solar cells -- calculators that never need batteries, and in some cases don't even have an off button. As long as you have enough light, they seem to work forever. You may have seen larger solar panels -- on emergency road signs or call boxes, on buoys, even in parking lots to power lights.
Although these larger panels aren't as common as solar powered calculators, they're out there, and not that hard to spot if you know where to look. There are solar cell arrays on satellites, where they are used to power the electrical systems. Yo­u have probably also been hearing about the "solar revolution" for the last 20 years -- the idea that one day we will all use free electricity fro­m the sun. This is a seductive promise: On a bright, sunny day, the sun shines approximately 1,000 watts of energy per square meter of the planet's surface, and if we could collect all of that energy we could

­Silicon has some special chemical properties, especially in its crystalline form. An atom of sili­con has 14 electrons, arranged in three different shells. The first two shells, those closest to the center, are completely full. The outer shell, however, is only half full, having only four electrons. A silicon atom will always look for ways to fill up its last shell (which would like to have eight electrons). To do this, it will share electrons with four of its neighbor silicon atoms. It's like every atom holds hands with its neighbors, except that in this case, each atom has four hands joined to four neighbors. That's what forms the crystalline structure, and that structure turns out to be important to this type of PV cell.
We've now described pure, crystalline silicon. Pure silicon is a poor conductor of electricity because none of its electrons are free to move about, as electrons are in good conductors such as copper. Instead, the electrons are all locked in the crystalline structure. The silicon in a solar cell is modified slightly so that it will work as a solar cell.

They say hope floats. Israel’s premiere environmental architecture firm Geotectura has certainly taken this statement to heart. Joseph Cory a designer at Geotectura, has worked with an aerospace engineer, to develop floating solar balloons capable of collecting solar energy in crowded cityscapes and places where large solar panels are not a viable alternative. They hold potential for disaster-stricken areas as well.
Filled with helium and coated with a space-age fabric made from photovoltaic solar cells, this project called SunHope is a promising low-cost system that could collect solar energy with less environmental impact than other traditional solar energy solutions.
Traditional solar systems, report Inhabitat, have daunting barriers to entry: they require high initial investments, large land requirements, and an in-depth installation process. On the other hand, the Sunhope project can go around these problems by constructing low-cost photovoltaic arrays designed for vertical rather than the horizontal spac

Also ideal for off-grid applications, these solar energy balloons could power tribes in the middle of the desert, people living in isolated islands; they can be connected to ocean-bound freighters, power homes in heavily forested areas; and since they are easy to deploy, we imagine they could offer quick power relief opportunities in disAlso ideal for off-grid applications, these solar energy balloons could power tribes in the middle of the desert, people living in isolated islands;
they can be connected to ocean-bound freighters, power homes in heavily forested areas; and since they are easy to deploy, we imagine they could offer quick power relief opportunities in disaster stricken areas.aster stricken areas.Several prototypes have been developed to show that a 10 ft balloon could provide about a kilowatt of energy roughly equal to about 25 square meters of solar panels. The cost? About $4,000 per balloon, compared to the $10,000 for a solar field. With the rising costs of electricity in Israel and the world (our bill is the highest it has ever been this month), we can hardly wait until SunHope starts production. This Green Prophet would be a buyer for