Source: Gatech.edu

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new type of three-dimensional photovoltaic system which could allow PV systems to be hidden from view and located away from traditional locations such as rooftops.

In this system, dye-sensitized solar cells use a photochemical system to generate electricity. The good news is that they are inexpensive to manufacture, flexible and mechanically robust. The bad news is that their conversion efficiency is lower than that of silicon-based cells.

But there’s a way around that: using nanostructure arrays to increase the surface area available to convert light could help reduce the efficiency disadvantage.

“Using this technology, we can make photovoltaic generators that are foldable, concealed and mobile,” said Zhong Lin Wang (pictured), a Regents professor in the Georgia Tech School of Materials Science and Engineering. “Optical fiber could conduct sunlight into a building’s walls where the nanostructures would convert it to electricity. This is truly a three dimensional solar cell.”

Wang believes this new structure will offer architects and product designers an alternative PV format for incorporating into other applications.

“This will really provide some new options for photovoltaic systems,” Wang said. “We could eliminate the aesthetic issues of PV arrays on building. We can also envision PV systems for providing energy to parked vehicles, and for charging mobile military equipment where traditional arrays aren’t practical or you wouldn’t want to use them.”

To find out more technical details about this new technology click here.

Earlier this month (2-4 November) an event at London’s Windsor Castle brought together religious leaders from all major faith traditions to discuss initiatives that such groups can partake to help the fight against climate change. The event, which only served vegan food because it is the only one suitable to all types of faith, was called Faith Commitments for a Living Planet and was co-hosted by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and organized by Prince Philip’s Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC).

There’s good reason to attract the support of religious groups to the green cause. According to the ARC, faith-based groups own nearly eight percent of habitable land on Earth, operate dozens of media groups and more than half the world’s schools, and control seven percent of financial investments worth trillions. All the main world religions in theory condemn greed and destructiveness and urge restraint and protection.

The event launched dozens of long-term commitments by all the major faith traditions including: transitioning to solar-powered Taoist Temples in China; creating faith-based eco-labelling systems in Islam, Hinduism and Judaism and greening all types of religious buildings; protecting sacred forests; developing ethical investment policies; printing sacred books on environmentally-friendly paper; and creating educational programs through formal and informal education.

Religion will also be on the table at the Copenhagen climate summit next month. A panel discussion titled Many Heavens: One Earth – Faiths, the Environment and Copenhagen is part of the program.

To kick off the week, I’d like to point you to a couple of stories that have called our attention this Monday. The first is about an initiative carried out by the East Bay Municipal Utility District, which provides water and wastewater treatment in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area. The company is “turning food scraps from 2,300 Bay Area restaurants and grocery stores into electricity to help it power its wastewater facility.”

Every day, one or two 20-ton trucks pull up to the plant here and dump food waste into giant tanks. At the end of the process, the food scraps create methane gas. It helps power the plant’s electricity-making generators.”

The article explains in more detail the technical aspects of this enterprise and it does sound as green as the Grinch (thanks Super Eco!). Worth checking out. Also check out a previous Energy Refuge blog about how sludge can be turned into renewable energy.

Elsewhere, the Times of India says a Korean company has come up with a new type of coating for solar cells “that will help solar panels to absorb and generate 5% more power than normal panels without the coating.” Maximizing conversion of sunlight into power is one of the main goals of this industry so this technology is a step in the right direction.

“Once the coating is laid on the solar panels, the solar panel’s absorption and power generation capacity increases 5% more as it increases one of the active materials of the solar cells. This means if a solar panel generates 200 watt of solar power, it will generate 210 watt of solar power after putting this coat. Surprisingly, the cost of this material is very nominal.”

What’s even better: the technology does not require any extra natural resources. To find out more, go here.

According to a new report called 2009 Nielsen Energy Audit, compiled by market research specialist The Nielsen Company, saving money is one of the top motivating factors driving the adoption of green energy options. 80% of the 32,000 respondents polled cited cutting costs as their main motivation for conserving energy.

“The current momentum surrounding green initiatives and reduced energy consumption presents utilities and home improvement companies with a golden opportunity,” says Jonathan Drost, Account Executive, Energy for The Nielsen Company. “When going green is cost effective, such as opting for Energy Star appliances or government incentive programs, customers migrate in that direction. The biggest hurdle for energy companies is educating the consumer on things like Smart Grids, Energy Efficiency programs and Renewable Green Energy.”

Solar appears as the number one preference as a carbon neutral source of energy, with 37% of the total. “I believe solar came out on top as a preference because it is a technology that consumers can identify with,” Drost offers. “Not only can a consumer place solar panels on their home or purchase solar water heaters, but also they see retailers installing solar panels on their roof and hybrid cars with solar roof options. It’s been a media hot topic as well.” 32% of the respondents expressed no preference, followed by 16% who cited wind as their top preference. Geothermal accounted for 5%; hydroelectric, 4% of preferences.

California, Texas, New York and Oregon boast the largest percentage of consumers who participate in a green energy program. In terms of regions, the west (consisting of California, Oregon and Washington), with a 24% rate of participation, is the greenest area in the country. This is explained by the fact that California has had green pricing programs in place for many years.

Age and income also play a role in green energy participation, which is better among the higher educated and those making over $50,000. However, a higher proportion of those making between $50,000-$100,000 (34%) participated compared to those making more than $100,000 (30%). Participants also skewed younger, with 40 percent falling between the ages of 18-34 and 39% in the 35-54 year age range. Those above 55 make up 20 percent of those taking part in green programs.

Ontario is already the Canadian leader in wind energy, producing enough electricity to power more than 300,000 homes. But the region wants to become a North American leader in renewable energy and has introduced a Green Energy Act to create 50,000 direct and indirect jobs in the new green economy.

The components of the Green Act include a feed-In-Tariff program, which allows individuals and companies to sell renewable energy into the grid at set rates; domestic content requirements, which would ensure at least 25 per cent of wind projects and 50 per cent of solar projects be produced in Ontario; a streamlined approvals process and a service guarantee to bring developers greater certainty, regulations for setting wind turbines certain distances from houses, roadways and property lines; and a new Ontario Renewable Energy Facilitation Office, described as a one-stop shop to help renewable energy projects get off the ground faster.

The province hopes that the new regulations will give provide more clarity to companies, boost investor confidence and help Ontario achieve its goal of eliminating coal-fired power by 2014. Investments in new renewable energy projects already in place or under construction in the region since 2003 exceed $4 billion.

A new research to be released on Friday by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) reveals that “the largest U.S subsidies to fossil fuels are attributed to tax breaks that aid foreign oil production”. The report was produced in partnership with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The study reviewed fossil fuel and energy subsidies for Fiscal Years 2002-2008 and shows that the lion’s share of energy subsidies supported energy sources that emit high levels of greenhouse gases.

During that period, the federal government provided substantially larger subsidies to fossil fuels than to renewables. Fossil fuels benefited from approximately $72 billion over the seven-year period, while subsidies for renewable fuels totaled only $29 billion. More than half the subsidies for renewables – $16.8 billion – are attributable to corn-based ethanol, the climate effects of which are hotly disputed. Of the fossil fuel subsidies, $70.2 billion went to traditional sources – such as coal and oil – and $2.3 billion went to carbon capture and storage, which is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Why is this happening? The U.S. energy market is shaped by a number of national and state policies that encourage the use of traditional energy sources. These policies range from royalty relief to the provision of tax incentives, direct payments, and other forms of support to the non-renewable energy industry. “The combination of subsidies – or ‘perverse incentives’ – to develop fossil fuel energy sources, and a lack of sufficient incentives to develop renewable energy and promote energy efficiency, distorts energy policy in ways that have helped cause, and continue to exacerbate, our climate change problem,” says ELI Senior Attorney John Pendergrass. “With climate change and energy legislation pending on Capitol Hill, our research suggests that more attention needs to be given to the existing perverse incentives for ‘dirty’ fuels in the U.S. Tax Code.”

The subsidies examined fall roughly into two categories: foregone revenues (changes to the tax code to reduce the tax liabilities of particular entities), mostly in the form of tax breaks, and including reported lost government take from offshore leasing of oil and gas fields; and direct spending, in the form of expenditures on research and development and other programs. Subsidies attributed to the Foreign Tax Credit totaled $15.3 billion, with those for the next-largest fossil fuel subsidy, the Credit for Production of Nonconventional Fuels, totaling $14.1 billion. The Foreign Tax Credit applies to the overseas production of oil through an obscure provision of the U.S. Tax Code, which allows energy companies to claim a tax credit for payments that would normally receive less-beneficial treatment under the tax code.

Fossie fuels and renewable energy were defined according to conventional definitions. Fossil fuels include petroleum and its byproducts, natural gas, and coal products, while renewable fuels include wind, solar, biofuels and biomass, hydropower, and geothermal energy production.

A silicon photovoltaic company unveiled yesterday two technologies for multi-crystalline silicon solar cells aimed at manufacturers striving to reach 18 percent efficiency. 1366 Technologies’ Self-Aligned Cell (SAC) architecture promises to “break the historic efficiency and cost tradeoff of photovoltaics (PV) by providing mono-crystalline equivalent cell efficiencies at multi-crystalline cell costs.”

One of the technologies address cell texture by creating a distinctive honeycomb structure that introduces cross-textured surfaces to the cell that trap more light and enable up to 1 percent higher absolute efficiency overall than previous cell designs. The second one focuses on the front-side cell metallization, wherein the company has developed metallization lines of just 30 microns (compared to the prevailing 120 microns) and a Grooved Ribbon busbar (licensed by Ulbrich and Schlenk). Industry standard thick fingers and flat busbars typically shade 9 percent of the surface of a cell. Comparatively, 1366’s front-side metallization approach only shades 2 percent of the cell delivering 75 percent of the efficiency gains of back-contact cell designs without the high costs and process complexity.

“We’ve pioneered a cell architecture and manufacturing process that’s going to change the way we think about energy,” said Frank van Mierlo, co-founder and president of 1366 Technologies. “Our innovations have the potential to save manufacturers $50 billion over the next five years and help the industry deliver solar at the cost of coal.”

In the past, PV companies have tried to increase efficiencies by using approaches such as back-contact or emitter wrap through solar cell technology, which add expensive steps to the manufacturing process with minimal gains in cell efficiency.

“The way we see it, the right technology and materials are available now to help PV reach grid parity, but the challenge for our industry is to simultaneously deliver high efficiencies and low costs,” said Dr. Emanuel Sachs, 1366 Technologies’ Chief Technology Officer. “Our Self-Aligned Cell architecture addresses this challenge head-on. We believe our technologies, combined with further advancements in manufacturing, will help solar power satisfy 7 percent of global electricity demand over the next decade and inspire one of the largest manufacturing revolutions in history.”

It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but it could become a reality. According to a report in Alternative Energy, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and IHI Corporation are planning to design and develop a $21bn Space-based solar farm that would generate 1GW of power. The farm, housed 36,000km above the surface of the earth, would require an area of four square kilometers consisting of rows of solar panels.

But don’t get too excited about it as if the future had suddenly arrived and we could remove the drips that channel fossil fuel into the veins of our economic systems. The project has a timeline of three decades and before fully embarking on it, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will demonstrate the project’s potential with a 10MW satellite. The agency will also test the systems used to beam energy from space using high-energy radio waves or lasers to ground-based receivers.

Cryptogon also covered the story and included a quote from Kensuke Kanekiyo, managing director of the Institute of Energy Economics, a governmental agency, who said: “It sounds like a science-fiction cartoon, but solar power generation in space may be a significant alternative energy source in the century ahead as fossil fuel disappears”. The article also touches on the subject of cost: how to make commercially viable the transportation of panels to the solar station 36,000 kilometers about the earth’s surface? There is no answer to this question, at least for the time being.

All things considered, Ecogeek wasn’t impressed: “I’m looking for something that can deliver 100 gigawatts by 2030. Cheaper solar, high-altitude wind and sophisticated geothermal seem a lot more feasible to me … this seems a bit like big kids playing with big toys”.

It does seem like something terribly complicated and the cost-benefit ratio does not sound all that attractive. What do you think?

Early last month we wrote about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act program that provides cash assistance to energy production companies in place of earned tax credits. Yesterday the Energy and Treasury Deparments announced $502 million in the first round of awards from the Act. According to an offical press statement, the new funding “creates additional upfront capital, enabling companies to create jobs and begin construction that may have been stalled until now”.

“These grants will help America’s businesses launch clean energy projects, putting Americans back to work in good construction and manufacturing jobs. The initiative will help double our renewable energy capacity over the next few years and make sure America leads the world in creating the clean energy economy of the future”, said Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Created under Section 1603 of the Recovery Act, the program is expected to provide more than $3 billion in financial support for clean energy projects by providing direct payments in lieu of tax credits. These payments will support an estimated 5,000 bio-mass, solar, wind, and other types of renewable energy production facilities in all regions of the country over the life of the program.

This first round of funding will give more than 2,000 Americans access to jobs in the renewable energy industry, the government said.

Researchers at the University of Texas have announced that solar cells could soon be produced more cheaply using nanoparticle “inks” that allow them to be printed like newspaper or painted onto the sides of buildings or rooftops to absorb sunlight and convert it into solar power.

The idea is to create a manufacturing process that is ten times cheaper than the current standard, that is, gas-phase deposition in a vacuum chamber, which requires high temperatures and is relatively expensive. The system being investigated at Texas uses light-absorbing nanomaterials, which are 10,000 times thinner than a strand of hair. Their microscopic size allows for new physical properties that can help enable higher-efficiency devices. The inks could be printed on a roll-to-roll printing process on a plastic substrate or stainless steel.

Leading the research is Brian Korgel, a chemical engineer who also owns a company called Innovalight, based in California, which is producing inks using silicon as the basis. But now Korgel and his team are using copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS), which is both cheaper and kinder to the environment.

According to Korgel, CIGS has some potential advantages over silicon as it’s a direct band gap semiconductor. That means you need much less material to make a solar cell. He adds that the inks, which are semi-transparent, could help realize the prospect of having windows that double as solar cells.

The only setback is that the technology does not perform as well as it should in other to become viable. Korgel’s team has developed solar-cell prototypes with efficiencies at one percent, which is way below the 10 percent ideal. “If we get to 10 percent, then there’s real potential for commercialization,” Korgel said. “If it works, I think you could see it being used in three to five years.”