Archives: Solar Energy

By Guest Blogger Steve Richards Understanding Solar Power Energy is of different kinds; hydral, kinetic and solar being some of them. Solar energy is the kind of energy received from the sun, and when sunlight is converted into electricity, we call it solar power. There are two basic processes by which sunlight can be directly • Read More »

Guest Blog by Natasha Risinger It almost seems like a dream: reducing your cost of electricity or even getting money for adding to the grid. One of the first thoughts that occur is about the initial investment. After all, the more you pay to create your power giving system, the longer it will take to • Read More »

By Guest Blogger Joe McCord Recent unpredictable weather patterns worldwide; tornadoes in Australia, ice storms in England and earthquakes in New Zealand among many other frightening events have many people previously on the side of the climate change skeptics reason to reconsider their view. With temperatures globally on the rise as well there is almost • Read More »

It’s not often that you can talk about two solar breakthroughs back to back. But, researchers at both universities, Stanford and Princeton, have turned the light on with new solar technology. Stanford researchers have developed solar cells made completely out of carbon. This has the potential of drastically reducing the price of the cells since • Read More »

By Guest Blogger Mathias Maehlum On 1st of August this year, the feed-in tariff in the UK, which enables household to put excess electricity generated by solar panels back on the grid for profit, was lowered by a quarter – from 21p to 16p for every kWh. On top of this, the payment lengths will • Read More »

A company called First Solar has just raised the bar for every other photovoltaic cell manufacturer by setting a record for PV efficiency. First solar, among other things, makes cadmium-telluride (CdTe) solar cells and increased their efficiency to 17.3-percent. According to First Solar, “…it set a new world record for cadmium-telluride (CdTe) photovoltaic (PV) solar • Read More »

With the fossil fuel levels around the planet steadily declining, both governments and individual consumers are looking for alternate energy sources to reduce costs and carbon footprints. You might want to ask your handyman how you can convert your house to be more energy efficient. Solar energy, once an inefficient and expensive process, has had • Read More »

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) which is part of the U. S. DOE has come up with a thin-film material that can be used in transparent solar panels. This breakthrough discovery may have far-reaching impacts. According to the LANL, “The new material is a semiconducting polymer spiked with ‘fullerenes’ – soccer-ball-shaped, cage-like molecules composed • Read More »

The largest concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in California will be built approximately 86 miles from my home. The 250-megawatt plant is being built by Abengoa Solar which has a purchase power agreement with Pacific Gas and Electric. When finished in 2013, the concentrating solar power project will be able to supply green energy to • Read More »

There’s an interesting article in the NY Times about how a fight is brewing around the building of large solar farms and water rights in several states. Simply stated some large solar farms use water to cool the PV panels and can consume millions (and sometimes billions) of gallons of H2O per year. This consumption • Read More »