Category: Solar Energy

Is this little blue tree the future of solar energy, or an overblown science project? Who decided solar panels should be flat? A seventh-grader from New York has worked out that solar panels arranged more like tree branches may capture more light than flat panels. For real, kind of. Aidan Dwyer, 13, noticedRead More

A brutal 2011 has left the solar industry dazed, damaged, and on the cusp of a major shakeout of weaker players that are more likely to shut down than be snapped up by their stronger rivals. Solar subsidy cuts in top markets Italy and Germany prompted a 20 percent drop in the priceRead More

The Army plans to install microgrids in Afghanistan as part of its mission to reduce its energy-related vulnerability in the field. A three-month experiment will deploy a system designed to use fuel more efficiency and pave the way solar and wind power in the field, the Army said earlier this week. Right now, theRead More

Although we’ve seen sunlight to electricity conversion efficiencies of over 40 percentwith multi-junction solar cells in lab environments, most mass-produced cells can only boast a conversion rate of around 15 percent. Now SunPower Corp., a Silicon Valley-based manufacturer of high-efficiency solar cells, solar panels and solar power systems, has claimed a new world recordRead More

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Vulture program, which aims to develop and demonstrate technology to enable a single high-altitude unmanned airplane (UAV) to operate continuously for a period of five years, has entered phase II. Under the terms of an US$89 million contract, Boeing will develop a full-scale demonstrator called theRead More

Ink-jet-printed silicon increases solar-cell efficiency. Inkjet solar: The inkjet printing process allows Innovalight to make silicon wafers that are thin enough to bend. A California company is using silicon ink patterned on top of silicon wafers to boost the efficiency of solar cells. The Sunnyvale, CA, firm Innovation says that the inkjet process is aRead More

A startup’s polymer sticker increases power output by 10 percent, and can be applied to panels that are already installed. The power output of solar panels can be boosted by 10 percent just by applying a big transparent sticker to the front. Developed by a small startup called Genie Lens Technologies, the sticker isRead More

A thin-film solar firm spun out of Colorado State University says it has developed a way to make cadmium-telluride photovoltaic modules that could be cheaper than processes used by other makers of such solar cells. Abound Solar of Loveland, CO, has received a conditional $400-million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. TheRead More

Bright heat: Nicholas Melosh has developed a device for simultaneously converting the sun’s light and heat into electricity. Melosh makes and tests the device in this vacuum chamber in his lab at Stanford University. Researchers have demonstrated a new mechanism for converting both sunlight and heat into electricity. A new type of deviceRead More