Partnered with Solar Power, Inc., Twentieth Century Fox remodel its Century City Studio to eco-friendly building. Solar Power, Inc. has completed the installation of 160 kW photovoltaic (PV) solar system (produce enough power to supply the equivalent of up to 150 homes). It was mounted on Fox Studio’s historic Building 99 using Solar Power’s SkyMount commercial rooftop system, as well as conventional racking.
Executive Summary about Sun Power by Richard Chapo
Generating electricity from the sun is all about converting sunlight into power. The technology behind solar systems is known as photovoltaic technology. Essentially, this technology involves using sunlight to create a chemical reaction. This process creates a direct current of electricity. The electricity is then converted to usable alternating current electricity and stored in a battery or fed into a utility grid system.
Researchers at Wake Forest University developed a device that capable of capturing two forms of energy from the sun, photons and heat, simultaneously. According to their claims, this technology is the first in the world.
David Carroll, Ph.D., director of the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials at Wake Forest University, said, “It’s a systems approach to making your home ultra-efficient because the device collects both solar energy and heat,”
Beach Ball designed by industrial designer Tony Leung, is the concept of solar energy generating system in Abu Dhabi between Saadiyat Island and Yas Island. This system has a photovoltaic panel that is contained in the inflatable transparent latex material.
Solar energy technologies use energy from the sun to produce heat, light, hot water, electricity, and even cooling, for homes, commercial and industrial.
There are a variety of technological applications that have been developed to take advantage of solar energy. Technology can be read further below.
Photovoltaics System
Solar cells work by converting sunlight directly into electricity. The electrons in the semiconductor material, the material used to capture sunlight, will move when the sun’s energy in the form of photons hit it. Solar energy is forcing the electrons to move, occur continuously, and consequently there is also a continuous electricity production. Process, which turns sunlight (photons) into electricity (voltage), called the photovoltaic effect.
Solar Cell Module
Solar cells are usually organized into modules that each module can consist of 40 solar cells. Some modules can be arranged to form a PV line fitted with a fixed angle facing south. Or even could be placed in a sun-tracking device, to get more solar energy throughout the day. Several rows of PV could produce enough power for a house. As for industrial applications or power companies, hundreds of lines of PV can be linked to form one large PV systems and sufficient to meet the electricity needs.
Thin Film Solar Cell
Thin film solar cells use several layers of semiconductor material with a thickness in the micrometer scale. Technology allows to create solar cells integrated into rooftops to the skylights. Even solar cells are designed for applications having the same power with actual roof.
One of the things that a potential obstacle in the development of solar energy is limited space. All existing solar panels in a solar power generation should receive sunlight for at least the same intensity to produce electrical energy optimally. Therefore, all the solar panels should be installed in rows, which mean that also require large open space.
In addition, the performance of solar panels that are widely used today are still influenced by the temperature generated by the environment and direct sunlight. The higher the temperature, the performance of a solar panel will also decrease.
Toyo Ito has completed construction on Taiwan solar powered stadium upon a clear area of approximately 19 hectares, nearly 7 hectares has been reserved for the development of integrated public green spaces, bike paths, sports parks, and an ecological pond.
It will generate 100% of its electricity from photovoltaic technology (14,155 sq meter solar roof and 8,844 solar panels). It is able to provide enough energy to power two jumbo vision screens and the stadium’s 3,300 lights that illuminate the track, field and 50,000 seats.
Terry Hope has created the THEKPV (The Hybrid Electric Kinetic Photovoltaic Vehicle), a solar powered bike that is powered by a 50W array of solar panels and has a capacitor for boosting its acceleration capabilities.
Rainbow Solar Inc. (RSI) has produced a transparent, photovoltaic glass window producing power 80-250 watts. Although this is not the “first solar window,” it seems that the RSI has taken a big step forward.
Sunhope, award-winning project by Joseph Cory and aerospace engineer Dr. Pini Gurfil is a breakthrough low-cost easily-deployable system that collects solar energy with very small environmental footprint.
Like the story of a fictional movie, but Japanese space agency plan so serious: In 2030 they will capture solar energy in space and sends it to Earth via laser or microwave.
This digital solar watch owns two windows: one shows the time by a digital display, while others exposes the solar cell. Thinking about a regular solar watch, solar cells are frequently disguised or hidden from view. But at this solar power watch that designed by Shin Azumi, the focus put on solar cells as a design feature to show its importance. The design shows respect for solar power as technology that produces clean energy sources.
Solar power is harnessed and applied in ever more interesting and creative ways, and Renu personal power generation and storage system is certainly no exception. Device features a free-standing modular solar panels which, when filled, can be put into a number of extensions to take advantage of the energy collected, including an iPod dock and LED table lamp.
Adventures in microsolar supported by microelectronics and MEMS techniques
Representative thin crystalline-silicon photovoltaic cells – these are from 14 to 20 micrometers thick and 0.25 to 1 millimeter across.
Sandia National Laboratories scientists have developed tiny glitter-sized photovoltaic cells that could revolutionize the way solar energy is collected and used.
The tiny cells could turn a person into a walking solar battery charger if they were fastened to flexible substrates molded around unusual shapes, such as clothing.
The solar particles, fabricated of crystalline silicon, hold the potential for a variety of new applications. They are expected eventually to be less expensive and have greater efficiencies than current photovoltaic collectors that are pieced together with 6-inch- square solar wafers.
The cells are fabricated using microelectronic and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) techniques common to today’s electronic foundries.
Sandia lead investigator Greg Nielson said the research team has identified more than 20 benefits of scale for its microphotovoltaic cells. These include new applications, improved performance, potential for reduced costs and higher efficiencies.
“Eventually units could be mass-produced and wrapped around unusual shapes for building-integrated solar, tents and maybe even clothing,” he said. This would make it possible for hunters, hikers or military personnel in the field to recharge batteries for phones, cameras and other electronic devices as they walk or rest.
Sandia project lead Greg Nielson holds a solar cell test prototype with a microscale lens array fastened above it. Together, the cell and lens help create a concentrated photovoltaic unit.
Even better, such microengineered panels could have circuits imprinted that would help perform other functions customarily left to large-scale construction with its attendant need for field construction design and permits.
Said Sandia field engineer Vipin Gupta, “Photovoltaic modules made from these microsized cells for the rooftops of homes and warehouses could have intelligent controls, inverters and even storage built in at the chip level. Such an integrated module could greatly simplify the cumbersome design, bid, permit and grid integration process that our solar technical assistance teams see in the field all the time.”
For large-scale power generation, said Sandia researcher Murat Okandan, “One of the biggest scale benefits is a significant reduction in manufacturing and installation costs compared with current PV techniques.”
Part of the potential cost reduction comes about because microcells require relatively little material to form well-controlled and highly efficient devices.
From 14 to 20 micrometers thick (a human hair is approximately 70 micrometers thick), they are 10 times thinner than conventional 6-inch-by-6-inch brick-sized cells, yet perform at about the same efficiency.
100 times less silicon generates same amount of electricity
“So they use 100 times less silicon to generate the same amount of electricity,” said Okandan. “Since they are much smaller and have fewer mechanical deformations for a given environment than the conventional cells, they may also be more reliable over the long term.”
Another manufacturing convenience is that the cells, because they are only hundreds of micrometers in diameter, can be fabricated from commercial wafers of any size, including today’s 300-millimeter (12-inch) diameter wafers and future 450-millimeter (18-inch) wafers. Further, if one cell proves defective in manufacture, the rest still can be harvested, while if a brick-sized unit goes bad, the entire wafer may be unusable. Also, brick-sized units fabricated larger than the conventional 6-inch-by-6-inch cross section to take advantage of larger wafer size would require thicker power lines to harvest the increased power, creating more cost and possibly shading the wafer. That problem does not exist with the small-cell approach and its individualized wiring.
From left to right, Sandia researchers Murat OKandan, Greg Nielson, and Jose Luis Cruz-Campa, hold samples containing arrays of microsolar cells.
Other unique features are available because the cells are so small. “The shade tolerance of our units to overhead obstructions is better than conventional PV panels,” said Nielson, “because portions of our units not in shade will keep sending out electricity where a partially shaded conventional panel may turn off entirely.”
Because flexible substrates can be easily fabricated, high-efficiency PV for ubiquitous solar power becomes more feasible, said Okandan.
A commercial move to microscale PV cells would be a dramatic change from conventional silicon PV modules composed of arrays of 6-inch-by-6-inch wafers. However, by bringing in techniques normally used in MEMS, electronics and the light-emitting diode (LED) industries (for additional work involving gallium arsenide instead of silicon), the change to small cells should be relatively straightforward, Gupta said.
Each cell is formed on silicon wafers, etched and then released inexpensively in hexagonal shapes, with electrical contacts prefabricated on each piece, by borrowing techniques from integrated circuits and MEMS.
Offering a run for their money to conventional large wafers of crystalline silicon, electricity presently can be harvested from the Sandia-created cells with 14.9 percent efficiency. Off-the-shelf commercial modules range from 13 to 20 percent efficient.
A widely used commercial tool called a pick-and-place machine — the current standard for the mass assembly of electronics — can place up to 130,000 pieces of glitter per hour at electrical contact points preestablished on the substrate; the placement takes place at cooler temperatures. The cost is approximately one-tenth of a cent per piece with the number of cells per module determined by the level of optical concentration and the size of the die, likely to be in the 10,000 to 50,000 cell per square meter range. An alternate technology, still at the lab-bench stage, involves self-assembly of the parts at even lower costs.
Solar concentrators — low-cost, prefabricated, optically efficient microlens arrays — can be placed directly over each glitter-sized cell to increase the number of photons arriving to be converted via the photovoltaic effect into electrons. The small cell size means that cheaper and more efficient short focal length microlens arrays can be fabricated for this purpose.
High-voltage output is possible directly from the modules because of the large number of cells in the array. This should reduce costs associated with wiring, due to reduced resistive losses at higher voltages.
Other possible applications for the technology include satellites and remote sensing.
The project combines expertise from Sandia’s Microsystems Center; Photovoltaics and Grid Integration Group; the Materials, Devices, and Energy Technologies Group; and the National Renewable Energy Lab’s Concentrating Photovoltaics Group.
Involved in the process, in addition to Nielson, Okandan and Gupta, are Jose Luis Cruz-Campa, Paul Resnick, Tammy Pluym, Peggy Clews, Carlos Sanchez, Bill Sweatt, Tony Lentine, Anton Filatov, Mike Sinclair, Mark Overberg, Jeff Nelson, Jennifer Granata, Craig Carmignani, Rick Kemp, Connie Stewart, Jonathan Wierer,
George Wang, Jerry Simmons, Jason Strauch, Judith Lavin and Mark Wanlass (NREL).
The work is supported by DOE’s Solar Energy Technology Program and Sandia’s Laboratory Directed Research & Development program, and has been presented at four technical conferences this year.
The ability of light to produce electrons, and thus electricity, has been known for more than a hundred years.
(in Olmedilla de Alarcón, Spain, 60 MW) Finished in September 2008. This power plant uses 162,000 average photovoltaic solar panel to deliver 60 MW of electricity on a sunny day. The whole factory was completed in 15 months at a cost of about 530 million U.S. dollars current exchange rate. Olmedilla built with conventional solar panels, which are made with silicon and tend to heavy and expensive.
(Spain, 50 MW) in 2008 Renovalia develop the power station in Puertollano, Ciudad Real, residential energy parks with an installed capacity of 50 megawatts (MW). The power generated here is equivalent to the annual domestic consumption of electricity of about 39,000 households. The energy produced here will replace the theoretical disposal 84,000 tons CO2/year or 2.1 million tons of CO2 over 25 years during the production.
(Portugal, 46 MW) Completed December 2008. This solar power plant is placed in the municipality of Moura, Alentejo, Portugal, one of the sunniest areas in Europe and besides one of the most economically depressed. The construction involves two stages, first with a built in 13 months and completed in 2008, and the rest will be completed in 2010, with a total cost of € 250 million for the project. The power plant will have an installed capacity of 46 mwp, by more than 376,000 solar panels. Nearly 190,000 panels (32 MW) installed in permanent structures, 52,000 (10 MW) in a single-axis trackers, which follow the sun in the sky, and further 20 MW of power capacity will be added during phase 2 project. This will occupy an area of 320 hectares (130 acres), producing 88 GWh of electricity per year.
(Germany, 40 MW) 550,000 First Solar thin-film CdTe modules. Completed in December 2008 Waldpolenz Solar Park, which is the world’s largest thin-film photovoltaic (PV) power system, built at a military air base east of Leipzig in Germany. The power plant 40-megawatt solar power system using state-of-the-art thin film technology. 550,000 First Solar thin film modules are used, which supplies 40,000 MWh of electricity per year. The investment costs for solar parks Waldpolenz Euro 130 million.
(Spain, 36 MW). Completed in October 2008, power plant that produces 34 GWh per year, which would own 12,000 households and prevent 375,000 tons of CO2. Facilities in seven acres and 172,000 panels houses. Project budget of about € 180,000,000. La Rioja, a region of Spain known for its wine, already covers 62% of electricity with enhanced resources.
