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.
Revolutionary of photovoltaic applications in the architectural building has undergone rapid development, starting from ordinary technology to high technology in the 3rd generation, they are:
1. First generation (the 1980s)
PV panel module with an iron framework just mounted on the field of building flat roof with a brace (tracking).
2. Second generation (the 1990s)
Photovoltaic cells (PV) developed more integrated part of building materials: roof materials (tiles, shingles).
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.
Usually, solar power and wind turbine stands apart. But unlike this one, called Heat WAVER and created by University of Liverpool (led by Dr. Joe King), it combines traditional turbines with photovoltaic technology. The idea is quite simple, they just design a wind turbine with rotor blades covered with solar panels.
But the team has faced problems. Preliminary computer simulations have found that turbines installed with solar panels will cause blinding beams of light shoot across the surrounding area. There are real fears that the turbines could potentially blind pilots and people who live nearby. Not only that, but on a very hot day, turbines will produce solar rays that can make the buildings on fire if it is concentrated.
Their solution is to design colored solar panels that do not reflect the sun’s beam.
We’ve covered previously solar panels that can be installed in glass windows, Transparent Photovoltaic Glass Window by Rainbow Solar Inc. (RSI).
Now it comes from Sony, the ‘Flower Power’ solar windows, a glass window that not only can produce electrical energy and are easy to install but can also be designed with the colors.
Cooperation with San Liu, Xinyu Wan and Emre Icdem, Vienna-based architect Steven Ma has proposed a very innovative super thin twin towers for Taiwan that will be used to demonstrate Taiwan’s past, present and future. With a height of about 360 meters, the sustainable tower features an observatory deck and sky-gardens at an altitude of 350 meters.
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.
Car bonnets, roof tiles and building facades can quickly enter the colorful and flexible solar panels to complement their conventional resources. Spheral Solar Power has produced efficient and flexible solar cells, which produces electricity at a lower cost and open an array of new applications for renewable energy.
Like denim material consists of thousands of tiny silicon beads attached to aluminum foil – each bead acting as an individual solar cells and uneven surfaces offer a larger area for light collection. Production costs can be reduced through the use of recycled silicon and this, combined with the efficiency comparable to standards photovoltaic cells and the versatility of a flexible material make Spheral solar cells potential to dramatically expand the use of renewable energy.
Building design can take advantage of hundreds of colors, styles and shapes to smoothly integrate solar cells. Spheral cells can be used to reflect light from or transmit light into the building and expand their flexibility for use in the company logo.
In tile the cells can be incorporated into the curved substrate opening various markets applications and automobile manufacturer may have found an alternative aerodynamic to rigid photovoltaic cells that are not practical in terms of vehicle design.
Commercial production of flexible cells are expected to begin in late 2003.
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.
Solar electricity generator with a capacity of 2 GW may be far from our imagination, but not in China. First Solar Inc., A solar power company from the United States, will build the solar electricity generator in Ordos city, in the province of Inner Mongol. This project is the development of the world’s largest solar electricity generator. The signing between them have been done at September 8, 2009 at the headquarters of First Solar Inc. in Tempe, Arizona, witnessed by Wu Bangguo, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.
“We are proud of the signing of this MoU” said Mike Ahearn, chief executive of First Solar Inc. was quoted as saying by APP.
Government of the United States and China can work together to reduce the cost of electricity from solar electricity generator connected to the network which will be competitive with electricity from traditional energy sources and create a blueprint for accelerating large-scale development of solar energy utilization of the world to prevent / reduce the impact of climate change, he added.
The MOU underscores a long-term partnership between First Solar Inc. and Ordos City, which First Solar Inc. will also consider making investments in the Ordos solar cells.
“We are very pleased to partner with one of the major players in industry of solar electricity generator technology in the project that will impact on low-carbon production in the Ordos.” said Cao Zhichen, deputy mayor of Ordos. For this project the Government of Ordos city will provide 65 square kilometers of land.
“Discussions with First Solar Inc. on the construction of the factory in China is a demonstration for investors in China that they can be confident of investing in high technology fields,” he said further.
China actively increasing the production capacity of electricity cheaper than solar energy sources as part of its national goal to achieve 10 percent energy supply from renewable energy sources by 2010 and 15 percent in the year 2020 including the energy source of wind, hydro, biomass and solar.
Currently, the installed capacity of solar electricity generator in China around 90 MW. Government of China plans to boost the utilization of solar energy from the initial target of just 1.8 GW in 2020 to 2 GW by 2011 and 10 to 20 GW by 2020 as announced in a press conference of the MoU signing.
The first phase of Ordos city solar electricity generator is building 30 MW of project demonstration is planned to begin in June 2010. The next phase, respectively built solar electricity generator with a capacity of 100 MW and 870 MW is expected to be completed by the end of 2014. While the last phase of 1000 MW will be completed by the end of 2019.
Based on the MoU, during the initial phase of implementation, First Solar Inc. will actively study the possibility of development module and manufacturing suppliers in the Ordos. First Solar Inc. also plans to expand its supply chain for the production of thin-film photovoltaic modules and used module recycling.
Solar technologies is now highly developed, with some progress is being developed to be used every day.
Below 10 Solar Technologies to note:
Utilization of solar energy in architecture can be done in two ways: passive and active. Utilization of passive do when solar power does not need to converted first into electricity. Deep utilization of the passive is also included on space heating (using the greenhouse gases) for the region with temperature of the air low, and water heating. Also, techniques to prevent heating the air in the room on the building in the area, including Tropical into the use of the passive type, where component of sunlight, which consists of: light and heat, only used on components’ light ‘it – the need for natural lighting in buildings.
Passive design strategies will be very different between the buildings that are on climate Tropical and climate Sub Tropical / cold. At the Tropical climate, direct radiation from the sun tend to be avoided by building in order to heat gain in the building to be low, so the increase of air temperature in the building can be prevented. While in Sub-Tropical climate, the design strategy is a passive step of the Tropical climate strategy in the acquisition of heat sun tend to be maximized (except in the summer), solar radiation through that fall directly on the building so that temperature increase occurs in the building, considering the air temperature around is low.
In utilizing the solar actively using the photovoltaic, should also simultaneously architect implement the strategy of passive design. Without the application of passive design strategies, energy use in buildings very likely remain high when visual and thermal comfort must be achieved. In situations such as this, the electric power comes from solar power conversion by solar cells does not become too much meaning. With dimensional solar cell panel which needs large electricity for the achievement of thermal comfort and visual on the building difficult to fulfill. Still electrical energy required for engine cooling air with a large capacity, because the air temperature in a high building, also required electricity for lights in the torch-lighting building a dark room when the strategy passive design that lead to the energy savings are not applied. Role of solar power to replace electricity necessary to achieve the building comfort (thermal and visual) finally failed because the building was not designed in such a form so that comfort achieved without the many electric energy consumption. Electricity generated by the photovoltaic possibility will not be large enough to cool down and illuminate the building. In other words passive design considerations for the use of energy in buildings in this case can not be ignored.
In the passive design, objectives of architecture work that would be achieved – that is comfortable and aesthetic, are generally made integral. Each step in the preparation of the components to form the jacket, simultaneous will result in the achievement of buildings comfort and aesthetic. Be not so with the case where the design of active solar cell panels can be arranged separate components with the preparation of building casing. In other words, the achievement of building aesthetic in active design done in a more flexible and separate with the strategy of comfort achievement, although in fact the architects are required to thought to integrate a comprehensive comfort needs with aesthetics – between needs using a solar cell panel with place them on the integrated shroud of the building so that the panels at once can be a building aesthetic element.
Article You May Be Interested In Reading: Solar Fountain
Executive Summary about Solar Collector by Armand Hadife
Solar energy is accessible in plentiful places around the world. This high temperature produced can be exploited for heating air or water in houses and buildings
Using solar energy is a natural and affordable approach for spaces or water heating. When using solar power for heating purposes you employ a device that will allow capturing the heat of the sun. This device is called a solar collector. A basic solar collector can be made with no difficulties.
The next step is to find a system to help circulate water or air inside the solar collector. In general, devices like fans and pumps are used to push air or water thru the solar collector and from the storage tank to the house.
For the novice, making a solar collector can be a difficult and demanding project. This is why solar collectors are broadly offered online and in solar products shops.
How to Build a Solar Collector
Executive Summary about Solar Collector by Mick Jeys
Building a solar collector is the best way to save money on electricity bills, and can be used to generate electricity or to heat water. The two most popular uses for solar collectors are to heat water and generate electricity.
Solar Collector To Generate Electricity
Typically known as a solar cell or panel, they are typically made from titanium dioxide, and create electricity through the photovoltaic effect. It is now very simple to build your own generator at home quite cheaply by substituting titanium dioxide with cuprous oxide.
Solar Collector To Heat Water
The most common example of this type can be seen in common solar hot water systems, where the hot water tank is actually up on the roof with the solar collector. Trials are being held in Germany to use solar heated water from the summertime to heat homes in the winter.
Article You May Be Interested In Reading: Garden Solar Lights
Executive Summary about Residential Solar by L J Sutherland
Residential solar energy can be incorporated into your home in many ways. The most commonly used system in homes today is the solar powered water heater. This system requires the installation of a solar panel on your roof or garden. The other system that you can use in your home is the use of photovoltaic solar panels. These panels convert sunlight into electricity. Residential Solar Energy Points to Remember:
Residential Solar Power – Solar Power For Homes
Executive Summary about Residential Solar by Jon Elsdon
Residential solar power for homes has become a must if we are to free ourselves of the rising cost of traditional power resources such as fossil fuels. Residential solar power for homes is the simplest alternative energy installation we can preform on our homes. Easy to install and maintain (solar panels have a life span of around 30years) a residential solar power system will have you saving money for years to come.
Regardless of whether you are looking to totally power your home with solar or are looking to supplement traditional power sources to give you a cheaper, more reliable (no more power outages), unrestricted power resource, solar power is the way to go.
Many households are turning to DIY (Do It Yourself) solar power projects.
Check out my other guide on Solar Battery
