The U.S. Department of Energy aims to make electricity from the sun cheaper than that from burning coal or natural gas.
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Silicon translates sunshine into electricity—and Earth receives enough sunshine in a daylight hour to supply all of humanity’s energy needs for a year. But despite being as common as sand, photovoltaic panels made from silicon—or any of a host of other semiconducting materials—are not cheap, especially when compared with the cost of electricity produced by burning coal or natural gas. The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) aims to change that by bringing down the cost of solar electricity via a new program dubbed “SunShot,” an homage to President John Kennedy’s “moon shot” pledge in 1961.

The U.S. Department of Energy aims to make electricity from the sun as cheap as that from burning coal or natural gas – by 2017.
Image: Dennis Schroeder, NREL Staff Photographer.

“If you can get solar electricity down at [$1 per watt], and it scales without subsidies, gosh, I think that’s pretty good for the climate,” notes Arun Majumdar, director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA–e), the DoE’s high-risk research effort. “With SunShot, the goal is to reduce the cost of solar to [$1 per watt] in the next six years.”

As it stands, melting silicon or depositing thin layers of copper indium gallium selenide, then manufacturing photovoltaic modules and installing them on rooftops or in large arrays in the desert, can cost as much as $10 per watt. And whereas some technologies can deliver modules for roughly $1 per watt, installation at least doubles that.

“We are making solar for the masses…to get to [a] cost point that is viable,” said Bruce Sohn, president of Columbus, Ohio–based First Solar, the world’s largest thin-film photovoltaic manufacturer, which claims it can produce its modules for less than $1 per watt, on a panel at ARPA–e’s second annual summit on March 1. “We are looking to make something that can compete head to head with fossil fuels over the long term.”

As part of the new SunShot initiative, DoE committed some $27 million to fund novel methods for producing solar cells and their components—like 1366 Technology’s effort to grow pure silicon wafers directly rather than hewing them from long ingots of the material or Solexant’s effort to build thin-film solar cells from semiconducting materials that are neither toxic nor rare. The goal is to produce solar modules at roughly 50 cents per watt with attendant hardware and installation costing the same amount. To reach that target the photovoltaic cells will have to convert at least 20 percent of the sunlight that shines on it into electricity and cost only 25 cents per watt by 2017. “The future of the U.S. depends on three securities: national, economic and environmental. The foundation of all of this is innovations in energy technology,” Majumdar said in his own speech to the summit. “The future is still up for grabs. How do we win the future? Invent affordable clean technology. Make them locally, sell them globally.”

Of course, harvesting the sun’s power is not limited to photovoltaic panels. The DoE push also will incorporate efforts to create solar-thermal power plants that can store the heat of the sun for 12 to 17 hours by 2020, along with attempting to address some of the issues surrounding permitting, inspection and connection of solar systems to the electricity grid. “We want change, we want innovation, we want to overthrow the old energy order,” said former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in a summit keynote address. “We want a new era of energy and a new era of American competitiveness.”

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger addresses the 2011 APRA-E Technology and Innovation Summit on California’s role in clean energy.

Already, electricity from the sun costs roughly the same as that generated from burning fossil fuels in places like Hawaii, which remains the only state to rely on imported oil for the bulk of its power. And solar power represents the fastest-growing sector of electricity generation. U.S. solar production in 2010 increased by nearly one gigawatt (billion watts), although that represents roughly the amount of electricity one nuclear power plant can produce. But even at that pace of adoption—spurred by both federal and state government largesse—solar still produces less than 1 percent of all U.S. electricity. And in 2035, by which time the DoE’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts that solar will have grown fastest among all energy resources (increasing sevenfold), all renewables put together, solar included, will only provide 14 percent of U.S. electricity.

The EIA has often been wrong in such long-term forecasts, but competing with natural gas—newly cheap thanks to the vast resources tapped by fracking in the eastern U.S.’s Marcellus Shale Formation—may prove difficult, even with SunShot. “Natural gas has low capital cost, higher fuel cost but overall lowest costs,” noted EIA Administrator Richard Newell at the ARPA–e conference. “There are significantly higher costs for other power sources.”

Yet, even at a higher price, solar can offer benefits, which is why Duke Energy has invested $50 million putting solar arrays on the roofs of grocery stores and some of its other large customers. “Distributed solar can be thought of as a distributed resource, a multiple value resource,” Duke Chief Technology Officer David Mohler told ARPA–e attendees. “The proper comparison for that is not the cost of a bulk power system, it’s the cost and benefit of having an embedded resource.”

And flexible solar cells in sheets have already found novel applications powering the telecommunications and other electronic equipment of U.S. Marine units deployed in Afghanistan. Small-scale solar is also booming in places such as Kenya that do not have an electricity grid for charging cell phones or batteries that power lights at night. “We will need every energy resource we can lay our hands on,” said Kurt Yeager, executive director of the Galvin Electricity Initiative, an effort to develop the smart grid in the U.S. “There are two billion people in the world without access to electricity. Security means giving them energy.”

Of course, the DoE has already invested some $1 billion in solar energy research since the turn of the century, funding efforts to develop “black” silicon or cells employing quantum dots. “If renewables are cost-competitive with fossil fuels then it’s a very, very different world,” Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said at the ARPA–e summit.

Secretary for the US Department of Energy, Steven Chu, discusses the big picture of how the United States uses Energy and why innovation in clean technology is the key to Winning the Future.

Yet, despite inventing the technology in the 1950s and more than 30 years of government support, the U.S. share of the global market for photovoltaic modules is down from more than 40 percent in 1995 to just 6 percent in 2011. China’s Jiangsu Province alone—home to Suntech Power, the world’s largest maker of photovoltaic panels—has begun investing more than $152 million a year in solar technology since 2009.

“Just because we lost the lead doesn’t mean we can’t get it back,” Chu said. “We still have the opportunity to lead the world in clean energy…but time is running out.”

Article by By David Biello.
Source: scientificamerican.com.

The Indian Space Research Organization and US National Space Society launched a joint forum to develop partnership in harnessing solar energy through space-based solar collectors.

Image by NASA. An orbiting tower of solar panels, shown extending into space, could gather power to use on Earth.

Just like a solar satellite in the 2002 Bond movie “Die Another Day”, they are planning to launch giant, possibly inflatable structures of photovoltaic arrays and antennas that catch the suns rays and create a focused microwave beam back to collectors on Earth. A special receiving antenna on the ground — called a rectenna — would then turn the microwave energy back into electricity, which would be fed into the power grid.

Image from New Scientist. Sunlight is reflected off giant orbiting mirrors to an array of photovoltaic cells; the light is converted to electricity and then changed into microwaves, which are beamed to earth. Ground-based antennas capture the microwave energy and convert it back to electricity, which is sent to the grid.

The initiative, announced Nov. 4, is spearheaded by former president of India A.P.J. Kalam and the National Space Society, a nonprofit dedicated to making humanity a space faring civilization.

Space-based solar power has the potential to turn Earth into a “clean planet, a prosperous planet, and a happy planet,” Kalam said during a Thursday press conference announcing the Kalam-NSS Energy Initiative.
Addressing the press at the National Press Club in New Delhi, Dr Kalam said, “By 2050, even if we use every available energy resource we have: clean and dirty, conventional and alternative, solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, coal, oil, and gas, the world will fall short of the energy we need.”

One of the major advantages of space-based solar energy harvesting is that it is not a ground-based solar energy resource. An array of solar panels stationed in a geostationary orbit around the world will receive sunlight for 99 percent time of the year. Plus there are no losses due to atmospheric interferences.

This partnership between the two countries is likely to gain strength as the United States has now removed some technology-transfer limitations which were forced on some scientific research organizations in India after the 1998 nuclear tests. Organizations like the ISRO and Bharat Dynamics will now have access to some sensitive and unique technology.

The U.S. military has already experimented with solar energy beaming and ways to deliver power to remote areas of the globe. For the US, the deal would potentially create thousands of jobs. For India, the project would mean huge amounts of clean energy which it could use to electrify its rural areas and help its economy to thrive.

Eco Factor: Concept lighting system powered by solar energy.

© Image by www.behance.net.

Solar energy and other renewable forms of energy generating systems not only do their bit for the environment but also keep the user close to the environment. Sinthesya is a concept solar-powered lamp designed for indoor and outdoor use that is inspired from the natural process of photosynthesis. The lamp generates energy from the sun during daytime and its high-intensity LEDs provide illumination as night falls.

© Image by www.behance.net.

The lamp with a movable head ensures that the user can focus the illumination at a particular area like a book or your favorite wall painting. With waterproof credentials, the lamp can be placed in your garden for charging without worrying about unseasonal rainfall. An energy meter shows the amount of charge present in its batteries allowing the user the charge it only when needed.

© Image by www.behance.net.

The Dark Side:

The designer doesn’t state the materials with which the lighting system will be built. If it’s plastic then it might just use more energy in its construction that it will actually save during its lifetime.

© Image by www.behance.net.

See more HERE.

A group of German firms has collaborated to launch what is to be the largest solar energy
project of its kind. The project, termed Desertec, aims to construct several solar thermal electric
power plants throughout North Africa and parts of the Middle East. Ultimately, the project will
supply electricity to European households using energy generated from the Sahara.

Electricity will be generated in power plants using parabolic mirrors, which creates enough heat
to produce the steam needed to drive turbines and electricity generators. High voltage lines will
carry electricity to Europe, supplying 15 percent of the continent’s electricity requirements.

Other parts of the world using this method of electricity generation span from the Mojave Desert
in California to the Andalusia region in the south of Spain.

© Inhabitat.
Solar parabola in action: The Desertec project could provide up to 20 percent of Europe’s energy needs by 2050.

Read more on this subject on www.germany.info