According to Eurekalert, the new services of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a team of researchers from Northwestern University has developed a new anode coating strategy that significantly heightens the efficiency of conversion of solar energy. A report about the work, which focuses on “engineering” of the interfaces of the organic material of electrodes in large quantities of organic heterojunction solar cells, was published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

This progress in solar energy conversion promises to bring researchers and developers of the world to the goal of producing cheaper, more factories and cells easily implemented. These technologies significantly reduce our dependence on fossil fuel for electricity production and also reduce the combustion product: carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas for global warming.

Tobin J. Marks, Researcher Professor Vladimir N. Ipatieff Chemistry Institute of Arts and Science and Weinberg Professor of materials science and engineering, and Robert Chang, professor materials science and engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science McCormick, leads the research team. Other Northwestern team members were researcher Bruce Buchholz and graduate students Michael D. Irwin and Alexander W. Hains.

Of the new solar conversion technologies on the horizon, solar cells made from organic materials such as plastics are attractive because they can be printed cheaply and quickly by a process similar to printing newspapers.

To date, the type of plastic photovoltaic cells most successful is called “bulk-heterojunction cell.” This cell utilizes a layer consisting of a mixture of semiconducting polymers (electron donor) and a fullerene (an electron container) tightly between two electrons – an electrical conductor electrode (the anode, which is usually covered with indium oxide tin) and a metal (the cathode), such as aluminum.

When light enters through the transparent conductive electrode and kicks the layer of polymers that absorb light, electricity flows due to formation of pairs of electrons and holes are separated and are directed to the cathode and anode, respectively. These charges are in motion electric current (current picture) generated by the cell and are collected by two electrodes, assuming that each type of cargo can pass through the layer between the active interest of fullerene-polymers and the correct electrode to carry the load – a major challenge.

The Northwestern researchers employed a laser deposition technique that coats the anode with a thin (5 to 10 nanometers thick) and smooth layer of oxide nikel. This material is an excellent conductor for extracting holes from the irradiated cell but, equally significant, is a major blocker that prevents the electrons to be channeled more misplaced electrode “incorrect” (the anode), which compromise the efficiency of conversion of the cell energy.

In contrast to previous approaches for anode coating, the coating of oxide nickel Northwestern is more cheap, electrically homogeneous and non-corrosive. In the case of cells in the bulk-heterojunction model, the Northwestern team has increased the voltage of the cell to approximately 40 percent and the efficiency of energy conversion of approximately 3 to 4 per cent to 5.2 to 5 , 6 per cent.

Researchers are currently working on tuning the anode coating technique for the extraction of the whole extraction and electron blocking efficiency and moving to production-scale experiments on flexible substrates.

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The concentration solar photovoltaic systems are rare. They are among the massive solar thermal plants built in the desert, and the Standard photovoltaic panels, concentrated PV panels used with lenses and curved mirrors to focus sunlight on solar cells, which can produce more power with less material – SolFocus says that one square centimeter cell can capture more than 500 square centimeters of sunlight. Configuration reduces the amount of silicon used in panels, and can significantly reduce the costs of the system.

SolFocus is two years old more or less and seeks to grow rapidly in an attempt to commercialize its technology. The company already sells products to selected customers for installations as test sites, such as the 50-kilowatt installation for the Institute’s Concentrated Photovoltaic Systems in Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. Last July the company bought a solar tracking company InSpira based in Madrid to help the business scale reducing the cost of the crawlers.

The VentureWire report says SolFocus is now looking to increase funding for “growth and manufacturing.” Previously the company was funded by the New Association of Moser Baer India, David Gelbaum, MetaSystem Group, NGEN Partners and Yellowstone Capital.

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And in some cases, technology offers an answer. An engineer from Mexico, for example, has used four different types of processors from Freescale low capacity for distilling water using solar energy, a glass and semiconductor system for estimating water needs and scattered around the house. José Luis Rojas digital solar digital, won a design competition conducted by the chip manufacturer Freescale.

Distillers generally work from home by collecting and channeling water into a chamber with a diagonal roof heated by the sun. The heat is enough to kill impurities in the water, leaving a film of condensation water on the roof of the distiller. The condensation then drips through the roof angled toward a clean water receptacle.

It is low-tech, but the accession of one of its chips to detect impurities, heat and direct water around the home is making the technology is so compelling for Freescale. Rojas plans to use the $ 50,000 prize to help marketing his product.

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Ingeniería Conserval estimates that its system SolarDuct PV / T can reach a total efficiency of about 50%, thus reducing the time period of investment recovery complete. With a faster return, companies could tilt the investment system SolarDuct roof, even without a favorable state and local incentives.

The company anticipates that its cogeneration system will help make solar energy investments financially accessible to commercial standards, industrial and institutional applications. Furthermore, the use of these metal collectors for mounting the panels could standardize and maintain the facilities costs associated with that portion of the investment, too.

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Willie J Padilla, a research from the team of the Academy of Boston, said that the meta material is designed to ensure that light is neither reflected nor transmitted, but converted into heat and absorbed. This happens with the light only in a narrow frequency range, but is a major breakthrough.

The meta materials are designed so that its physical components gain new properties that allow them to respond to radiation in tolerated ways. This is the first meta material that shows a perfect absorption and constructed of materials such as metal can be used for a variety of applications for the detection and collection of light, one of which could possibly be the most efficient generation solar energy.

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A new catalyst produces oxygen and hydrogen, and then the batteries are used to generate electricity, using much less energy than current methods.

With this catalyst, users can depend on the energy produced by photovoltaic solar energy systems to provide sufficient energy to the process that leads to new energy, said the professor of Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT that developed the new material.

“If you can only have energy when the sun is shining, you are in big trouble. That’s why, in my view, solar energy has not penetrated the market”, said Daniel Nocera, the MIT professor, in an interview. ”If I can provide a storage mechanism, then I will have power 24 hours a day and now we can start talking about solar energy.”

Solar energy has been growing throughout the world, but remains a source of energy very little used in United States only provides power to 600 thousand houses, and then only when it is daytime.

Most homes with solar panels provide power to the grid during the day, but take it back overnight. Nocera said that his invention will allow these people to store solar energy as hydrogen and oxygen, allowing the battery to produce electricity to be used at night.

“I can turn sunlight into a chemical fuel, now I can use solar energy at night.”

Great potential for clean energy

These batteries are interesting because they produce energy from the greenhouse gases associated with climate change, but to produce hydrogen and oxygen which typically need fossil fuels to be produced.

This has led researchers to look for ways to charge these batteries, and this discovery has achieved it, so the possibility of unlimited and clean energy is now a reality.

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Solar producers measure their costs in terms of dollars per watt of energy produced, a formula is a combination of the cost of producing a module and its energy efficiency.

At this moment the best crystalline silicon modules can be sold from $ 3 to $ 4 per watt, First Solar can sell at about $ 2.40 per watt, price that the company expects to reduce. “I really have pushed the company to the threshold.” Said Travis Bradford, author of Solar Revolution. “They have a great technology”

But First Solar does not generate the largest buzz. That notoriety belongs to the enterprise Nanosolar, which shocked its competitors in December when it announced that it would be profitable to sell thin-film panels at $ 1 watt. This figure is the Holy Grail of sun, the point at which solar energy is generally cheaper than coal, without the help of subsidies.

The manager Martin Roscheisen main Nanosolar, who, like many solar kings, has its roots in Silicon Valley, says he can achieve radical cost savings by directly applying an ink composed of nano particles. Nanosolar cells Powersheets of wheel machines like pages of newspapers in print, on an average of several hundred feet per minute. Roscheisen, intensive Austrian said that the first 18 months of production of Nanosolar have already been purchased. “We share the market by 35% in the coming years,” he said. “The truth is that we can climb a lot more products for less.”

Roscheisen competitors, and puts them in a gentle way, doubt his claims, noting that the cost of raw material would be impossible to produce panels cost $ 1 per watt. “Of course I doubt,” he said. “Otherwise, their model would be a joke.”

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The first of Dr. Mills factory for mass production of solar parks will open in Las Vegas this year. Last week we speak with Australian politicians interested in Nevada, including the NSW Environment Minister, Verity Firth.

Power plants, designed in the laboratory of the University of Sydney reflect sunlight with mirrors to boil water and use steam turbines, generating electricity at a price not much higher than the coal-fired power station.

But, unlike some solar power systems can´t work when the sun is shining by storing heat in insulated chambers for rainy days, and continue to supply energy to the grid.

The technology is not complicated or particularly expensive, but being used in Nevada rather than Australia, because this is where the funding, said Dr. Mills.

“Not really talking about government money or subsidies, we are trying to establish a level playing field for technology,” said Dr. Mills.

“There is great debate in the U.S., but I do not think the debate in Australia.”

Dr Mills moved the headquarters of Ausra, the company founded by a USA last year because he realized that there were more banks willing to take risks in large-scale developments that directly feed the energy grid.

“We have shown that the system will compete with electricity from coal, especially when the carbon capture and storage is an extra cost,” said Mills.

“And obviously we have no fuel cost.”

“There have been regular questions from potential investors in Australia, but so far none has found a project on a scale that may begin to see a coal power stations being replaced by the green” Ausra has a pilot plant who now works and saves an estimated 4000 tons of carbon dioxide a year.

The government of Australia would like to see more schemes like this, but offers no special incentives at this time.

Ms Firth said it hoped to introduce the emissions trading scheme from the federal government and 20% renewable energy by 2020, close to the state fund for renewable energy, $ 40 million, Dr Mills encouraged persisting in a solar plant large scale in the state.

“Obviously we’d like to see this kind of industry in Australia, it is absolutely part of the long-term agenda,” said Firth.

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California utility PG & E Corp signed contracts with BrightSource in April to buy up to 900 megawatts of solar thermal in the coming years, enough energy to power 630,000 homes.

The move is part of a push from PG & E to meet the requirements of California for at least 20 percent of the energy supply comes from renewable energy by 2010.

A global race is under way to find energy alternatives to replace fossil fuels, and entrepreneurs are scrambling for a piece of clean energy market which analysts estimate is worth about $ 150 billion a year.

The development center BrightSource, with a tower 60 meters high and some 1,200 mirrors, is located in approximately 12,000 square meters of the Desert in Israel Nagev, chairman Arnold Goldman said.

BrightSource gave no financial details of the complex, but said that their systems are more cost-efficient than other solar power plants.

The new power tower, which is capable of generating 1.5 megawatts, will not produce electricity for public use, but to test technology to feed future plants, including a 100 megawatt plant in the Mojave Desert that is estimated to be completed 2011, said Kroizer.

The 100 megawatt plant will be 50 times larger than the central Negev.

The manager of BrightSource Woolard said competitors, such as Spanish building and energy group Acciona, still using technology similar to those used by BrightSource 20 years ago.

“The tower of power is based on technology, we see no serious competitor still in the area,” Woolard said in a conference in Jerusalem.

Higher Temperature Higher Pression

The towers of solar energy, which have been used for decades, used mirrors to reflect and intensify sunlight, it is almost like using a magnifying glass to start fire. Traditionally, the system contains long rows of mirrors bent to reach the 100 meters in length.

Sunlight is aimed at a boiler on top of the tower is hot enough so that water vapor is then passed through turbines which produce electricity.

The new power tower is surrounded by a system of smaller, flat mirrors, each with a system to track growth and reflect the sun more effectively than other systems, Goldman said.

“They require large quantities of electronics and controls and gears. The electronics industry has fallen so those costs can be achieved that today, “said Goldman. It also requires about one third of steel and cement, he said.

BrightSource mirrors reflect about 50 percent sunlight, while the Standard systems reflect 35-40 percent, Goldman said. As a result, the temperature and pressure in the boiler is higher and energy is produced more effectively.

“Pressures historic records have shown about 20 suns in the tower. It has a maximum of 600 suns, “said Goldman.

Woolard also said that the new power tower works at half the cost of solar photovoltaic plants because it produces twice the energy in the same amount of hours in the year.

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The film is cheaper than traditional silicon solar panels. There are many reasons for this.

One is that the thin film solar cells use less material to produce electricity. Silicon is abundant, but in its pure form is expensive. The film uses extremely thin layers of silicon, lowering costs.

The other reason that the thin photovoltaic film is the least cost manufacturing process. Traditional photovoltaic solar energy cells require a lot of expensive manual labor. The process of applying for support for the silicon thin film is similar to a printing machine. This means lower costs and faster production.

The greatest disadvantage of this type of solar panels is that they are less efficient than traditional solar. This means that a larger area to produce the same amount of solar energy.

Innovations in this area are solar shingles. These are built with photovoltaic shingles, eliminating the need for traditional panels. This can reduce the cost of installation.

In conclusion, the photovoltaic film has advantages in their prices and range of applications. Although not as efficient as solar panels, are developing rapidly and indeed may exceed the traditional silicon panels.

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