In September, Dan Arvizu, who heads the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, made a prescient prediction during a European solar energy conference. He said the meteoric growth of photovoltaic installations over the last six years would cause fossil fuel and nuclear interests to demonize solar cells in hope of killing what they might see as a powerful threat. Days later, Washington politicians started ramping up an investigation into Solyndra, a leading maker of thin-film solar cells that had gone bankrupt two years after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. ... Read More
Rooftop Solar Power to the People?
April 18, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
While chasing the mirage of a game-changing renewable energy source in the form of industrial-scale solar plants capable of powering hundreds of thousands of homes, the federal government has turned its back on a better, cheaper form of energy from the sun: distributed solar power generation, sometimes known as rooftop solar. At least, that's the way desert environmental advocates see it. A coalition of scientists and local land conservationists calling itself Solar Done Right envisions roofing homes, commercial buildings and parking lots throughout the Southwest with a vast network of ... Read More
Solar Showdown: Are New Solar Power Projects Anti-Environmental?
April 18, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Last December, I flew to Phoenix, rented a car and drove two hours west on Interstate 10 to Blythe, Calif., a sun-baked town of 13,000 on the lower Colorado River surrounded by orange groves and irrigated farmland. In the winter, this area attracts tens of thousands of snowbirds, many of whom park their recreational trailers along dirt roads in the desert and tool around in all-terrain vehicles. I hadn't come to see them, though. I wanted to learn about another new arrival, an international consortium called Solar Millennium LLC, which is building a 7,000-acre solar power generating station ... Read More
Inventor of Plastic Solar Cells Sees Bright Future
January 28, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
In 1974, future Nobel laureates Alan Heeger, Alan MacDiarmid and Hideki Shirakawa discovered a new type of plastic — conjugated conducting polymers. "This polymer was a completely new type that acted more like a metal than like other plastics as it was an excellent conductor of electricity," recalled Niyazi Serdar Sariciftci, who started working with the polymers as a doctoral student at the University of Vienna in the mid-1980s. "It became quite the rage and elicited great interest due to its unique behavior." Drawing on that breakthrough, Sariciftci would create the plastic solar ... Read More
Busting Myths About Photovoltaics
September 15, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The European Union Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference I just attended stressed the need for public education about photovoltaics — the silicon-based solar cells that turn sunlight into usable electricity — to increase acceptance of the solar-power technology. Myths abound about photovoltaics that hinder their growth, and I'd like to burst some of those misconceptions right here: Myth: Because solar cells are only a few microns thick, they produce weaker electricity. Fact: All electrons are created equal. Hence, the movement of electrons that make up electricity are no different ... Read More
Solar Power: America Hangs Its Head
September 10, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
At the world's most prestigious conference on photovoltaics, the 25th EU Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference in Valencia, Spain, I had the honor of being selected as one of the participants in its "PV Policy Debate 2010." The panel was moderated by BBC environmental analyst Roger Harrabin and included Giovanni Federigo De Santi, director of the European Commission’s Institute for Energy Joint Research Center; Heinz Ossenbrink, director of the center’s photovoltaics section; Marcello Raimondi, Councilor of Environment, Energy, and Networks for Italy’s Lombard region; Karin Feier, ... Read More
Europe Boasts of its Solar Power Strength
September 7, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The European Union's Joint Research Centre reports that photovoltaic modules installed globally in 2009 had a capacity to generate more than 7 gigawatts of electricity — the equivalent of about seven nuclear power plants. Out of these, almost 6 gigawatts were installed in Europe. This means that 75 percent of the world's photovoltaic systems went up in Europe alone during last year. The cumulative installed PV capacity in the world comes to 22 gigawatts, with 70 percent being European. The United States, though enjoying far more sunshine and being the birthplace of modern photovoltaics, ... Read More
Energy Oasis in the Desert
July 13, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
By 8 a.m., you're already scrambling for shade. The sun is a force in the Negev, the desert that comprises more than half of Israel's land mass. David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister and a passionate champion of the desert, said Israel's success as a nation would ride on how its citizens make productive use of the sun. In 1956, he wrote: "The mightiest source of energy in our world ... is the sun, which favors us day by day, with astronomical quantities of energy, which runs to waste." He called on scientists to find ways for "absorbing even a very small part of this tremendous ... Read More
Solar’s New Dawn, With Applicator Brush
July 8, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The lone photovoltaic panel, perched like a pterodactyl on a suburban rooftop, is an ungainly reminder of the stillborn response to the 1973 oil crisis, when energy self-sufficiency was an all-too-brief national priority. Back then it all seemed simple: sunlight was free and abundant and solar panels looked like an obvious energy solution. But solar energy never quite caught on with Americans. The oil crisis passed, while panels were costly, bulky and not very efficient at converting sunlight to electricity. Most people decided hooking up to the electrical grid was both easier and ... Read More
Saving Sub-Sahara Africa a Drip at a Time
January 25, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
The hundred thousand people of the Kalalé District in northern Benin, a country in West Africa, like billions in the developing world, are not connected to power lines. All but one out of 20 rely on farming for their livelihood, and most just scrape by. During the dry season from November through April, many suffer from malnutrition, a condition so common it gets its own name, kwashiorkor. One Kalalian, Mamoudou Setamou, teaches about insects and integrated pest management at Texas A&M. He hasn't forgotten his roots and returns to Kalalé to participate in local community functions ... Read More
