Re: Solar energy news and discussion
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2024 6:14 pm
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Read more here: https://thebulletin.org/2024/04/expandi ... -heading(Bulletin of Atomic Scientists) Proposed changes to the US Bureau of Land Management’s Western Solar Plan would clear the way for large solar energy projects to be built across vast tracts of public lands in 11 western states. The proposed amount of land available to the solar industry ranges between 8 acres and 55 million acres, depending on the proposed scenario (the Bureau of Land Management provides five alternatives). The agency’s preferred plan would open up 22 million acres, or 34,375 square miles, to solar development—an area roughly the size of the state of Indiana.
The federal agency estimates over the next decade solar projects could be developed on one million acres across all western public lands, an area one-and-a-half times the size of Rhode Island.
The changes are part of the Biden administration’s efforts to advance clean energy and transmission infrastructure, construct carbon pollution-free power, and increase grid resiliency to prevent power outages. The administration’s goal is to achieve a 100 percent clean electricity grid by 2035, an ambitious timeline that experts say will also increasingly create land-use conflict in the western United States as renewable energy deployment accelerates.
Researchers from Lehigh University have developed a material that demonstrates the potential for drastically increasing the efficiency of solar panels.
A prototype using the material as the active layer in a solar cell exhibits an average photovoltaic absorption of 80%, a high generation rate of photoexcited carriers, and an external quantum efficiency (EQE) up to an unprecedented 190%—a measure that far exceeds the theoretical Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit for silicon-based materials and pushes the field of quantum materials for photovoltaics to new heights.
"This work represents a significant leap forward in our understanding and development of sustainable energy solutions, highlighting innovative approaches that could redefine solar energy efficiency and accessibility in the near future," said Chinedu Ekuma, professor of physics, who published a paper on the development of the material with Lehigh doctoral student Srihari Kastuar in the journal Science Advances.