Solar energy news and discussion

weatheriscool
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Next-generation solar cells reach 24% efficiency
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-04-nex ... iency.html
by University of Cologne

A German research team has developed a tandem solar cell that reaches 24 percent efficiency—measured according to the fraction of photons converted into electricity (i.e., electrons). This sets a new world record as the highest efficiency achieved so far with this combination of organic and perovskite-based absorbers. The solar cell was developed by Professor Dr. Thomas Riedl's group at the University of Wuppertal together with researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry at the University of Cologne and other project partners from the Universities of Potsdam and Tübingen as well as the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin and the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschng in Düsseldorf. The results have been published in Nature under the title "Perovskite–organic tandem solar cells with indium oxide interconnect."

Conventional solar cell technologies are predominantly based on the semiconductor silicon and are now considered to be "as good as it gets." Significant improvements in their efficiency—i.e., more watts of electrical power per watt of solar radiation collected—can hardly be expected. That makes it all the more necessary to develop new solar technologies that can make a decisive contribution to the energy transition. Two such alternative absorber materials have been combined in this work. Here, organic semiconductors were used, which are carbon-based compounds that can conduct electricity under certain conditions. These were paired with a perovskite, based on a lead-halogen compound, with excellent semiconducting properties. Both of these technologies require significantly less material and energy for their production compared to conventional silicon cells, making it possible to make solar cells even more sustainable.
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Yuli Ban
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Solar could generate half of the world’s electricity by 2050 and become the cheapest source of energy, Gao Jifan, the chief executive officer of Trina Solar Co., said at the Boao Forum for Asia.

Global solar power capacity has the potential to grow to 14,000 gigawatts by the middle of the century from 800 gigawatts at the end of last year, Gao said in a panel discussion at the annual forum in Hainan. Chinese company Trina is the world’s third-biggest supplier of solar panels.
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caltrek
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In this post, I am thinking of "advances" as not just in sophistication of design, but also in actual implementation through construction. Breakthroughs in technology that are not scalable or otherwise cost effective can be thus inconsequential. Construction completes the implementation process.

How Mohammed bin Rashid Solar Park Plays a Key Role in Dubai’s Net-zero Strategy
May 5, 2022

https://www.thenationalnews.com/busines ... -strategy/

Introduction:
(The National) Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, the largest single-site solar park in the world, will help reduce more than 6.5 million tonnes of emissions when it becomes operational, contributing to Dubai’s net-zero strategy.

The park has a planned capacity of 5,000 megawatts and is developed at a cost of Dh50 billion ($13.61bn) across five stages. It will be operational by 2030.

The park is expected to play a key role in helping Dubai procure 100 per cent of its power from clean energy sources by 2050.

The current capacity at the solar park is 1,527MW using photovoltaic solar panels, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority said.

“Dewa is implementing more projects with a total capacity of 1,333MW using solar photovoltaic and Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) in addition to future phases to reach 5,000MW by 2030,” said Saeed Al Tayer, managing director and chief executive of Dewa.
Edit: Changes in format to facilitate easier reading.
Last edited by caltrek on Mon Jun 20, 2022 5:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Yuli Ban
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If it feels as if the solar industry has crossed a major milestone, that’s because it has. Cumulative industry deployments reached 1 TW of installed capacity sometime in Q1. And now, only a couple of months later, it is time to move on from these accomplishments and ask the industry, “what will you do for us by 2030?”

What is it we are asking for? One terawatt of solar power, installed each and every year, and forever thereafter, starting in 2030.

At InterSolar Munich last week, LONGi Solar, the global leader in solar panel manufacturing, projected that global solar deployment will reach 1 TW per year by 2030.

To elucidate this point, pv magazine USA assembled the chart below based upon BloombergNEF solar photovoltaics deployment data from the year 1980 through 2021. The vertical axis shows the amount of growth in each year versus the three years prior.


Several industry analyst groups have reported that global solar deployment in 2021 totals 150 MW of capacity versus BloombergNEF’s 183 GW. Starting with the lowest estimate, and assuming that installed capacity continues to double every three years, the capacity deployed in the near future will be immense:

2021 – 150 GW
2024 – 300 GW
2027 – 600 GW
2030 – 1.2 TW
Alternatively, if we start with the 183 GW deployment predicted by the venerable BloombergNEF team, we arrive at nearly 1.5 TW of yearly deployments in 2030.
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weatheriscool
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New polymer property could boost accessible solar power

by Jenna Kurtzweil, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
https://phys.org/news/2022-06-polymer-p ... solar.html
Lightweight as a window cling and replicable as a newspaper, organic solar cells are emerging as a viable solution for the nation's growing energy demand.

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are the first to observe a biological property called chirality emerging in achiral conjugated polymers, which are used to design flexible solar cells. Their discovery could help enhance the cells' charge capacity and increase access to affordable renewable energy.

DNA's coiled architecture is recognizable to many as a helix. Structurally speaking, DNA and other helical molecules are classified as chiral: asymmetrical such that superimposition onto a mirror image is impossible. The term originates with the Greek word for hand, which is also an example. Picture a left handprint on a sheet of paper, followed by a right handprint directly on top. The two prints do not neatly align; your hand, like its DNA, is chiral.

From hands and feet to carbohydrates and proteins, chirality is twisted into humans' genetic makeup. It's also abundant in nature and even enhances the chemical reaction that drives photosynthesis.

"Chirality is a fascinating biological property," said Ying Diao, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and the study's principal investigator. "The function of many biomolecules is directly linked to their chirality. Take the protein complexes involved in photosynthesis. When electrons move through the proteins' spiraled structures, an effective magnetic field is generated that helps separate bound charges created by light. This means that light can be converted into biochemicals more efficiently."

For the most part, scientists have observed that molecules of like structures tend to keep to themselves: chiral molecules assemble into chiral structures (like nucleic acids forming DNA), and achiral molecules assemble into achiral structures. Diao and her colleagues observed something different. Under the right conditions, achiral conjugated polymers can depart from the norm and assemble into chiral structures.
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caltrek
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weatheriscool wrote: Mon Jun 06, 2022 3:10 pm New polymer property could boost accessible solar power

by Jenna Kurtzweil, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
https://phys.org/news/2022-06-polymer-p ... solar.html
...
More on that here:

Abstract:
(Nature Communications) Intimately connected to the rule of life, chirality remains a long-time fascination in biology, chemistry, physics and materials science. Chiral structures, e.g., nucleic acid and cholesteric phase developed from chiral molecules are common in nature and synthetic soft materials. While it was recently discovered that achiral but bent-core mesogens* can also form chiral helices, the assembly of chiral microstructures from achiral polymers has rarely been explored. Here, we reveal chiral emergence from achiral conjugated polymers**, in which hierarchical helical structures are developed through a multistep assembly pathway.
Read more here for further technical discussion: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30420-6

* A mesogen is a compound that displays liquid crystal properties. See this Wikipedia article for a further discussion of mesogens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesogen.

** Conjugated polymers are organic macromolecules that are characterized by a backbone chain of alternating double- and single-bonds
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US Army Deploys First Floating Solar Array
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/337 ... olar-array
By Adrianna Nine on June 16, 2022 at 7:45 am

The US Army conducted a ribbon-cutting ceremony over the weekend for a new clean energy facility: the Department of Defense’s first floating solar array.
The system sits atop the surface of North Carolina’s Big Muddy Lake, where it will generate clean energy for Fort Bragg. At 1.1 megawatts, it’s the biggest floating solar array in the Southeast United States. The Army base will use the energy to power onsite facilities, supplement the local energy grid, and create a backup power source in case of power outages.

The array is the result of a collaboration between Fort Bragg, Ameresco (a renewable energy company) and Duke Energy (one of North Carolina’s power companies). The Army reports that alongside their new setup at Big Muddy Lake, the trio are testing an electronic “recloser” funded by the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program. If all goes well, the recloser will help minimize power disruptions and system damage during transient events, like contact between a tree and power line.
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caltrek
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Samara Is Building Tech to Switch Spain’s Households Onto Solar Energy
by Natasha Lomas
June 20, 2022

Introduction:
(TechCrunch) Despite being one of the countries in Europe with the most hours of sunshine, Spain has extremely low levels of household solar installations. Madrid-based Samara, a startup founded in May this year — which is launching a service in its home market today — wants to change that, spotting what it believes is a major opportunity to accelerate the market’s transition to renewable energy.

The startup has just closed €2 million in pre-seed funding to develop technology to simplify the process for households of installing solar energy systems, batteries and EV chargers, as well as developing digital tools for householders to manage their usage. The round is led by European and LatAm VC firm, Seaya, and Pelion Green Future, an investment holding focused on clean energy and climate tech.

Samara’s approach looks similar to Berlin-based Zolar, which offers an online configurator to help householders choose a photovoltaic system to buy or rent and other digital energy products, as well as connecting them with a network of local installers to carry out the work.

“We want to really simplify adoption of solar by customers,” says Samara co-founder, Iván Cabezuela. “That means simplifying the experience using software and technology to create easier customer proposals, easier projects — like customers can see where the panels will fit at their home with 3D design, and see what their savings would be, and things like that.”

This will include building an installer management app for the third party installers Samara intends its platform to work with.
Read more here: https://tcrn.ch/3xIrkbS
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weatheriscool
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Flexible all-perovskite tandem solar cells with a 24.7% efficiency
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-fle ... cells.html
by Ingrid Fadelli , Tech Xplore
Lightweight and flexible perovskites are highly promising materials for the fabrication of photovoltaics. So far, however, their highest reported efficiencies have been around 20%, which is considerably lower than those of rigid perovskites (25.7%).

Researchers at Nanjing University, Jilin University, Shanghai Tech University, and East China Normal University have recently introduced a new strategy to develop more efficient solar cells based on flexible perovskites. This strategy, introduced in a paper published in Nature Energy, entails the use of two hole-selective molecules based on carbazole cores and phosphonic acid anchoring groups to bridge the perovskite with a low temperature-processed NiO nanocrystal film.

"We believe that lightweight flexible perovskite solar cells are promising for building integrated photovoltaics, wearable electronics, portable energy systems and aerospace applications," Hairen Tan, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. "However, their highest certified efficiency of 19.9% lags behind their rigid counterparts (highest 25.7%), mainly due to defective interfaces at charge-selective contacts with perovskites atop."
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