Tag: solar

Agrivoltaics

Using vertically mounted bifacial modules allows for more arable land. And if you don’t know what bifacial solar panels are, they can collect solar energy from both sides of the panel. This type of installation would work particularly well in areas that suffer from wind erosion, since the structures reduce wind speeds which can help protect the land and crops grown there. The bifacial panels also can generate more power per square meter than traditional single faced panels and don’t require any moving parts. Then there’s also the option of mounting panels on stilts, which allows farming machinery to pass underneath. In this design you have to maintain a certain clearance between rows to protect the stilts from the machinery, so there is a modest arable land surface loss, usually 3-10%.

2022-09-14: A similar thought process is to combine solar with dams.

Utilizing even small tracts of water can yield outsized benefits. EDP’s Alqueva array, for instance, takes up just 0.016% of the reservoir total surface area. The relative footprint is even smaller when taking into account the reduced need for transmission infrastructure, as the project can plug into the dam’s pre-existing lines.

Moreover, panels and water can have a symbiotic relationship. Modeling the effects of floating panels on water reservoirs found that floating solar panels could reduce evaporation of the water beneath them by 42%. Conversely, solar panels lose generating capacity as they heat up, and the water helps keep panels cool — and 10% more efficient.


2023-06-26: Luminescent Solar Concentrators strike a good balance of energy / agricultural performance.

The idea of Agri-LSC is to allow visible light that crops use for photosynthesis to pass through the panel, while capturing wavelengths of light that are unusable for plants, like infrared and ultraviolet, and converting them into electricity or even transforming them to aid with crop growth. UbiGro is a transparent film that implements a method of LSCs to increase yield for everything from strawberries to cannabis by 20%. They recently teamed up with the solar module company Heliene to add UbiGro film to solar panels, simultaneously generating electricity from low light while aiming to increase plant yield.

Solar Panel Windows

Classified as a Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) system, ClearVue’s solar PV windows are integrated within a building’s envelope, as opposed to conventional PV systems where modules had to be mounted on the top of existing roofs. This has a dual benefit: clear solar glass serves as an energy-efficient window product for any building, but also generates electricity for on-site use or export to the grid. This can provide savings in materials and electricity costs, reduce pollution, and add to the architectural appeal of a building.

2022-11-12: ultrathin organic solar cells hit new efficiency records

Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) are 10x lighter than silicon panels and cost 50% as much to produce. Some are even transparent, which has architects envisioning solar panels not just on rooftops, but incorporated into building facades, windows, and even indoor spaces. “We want to change every building into an electricity-generating building”. OPVs reach 9% efficiency. Prototypes have reached efficiencies of 20%, approaching silicon and alternative inorganic thin-film solar cells, such as those made from a mix of copper, indium, gallium, and selenium (CIGS). Unlike silicon crystals and CIGS, where researchers are mostly limited to the few chemical options nature gives them, OPVs allow them to tweak bonds, rearrange atoms, and mix in elements from across the periodic table. Yet, stability and high efficiency still won’t be enough. To make it in the market, solar cells also need to prove reliable for decades. Under intense exposure to the ultraviolet (UV) in sunlight, the organics in solar cells can degrade, much as our skin burns during a day at the beach.

Perovskite Solar

There are estimates that perovskite solar panels could cost just 10 to 20 cents per watt, compared to 75 cents per watt for traditional silicon-based panels — anywhere from 3X to 8X cost savings. Perovskite’s conversion efficiency has increased at an astounding rate over the last 4 years — from 4% to nearly 20%. And this is just the beginning — the theoretical limit of perovskite’s conversion efficiency is 66%, compared to silicon’s theoretical limit of 32%.

Anti Solar Campaigns

In Arizona, however, where a recent poll found that 75% of the electorate wanted more solar energy, A.P.S. has spent $22m campaigning against Prop 127. “You’d think we were proposing something truly harmful and dangerous”. He hasn’t been shy in returning the blows, spending $18m supporting Prop 127 through Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona. Their biggest expense was a paid force of petitioners who spread out across the state to collect 480k signatures to get the initiative on the ballot, 2x the amount required by law. “We’re on the side of the angels. This is a black-hat, white-hat fight.”

Etching solar

While researchers did find that production of individual black-Si passive emitter rear cells (PERC) were between 15.8 and 25.1% more expensive than making conventional cells, they also found that the efficiency gains and the ability to go to the less-expensive multicrystalline silicon starting material far outweighed those extra costs: overall the cost per unit power dropped by 10.8%.

60% efficient solar

Current solar cells are able to convert into electricity around 20% of the energy received from the Sun, but a new technique has the potential to convert around 60% of it by funneling the energy more efficiently. UK researchers can now ‘funnel’ electrical charge onto a chip. Using the atomically thin semiconductor hafnium disulphide (HfS2), which is oxidized with a high-intensity UV laser, the team were able to engineer an electric field that funnels electrical charges to a specific area of the chip, where they can be more easily extracted.

Moisture vaporators

The star wars moisture vaporator becomes reality.

The system Wang and her students designed consists of a kilogram of dust-sized MOF crystals pressed into a thin sheet of porous copper metal. That sheet is placed between a solar absorber and a condenser plate and positioned inside a chamber. At night the chamber is opened, allowing ambient air to diffuse through the porous MOF and water molecules to stick to its interior surfaces, gathering in groups of 8 to form tiny cubic droplets. In the morning, the chamber is closed, and sunlight entering through a window on top of the device then heats up the MOF, which liberates the water droplets and drives them—as vapor—toward the cooler condenser. The temperature difference, as well as the high humidity inside the chamber, causes the vapor to condense as liquid water, which drips into a collector. The setup works so well that it pulls 2.8 liters of water out of the air per day for every kilogram of MOF it contained, the Berkeley and MIT team reports today in Science.