Tag Archive for: solarpanels

For part of almost every day this spring, California produced more electricity than it needed from renewable sources.

California is showing how a big state can power itself without fossil fuels

Something approaching a miracle has been taking place in California this spring. Beginning in early March, for some portion of almost every day, a combination of solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower has been producing more than a hundred per cent of the state’s demand for electricity. Some afternoons, solar panels alone have produced more power than the state uses. And, at night, large utility-scale batteries that have been installed during the past few years are often the single largest source of supply to the grid—sending the excess power stored up during the afternoon back out to consumers across the state. It’s taken years of construction—and solid political leadership in Sacramento—to slowly build this wave, but all of a sudden it’s cresting into view. California has the fifth-largest economy in the world and, in the course of a few months, the state has proved that it’s possible to run a thriving modern economy on clean energy.

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Source: The New Yorker

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Amsterdam will make installing solar panels and heat pumps easier and allow visible installations on monuments and heritage buildings.

Amsterdam to allow solar panels on monuments

The city of Amsterdam is to permit the installation of solar panels on monuments and buildings in protected cityscapes. The decision is part of the city’s Sustainable Heritage Implementation Agenda, which is designed to bring historic buildings in Amsterdam in line with modern sustainability targets.

The new measures will come into force by 2025. The city also plans to ease solar panel and heat pump installations through permit-free work or an accelerated permit procedure.

The rules will allow solar panels in full view and permit air heat pumps on roofs. Other planned regulations include insulating 123,000 homes by the end of the decade and allowing greenery on the roofs and facades of some monuments.

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Source: PV Magazine

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For developing countries, floatovoltaics could be especially powerful as a means of generating clean electricity.

Coming soon to a lake near you: Floating solar panels

A reservoir is many things: a source of drinking water, a playground for swimmers, a refuge for migrating birds. But if you ask solar-power enthusiasts, a reservoir is also not realizing its full potential. That open water could be covered with buoyant panels, a burgeoning technology known as floating photovoltaics, aka “floatovoltaics.” They could simultaneously gather energy from the sun and shade the water, reducing evaporation — an especially welcome bonus where droughts are getting worse.

Now, scientists have crunched the numbers and found that if humans deployed floatovoltaics in a fraction of lakes and reservoirs around the world — covering just 10 percent of the surface area of each — the systems could collectively generate four times the amount of power the United Kingdom uses in a year. The effectiveness of so-called FPVs would vary from country to country, but their research found that some could theoretically supply all their electricity this way, including Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Papua New Guinea.

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Source: Grist

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Agrivoltaics offers a promising solution to the complex task of harmonizing energy production and agriculture.

Agrivoltaics boost food & energy production in Asia

Every autumn morning at an aquaculture site near the mouth of the Yellow River in China’s Dongying City, Shandong Province, farmers begin packaging shrimp for their customers. Their harvest is increasingly more bountiful thanks to an innovative way of farming that integrates renewable energy into agriculture.

Here, solar photovoltaic (PV) panels were installed several meters above the water, helping to generate an annual 260 gigawatts-hours of energy — enough to power 113,000 households in China. Since its completion and grid connection in 2021, the farmers have also gained many benefits.

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Source: Clean Technica

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Artificial Intelligence is helping solar-plus-storage projects provide power even when the sun isn’t shining.

How Amazon is harnessing solar energy, batteries, and AI to help decarbonize the grid

Assembled in neat rows across a westward stretch of the Mojave Desert in Southern California, solar panels at the Baldy Mesa solar farm are turning ample sunlight into carbon-free energy and sending it into the grid.

As it does every day, the sun eventually stops shining, along with the power being produced. At this solar-plus-storage farm, that doesn’t mean the energy stops flowing. Beginning this May, a football field-sized battery energy storage system (BESS) next to the solar panels will send electricity gathered during the day back to the grid, ensuring carbon-free energy is available even at night.

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Source: amazon

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Sunreef shared a new sustainability strategy and is now integrating recycled PET bottles into its solar electric yacht production process.

Sustainability at sea: Sunreef is integrating recycled plastic bottles into solar electric yachts

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Sunreef Yachts is already a solar electric boatbuilder recognized for its sustainability efforts in the maritime industry but is now taking things a step greener. The company is now integrating recycled PET bottles into its solar electric yacht production process.

Sunreef Yachts has been operating out of Gdansk, Poland, for over 20 years alongside a newer footprint established in the United Arab Emirates. From day one in 2002, Sunreef has been pushing the boundaries of sustainable marine travel, launching the world’s first 74-foot luxury oceangoing catamaran with a flybridge.

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Source: electrek

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The Sweetwater Authority is exploring the environmental impact of a 9.5 acre floating solar array to be placed near the Sweetwater Dam.

Floating solar panels proposed for Sweetwater Reservoir

They generate green energy. The save money. They slow evaporation. They float.

And the Sweetwater Authority wants to put them on its Sweetwater Reservoir.

General Manager Carlos Quintero said the water agency is exploring the environmental impact of a 9.5 acre floating solar array that would be placed near the Sweetwater Dam. It would cover roughly 1.3% of the reservoir, Quintero said, and could generate as much as two-thirds of the energy needed to make the reservoir water drinkable and decrease a small amount of evaporation.

“Really, the main benefit is to our ratepayers,” Quintero said. “We could be saving upwards of $27 million in a 25-year span.”

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Source: NBC San Diego

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Solar panels are often tilted to a stowed position to prevent wind damage to utility-scale assets. Array Technologies introduced a passive stowing strategy that prevents unnecessary production losses.

Passive solar tracker wind stowing boosts energy production

During high wind events, utility-scale solar assets are often automatically tilted to a stowed position to prevent damage and downtime from repairs. High wind can cause solar panels to vibrate and rotate, leading to microcracking, twisting, or shattering of panels.

However, stowing solar trackers can lead to a loss of production as they do not follow the sun in an active stow system.

Array Technologies, a leading provider of solar tracker systems, worked with independent engineering and design firm DNV to study an alternative method to active stowing called passive stowing. The analysis focused on evaluating the energy losses associated with various tracker wind stow methods and considered multiple variables, including wind velocity stowing thresholds, wind direction, dwell time, stow exit wind velocity threshold, stow angle, and stow direction.

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Source: PV Magazine

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The Anaheim Transportation Network opened the first-of-its-kind, solar-powered charging facility in the county.

Anaheim’s resort-area buses get new solar-powered charging facility

The Anaheim Transportation Network, the transit agency that runs buses in the city’s resort district, on Friday opened the first-of-its-kind, solar-powered charging facility in the county to power its fleet of battery electric buses and vans.

The charging hub, located east of the 5 Freeway off of South Claudina Street, expands the agency’s ability to charge its electric vehicles as its leaders plan to buy more in the coming years.

“We’re extremely proud of it,” ATN CEO Diana Kotler said.

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Source: The Orange County Register

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Transparent solar cells will transform the look of infrastructure by enabling many more surfaces to become solar panels.

A shade closer to more efficient organic photovoltaics

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Transparent solar cells will transform the look of infrastructure by enabling many more surfaces to become solar panels. Now, materials called non-fullerene acceptors that can intrinsically generate charges when exposed to sunlight could make semitransparent organic photovoltaics easier to produce, a KAUST-led international team shows.

Semitransparent photovoltaics are able to convert sunlight into electricity without blocking visible light. This makes them attractive for building integrated applications, such as windows, facades and greenhouses.

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Source: PHYS.org

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