Tag Archive for: solarpanels

The historic climate bill would deliver billions of dollars in tax and other incentives to US solar manufacturers.

How Joe Manchin’s change of heart could revive the US solar industry

The gamble by a company here churning out large volumes of solar panels was starting to look risky.

Its plan to be a launchpad for a solar manufacturing resurgence was already audacious in an industry so dominated by China, whose cheap products drove the closure of many American solar plants. Government investment championed by the White House was supposed to position domestic firms to compete, but a paralyzed Congress was refusing to write the check.

But the wager in Dalton by Qcells North America may have paid off with an ambitious climate package now on a path to President Biden’s desk. The bill, negotiated in part by Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), would deliver billions of dollars in tax and other incentives to U.S. solar manufacturers, equipping them with government support on a scale of those China used to corner the market.

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Source: Washington Post

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Terabase Energy plans to scale up its system for mass installation reduce the cost of developing utility-scale solar projects.

Gates-led fund backs robots to automate solar panel installation

A Berkeley, California startup that automates solar panel installation has raised $44 million in a funding round co-led by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

Terabase Energy has already developed software to design solar panels and improve their efficiency in changing weather conditions. It plans to use the new funding to scale up its system for mass installation, aiming to reduce the cost of developing utility-scale solar projects.

While there are existing methods to automate or digitize separate steps of solar construction and deployment, Matt Campbell, co-founder and chief executive officer of Terabase, says that the company automates the whole process.

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Source: Bloomberg

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Research shows the need for storage decreases if the majority of the solar capacity is installed vertically in an east-west orientation.

New research says vertical solar panels have improved performance

Researchers in Germany claim vertical solar panels may be better than horizontal solar panels. Typically, solar panels are mounted horizontally and oriented toward the south to get maximum exposure to the sun as it travels across the sky. Instead of lying flat, they are angled at between 20 and 35 degrees, depending on how far from the Equator they are located. There are complex mathematical formulas that tell solar farm developers the precise angle the panels should be mounted at in Pensacola, Peoria, or Penticton. There are tracking systems that can move the panels during the day to follow the sun, but they are expensive and need regular maintenance.

But what if conventional wisdom is wrong? Researchers at Leipzig University of Applied Sciences claim that mounting bifacial solar panels with one side facing east and the other facing west would produce more renewable electricity and reduce one of the side effects of traditional solar energy farms — an abundance of electricity at midday and not enough in the morning or afternoon. Their study was published in the August, 2022 edition of the journal Smart Energy.

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Source: Clean Technica

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The satellite’s 11-meter solar wing from its folded stowed configuration allows it to fit in the rocket fairing.

See the enormous solar panels of this Earth-monitoring satellite

The European Space Agency (ESA) and Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) are preparing to launch a new Earth-monitoring satellite called EarthCARE which will study clouds and aerosols to see how they interact with the atmosphere and contribute to its temperature. As part of testing the satellite’s hardware before launch, the craft’s solar panel wing was recently unfurled for the first time.

EarthCARE has a large set of instruments for taking measurements, including an atmospheric lidar, a Doppler cloud radar, a multispectral imager, and a broadband radiometer. This range of instruments is necessary to understand the complex relationship between clouds, aerosols, radiation, and climate change. But this many instruments require a lot of power, hence why the satellite is also equipped with a huge five-panel solar wing.

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Source: digital trends

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Transparent solar cells have taken another step toward becoming a reality. Here come windows that can generate power from the sun.

Scientists create a nearly invisible solar cell with up to 79% transparency

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Transparent solar cells, which have the potential to convert windows, greenhouses, glass panels of smart devices, and more into energy harvesting devices, have taken another step toward becoming a reality.

A team of scientists from the Tohoku University in Japan has created a near-invisible solar cell using indium tin oxide (ITO) as a transparent electrode and tungsten disulfide (WS2) as a photoactive layer.

Remarkably, the cell has the potential to achieve a transparency of 79 percent and can help take the TMD-based near-invisible solar cells from the basics to truly industrialized stages, according to the study published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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Source: Interesting Engineering

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Recovered silver, polysilicon, copper, and aluminum from re-hashed panels can fetch the most cash on the recycling market.

Dead solar panels are about to become a lot more valuable

In the coming years, recyclers will hopefully be able to mine billions of dollars worth of materials from discarded solar panels, according to a new analysis published this week. That should ease bottlenecks in the supply chain for solar panels while also making the panels themselves more sustainable.

Right now, most dead solar panels in the US just get shredded or chucked into a landfill. The economics just don’t shake out in recycling’s favor. The value you can squeeze out of a salvaged panel hasn’t been enough to make up for the cost of transporting and recycling it. That’s on track to change, according to the recent analysis by research firm Rystad Energy.

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Source: The Verge

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The consortium will invest $6B as it recruits solar panel manufacturers in a long-term strategic plan to supply up to 7GW of solar modules per year from 2024

US solar developers to spend $6B to boost domestic panel supplies

A group of U.S. solar energy project developers on Tuesday said they would jointly spend about $6 billion to support expansion of the domestic solar panel supply chain.

The U.S. Solar Buyer Consortium, which includes developers AES Corporation AES.N, Clearway Energy Group, Cypress Creek Renewables and DE Shaw Renewable Investments, said in a statement that the funds would address current supply chain issues.

Since the start of the pandemic, companies that buy solar panels for large power plants have struggled with global supply chain disruptions that have driven up costs, as well as potential U.S. tariffs on imported panels from Asia. Duties on those products, which supply most U.S. projects, would make solar energy more expensive and less competitive with power produced by fossil fuels.

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Source: VOA News

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Kae Shummoogum showed off his wind and solar powered home near Calgary with 17 solar panels on the roof and thermal solar panel on the side.

Wind and solar powered home shows what is possible for eco-conscious homeowners

Kae Shummoogum opened his home on Saturday to curious visitors wanting to learn more about why his is the only home in the Calgary area to be powered by wind.

Although, Shummoogum readily says that is just a small part of the entire power his home generates from ecologically friendly sources.

He installed the wind generator at his home, just outside of Calgary’s city limits near Balzac, nearly 20 years ago.

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Source: Livewire Calgary

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The vehicle, which Lightyear describes as production-ready, has 388 miles of range, 44 miles of which are derived from solar power alone.

Lightyear’s solar-powered car will go into production later this year

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EV startup Lightyear revealed its first solar-powered electric vehicle, dubbed Lightyear 0, at an event this week in the Netherlands. The vehicle, which Lightyear describes as production-ready, has 388 miles of range, 44 miles of which are derived from solar power alone.

The Lightyear 0 is the product of six years of research and development from its engineering team. That said, it doesn’t look too dissimilar from the sleek sedan prototype first revealed by the company in 2019. The specs are a little more down to earth: 388 miles versus the prototype’s 450 miles — but the overall shape and design of the vehicle appear mostly unchanged.

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Source: The Verge

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The partial shade offered by solar panels creates a microclimate that reduces evaporation and significantly boosts the production of vegetation in arid climates.

Solar panels keeping sheep fed during drought

Two agrivoltaic installations in New South Wales, Australia are being credited with increasing the quantity and quality of fleece in sheep grazing at the facilities during a drought. Research has indicated that the partial shade offered by solar panels creates a microclimate that reduces evaporation and significantly boosts the production of vegetation in arid climates.

While these results are preliminary and anecdotal (and perhaps a tall tale from a fleece salesman down under), they offer potentially exciting field results that could be applied globally.

Graeme Ostini, a wool broker, says he’s been grazing his merino wethers (a variety of sheep) at a solar farm where sheep can graze under the modules. Ostini and other grazers say that over the past few years, these sheep have been ‘cutting an amazing amount of wool’.

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Source: PV Magazine

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