3 more small scale solar farms start generating electricity

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The trend towards smaller scale solar continues.   Three new U.S. based small solar farms began operations recently, two in New Jersey and one in Nevada.

The biggest of the three is the Nevada project.   First Solar and Enbridge Inc have just announced the completion of the Silver State North project, a 50 megawatt solar farm located about 40 miles south of Las Vegas.   Located on 600 acres of public land in the Ivanpah Valey, it consists of about 820,000 First Solar thin-film photovoltaic solar panels.  It produces enough electricity to power about 9,000 on a summer day.

New Jersey, in addition to recently starting up a 6.1 megawatt solar farm at the Lawrenceville School, added two new solar farms.    The Kearny Landfill Solar Farm becomes New Jersey’s first solar farm to be located on a state owned landfill    Built over a 13 acre capped section of the closed New Jersey Meadowlands Commission (NJMC) 1A Landfiill, it generates 3 megawatts of power.   The panels use less than a quarter of the entire landfill site, and the companies kept a large pond intact for birds and other wildlife that live there.  The Kearny solar farm is a joint project between Public Service Electric and Gas (PSE&G), NJMC, and SunDurance Energy.

The other New Jersey project is a 12.5 megawatt farm in south Jersey that just started operations.   Lincoln Renewable Energy LLC built the 100 acre farm in a rural area of Fairfield Township.   It consists of 53,000 solar panels and can provide enough power for about 2,000 homes.

 

 

 

Nanosolar aiming to reach grid parity by 2015

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Nanosolar, maker of thin-film CIGS solar cells, is predicting that it will hit full grid parity by 2015.   Grid parity means that the electricity provided will be cheap as grid supplied power, without the need for tax breaks. In 2006, Nanosolar received a $42 million grant from the Bush Administration as part of the Department of Energy’s push to “make solar energy cost competitive” with fossil fuels by 2015.  As part of that grant, the companies involved had to demonstrate that they were meeting milestones on the way to grid parity, and earlier this month the DoE certified that Nanosolar has passed its latest round of milestones.

Nanosolar makes a unique thin film solar cell using inks made from nanoscale particles where the inks are applied to a thin flexible substrate using a roll-to-roll process that’s very similar to low cost printing techniques.

One of the larger projects that Nanosolar has worked on was their installation of a thin-film array for the Camp Perry where the Ohio National Guard is located.  In this 538 Kw project, Nanosolar focused on reducing the cost of installation.  They developed an installation system that consisted of assembling the solar panels into cartridges, which were then fitted into prepared “piers”.   Nanosolar was able to demonstrate reduced installation costs, plus they showed that their method greatly reduced the risk of breakage of the panels, which tends to drive costs up when using conventional inflexible silicon based solar panels.

They’re currently working on installing a larger (1 MW) system at the California National Guard’s Camp Roberts.  Their goal for this project is to achieve a total installed cost that is less than what the National Guard is currently paying for grid electricity.

via: CleanTechnica

NJ school gets 90% of its energy needs from 6.1MW solar farm

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Following up on the news about the trend towards smaller solar project, comes this news from New Jersey.    The Lawrenceville School, a centuries-old boarding school in New Jersey, recently began operations of a 6.1 megawatt solar power farm.

The solar farm, which occupies about 30 acres of school owned land, generates about 90% of the school’s annual electricity needs.  It’s believed to be the largest solar energy farm installed at a U.S. primary or secondary school.
The new solar system consists of 29,934 U.S. made SolarWorld panels.   The panels are mounted on single-axis trackers to follow the sun during the day so that more electricity can be produced from sunup to sundown.

New 6.1MW solar farm at The Lawrenceville School
New 6.1MW solar farm at The Lawrenceville School

The Lawrenceville School also plans on using its new solar farm as part of its curriculum.   Head Master Liz Duffy said, “The Lawrenceville School has become a national leader among secondary schools for its commitment to sustainability. We also look forward to the many learning opportunities the Solar Farm will provide to our students and the local community. The School community will have access to a wealth of real-time monitoring information ranging from where the panels are currently positioned, to how much power is being generated, to how much energy a specific campus building is using, and much more. I am excited about the creative ways our teachers and students will use that data to help build a healthier, more sustainable world for future generations.”

 

World’s blackest solar cells absorb 99.7% of all light

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Natcore Technology's "absolute black" silicon wafer
Natcore Technology's "absolute black" silicon wafer

Natcore Technology, of Red Bank, NJ has developed a new solar cell that absorbs pretty much every single photon that hits it, leading to an increase in efficiency.  The company claims that their new cell absorbs 99.7% of all photons that hit it, compared to the typical solar cell that absorbs about 96% of the available photons.

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Chrysler testing plug-in hybrid minivans

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Chrysler Town & Country PHEV
Chrysler Town & Country PHEV
Chrysler has been moving ahead with plans to release a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) version of its popular Town & Country minivan.  They now have 25 Town & Country minivans driving around the roads of Arizona, North Carolina, and Michigan as part of the data-collection phase of the development.

Chrysler’s powering this PHEV minivan with a combination of a 3.6 liter Pentastar engine mated with a two-mode hybrid transmission that yields 290 hp.    It uses a liquid cooled lithium-ion battery that can be charged in two to four hours using a 220-volt charger.    Charging with a 110 volt charger can take eight to 15 hours.    The range with a full charge and a tank of gas will be about 700 miles (the non-hybrid Town & Country can go about 360 miles on a tank of gas).

Chrysler is also working on a plug-in hybrid version of its Ram pickup.

via: MotorTrend

Solar getting smaller – economics of solar power leading the way towards more smaller projects

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There seems to be a trend developing in the solar power arena – utilities are shifting away from huge large scale solar projects and are instead moving towards smaller sized projects.   A good example is the brand new 8 megawatt solar plant built on 50 acres of private land in North Palm Springs.

While the costs and the red tape involved in getting huge solar projects built are the main factors behind the shift away from huge solar farms, companies interested in solar are finding other benefits too.    Most of these smaller farms can be built on small tracts of privately owned land rather than public land, and there’s lots of small tracts of marginal, abandoned agricultural and brownsite land that would be perfect for small solar installations.

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New solar cells light up to generate more electricity

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Alta Devices new solar cell
Alta Devices new solar cell
Alta Devices has put a new twist on solar cell design and has come up with 28.3 percent efficient gallium arsenide solar cell.

The new solar cells actually emit light in a process call luminescence.    The light comes from new photons that get created when sunlight hits the semiconductor material in the cell – when sunlight hits the gallium arsenide, the light knocks electrons loose, but at the same time it also generates some new photons.  It may sound counter-intuitive, but by letting these new photons escape the cell instead of trying to keep them in, you end up increasing the voltage that the cell can produce.   “What we demonstrated is that the better a solar cell is at emitting photons, the higher its voltage and the greater the efficiency it can produce,” says Eli Yablonovitch, principal researcher and UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering.

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Hybrid and electric car sales hit records in March 2012

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Hybrid and electric sales figures are out for the month of March and they’re record breaking numbers. in March, a record 52,000 hybrid and all-electric cars were sold in the U.S. up from 34,000 in March 2011, and 38,000 in Feb 2012. Sales of hybrids and electrics made up 3.64 percent of total U.S. car sales, which is also a record. The second highest month was July 2009, which was when the Cash for Clunkers program was in full swing and people traded in old gas guzzlers for new, fuel efficient cars.

There were two major reasons for this healthy increase, with higher gas prices certainly being one of them. The other is that there are more and more hybrid and electric choices available to the consumer, and Americans are now starting to find hybrids and electrics that fit their needs. For example, Prius sales jumped 35% from February, thanks to sales of the larger Prius v and the brand new smaller (and less expensive) Prius c.

Plug-in electrics also did well, with 2,290 Chevy Volts being sold in March, which is more than double the amount sold in Feb. Volt sales reduced inventory so much that GM is planning on restarting their Volt production line earlier than they expected. The brand new Toyota Prius PHV debuted in March, selling 911 vehicles.

HybridCars.com has all the details if you want to check out their March 2012 Dashboard

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