Tag: solar

  • Engineers Develop Nanotech Solar Thermal Fuel Cell

    Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a process for storing solar energy in the form of heat with a material based on carbon nanotubes. A description of the process by engineering professor Jeffrey Grossman and postdoc Alexie Kolpak appears online in the journal Nano Letters (paid subscription required). Grossman and Kolpak’s methods involve…

  • Solar Panels Resembling Ivy to be Installed at University

    Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology (SMIT), a company in Brooklyn, New York, has developed solar panels that resemble ivy leaves and assembles them in arrays to cover a building’s walls. The first U.S. installation of SMIT’s solar array is, of course, a college campus: University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Solar Ivy, as SMIT calls…

  • Engineers Calculate, Write Software for Solar Fluctuations

    A faculty-student engineering team at University of California, San Diego has developed a computer model to calculate fluctuations in the solar power grid caused by changes in cloud cover. The team of professor Jan Kleissl and Ph.D. student Matthew Lave have also written software to help power grid managers predict fluctuations in the solar grid…

  • New on Technorati: Why American Manufacturing Rocks

    Posted today on Technorati … Innovations built on brainpower rather than race-to-the-bottom cheap labor are propelling American manufacturing and exports. Read more: Solar Wafer Process Developer Earns DoE Loan Guarantee *     *     *

  • Solar Wafer Process Developer Earns DoE Loan Guarantee

    The U.S. Department of Energy will offer a conditional commitment for a $150 million loan guarantee to 1366 Technologies in Lexington, Massachusetts. The company has developed a new manufacturing process for silicon wafers used in solar panels that promises to slash the costs and time needed to make. The loan guarantee will support 1366 Techologies’…

  • GE Technology Selected for First Gas/Wind/Solar Power Plant

    GE says it will provide the basic technology for a power plant in Turkey that generates electricity with a combination of natural gas, wind, and solar power. The plant, to be built by MetCap Energy Investments, a Turkish development company, is expected to provide power for more than 600,000 homes when it goes online in…

  • State, Industry Funding Support University Solar Center

    The State of Ohio and several companies are contributing funds for an R&D center at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland to boost the lifetime of solar energy technologies. The Solar-Durability and Lifetime Extension (S-DLE) Center at Case Western Reserve will have labs and test facilities to evaluate materials and components under extreme conditions. The…

  • Interactive Map Shows Off-Grid Energy Technology Sites

    Santa Clara University in California and social-enterprise information company Ayllu have created the Energy Map Web site that offers graphs and analyses of 40 social enterprises in 16 countries that bring electricity or alternative fuel to communities of 500 to 500,000 people each. All 40 of the sites involve energy produced or consumed outside of…

  • Report: Concentrating Photovoltaic Solar More Competitive

    Traditional flat-plate photovoltaic (PV) solar technologies can expect to face increasing pressure in public utility markets from concentrating photovoltaic (CPV), according to a new study by GTM Research. The report — Concentrating Photovoltaics 2011: Technology, Costs and Markets — tracks 170 CPV projects underway by 70 companies, as well as cost and demand forecasts through…

  • Engineers Develop Efficient Nanotech Solar Energy Film

    An engineering team from the universities of Missouri and Colorado, Idaho National Lab, and MicroContinuum Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts are developing a flexible solar sheet that captures more than 90 percent of available light, for manufacture in the next few years. Their lab findings have appeared in the Journal of Solar Energy Engineering. Current photovoltaic…