printable_solar_cells_ogica

As we know it

The production of conventional solar cells is a costly affair. This is one reason that has hindered the popular use of solar energy for day-to-day electricity demands of households and organizations. Another reason is the use of a complex technology for producing solar cells and less enthusiasm among governments to adopt solar technologies. However, all of these could become a thing of past soon. Researchers have now shown that solar cells can be printed on a large scale just like newspapers. Such cells are cheap and can be printed on almost every kind of surfaces.

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MIT researchers just officially unveiled a device that uses sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The device builds upon a breakthrough hydrogen producing technology developed in 2008, and they are calling it an “artificial leaf” because of it capacity to create chemical fuels directly from sunlight. The cell is also made from common materials like silicon, cobalt and nickel, which means that the “leaf” could potentially be mass-produced. If the technology proves itself it could create hydrogen fuel directly from the sun, which could be used for transportation, heating, and running fuel cells for electricity. Check out a video of the leaf’s bubbling action by reading on.

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I had heard about printable solar cells before, but now, a team of researchers from the Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany have developed a method that makes it possible to print solar cells on ordinary paper, possibly opening a way of saying goodbye to those bulky pieces of silicon installed on rooftops.

The idea of paper printing also reduces costs. The technology, known as 3PV (Printed Paper Photovoltaics) uses methods similar to those already applied in printing magazines.

The scientists said this discovery would be “a paradigm shift in solar technology,” as it would allow producing much cheaper electricity than conventional solar cells.

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This is one of the coolest stories I’ve seen in awhile. It was shared with me by one of CleanTechnica’s great readers on our Contact page, but I couldn’t get to it for awhile. Luckily, as I started writing on it, I found out that the technology and its 19-year-old inventor just got a $275,000 boost!

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Nokia Tests Solar Power For Cell Phones

Finnish cell phone giant Nokia is on a mission to find out how to apply solar power technology to cell phone technology. The company started a project in June called Nokia Solar Charging Project which is coming to its conclusion at the end of September. It sent a group of people on the road so they could see how solar charging would work in different scenarios.

They have been sailing across the Baltic Sea, camping in a Swedish forest and exploring Kenya in Africa to make the experiment as broad as possible.

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Our indiscriminate and ruthless use of exhaustible resources today is spelling out disasters which we witness in the form of natural calamities around us with a frequency much higher than ever seen in the past. However, nature is benevolent and still giving us a chance to mend our ways and rectify our follies by way of turning back to her for our needs; her bounty in the form of wind, water and solar energy being most revered blessings for us! Scientists of our times have been smart enough to take the cue and advance in the field of harnessing electricity, which is one of the essentials in our developed world, through the power of the sun- “Solar Energy”.

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10 eco friendly outdoor gadget charging systems

Spending time outdoors comes coated with a lot of fun but also has its negative sides. If we are using our beloved gadgets outside home, it becomes difficult at times to charge them in case they run low on battery. But, why not use eco-friendly way of juicing up the gadgets when spending time with nature. Below is a list of eco-friendly outdoor gadget charging systems, which will make gadget freaks jump with utmost joy.

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Full-Scale Solar-Turbine Testing Completed by Southwest Solar Technologies, Inc.

Southwest Solar Technologies Inc. announced today the successful on-sun testing and proof of concept of a highly advanced solar-turbine power system being developed by the Company. The full-scale prototype test was the first operational validation of the integrated system, which uses a large parabolic solar dish with mirrors to concentrate the sun’s energy to power an air-based open cycle turbine to produce electricity.

This milestone field test was conducted in Phoenix using the Company’s 320-square-meter solar concentrating dish, the largest solar dish in North America. The dish delivered thermal energy in the form of 2000 “suns” of concentrated sunlight into its advanced high-temperature solar thermal receiver. Inside this receiver compressed air was superheated, and that superheated air was used to power a high-speed turbine alternator and produce electrical power.

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The Earthquake followed by a tsunami that devastated Japan back in March has spawned a veritable clean tech revolution, both on the research and governmental fronts.

Now Mitsubishi Chemical Corp has announced it has developed a spray-on solar power technology whereby solar cells can be applied to buildings, vehicles and even clothing, just like painting. The solar cells are very thin (less than 1 millimeter thick) and weigh less than one tenth of crystalline solar panels of the same size.

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Everybody’s going green these days, and it’s been reported that even the soldiers in Australia will soon be joining the movement. The Australian National University (ANU) have managed to create wearable lightweight solar panels that convert light directly into electricity using SILVER solar cell technology. Designed for the Department of Defense, these silver cells have a bendable radius of around a few centimeters, which allow it to be used as part of the soldier’s gear.

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