Taking cues from the master Solar energy systems inspired by natural forms

Solar power: Green but inefficient

While green energy like solar power can be the answer to our power needs, there are certain hindrances to its success. First, it is expensive building the necessary equipment for harvesting the sun’s power. Next, sufficient land needs to be made available to set up a solar energy systems. Lastly, modern methods don’t allow for maximum harvesting of sunlight, which is why a lot of it goes to waste. These drawbacks pose a huge problem in attempts to replacing conventional energy with green sources. Considering solar energy systems cost about $45,000 each, most towns can’t afford to invest in them, as maximum benefits of this green energy source will be reaped only when several such systems will be installed. This is why the world still relies on conventional power even though fuel supplies are fast depleting.

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Night Light A sustainable pavilion designed to harvest and transmit sunlight

Designed by Npsag. the Night Light is a conceptual pavilion that harvests solar energy and transmits it back as an event light after dark. The concept is actually a collection of solar powered painted cells which glow in the dark. The concept structure features a diagrid which supports the interior.

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Renewable energy investments are surpassing investments in new fossil fuel power for the first time ever, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance as reported by Joe Romm on ThinkProgress. Adding to the encouraging news, Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported that the trillionth dollarhas been invested in renewable energy, energy efficiency and smart energy technologies.Wind, solar, wave and biomass energy attracted $187 billion of investment capital in 2010 compared to $157 billion for natural gas, oil and coal, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s latest data and calculations. A faster pace of wind and solar power installations, along with oversupply in various wind and solar power plant inputs, is driving installed costs lower, making these clean, renewable alternatives more competitive with coal using conventional cost and return on investment measures and methods, even given their increasingly glaring inadequacies.

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Billionaire Buffett Bets on Solar Energy

The “Oracle of Omaha,” who made his fortune by betting on technologies that appear underpriced, is now putting his money into solar.

The solar industry got a turbo-boost of both name recognition and mainstream credibility on Wednesday as a subsidiary of billionaire Warren Buffett’s investment company MidAmerican Energy Holdings announced plans to purchase the Topaz Solar power development from thin-film PV module maker First Solar. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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Floating Marine Solar Cells Harvest Energy from the Sun and Waves

Marine Solar Cells (MSC) by Phil Pauley are conceptual hybrid solar and wave energy generators designed to generate renewable energy off shore. The solar wave unit captures wave energy through natural buoyancy displacement and solar energy through photovoltaic cells, taking advantage of natural light reflecting off the ocean’s surface to increase solar capture by 20%.

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Clean solutions to human energy demands are essential to our future. While sunlight is the most abundant source of energy at our disposal, we have yet to learn how to capture, transfer and store solar energy efficiently. According to University of Toronto chemistry professor Greg Scholes, the answers can be found in the complex systems at work in nature.

“Solar fuel production often starts with the energy from light being absorbed by an assembly of molecules,” said Scholes, the D.J. LeRoy Distinguished Professor at U of T. “The energy is stored fleetingly as vibrating electrons and then transferred to a suitable reactor. It is the same in biological systems. In photosynthesis, for example, antenna complexes composed of chlorophyll capture sunlight and direct the energy to special proteins called reaction centres that help make oxygen and sugars. It is like plugging those proteins into a solar power socket.”

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Two Lehigh physicists have developed an imaging technique that makes it possible to directly observe light-emitting excitons as they diffuse in a new material that is being explored for its extraordinary electronic properties. Called rubrene, it is one of a new generation of single-crystal organic semiconductors.

Excitons, which are created by light, play a central role in the harvesting of solar energy using plastic solar cells. The achievement by Ivan Biaggio, professor of physics, and Pavel Irkhin, a Ph.D. candidate, represents the first time that an advanced imaging technique has been used to witness the long-range diffusion of energy-carrying excitons in an organic crystal.

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