As we know it

One of the biggest concern for everyone today is to recharge the many small gadgets that have become an irreplaceable part of life. While these gadgets ensure connectivity with the larger world and allow you to go to places without worrying for any job undone or on an expedition, they also consume a lot of electricity for recharging. This becomes a constraint, especially when you are planning for a long vacation at some unexplored locations. As such location may not have regular electricity supply and you may get actually cut-off from the world during your journey. However, a few researchers have developed portable devices that you can carry along with you. They mostly depend on the renewable solar energy for recharging your gadgets. Also, they allow you to stop using conventional batteries that often contain harmful chemicals which get mixed with the soil and water when thrown after use.

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Sustainable and renewable energy sources has been the main source of various efforts on both designing as well as scientific levels. Over the years, the development in this field has been subtly pushing forward to more feasible as well as practical applications in offices, homes and also small outdoor efforts. The Solar Pod featured today, however, takes a step forward towards more commercial applications with an architectural twist. The pod came forward while working for greener solutions in context of not domestic but rather public gatherings which requires a certain degree of sophistication united to functional utility of stored renewable power. To bring alive such dreams and amalgamate futuristic power technologies to a greener aesthetic context, the Solar Pod brings forth a metallic flower facade lined inside with thin film solar collectors which symbolically holds forth the fruit for effective future replacement of fossil fuels.

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Ascent Solar Technologies develops innovative, lightweight, flexible, thin-film solar photovoltaic modules (that’s a mouthful, I know — read it again). Ascent’s flexible CIGS solar panels are so innovative they were named one of TIME’s are designed to integrate with limitless applications, transforming unused surface area into a source of clean, renewable energy.50 Best Inventions of 2011, one of only six “green” inventions to make the list this year. The list is featured in the November 28, 2011 issue of TIME (which, somehow, is already online… oh, old media, how you amuse me).

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World Bank Co-Finances Morocco's Ouarzazate 500 MW Concentrated Solar Thermal Power

The World Bank approved $297 million in loans to Morocco to support construction and operation of Morocco’s 500-megawatt (MW) Ouarzazate Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant, one of several large scale solar power projects in various stages of planning or development across the solar energy rich Middle East-North Africa region.

Upon completion, the Ouarzazate parabolic trough CSP plant would be one of the largest CSP plants in the world. A group of seven international lenders has committed $1.435 billion dollars to build and develop the project. Ouarzazate is seen as a key milestone for Morocco’s national Solar Power Plan, which was launched in 2009 with the goal of deploying 2000 MW of solar power generation capacity by 2020.

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A Super-Absorbent Solar Material

A new nanostructured material that absorbs a broad spectrum of light from any angle could lead to the most efficient thin-film solar cells ever.

Researchers are applying the design to semiconductor materials to make solar cells that they hope will save money on materials costs while still offering high power-conversion efficiency. Initial tests with silicon suggest that this kind of patterning can lead to a fivefold enhancement in absorbance.

Conventional solar cells are typically a hundred micrometers or more thick. Researchers are working on ways to make thinner solar cells, on the order of hundreds of nanometers thick rather than micrometers, with the same performance, to lower manufacturing costs. However, a thinner solar cell normally absorbs less light, meaning it cannot generate as much electricity.

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iaa-orbiting-space-lasers

Orbiting solar power stations have been a continuous source of debate for decades – someone always brings up the idea of power plants IN SPACE and it always gets shot down as being unfeasible. (What’s not realistic about having energy beamed down from space? Come on.) But because Star Trek has been part of our collective consciousness for the past 50 years (or maybe it’s just me), someone always goes back to the idea of space lasers providing clean energy. (more…)

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Nanoantennas could make for more efficient solar panels

Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic energy, and when they’re picked up by traditional metallic antennas, the electrons that are generated can be converted into an electrical current. Given that optical waves are also a type of electromagnetic energy, a team of scientists from Tel Aviv University wondered if these could also be converted into electricity, via an antenna. It turns out that they can – if the antenna is very, very short. These “nanoantennas” could replace the silicon semiconductors in special solar panels, which could harvest more energy from a wider spectrum of sunlight than is currently possible.

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Nazi Bunker to Become Europe's Largest Solar Power Plant

A former Nazi bunker located in the Wilhelmsburg district of Hamburg, Germany is about to get full-scale makeover. The building, which sorta looks like a giant LEGO, is set to become Europe’s largest renewable energy power plant.

When it’s all said and done, the power plant will supply 3,000 homes with heating and 1,000 of those with electricity, cutting 6,600 tons of CO2 per year.

Come 2012, this nine story structure (called a Flaktürme in German) will boast a 110 kWh rooftop photovoltaic system and a south-facing 0.6 GWh solar-thermal unit. And the building’s interior is being reserved for even further renewable expansion. It will include both a 10.5 GWh woodchip combined heat and power plant and a 3.7 GWh biomethane plant powered by a nearby industrial plant, for example. Waste heat will also be stored. That sounds like a lot but this building could house around 80 single family homes. It is that big.

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Orbital solar power plants touted for energy needs

The sun’s abundant energy, if harvested in space, could provide a cost-effective way to meet global power needs in as little as 30 years with seed money from governments, according to a study by an international scientific group.

Orbiting power plants capable of collecting solar energy and beaming it to Earth appear “technically feasible” within a decade or two based on technologies now in the laboratory, a study group of the Paris-headquartered International Academy of Astronautics said.

Such a project may be able to achieve economic viability in 30 years or less, it said, without laying out a road map or proposing a specific architecture.

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How Much Can You Really Save with Solar

I just returned from the Solar Power International (SPI) show, an annual event for the solar industry, and there were a few things I kept hearing over and over.

One was: “It’s simple: People can live better with solar.” The second was: “The price of electricity will rise over the next decade.”

Over the last 40 years, Americans have been fortunate to have largely consistent electric rates. But as utility providers need to replace aging systems and fuel costs rise, experts predict that homeowners will soon need to pay more for electricity.

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