Solar energy hits new efficiency record

Darkfrog submitted, created time 4 weeks 2 days (www.nature.com)

The biggest problem with solar panels and solar cells, more than the expense of making them, has been that they just don't create as big of a return as fossil fuels.

Luminescent solar contractors (LSCs) look like glass panels with colored edges (although this might be artists' license). They are embedded with light-absorbing dyes to catch photons. When the photons are re-emitted, they bounce around inside the glass by total internal reflection (the same principal used in fiber optics) and eventually hit the solar cells mounted along the edges of the panel

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U.S. retailers chase a solar panel deadline

Darkfrog submitted, created time 4 months 4 weeks (www.nytimes.com)

U.S. retailers might consider floor space to be the number one claim on their attention, but they're finally putting those big, flat roofs to work toward the bottom line. No, they're not doing cheery rooftop displays of their merchandise; they're installing solar panels. If they do so before December 31 of this year, they will receive a generous tax write-off.

So far, the big chains like Wal-Mart, Kohls, Whole Foods, and Safeway have outfitted about one in ten stores with rooftop solar panels, but we can expect more if Congress renews their offer for 2009 and beyond

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Catalyst heralded as solar-power breakthrough

sea-maid submitted, created time 5 months 5 days (www.nature.com)

Chemists believe they have made a key breakthrough that would allow them to mimic photosynthesis and solve the world’s energy crisis. They have found a way to use solar energy to create hydrogen, which they describe as a way of storing the sun's power. The hydrogen could then be stored, piped long distances, or adsorbed into porous materials for transport.

Previous methods of splitting hydrogen have involved either large amounts of electric voltage or rare and expensive catalysts. The method described here, however, emplys charged cobalt and phosphate ions.

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Solar power: Organic dyes help harvest sunlight

Darkfrog submitted, created time 5 months 4 weeks (www.nature.com)

Researchers claim that glass laced with specific dyes can channel photons into small solar cells, giving them as much power as if they covered a larger area without overheating. Researchers tried dye-enhanced solar devices years ago, but the research was full of problems. Either the dyes would break down in sunlight or the photons would be reabsorbed too quickly.

Marc Baldo of MIT claims that once the process is fine-tuned the efficiency of most of today's solar cells could be doubled. The research team believes that their work could be available commercially in as little as three years.

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a revolution in solar power--thin-film

sea-maid submitted, created time 8 months 1 week (www.sciam.com)

Thin-film photovoltaic cells, like those in the array seen here in Mainbernheim, Germany, can harvest as much energy from the sun with far less semiconductor material,the lowest cost and most reliable thin-film technology directly into building construction materials will be the beginning of a revolution in solar power, we will see the day when solar became an economically substantive part of our energy mix

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Solarthermal energy rears a practical head

Darkfrog submitted, created time 10 months 2 days (www.nytimes.com)

In contrast to solar panels, the ten solarthermal plants out in Nevada are more than exceeding their initial investment value. Together, they produce as much energy as three nuclear plants, but they each took only two years to build.

In solarthermal plants, large patches of desert are blanketed with mirrors that focus the sun's rays on a liquid, heating it into a gaseous phase. The gas then turns the power turbines. It's renewable, it's clean, it's not cheap but it's not expensive. Right now, the biggest problem seems to be that it's limited

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Branched-polymer solar cells capture more energy

Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 8 months (www.sciam.com)

Regular solar cells are simple, cheap, and barely effective, but a new solar cell design out of Wake Forest shows more promise. By incorporating branched polymer structures to guide photons, the new cells have been able to trap more light. Different sources rate its efficiency as little as 3.3% -- still respectable -- or as high as 6%, which would be a record. The article does not say whether this would make the cells more expensive.

The article mentions "trees" but it's entirely metaphorical

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When It Comes to Photosynthesis, Plants Perform Quantum Computation

Dolly submitted, created time 1 year 8 months (sciam.com)

Plants soak up some of the 1017 joules of solar energy that bathe Earth each second, harvesting as much as 95 percent of it from the light they absorb. The transformation of sunlight into carbohydrates takes place in a million billionths of a second, preventing much of that energy from dissipating as heat. But exactly how plants manage this nearly instantaneous trick has remained elusive

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