Solar Innovation - Japan | Green Energy News

September 12, 2004 – Vol.9 No.25

SOLAR INNOVATION - JAPAN.

Solar PV power must drop dramatically (or conventional energy become relatively far more expensive) before it can become a mainstream product. Business models might be developed that could reduce solar’s cost (see above article PROPOSING: ZERO ENERGY NEW HOMES (ZENH)), but solar technology must really improve. Improvement can come with existing technologies, such as silicon solar, or the existing technologies be abandoned altogether for something else.

Peccell Technologies and Showa Denko KK (SDK) have developed a high voltage (4 volt) film-type dye-sensitive solar cell based on nano-scale particles of titanium dioxide. The ultra-small particles allow increase of the cell surface area that can be exposed to sunlight and thus convert photons to flowing electricity.

Peccell expects to have inexpensive, light-weight, flexible solar cells available for sampling by 2006. Visit Showa Denko at http://www.sdk.co.jp/

Kyocera Solar with the introduction of its d.Blue silicon solar product has also taken a step to increase solar electric output by increasing the surface area in which sunlight will react. The manufacturing process for d.Blue (also known as the KC187G) creates a microscopic texture on the cell’s multicrystalline surface that maximizes the amount of sunlight the cell can absorb and also reduces reflectance. The texture gives the cells the deep blue color, thus d.Blue. Visit Kyocera Solar at http://www.kyocerasolar.com/