All About Solar | Green Energy News

September 4, 2005 – Vol.10 No.24

All ABOUT SOLAR.

This week’s news...

XsunX thinks the windows or the glass exterior of many commercial buildings - skyscrapers and such - should generate electricity. Its Power Glass technology, still in development, could do just that. The company is developing transparent photovoltaic solar films that could provide a portion of a building’s power yet keep the view from the inside out the same.

The company’s technology using thin film photovoltaics on glass or clear plastic substrates now achieves an efficiency of only 4 percent according to the company’s web site. They say efficiency can improve up to 6 percent, but while less efficient than conventional silicon photovoltaics, their manufacturing costs should be much less, only 25 percent of conventional cells.

The company appears to be closer to commercialization and has announced it has designed a modular production system that would allow Power Glass producers to begin small then scale up their production operations. Visit XsunX at http://www.xsunx.com/

Efficiency is a key word with solar energy. As solar photovoltaics produce relatively small amounts of energy, little energy can afford to be wasted.

SatCon has announced that its photovoltaic inverters (which convert solar generated direct current (DC) to building-compatible alternating current (AC)) have been listed with the California Energy Commission (CEC) as the most efficient inverters available in North America for commercial scale photovoltaic projects.

They offer 95.5 percent efficiency, with a peak of 96 percent. Visit SatCon at http://www.satcon.com/