All About Solar | Green Energy News

October 16, 2005 – Vol.10 No.30

All ABOUT SOLAR.

This week’s news...

Holograms, which manipulate light waves to create three dimensional images, can also be used in conjunction with solar cells to concentrate light on them. Concentrating sunlight on solar cells can mean more electrical output from a cell thus fewer cells needed in a panel for a required output.

The concentration of light on solar cells by way of holographic technologies could drive the cost of solar energy down.

Prism Solar, a start up manufacturer of holographic planar concentrating photovoltaic module technology, has secured seed funding for and has begun working on a second generation prototype of its proprietary and patented technology.

The company which expects to begin manufacturing the modules in 2006, will present its technology at the 18th annual National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Industry Growth Forum to be held in San Francisco, California in November. Visit Prism Solar, subsidiary of Direct Global Power, at http://www.directglobalpower.com/ , the NREL Forum at http://www.cleanenergyforum.com/

XsunX is pursuing the development of a new opaque, thin film four-terminal solar cell in an effort to expand its business opportunities beyond its proprietary Power Glass(tm) solar technology.

The opaque solar cell utilizes low band gap nano-crystalline junction materials and ultra-thin amorphous silicon materials. According to the company the four-terminal architecture of the cell does not require electrical current matching between each cell, a common problem, they say, with high-efficiency, multi-junction cells.

The company’s Power Glass technology is supposed to allow the production of electricity through transparent windows. Windows made from the new opaque technology would allow only diffuse light to enter a building. The company does not mention the solar efficiencies of either Power Glass or the opaque technology in its press releases. Visit XsunX at http://www.xsunx.com/ .

Research and development into nano crystal materials is also taking place at Berkeley Labs, a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory.

Researchers with the Alivisatos Group at the lab have developed the first ultra-thin inorganic nano crystal solar cells. The cells utilize rod-shaped nanometer-sized crystals made of two semiconductors, cadmium-selenide (CdSe) and cadmium-telluride (CdTe). The resulting photovoltaic film is about 1000 times thinner than a human hair. At the current stage of development the solar-to-electric conversion is only 3 percent, the same or less than organic photovoltaic cells made largely of polymers.

The inorganic nano crystal cells would be as easy and inexpensive to make as organic cells Berkeley researchers say. Visit Berkeley Labs at http://www.lbl.gov/ , for the researchers web page visit http://www.cchem.berkeley.edu/~pagrp/