All About Solar | Green Energy News

May 7, 2006 – Vol.11 No.7

ALL ABOUT SOLAR.

This week’s news...

For decades the dream of solar power researchers has been to develop a way to produce solar cells as fast as newspapers can be printed. Fast would mean inexpensive and the world could quickly be draped in solar panels.

But as yet the dream has not become reality. For the most part solar cells are made in the slow tedious way they have been for a few decades by slicing silicon or crystallizing silicon on metal sheets.

But with the help of the nanotechnologies industry - which is in its infancy - the dream of printed photovoltaic cells may be just a few years away.

Eikos, a Franklin, Massachusetts-based developer and licensor of highly transparent conductive carbon nanotube (CNT) inks for coatings and circuits has made progress towards the dream of fully printable solar cells.

In partnership with the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Eikos has used its conductive transparent Invisicon (tm) carbon nanotube ink to replace both Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) and PolyEthyleneDiOxyThiophene (PEDOT) to create organic solar cells with an efficiency as as high as 2.6 percent. Organic means carbon-based, non-silicon.

Further, the Eikos/NREL partnership developed a Copper Indium Gallium diSelenide (CIGS) solar cell that used the Invisicon coating instead of aluminum-doped Zinc Oxide as a transparent electrode. The efficiency of the CNT-CIGS cell was 12.98 percent and is somewhat less than the 19.5 percent efficiency which Eikos believes is the record for CIGS cells using Zinc Oxide. Less, but significant, is okay at this stage of research.

The Eikos/NREL team say that Invisicon, already in use in flat panel displays and organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) could be used to make solar cells, at half the cost of conventional cells with the same efficiency. Visit Eikos at http://www.eikos.com/ .

Johnson Square Village, now under construction in Brockton, Massachusetts, will be the first all-solar village in the state. Each of the 26 townhouse condominiums in the complex will have its own 18-panel, 3.24-kilowatt solar system that should provide more than 60 percent of each home’s electrical needs.

The panels will provide enough power for base-load applications in daytime use; a grid connection is available for peak power needs and nighttime use.

Prices start at $214,900 and include the entire cost of the solar system. The costs of the solar systems were reduced by a $458,300 grant from the state’s Renewable Energy Trust. The Trust is fed by a small surcharge on rate payer’s electric bills that is earmarked for renewable energy projects.

Home owners at Johnson Square Village are expected to save about $600 per year on electric costs. (A portion of their electric bill is paid for in their mortgage payment: The electricity from the solar system is free, but its subsidized system cost is included in the mortgage.)

The project will be LEED certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) by the US Green Building Council when it is complete.

The solar systems were designed by Conservation Services Group (CSG). Visit CSG at http://www.conservationservicesgroup.com/. , the Renewable Energy Trust at http://www.mtpc.org/renewableenergy/index.htm

Canada’s solar fledgling solar industry may be put on hold.

Funds for the Renewable Energy Deployment Initiative (REDI), which includes financial support for solar thermal technologies, have been frozen since the end of March.

REDI is a climate change mitigation program and all funding for REDI programs are frozen until a government review is completed. The new Conservative government wants to cut more than $1 billion from existing climate change programs over the next five years so it can deliver made-in-Canada solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Home grown solutions would be more beneficial for the Canadian economy, they say. Visit the Canadian Solar Industries Association (CANSIA) at http://www.cansia.ca/