All About Solar | Green Energy News

October 15, 2006 – Vol.11 No.30

ALL ABOUT SOLAR.

This week’s news.

The following is bold plan that could make executives at some utility companies outside of California a little queasy.

The Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) - the largest community college district in the nation (9 campuses) - has announced a plan to remove all its campuses from the power grid. Say goodbye to utility companies.

The initial plan is to install enough solar power to supply one megawatt of power for each campus - more than each campus needs to operate in daylight hours. The oversized solar power plants are just the start. In a second phase excess solar power would be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen then use the hydrogen to run fuel cells to generate electricity after dark.

Though only a plan at this point it appears as though the LACCD grid disconnect may happen. The LACCD is currently undergoing a “greening” as part of $2.2 billion bond program approved by voters in 2001 and 2003. The LACCD is also utilizing incentive programs from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and Southern California Edison (SCE).

Disconnected from the grid, the colleges will be able to reallocate cash normally spent on utility bills to other needs. California utilities are already accustomed to projects such LACCD’s but utility companies elsewhere in the nation (with some exceptions of course) largely haven’t experienced the notion that customers may no longer need them to deliver power. Visit the LACCD at http://www.laccd.edu/

For many homes the available sunny side roof area is simply not large enough to cover with solar photovoltaic panels to provide full electric power for the house. But, the more powerful solar electric technologies get, the less real estate, the less space will be required for a needed electric output so there’s hope for people with small-roofed houses. (Like this editor.)

This hope may have been realized with a new product from SunPower Corporation - a 315-watt solar panel the company calls the SP-315. With it SunPower says a 4-kilowatt system would need only 15 panels covering 265 square feet. (A SP-315 4-kilowatt system would take up only half of the roof space on sunniest side of this editor’s house.) A system using 30 conventional 160-watt panels would require 410 square feet of roof space SunPower says.

The new panel uses SunPower Gen 2 solar cells which operate at 22-percent efficiency. The new product will be available by the Spring of 2007. Visit Sunpower at http://www.sunpowercorp.com/

BP Solar is set to begin production of a new solar panel in 2007 as well. The company will be offering a panel that will offer an efficiency increase 8 percent higher than their own conventionally manufactured multicrystalline counterparts. The new product will utilize two new manufacturing processes that increase the cell efficiency: Mono2 (tm) a mono-crystal casting process that increases cell efficiency yet at a similar cost to multicrystalline products; and Nuline, a screen printing process that puts conductors onto the cells with a two percent increase in efficiency.

Modules made with the cells will have a similar efficiency and appearance to panels with made with monocrystalline cells. (The company didn’t offer the expected efficiency of the new product in public statements.) Visit BP Solar at http://www.bpsolar.com/

Kyocera should have new, more efficient products hitting the market soon with the unveiling of a new 18.5 percent energy conversion efficiency multicrystalline silicon solar cell.

The company has been making steady improvements in cell efficiency but the latest improvement is the result of increasing the amount of light intercepted by the cell by moving the front electrical contacts to the back of the cell. (This is a design feature SunPower employs on its monocrystalline cells.)

Visit Kyocera Solar at http://www.kyocerasolar.com/

Others are experimenting with silicon solar cell technologies to improve efficiencies.

Silicon Genesis will soon have available samples of its single crystal silicon material made with the company’s proprietary silicon film formation technology. Cells made with the process would have a conversion efficiency of at least 18 percent, about the same as some thick-film silicon, but use a fraction of the silicon needed for those cells. The cost would be reduced as well.

Samples, either free standing or mounted on glass, should be available soon. Visit Silicon Genesis http://www.sigen.com/

Though it may seem to some that Google wants to take over the cyber world with its growing range of products and services, it now wants to give something back to the real world: its corporate reduction in greenhouse gases.

The company will be building one of the largest solar power plants on a corporate headquarters in the world and the largest in the US. A 1.6-megawatt powerplant will be built at the company’s Googleplex corporate campus in Mountain View, California. The 9212 solar panels from Sharp will be installed on rooftops and solar structures above parking lots that will also provide shaded parking.

The project will be built by EI Solutions of Pasadena, California. Visit them for a video of the project at http://www.eispv.com/ , visit Sharp Solar at http://www.sharpusa.com/ and you know where to find Google.