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Category: solar power

On Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Mark Zuckerberg partook in what he thought would be a “fireside chat” with Wired’s Jessi Hempel but which was verifiably not fireside, and was, actually, a keynote.

Inverse picked out the best nine moments of this interview.

1.) Zuck doesn’t know that Aquila will meet regulations but is just confident that it’ll work out

Zuck reported that Aquila, Facebook’s casual wifi-beaming, solar-powered drone project, is coming along well. A team is currently constructing the second full-scale drone — which has the wingspan of a 747, is only as heavy as a car, and will be able to stay aloft for as long as six months — and another team is testing large-but-not-full-scale models every week. These drones will transmit high-bandwidth signals via a laser communications system, which, he says, require a degree of accuracy on par with hitting a quarter on the top of the Statue of Liberty with a laser pointer in California. The goal, he added, is to get these drones beaming wifi that’s 10 to 100 times faster than current systems. Facebook will roll out its first full-scale trials later this year, and Zuck expects that within 18 months, Aquila will be airborne.

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No source of energy is perfect and one of the traditional drawbacks of solar energy has been that it’s tough to generate new power when it’s dark outside. However, SolarCity announced this week that it’s taken a big step toward fixing this problem by agreeing to use Tesla’s 52 MWh Powerpack lithium-ion battery storage system for its massive solar power project that it’s building in Hawaii for the Kaua’i Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC). SolarCity, of course, is chaired by Tesla CEO Elon Musk so the decision to go with the Powerpack is pretty convenient for both companies.

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SolarCity says it believes that its collaboration with Tesla will produce “the first utility-scale system in the U.S. to provide dispatchable solar energy, meaning that the utility can count on electricity being available when it’s needed, even hours after the sun goes down.” To be clear, using the Powerpack won’t completely eliminate the need for non-solar resources at night since it’s projected to feed up to 13 megawatts of electricity onto the grid, which will only reduce the amount of power used by non-renewable sources.

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Now, that’s a concept! Spray paint from a can that harnesses solar energy. Imagine, you can spray paint windows, patio tables, your car, a bike, etc. with Solar Spray Paint in a can; and watch your gadgets get charged. It is almost like the “Computer Screen in the Can” idea that I had last week. Geez, wonder if she could partner with me on that concept?

Researcher aims to engineer spray paint that can convert sun’s elusive energy to electricity.

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German solar technology firm Heliatek claims to have outdone itself by setting a new world record for directly converting sunlight into electricity using organic photovoltaic cells. In 2012 it claimed a then world record 10.7 percent conversion efficiency and said it was gunning for 15 percent in the near future. This week it announced it’s halfway there, achieving a new record of 13.2 percent.

Heliatek says its R&D teams achieved the new record using a multi-junction cell and that the measurement was independently confirmed by Fraunhofer CSP’s solar testing facility. While traditional silicon cells have achieved higher levels of conversion efficiency, organic cells are also pursued because they can be produced more cheaply and are also more flexible.

In fact, the firm claims that “the excellent low light and high temperature behavior of the organic semiconductor” in the new cells makes them equivalent to the electricity generation capability of conventional solar cells with 16–17 percent efficiency under real world conditions.

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One way or another, via government research or the countless new startups, fusion is well on it’s way.

Chinese scientists have managed to create a hydrogen gas that is three times hotter than the sun.

The artificial solar energy could eventually be used as an inexhaustible source of power, ending reliance on fossil fuels and solving the world energy crisis.

Chinese boffins created the gas in a huge magnetic fusion reactor at the Institute of Physical Science in Hefei.

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As oil was to Saudi Arabia, could solar be to Morocco?

Morocco has turned on its enormous solar power plant in the town of Ourrzazate, on the edge of the Saharan desert. The plant already spans thousands of acres and is proficient of generating up to 160 megawatts of power. It’s already one of the largest solar power grids in the world, capable of being seen from space. And it’s only going to get bigger.

The present grid, called Noor I, is just the first phase of a planned project to bring renewable energy to millions living in Morocco. It will soon be followed by expansions, Noor II and Noor III, that will add even more mirrors to the present plant. Once the project is finished around 2018, the whole grid will cover 6,000 acres. It will be capable of producing up to 580 megawatts of power, comparable to that of a small nuclear reactor.

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New method to make purify water and eliminate clean water shortages in the future by purifying waste water via artificial leafing.

Contaminated water can be cleaned up to varying levels of purity with a new artificial leaf. Photo: American Chemical Society For years, scientists have been pursuing ways to imitate a leaf’s photosynthetic power to make hydrogen fuel from water and sunlight. In a new twist, a team has come up with another kind of device that mimics two of a leaf’s processes — photosynthesis and transpiration — to harness solar energy to purify water. Their development, reported in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, could help address issues of water scarcity.

More than 1 billion people around the world live in areas where clean water is hard to come by, and that number will likely rise as the population grows.

One possible solution to the shortage is to clean up wastewater or other water sources that would otherwise not be drinkable or usable for agriculture. But methods to scrub contaminants from water mostly rely on conventional energy sources. To address the water problem without adding to the dependence on fossil fuels, Peng Tao, Wen Shang and colleagues developed a way to purify water by copying the way green leaves work.

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Traditional farming has challenges that are now being overcome by innovative and sustainable solutions. One instance is a floating island that is powered by solar energy and has several farms that were created by the Forward Thinking Architecture. The islands are designed to work in an energy efficient manner where rainwater and sunlight are harvested so that the farming is done in a sustainable manner. The floating farms are designed to produce vegetables of the amount twenty tons every day. The advantage of this approach is that it has paved the way for farms such as this to be built and run across the world, even in places that are not accessible or do not have the right resources for farming. Locals can grow the food they need and reduce the need to import food and other goods which can then save money and provide opportunities for local employment. The floating farms and their amazing technology and possibilities are shown below. There are links given as well for those who wish to know more. It surely will revolutionize the problems of food production that has been plaguing many countries.

Solar-Powered Floating Farms 1Solar-Powered Floating Farms 2Solar-Powered Floating Farms 3Solar-Powered Floating Farms 4Solar-Powered Floating Farms 5Solar-Powered Floating Farms 6Solar-Powered Floating Farms 7Solar-Powered Floating Farms 8Solar-Powered Floating Farms 9Solar-Powered Floating Farms 10Solar-Powered Floating Farms 11Solar-Powered Floating Farms 12Solar-Powered Floating Farms 13

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As solar power becomes a bigger and bigger part of the overall energy landscape, engineers around the world are busy working out how to build plants that are large and efficient enough to keep up with demand. Now Japanese electronics giant Kyocera is starting construction on what it says will be the largest floating solar power plant (in terms of overall capacity) in the world.

It’s the fourth such floating plant Kyocera has worked on so far, but this one promises to be the most impressive yet: the facility is going to be built on the Yamakura Dam reservoir to the south-east of Tokyo in Japan, and will pump out 13.7 megawatts (MW) of power once it’s completed in March 2018. Some 51,000 photovoltaic panels will be stitched together to cover around 180,000 square metres (about 44.5 acres) of space.

That’s roughly the same area as 18 soccer pitches, so you get a sense of the sort of scale we’re talking about here. Kyocera says the new plant will provide enough power for 4,970 average households and offset around 7,411 tonnes of CO2 emissions every year that it’s in operation (equivalent to 19,000 barrels of oil).

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