THE MOREE Solar Farm will become Australia’s first utility scale solar PV project, with construction scheduled to begin in mid 2012. The Australian Federal Government announced the chosen consortium for the facility on 18 June 2011, under the Solar Flagships Program. Proponents of the project claim the Moree Solar Farm will pave the way for more utility scale solar power production in Australia by demonstrating the proven tech…
WITH the recent announcement of Samsung of their NC215S solar-powered laptop (for Africa, Russia, and later, the US), is this just the tip of the iceberg for solar-enabled consumer electronics? The NC215S has a 1.6GHz N570 Intel Atom dual-core processor, 250GB storage, and 1GB of RAM. The lid houses a large solar panel, with estimated battery life from a 6-cell battery at 14.5 hours. Of course, we are all familiar with solar pa…
WASHINGTON – Michele Bachmann’s claim that she has “never gotten a penny” from a family farm that’s been subsidized by the government is at odds with her financial disclosure statements. They show tens of thousands in personal income from the operation. And, on a less-substantive note, she flubbed her hometown history when declaring “John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa,” and “that’s the kind of spir…
SOLAR cells with 22 percent efficiency could become commonplace in just a few years, as research from scientists at the University of NSW starts becoming commercialised. Researchers from UNSW have boosted the efficiency of common rooftop solar cells to 19.4 percent, up from 18 percent. The 1.4 percent boost in efficiency is considered significant in the solar industry, since the top-of-the-line laboratory-produced cells have ef…
GT Solar says it has received two orders worth $81.7m from customers in Asia for polysilicon production equipment. The recent orders include GT’s hydrochlorination equipment used for the production of trichlorosilane (TCS) as well as other polysilicon production equipment. Polysilicon is used for integrated circuit and central processing units. It is the conducting gate material in MOSFET and CMOS processing technologies. It is…
This is more complicated than it seems because to build the renewable energy sources, you have to use energy. Until the turn of the century, it took more energy to make a solar panel than you got back from it in its operational life. Now that figure is down to several years depending on where and how it is used. solar electric in silicon solar themal wind wave geothermal – will we damage the rock structure? solar e…