Solar Cells Info

By Gail Robinson /22 Jan 2008
Source: The Star UK
http://www.thestar.co.uk/barnsley/School-joy-at-free-solar.3696189.jp

A BARNSLEY school is set to become one of the greenest in the country. Wellgate Primary in Mapplewell, is to get £20,000 of solar panels funded by The Co-operative’s £1m Green Energy for Schools scheme and the Government’s Low Carbon Building Programme.  The rooftop solar panels will generate renewable electricity which will reduce the school’s reliance on fossil fuels and highlight the issue of climate change.
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A huge increase in contracts to supply the grid means the province may soon be home to some of the planet’s biggest arrays

by Richard Blackwell, Globe and Mail Update / January 22, 2008
source:GlobeandMail.com
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080122.wrsolar22/BNStory/

Ontario is on its way to becoming a major centre for solar power, and will soon see thousands of solar panels spread out over acres of land, feeding clean power into the power grid.  Year-end numbers show an explosion of interest in building solar generating systems, from individuals who want to put a few panels on their roof, to businesses investing in huge solar farms.
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Nuying Huang, Taipei; Rodney Chan,
Source; DIGITIMES, 17 January 2008
http://www.digitimes.com/bits_chips/a20080117PD209.html

NanoPV, a US-based specialist in thin-film solar technology who has teamed up with Taiwan-based Kenmos Photovoltaic, will kick off operations at its New Jersey, US fab in the second quarter, according to NanoPV president Anna Selvan John.  The new plant, which will house a solar cell capacity of 5MWp, is chiefly meant for the development of PV technology and equipment, he said. The plant is expected to put out tandem junction thin-film solar cell making equipment by the end of 2008.
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by Aaron Hand, Executive Editor, Electronic Media,
Source: Semiconductor International, Jan 15, 2008
http://www1.semiconductor.net/article/CA6522776.html

Braggone (Oulu, Finland), which develops advanced materials for semiconductor and optoelectronics applications, has signed a joint-development agreement with equipment supplier Beneq (Vantaa, Finland) to offer a turnkey solution for improving the manufacturing efficiency and product performance of solar cells.  Braggone’s innovative antireflective coatings and silicon treatments have been able to significantly reduce reflective properties. Taking this solution from the semiconductor industry to photovoltaics has enabled solar glass reflectivity to be cut from 9.2% to 1.8%, for example, which translates into more of the sun’s energy being captured within the panels.
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Nano technology makes things bigger
by Ian Williams, vnunet.com /08 Jan 2008
Source: VNUNet.com
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2206735/boffin-100-times-larger-solar-cells

A researcher at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University has created a solar cell 100 times bigger than previous designs using nano-based methods.  Professor Arie Zaban, head of the university’s Nanotechnology Institute, had already developed a method of using metallic wires mounted on conductive glass to form the basis of solar cells.  This method produces electricity with an efficiency similar to that of conventional silicon-based cells, but which are much cheaper to produce.
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Source: ScienceDaily.com ,  Jan. 11, 2008
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080109094341.htm
Adapted from materials provided by Wiley-Blackwell

Solar cells have attracted global attention as one of the cornerstones of alternative energy. In theory, it seems to make abundant sense to tap into the energy of the sun to convert light to electricity with little or no emission of noxious pollutants. However, in practical terms, progress has been slow because of technological impediments and the many different factors that need to be optimized to obtain stable and high-efficiency devices. (more…)

Source: RenewableEnergyAccess.com / Jan 17, 2008
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=51152

In the race to make solar cells cheaper and more efficient, many researchers and start-up companies are betting on new designs that exploit nanostructures — materials engineered on the scale of a billionth of a meter. Using nanotechnology, researchers can experiment with and control how a material generates, captures, transports, and stores free electrons — properties that are important for the conversion of sunlight into electricity.  “We initially thought that the best we might do is get results as good as the sum of the two, and maybe if we didn’t make this right, we’d get something worse. But surprisingly, these materials were much better.” –Jin Zhang, Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz
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ScienceDaily, Jan. 17, 2008
Source: ScienceDaily.com
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080114101837.htm
Adapted from materials provided by Durham University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

A national team of scientists led by experts at Durham University are embarking on one of the UK’s largest ever research projects into photovoltaic (PV) solar energy.  The £6.3million PV-21 programme will focus on making thin-film light absorbing cells for solar panels from sustainable and affordable materials.  The four-year project, which begins in April (2008), is being funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under the SUPERGEN initiative.
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Jan 21, 2008
Source: FabTech.org
http://www.fabtech.org/content/view/6001/

Although they both participate in the emerging copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS) thin-film photovoltaics sector, Ascent Solar Technology and International Solar Electric Technology (ISET) have at least as many differences between them as things in common. Ascent’s PV roots go back to work begun at ITN Energy Systems in the early 1990s, while ISET first hung out its shingle in March 1985. ITN created Ascent in 2005, and the new venture has been publicly traded since 2006, while ISET has been and remains fiercely independent. Ascent’s process technology uses vacuum-based coevaporation and sputtering, yet ISET favors a nonvacuum ink-print/selenization approach. Both use molybdenum for back contacts and zinc oxide for their front contacts, although ISET adds ITO to the front. ISET’s current manufacturing strategy employs batch processing on glass, while Ascent pursues a roll-to-roll production scheme, with flexible plastic as its substrate of choice. Ascent is based in Littleton, Colorado; ISET calls Chatsworth home, in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley.
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Jan 14, 2008
Source: FabTech.Org
http://www.fabtech.org/content/view/5956/

Few solar photovoltaic sectors exhibit as volatile a combination of hype and promise as the copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS) thin-film segment. A handful of companies–Global Solar, Wurth, Showa Shell, for example—are already manufacturing relatively modest amounts of commercial products using CIGS (or its cousin, CIS) films on glass, stainless steel, or flexible substrates, while a larger number are just developing (or trying to develop) processes, building and characterizing (or trying to build and characterize) pilot or initial manufacturing lines, or talking (and talking) about building volume-manufacturing facilities. (more…)