Solar Cells Info

Tokyo, November 27, 2008
Source: Reuters/International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/27/business/sharp.php

Sharp of Japan, Enel of Italy and a third manufacturer will invest more than $2.6 billion in Italian solar power ventures to tap growing demand for cleaner energy.  Top solar power firms are hurrying to expand capacity even as the sector smarts from a worsening global economy, which is drying up financing for new ventures and forcing smaller solar power firms to push back investment.  Sharp, the world’s No.2 maker of solar cells after the German company Q-Cells, said it and Enel planned to spend about ¥100 billion, or $1.05 billion, to set up solar power generating plants in Italy with a total generating capacity of 189 megawatts by the end of 2012. (more…)

By MARI YAMAGUCHI, 26 Nov 2008
Source: Associated Press /Forbes.com
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/11/26/ap5749538.html

Sharp said Thursday it’s in talks with Italian utility company Enel to set up a European joint venture to produce solar panels – a move that highlights the Japanese electronics company’s ambitions in this key green business.  “We are considering cooperation with Enel SpA to jointly produce solar cells,” Sharp Corp. (other-otc: SHCAY.PK – news – people ) spokeswoman Miyuki Nakayama said, while declining to elaborate. Sharp will give details at a news conference later in the day, she said.
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Source: Frontier India Strategic & Defence, November 30, 2008
http://frontierindia.net/cae/mit-finds-ways-to-boost-solar-cell-efficiency/183/

New ways of squeezing out greater efficiency from solar photovoltaic cells are emerging from computer simulations and lab tests conducted by a team of physicists and engineers at MIT.  Using computer modeling and a variety of advanced chip-manufacturing techniques, they have applied an antireflection coating to the front, and a novel combination of multi-layered reflective coatings and a tightly spaced array of lines — called a diffraction grating — to the backs of ultrathin silicon films to boost the cells’ output by as much as 50 percent.
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Los Angeles, CA, Nov. 29
Source: www.chinaview.cn
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/30/content_10433372.htm

U.S. researchers have taken one step closer to creating high-efficiency solar cells using cheap plastic with a dash of silicon, it was announced on Saturday.  The solar cells, being developed by researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), have significantly greater sunlight absorption and conversation than previous polymers, the university said in a press release on its website.  The researchers want these easy-to-use plastic solar energy cells to be sold at local hardware stores, and then hung like posters on the wall, said the release.
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