Solar Power World

New Way To Store Sun’s Heat

A novel application of carbon nanotubes, developed by MIT researchers, shows promise as an innovative approach to storing solar energy for use whenever it’s needed. Storing the sun’s heat in chemical form — rather than converting it to electricity or storing the heat itself in a heavily insulated container — has significant advantages, since in principle the chemical material can be stored for long periods of time without losing any of its stored energy. The problem with... Read More

Clear skies for solar

Everyday, more and more people are choosing to make use of the sun’s energy. New York-based Clear Skies Solar, Inc. a full-service renewable energy provider to commercial, industrial, and agricultural industries, is helping the spread of solar power with recent project funding it received. The solar company received investments that will help fund six new projects. Agreements total 200-kW of commercial projects brought in under Clear Skies Solar’s new-expansion... Read More

New solar energy conversion process could reduce the costs of solar energy production

Stanford University engineers have figured out how to simultaneously use the light and heat of the sun to generate electricity in a way that could make solar power production more than twice as efficient as existing methods and potentially cheap enough to compete with oil. A small PETE device made with cesium-coated gallium nitride glows while being tested inside an ultra-high vacuum chamber. The tests proved that the process simultaneously converted light and heat energy... Read More

Multiphysics Modeling Analyzes Materials to Revolutionize Solar Energy

by Karl-Anders Weiss, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Freiburg, Germany Solar collector designs based on polymers replace metal with plastics and offer potential of far lower costs. To analyze these designs, researchers must model factors like heat transfer, structural deformation, and stress. About half of fossil fuels are used in heating, so there is a huge potential in replacing them with renewable sources such as solar power. But standard solar collectors... Read More

Solar Energy Initiatives Partners With a Major Funding Source

Solar Energy Initiatives, Inc., executing on a grass roots campaign, “RENEW THE NATION,” to help redeploy a portion of the U.S. work force and focus on reducing the world’s dependence on fossil fuels by selling solar thermal and photovoltaic (PV) technologies, today announced the signing of a Project Funding Agreement with a financial services company located in the Northeast United States. The terms of the agreement state that the financial services company... Read More

Parabolic Trough Solar Field Technology Explained

A parabolic trough power plant’s solar field consists of a large, modular array of single-axis-tracking parabolic trough solar collectors. Many parallel rows of these solar collectors span across a solar field, which is usually aligned on a north-south horizontal axis.The basic component of a parabolic trough solar field is the solar collector assembly or SCA. A solar field consists of hundreds or potentially thousands of solar collector assemblies. Each solar collector... Read More