Labs - Government
Down to the Ground: Space weather in our daily lives
07 December 2010POSTED IN Applications Features
In this series on the effect of space weather and solar flares, we reviewed the energetic mechanisms of solar flares and their multiple consequences on Earth and on human technologies, and we looked at solar wind. But the storms do not just happen "up there". Some particles are so penetrating that they come “down here,” causing disruptions and posing health risks.
Bosch Installs Ground-Mount Solar Panels
08 December 2010POSTED IN Applications News
Bosch has announced its first on-site installation of ground-mount solar panels in the US at the Bosch Proving Ground in Flat Rock, Michigan.
Textured Substrate Boosts Polymer Solar Cell Efficiency 20%
07 December 2010POSTED IN Research
Researchers from Iowa State University and the US Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have produced polymer solar cells with a thin and uniform light-absorbing layer on textured substrates that improves the efficiency of polymer solar cells by increasing light absorption.
Singlet Fission Could Mean Higher Efficiency Solar Cells
06 December 2010POSTED IN Research
Researchers from the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the University of Colorado, Boulder (UCB) have designed a molecular system that produces two triplet states from an excited singlet state of a molecule, with essentially perfect efficiency.
MiaSolé Achieves New Thin Film PV Efficiency
03 December 2010POSTED IN Applications News
MiaSolé, a manufacturer of copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) thin-film PV solar panels announced that the US Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) independently confirmed the 15.7% efficiency of its large area production modules (1 square meter in size).
IEEE Honors DeBlasio with Steinmetz Award
30 November 2010POSTED IN Politics and Policy News
Richard DeBlasio, chief engineer for renewable electricity and end use systems with the US Department of the Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), will be honored by IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), the world’s largest technical professional association, with the 2010 Charles Proteus Steinmetz Award.
NREL Certifies Konarka OPV Solar Cells at 8.3% Efficiency
29 November 2010POSTED IN Applications News
Konarka Technologies, Inc., the developer of Konarka Power Plastic, a material that converts light to energy, today announced that the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has certified Konarka’s organic photovoltaic (OPV) solar cells at 8.3% efficiency, the highest performance recorded by NREL for an OPV solar cell.
Nanowire-Based Solid-State Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells with 4.9% Conversion Efficiency
26 November 2010POSTED IN Research
Michael Grätzel from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and his colleagues have recently developed solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells based on a self-assembled fibrous network of nanowires that allows fast charge extraction.
Faster and Easier Testing for Polymer Solar Cells
24 November 2010POSTED IN Research
Risø DTU National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy in Denmark has developed a new testing platform for polymer solar cells and will work with a company to bring the new platform into production.
Dual-Diameter Nanopillars Absorb More Light
18 November 2010POSTED IN Research
Tuning the shape and geometry of highly-ordered nanopilllar arrays greatly enhanced their optical absorption properties in recent work by researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley.
Photo caption: Ali Javey, a Berkeley Lab-UC Berkeley chemist, has been at the forefront of nanopillar research. Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab Public Affairs.
Understanding Solar Wind: Consequences on Earth
16 November 2010POSTED IN Applications Features
In this series on the effect of space weather and solar flares, we reviewed the energetic mechanisms of solar flares and their multiple consequences on Earth and on human technologies, including telecommunications and navigation systems now in widespread use. This highlighted the need for a permanent monitoring of solar active regions that are the flare factories.
Molecular Stencils Bring New Possibilities for Solar Energy
16 November 2010POSTED IN Research
A technique known as sequential infiltration synthesis (SIS) that creates molecular “stencils” has been developed by researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and may pave the way to new materials that could potentially find their way into future generations of solar cells.
HelioVolt and NREL Continue Advanced CIGS Development Work
10 November 2010POSTED IN Research
HelioVolt announced it will extend the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) for research carried out at NREL's facilities to jointly develop the fastest and most efficient way to manufacture low-cost thin-film CIGS photovoltaic solar cells.
Launch of New Conference on Silicon Photovoltaics
10 November 2010POSTED IN Applications News
Scientists will meet in Freiburg for the 1st ”SiliconPV – International Conference on Silicon Photovoltaics” in April 2011.
Large Area Polymer Honeycomb Thin Films Blend Semiconductors and Fullerenes
06 November 2010POSTED IN Research
Scientists at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory have fabricated transparent thin films that can absorb light and generate electric charge over a relatively large area.
Solar Mirror Film Tops 20-Year Weathering Mark
04 November 2010POSTED IN Applications News
SkyFuel announced today that its ReflecTech Mirror Film, which is used in the SkyTrough parabolic trough concentrating solar collector, has surpassed the 20-year weathering mark, demonstrating long-term durability against ultraviolet (UV) radiation.
Alliance Forms to Speed Adoption of Smart Grid Standard in US
29 October 2010POSTED IN Politics and Policy News
A group of smart grid industry players such as Pacific Gas & Electric Company, Southern California Edison, Honeywell, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced the formation of the OpenADR Alliance, a non-profit organization created to advocate the development, adoption and compliance of a smart grid standard called Open Automated Demand Response (OpenADR).
Energy on Demand by Trapping Solar Heat in Chemical Bonds
28 October 2010POSTED IN Research
Researchers from MIT in Cambridge, Mass., and other institutions have figured out how a molecule called fulvalene diruthenium stores and releases heat on demand, a finding that could make it possible to produce a type of rechargeable heat battery that repeatedly stores and releases heat gathered from sunlight or other sources.
Equation More Precisely Describes Organic Solar Cell Physics
24 October 2010POSTED IN Research
An equation developed by researchers from the University of Michigan, Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University describes the relationship of current to voltage for organic heterojunctions and could help widen the adoption of organic semiconductors in solar cells.
Researchers Watch Nanoparticles Grow
20 October 2010POSTED IN Research
Researchers from Argonne National Laboratory and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, both in Illinois, have used high-energy X-rays to watch nanoparticles grow from the earliest stages of their formation.
