Tag Archives: efficiency
Net Metering: Whats Not to Like?
There’s been a lot of talk lately about net metering. What’s so special about net metering, and why all the fuss? Net metering is a simple concept that’s policy in 43 states. It’s like rollover minutes on a cell phone bill — it lets utility customers who install solar systems feed energy they generate into [...]
Can Fluorescent Dye Increase the Efficiency of Solar Cells?
Scientists at Yale think that for some solar cells the future may be fluorescent. While many may believe that the purpose of a solar cell is to absorb light, not to emit it (fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation), it turns out that the [...]
M2M Communications: Will it Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions?
Call it what you will — the “industrial internet,” the “internet of things,” or “machine-to-machine communications” (M2M) — the seamless connectivity of devices is becoming one of the core drivers of the clean energy transition. There are now 1.3 billion M2M devices in operation around the world. By 2020, there will be 12.5 billion in [...]
Lets Bust Some Energy Myths
What with pressure from governments and society in general to reduce our carbon footprints as much as we can it is unsurprising that so much weird and wonderful advice is put forward as the latest innovative method of saving energy. Like with most things that require work and commitment, there are few simple ways of [...]
Nanowires: Making Quantum Dot Solar Cells Better
While potentially much more efficient, than conventional photovoltaic systems, quantum dot solar cells are still at a pre-commercialization stage. In a new paper, to be published in the journal Advanced Materials, researchers propose to improve quantum dot solar cell design with nanowires. To put it simply, quantum dot is a portion of matter that has [...]
Alta Devices Hits 30.8% PV Cell Efficiency
Alta Devices reached 30.8 percent solar cell conversion efficiency earlier this month. The company developed a dual-junction thin-film PV device that builds on its previous single junction cell. The company said its a new world record for the dual junction cells. The results were verified by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). And while this [...]
Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells Get More Efficient
A dye-sensitized solar cell is simple to make using conventional roll-printing techniques, is semi-flexible and semi-transparent which offers a variety of uses not applicable to glass-based systems, and most of the materials used are low-cost. However its conversion efficiency is less than the best thin-film cells. Scientists at the Uppsala University now propose a new [...]
Quantum Dot Solar Cell Efficiency Breakthrough Announced
Quantum dot solar cells, an emerging field in solar cell research that uses quantum dots as the absorbing photovoltaic material, could be significantly advanced by a new technique, developed by University of Toronto Engineering Professor Ted Sargent and his research group. In a paper “Jointly-tuned plasmonic-excitonic photovoltaics using nanoshells,” published in the journal Nano Letters, [...]
In Focus: Obama’s Executive Green Orders
President Obama has vowed that in the absence of congressional action, he will use his executive privileges to combat climate change. Some who are seeking a pretext to discredit the President have suggested that he is ruling by executive orders (EOs). However, President Obama has signed fewer EOs in his first four years in office [...]