Tag Archives: thin film
World’s Largest CSP Project Started in Morocco
Morocco is embarking on the first of a series of mammoth solar plants that in total will raise renewable energy to 42% of its mix by 2020. The country plans to build five huge solar plants that all come online in 2020, as well as a string of wind farms along the coast. The first solar [...]
Solarreviews.com: Helping Consumers Find the Right Solar Installer
The solar energy market grew by 76% last year, according to GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association. As solar power becomes an increasingly competitive energy source, more Americans are looking for reputable companies that can meet their solar needs. Up until now, however, consumers have not had the ability to easily access ratings [...]
Confimed Shrinkage: Solar Venture Capital Funding
The amount of venture capital (VC)—early-stage funding with higher risks, but high potential returns—going to solar companies continues to shrink, according to a new report from Mercom Capital Group. The report found that solar venture capital in the first quarter of 2013 fell to $126 million, almost a third of the $324 million in the [...]
The Solar Shakeout Continues
The past few years have seen some spectacular flameouts in the solar energy industry, with none so prominent—at least in the U.S.—as Solyndra. Many of these flameouts were startups, but some were bigger players. Now Suntech is in the hot seat. The Chinese manufacturer was one of the world’s biggest PV producers, but it recently [...]
CdTe PV Efficiency Record Goes Back to First Solar
Last month we reported on how General Electric quietly stole the cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar cell effficiency crown from First Solar (NASDAQ: FSLR) — with a solar cell clocking in at 18.3 percent. When I asked First Solar CTO Raffi Garabedian for a comment at the time, he was respectful, but said that it didn’t [...]
Top 5 Recent Renewable Energy Breakthroughs
We are currently on the frontier of green energy. Scientists have been busy researching and developing ideas to launch humanity into the future of energy usage. A number of these technologies that have been admittedly doomed in their infancy. However, many have been vitalized with a number of incredible breakthroughs. The last few years have [...]
Pictoral Installs 757 Kilowatt PV Array
Pictorial, a family-owned, New Jersey commercial printer since 1938, is now benefitting from its new solar rooftop. It’s a757 kilowatt photovoltaic array installed by N.J.-based Solis Partners. Printing companies use a fair amount of electricity running printing presses, machine operated cutting machines and more, so it’s no surprise that the system, which covers two-thirds of [...]
HIT Sets 21.4% Efficiency Solar Cell Record
Thanks to researchers at EPFL`s Institute of Microengineering in Neuchatel, Switzerland, a new world record efficiency of 21.4% has been set for solar cells. This feat was done with HIT solar cells (heterojunction with intrinsic thin layer), and is by far the highest conversion efficiency ever achieved with the substrates that were used. These types [...]
U.S Transmission Lines Need Upgrading for Renewable Energy Projects
The Telegraph Herald highlighted an issue that many people may not consider when advocating renewable energy projects: a lack of an adequate transmission system to move clean energy generated in remote desert areas to more populated regions around the country. Developers–and the government–believe that the vast expanse of sun-drenched desert in the American Southwest could [...]