Tag Archives: Solar

Earth Day, 2011, Where Are We?

Earth, from space, courtesy of the American taxpayer

Earth from Space, courtesy of the American taxpayer. Reto Stöckli, Nazmi El Saleous, and Marit Jentoft-Nilsen, NASA GSFC

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Earth Day, 2010, I looked to the future on Popular Logistics. In 2009, I wrote about water pollution and agricultural waste in the Chesapeake. Today I am looking at the present and recent past. While a comprehensive look at where we are can be found on the web pages of the World Watch Institute, the New York Times, and the World Factbook of the Central Intelligence Agency, I want to make a few points.

Our energy policy is “when you flip a switch, the juice gotta flow.” It ain’t magic. It’s engineering and classical physics, with an understanding of radioactive fission and decay and a profound lack of long term thinking. It ain’t magic, but it might as well be. But we really need to base our energy policy on an understanding of ecological economics and sustainability.

We’ve had a few problems with nuclear power and fossil fuel in the last few years. Yet, there’s some light on the horizon.

Continue reading →

New Solar Tech: Less Waste; Lower Cost.

Waste Equals Cost. Less Waste Equals Equals Lower Costs.

1366 Technologies - Standard 4-step, high waste process versus 1366 Direct Wafer process

Standard process versus 1366 Direct Wafer process

 

 

People frequently ask me about waste in Solar PV. Clearly, given that no fuel is consumed, no waste is produced from the use of a solar energy system to generate electricity. PV solar modules are not flammable (below something like around 1,000o C) so even if the building burns down under the modules – which could produce toxics – there is no waste from the solar energy system.

However, there is a carbon footprint in transport and installation, and there is waste associated with the production of solar modules. This is about to be reduced. Continue reading →

Solar Power and Toxic Waste

Ground-mounted solar array in a field of wildflowers

Ground-mounted solar array in a field of wildflowers. Copyright iphotostock.com

If you think there are zero direct emissions from the production of electricity from PV solar modules, YOU’RE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT. There are however, indirect emissions associated with production, transport, installation and refresh / recycle are dependent on the technologies used in those processes. Most are associated with the use of fossil fuels and nuclear power to manufacture and move solar modules.

Three observations stand out David Biello’s article, “Dark Side of Solar Cells Brightens,” Scientific American, Feb. 2008.

  1. Indirect emissions are derived from the fossil fuels used to generate the electricity for PV manufacturing facilities.
  2. Heavy metals, such as cadmium, used to manufacture PV solar modules, can be recovered from mining wastes and coal ash.
  3. Overall toxic emissions are 90 to 300 times lower than those from coal power plants.

Continue reading →

Vermont Yankee – Leaks Cesium

The latest news about Vermont Yankee – The leak of Cesium-137 is not a new leak.  From VermontBiz.com (click here) or the Burlington Free Press (here).

“In a statement issued yesterday, Vermont Yankee said that recent news reports have focused less on the tritium resolution and more on the other isotopes found in the soil at the plant. Despite the recent media coverage, Vermont Yankee said the presence of Cesium-137 and other radionuclides found in the soil at the plant is not new news. During the first week of March, the company shared soil sample results with the Vermont Department of Health indicating the existence of cesium in the soil.”

What’s worse than a nuclear power plant that leaks radioactive tritium?  A nuclear power plant that leaks radioactive cesium. The good news  that it’s not a new leak. Vermont Yankee ” has not had a fuel defect that could leak Cesium-137 since 2001.” Exactly how is this reassuring?

It’s “not dangerous” according to the NRC and the people who either lied or didn’t know about the tritium leaks.

In an unscientific web-based poll (here) WPTZ a Vermont television station affiliated with NBC, 5,487 or 53% of the responders said Vermont Yankee should be shut down now (3,387 / 33%) or when it scheduled to shut down in 2012 (2,100 / 20%). The question was “Do you think Vermont Yankee should continue operations beyond its scheduled shut down in 2012?

” The question was answered affirmatively by 4,506, or 44%.

The Vermont Dept. of Health provided a summary, here of tritium contamination, here.

While nuclear power provides a tremendous amount of power from a small amount of material, it is very expensive when done right. And when done wrong we have disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and business as usual like Vermont Yankee, Indian Point, Oyster Creek – the list of accidents is long for each operating nuclear power plant.

The economic externalities of nuclear and coal are very expensive in terms of health effects to people and the environment. As I’ve addressed elsewhere in this blog, solar, wind, and other renewable sources are safe and inexpensive, and the economic externalities are beneficial.

The only good news is that Vermont, in the spirit of Ethan Allen, is pointing the U. S. in the direction we need to go, vis a vis nuclear power.

Sustainability and Carbon Sequestration

Abstract. By burning fossil fuels we have put 3.6 trillion tons of Carbon Dioxide, CO2 in the atmosphere1 in the last 200 years – most in the last 60. This has changed the concentration of atmospheric CO2 from 270 parts per Million, ppm, to 390 ppm, an increase of approximately 31%. This increase of atmospheric CO2 is resulting in changing precipitation and rising temperatures, from the equator to the poles.

The typical modern reductionist approach is to simplify the problem to develop a solution:

“Burning coal, oil, and natural gas puts CO2 into the atmosphere. All we need to do to solve the problem is modify the machines so they burn fossil fuel without releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. How do we do that? We should capture the carbon dioxide, and the arsenic, mercury, other heavy metals, radionucleotides, etc, and store it somewhere.”

But we need to remember that we are burning coal, oil, and natural gas for a reason: to generate heat, hot water, electricity and transportation. There are alternative energy technologies, including nuclear, solar, and wind.

Coal with Carbon Sequestration is estimated to cost $10 to $15 Billion per gigawatt, without considering the costs of mining, processing and transporting the coal, cleaning up after mining, and isolating the arsenicals, mercury, and radionucleotides released from burning coal.  Solar is estimated to cost $6.5 Billion per gigawatt – with no fuel and no wastes. Wind $2 to $3 Billion per gigawatt – with no fuel and no wastes.

We at Popular Logistics think, feel and believe that we need to replace coal with solar and wind immediately.

Continue reading →

Todd Woody/Green Inc. Blog: Samsung Enters Solar Deal in California

Seth Woody reports from the Green Inc. blog at the Times

Samsung, the Japanese conglomerate best known to Americans for its televisions and cellphones, is jumping into the American solar business.

Pacific Gas and Electric, the California utility serving much of the northern and central parts of the state, asked regulators last week to approve a series of 25-year contracts [pdf] for 130 megawatts’ worth of photovoltaic power plants to be built by Solar Project Solutions, a joint venture between Samsung America and ENCO Utility Services, a former subsidiary of the utility company Edison International.

Samsung’s first commercial solar plant in South Korea. Photo via Green Inc. blog at NYTimes.com

The deal is the latest of a spate of such agreements signed by California utilities as they take advantage of the increasing attractiveness of photovoltaic power as the price of solar modules falls and new competitors enter the market.

Unlike large solar thermal power plants that use mirrors to heat liquids to generate steam to run electricity-generating turbines, photovoltaic farms can be built relatively quickly near cities and existing transmission lines.

Todd Woody,–  Samsung Enters Solar Deal in California,

on the Green Inc. Blog (NYTimes.com)

Mr. Woody’s point about photovoltaic systems is well-taken: here’s another photovoltaic application, the Marine Corps’ recently announced GREENS system:

A year ago, U.S. Marines operating in the Arabian Desert only viewed the sun as the source of the region’s relentless heat. Recently, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Advanced Power Generation Future Naval Capabilities program introduced technology that allows the Marines to harness some of that sunshine to help power their field equipment.

Fueled by the sun, the Ground Renewable Expeditionary ENergy System (GREENS) is a 300-watt, photovoltaic/battery system that provides continuous power to Marines in the field. ONR began exploring the GREENS idea in fall 2008 in response to a Marine Corps requirement from Iraq for an expeditionary renewable power system.

“It’s vitally important to have power in the battlefield especially these days in an irregular warfare environment,” said Marine Col. Thomas Williams, a senior officer at ONR.

Via Solar Daily.

Link to Solar Energy Powers Marines on Battlefield – media release from the Public Affairs/Corporate Communications Office, Office of Naval Research








Cassie Rodenberg at Popular Mechanics: Solar-Powered Circuits Breakthrough – Solar-Powered Circuits Charge by Sunlight in Real-Time

Solar power’s incremental steps forward keep coming faster and faster, and not on a single vector: large arrays to power the grid, specific installations where wiring is inefficient or impractical, and for small devices. Cassie Rodenberg, writing at PopularMechanics.com, writes about another step forward with solar power for relatively small devices. From Solar-Powered Circuits Breakthrough – Solar-Powered Circuits Charge by Sunlight in Real-Time:

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania unveiled the world’s first solar-powered circuit in a January edition of ACS Nano. The technology shows particular promise for touchscreen devices, which could use the circuits as a direct source for sun-power. Not to be confused with solar cells, which convert sunlight energy to electricity and store it for later, this breakthrough involves circuits—electrical devices that provide paths for electricity to flow. This means that sunlight absorbed by the device can immediately use the energy to power the device.

Here’s how the circuit works: Electrons, here known as surface plasmons, oscillate on tiny molecules called nanoparticles. These plasmons act as a ‘super lenses,’ which gather all solar light hitting the circuit. Once the light’s collected, the particles pose as electrodes to ferry away the electricity for a device to use.

Currently, though, researchers can only produce and harness small amounts of energy from the photovoltaic circuits, nowhere near enough to power consumer electronics. But scientists are sure power production will only increase in the future with creative methods like stacking circuits to absorb and focus more light energy.

Self-charging photovoltaic circuitry might be used in display screen pixels or painted on the outside of iPads and smartphones to scavenge sunlight and charge the devices, according to Dawn Bonnell, a researcher on the project. It also could potentially offer just the right power solution for small robotic devices or help computers operate on light alone.

Cassie Rodenberg, Solar-Powered Circuits Breakthrough – Solar-Powered Circuits Charge by Sunlight in Real-Time, at PopularMechanics.com

Copenhagen, Climate Change, China, and Dessert

Sea IceEarlier today one of my friends handed me a copy of some satire published in the New York Post, a tabloid in the tradition of the London rags, on the subject of “Climate-Gate.”  At about the same time, Roger Saillant, co-author of Vapor Trails, who heads the Fowler Center for Sustainable Value at Case Western Reserve University pointed me to Elizabeth May’s post on the hacked computers and stolen e-mails at East Anglia University. Ms. May leads Canada’s Green Party.

Patrick Michaels, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is really a public relations arm of Exxon Mobil, was once a scientist at the University of Virginia.  He is famous for giving testimony attacking Dr. James Hansen to the U.S. Senate. However, when interviewed by Elizabeth May on Canada’s CBC Sunday Morning’s “Kyoto on Trial” in 2002, Michaels admitted to redrawing Hansen’s graph to make it wrong. Michaels, who has traded the scientific method for Stanislavsky’s acting method, admitted to perjury in his testimony before the United States Senate.

The graph shows the amount of sea ice from July thru November from 1979 to 2000, then in 2005, 7, 8, and July thru Sept., 2009. It is from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder Colorado (here) published Oct. 6, 2009. The dark gray line shows Arctic sea ice from 1979 to 2000. The gray band shows 2 standard deviations from the mean. The colorful lines show that Arctic sea ice is at or well below two standard deviations from the mean levels of 1979 to 2000.  Clearly there is less ice in the Arctic then there used to be. Continue reading →

Solar Kinetics – Single-Element Stretched- Membrane Dish – at Sandia National Labs

Solar Kinetics’ Single-Element Stretched- Membrane Dish. 7 Meter diameter. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Sollar Kinetics' Single-Element Stretched- Membrane Dish. 7 Meter diameter. Solar Kinetics' Single-Element Stretched- Membrane Dish. 7 Meter diameter. Public domain image via Sandia Nat'l Lab.

Sollar Kinetics' Single-Element Stretched- Membrane Dish. 7 Meter diameter. Solar Kinetics' Single-Element Stretched- Membrane Dish. 7 Meter diameter. Public domain image via Sandia Nat'l Lab.

We’re trying to sort out if this is the same Solar Kinetics firm responsible for the Electric 7 electric  vehicle design. (Images of and explanation of construction process here). Following are some images of a completed Electric 7:

Electric 7 by Solar Kinetics

Electric 7 by Solar Kinetics

More images of the 2008 Electric 7.




Solar Installation in Austin, Texas: image by Larry D. Moore

PV installation at Applied Materials, Inc., Austin Texas, 2008. Image by Larry D. Moore via Wikimedia Commons.

PV installation at Applied Materials, Inc., Austin Texas, 2008. Image by Larry D. Moore via Wikimedia Commons.

Larry D. Moore gallery on WikiMedia Commons (including many images not related to energy).

Apart from its beauty – we suspect there’s more to this PV panel design than an attractive layout. An image of the array, comprised of a larger number of similarly or identically constructed setups, can be found after the jump.

Continue reading →

Jobs, National Security, Energy, Environment, Economy

Architecting a Clean, Secure, Sustainable, Non-Carbon and Non-Nuclear Energy Future

Middelgrunden, Denmark, near Copenhagen

Middelgrunden, Denmark, near Copenhagen

  • 100 Gigawatts offshore wind. $300 Billion.
  • 100 GW land based wind. $200 Billion.
  • 50 GW solar. $325 Billion.
  • 250 GW Clean, renewable, sustainable Energy.  $825 Billion.
  • Save the World: Priceless Continue reading →

Massachusetts to pay higher prices for consumer-produced solar, wind energy

Marketplace reported last night that “Massachusetts has launched a program that rows of panelslets home and business owners who generate their own power sell it back to the electric compan” at retail prices, increasing the incentives for the installation of solar and wind energy-producing equipment, and additional incentives for conservation (i.e. additional conservation, which brings net consumption towards zero brings a household closer not just to a zero bill, but payment from utility companies).

Program pays top dollar for extra power, reported by Mitchell Hartman. From the transcript:

[Massachusetts] State Energy Secretary Ian Bowles.

IAN BOWLES: Starting now, if you own solar panels on your home, or you have a small-scale wind turbine, and you want to sell extra power back to the grid, you’ll now be able to do that at a very advantageous rate.

California will do the same thing starting in January and lots of other states are working on similar programs. Massachusetts now leads the pack, because it’s making utilities pay retail rates for the electricity customers generate.

TERRY TAMMINEN: So it really encourages you to become a renewable energy entrepreneur.

California energy consultant Terry Tamminen says these policies encourage alternatives to fossil fuels. But can a bunch of windmills and rooftop solar panels really make a difference?

TAMMINEN: Boston may not be noted for its sunshine, but neither is Germany, and yet Germany is the second-largest user and producer of solar energy in the world.

For years, Germany has been paying customers a premium for the renewable power they generate. Tamminen says that’s largely why it’s jumped ahead.

Mitchell Hartman, Program pays top dollar for extra power.

Via Marketplace, a production of American Public Media.



Green Energy: Our Future Depends On It

Back in February, 2009, Business Week published my article, Green Energy: Our Future Depends on It. They even asked for a picture – which I was happy to provide.  I just learned that it was picked up by other web-sites:

The article is reproduced below. Continue reading →

Solar Power Enhanced Prius

Solar Prius

Solar Prius

Toyota solves the micro-greenhouse effect of the sun heating a parked car, in the Prius III. The new Prius has a Photovoltaic Solar option. The PV Solar Modules, from Kyocera, power the air conditioner and fan to keep the car cool when it is parked on a hot sunny day. In this generation of the car, the PV Modules will only power the air conditioning system; they will not charge the batteries or the transmission. That, however, may be coming. While it’s expensive, and perhaps more whiz-bang than practical, which can perhaps be said for things like radios, cd players, MP3 players, automatic transmissions, air conditioning, heat – in short everything but the engine, transmission, wheels, seats, doors, and windows, it’s a very cool whiz-bang feature. More observations at the Environment Blog

.

According to Rory Reid, at CNET ,

“By using a combination of a solar panel and an electric motor, Toyota is able to use the power of the sun against itself, save gas, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

“It’s a shame that these particular solar panels can’t be used to power the entire vehicle, but there is hope: A U.S. company called SEV has already demonstrated a modified, solar-powered Prius that improves fuel economy by about 29 percent. According to SEV, this gives you a daily electric-only range of 20 miles.”

As Dylan said, “The times, they are a-changing.” This is a step in the direction of a plug-in solar and bio-diesel powered car.

Silicon Solar’s Portable Solar Power Systems

Silicon Solar has a wider selection of Portable Solar Power Systems than we’d recalled, including some, like the flexible (in fact, rollable) panels pictured below, which are presumably fairly robust. We’re not sure which models/systems can be daisy-chained – one of the principal virtues of the Solar Stik system. We hope to be able to manage, in the near future, a comparison either of the respective specifications – or perhaps even a field test.

Global P3 Flexible Solar Panel - 30 Watt output - weight: 1 lb. from Silicon Solar

Global P3 Flexible Solar Panel - 30 Watt output - weight: 1 lb. from Silicon Solar

The Global P3  – at right – at full capture/output generates 30 watts of energy, sells for a bit over $500 – and weighs, according to Silicon Solar – one pound. For those of you on the Standard Metric system – that slightly less than one kilogram.

We hope that government purchases and other economies of scale push prices down further. However, without having data at hand, we think it safe to say that the weight to yield ratios of solar PV systems has been improving.