Global Solar Energy Adds Two New Portable Solar Chargers

Portable solar chargers are an up and coming items for those seeking eco-friendly means of portable power on the go. Here at the Consumer Electronics Show this week Global Solar Energy, a manufacturer of Copper Indium Gallium diSelenide (CIGS) thin film solar products, is showcasing a few new models from its SUNLINQ line. These are known as the USB Mini and USB Plus.

The SUNLINQ USB Mini and SUNLINQ USB Plus portable solar chargers are designed to harness the sun’s energy to charge mobile devices like phones, PDAs, iPods, and electronic readers. These chargers deliver energy to these devices directly through a USB port, charging their internal batteries directly rather than storing energy in an internal battery of its own for later charging.

Features of these portable solar chargers include flexible solar energy cells so that the chargers can be laid out or attached to better optimize sunlight, a weather resistant, nylon rip-stop backing, 5-volt standardized USB power and charging under even cloudy or overcast skies.

What is the chemical process that takes place in a solar panel?

On a chemical level, how does a solar panel work? What are the chemicals inside it that react with one another, and how are the chemicals arranged and assembled with the other materials?

Specifically, I’m trying to determine if I could build a solar cell at home, even if it is very inefficient. Any information is appreciated.

Nothing chemical at all – solid state physics at the quantum level – photon of light knock electrons off silicon which are freed to form an electrical circuit that we can use as power.
Because nearly pure silicon is required, there is no way you can build one of these at home.
Heating solar panels are not chemical either – just physical.

Solar Boiler

Efficiency of Solar Cells

Since the introduction of the modern silicon solar cell, the efficiency of solar cells has improved significantly. The first silicon solar cell was created by Bell Labs and shown to the public for the first time on April 25, 1954. This solar cell was able to convert about 6% of the solar energy it collected to electricity.

The silicon solar cell followed the selenium solar cell, which was significantly less efficient. Selenium solar cells only converted about 0.5% of the sun’s energy.

Most research on solar cells since that time has focused mainly on improving efficiency and decreasing manufacturing costs. So far, researchers have succeeded in creating cells with up to 40% efficiency, using exotic materials. However, using these materials significantly increases the production cost; these high-efficiency cells can cost over 100 times as much as ordinary 8% efficient cells to produce. Decreasing production cost may be even more important than improving efficiency in relation to the goal of encouraging more users to adopt solar power.

The total amount of power provided by the sun under ideal conditions is around 1,000 watts per square meter. These are the conditions that are assumed when a specific solar cell’s output specifications are cited. Of course, there are a number of factors that can impact the intensity of sunlight, such as weather, elevation, pollution, and dust. Some events, such as volcanic eruptions, can even reduce sunlight on a worldwide basis for periods of a year or longer. Elevation has an impact on solar cell efficiency in that higher elevation actually brings greater efficiency. This is due to the fact that, as elevation gets higher, the air gets thinner, and the effects of dust and pollution are decreased.

At approximately 14-19% efficiency, multicrystalline solar cells are the most efficient cells currently on the market. However, this kind of cell is not expected to improve much beyond that benchmark. Amorphous silicon cells, on the other hand, although currently about 8% efficient, are widely thought to be the next big thing in solar cell technology.

How to Install a Solar Air Heater

I am not as handy or have as much time on my hands as some.

Therefore I purchased a manufactured solar air heater / collector.

It is a good unit and is providing up to 80 degrees F temperature rise at its peak.

What I did do was to take meticulous notes and pictures of the installation process of the unit against the south wall of our walkout basement.

If you would like to review how we installed it, as well as of the unit itself, you can access our blog entries with lots of pictures here:

Solar Air Heating Installation Series

I will also say that, however, that before investing in any energy conservation product one should undertake the no cost and low cost energy conservation tasks first. This approach will also provide the funds over the short & medium term to pay for the higher cost energy conservation investments.

I hope this helps,

Solar PV Firm Bets on Bioplastic

Shrink Nanotechnologies is one of several companies that is using bioplastics to find a new way of making devices that will minimize the use of increasingly-scarce rare metals.

The company’s OptiSol Solar Concentrator is billed as a nanotechnology-based plastic solar concentrator and solar photovoltaic cells film. Traditional silicon solar cells absorb only a small fraction of the total incident solar radiation potential, with a majority of the light either reflected or converted to thermal energy.

Based on electromagnetic non-optical principles and using a proprietary technology, the OptiSol enhances the capabilities and efficiency of existing solar cell designs by focusing and tuning the incident solar radiation from the sun for optimal silicon absorption, with less of the total spectrum lost as heat or reflection. The goal is to deliver immediate and significant improvements in efficiency and power output.

The product can also be made into clear view solar cells that can be used on windows and for exterior panel siding.

CleanTechies caught up with Shrink Nanotechnologies CEO Mark Baum for three questions.

CleanTechies: Do you have any working installations? Where and when were they deployed?

Mark Baum: We are currently building a final prototype functional OptiSol solar window with our working groups at UC Irvine and UC Merced. To our knowledge, this device — including the first two iterations — are the first functional quantum dot solar concentrators that do not rely on mirrors, lenses or tracking systems. They absorb ambient light at one wavelength and convert it into another (800-900 nm). We use very small amounts of silicon to absorb at the 8-900 nm wavelength, and the efficiency of the silicon is improved as a result of the window design system that the silicon cell is a part of. Our current designs absorb approximately 16% of the light shining onto it and are at an overall efficiency of 5.7%.

To our knowledge, the most efficient concentrator device ever made is at 7%. Relative to the present efficiency numbers we have achieved, the additional differences are in cost. The fact that our window designs are upgradable, allowing the consumer to benefit from better technologies over time, and environmental friendliness as we do not use harmful toxic elements to create these results.

India to Spend $900 Million on Solar

A worker arranges the photovoltaic cell components of a solar module panel at a factory near Bangalore.

Ending months of speculation about exactly what it was planning to do to boost the use of renewable sources of energy, India said this week that it will spend about $900 million on solar energy.

The Indian cabinet approved a plan on Thursday that sets out to increase energy production from solar technology to 20 gigawatts by 2022, up from six megawatts today. The government will spend about 43 billion rupees ($922 million) in the first of three phases of the program. The total cost for all three phases could approach $20 billion.

The government had signaled its intention to invest more heavily in solar technology earlier this year, but had been reluctant to share details. Its latest announcement comes less than three weeks before world leaders are set to meet at Copenhagen to discuss climate change.

Though Indian policy makers have softened their tone on the meeting, they are adamant that they will not agree to any mandated reductions in emissions and have said any targets should be calculated on a per capita basis, something that the United States and other Western powers have resisted.

While India’s stated target for solar power appears ambitious — the United States had nine gigawatts of solar energy capacity at the end of last year — there is significant skepticism about whether the country can meet that target.

India has been very slow to add conventional electricity generating capacity. Government officials estimate that they will fall 20 percent short of their target for new power capacity for the five years that end in 2012. Many Indians have only intermittent power and most industrial users build their own captive power plants to ensure that they have a continuous supply of electricity.

Another big challenge will be reducing the cost of solar power to make it relatively competitive with coal, which is India’s main fuel for power plants. In India, power produced by solar cells costs about 2 and a half times as much as power from coal. The Indian government will likely have to subsidize makers of solar equipment for some time if it wants to achieve its target. The country already subsidies fuels like diesel, kerosene and petroleum for drivers and household use.

Solar Air Heating

Solar air heaters are products which use the direct sun light to generate heat for the home, cottage or any type of building.

As they generate heat, the only form of energy they consume is a minor amount of electricity to run the internal fan to take the cool air from inside the home, push it out to the solar air heater on the south facing wall or roof, cause it to be heated within the solar air heater and then push it back now heated into the home.

And, some of these products use a small solar panel to run the internal fan.

We had many, many visitors to our site, DailyHomeRenoTips.com, throughout the publishing of this series of articles last fall.

So, we thought we would provide on one page all of the links to all of the articles. Since autumn is upon us, now is the time to be planning and ordering such units if you are hoping to have it installed before the snow comes.

And, if you have used a commercially available solar air heater, we would like to hear from your on your experiences, so do drop us a line to Dan@DailyHomeRenoTips.com.

Remember, I am not a professional contractor; I am merely an average home owner writing about our home renovation, maintenance and energy & clean water conservation experiences to help others. Do your own research and analysis as you would before you spend any money on your home.