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POPSAlternative Energy News This site is an open source for news and information about renewable energy technologies. Browse the articles and press releases, the latest news, discussion forums, and mix-up of other media from sources like Flickr and YouTube. Our goal is to raise awareness about clean energy sources using any means necessary. Got an idea? Contact us.
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POPSCheaper than Coal... Several solar companies have announced that they can produce solar panels that have a cheaper dollars per watt price tag than coal. While these don't seem to have reached the domestic market yet, it's and interesting development.
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POPSPhotovoltaics - How they Work It'd be nice to see a video of this.... The photovoltaic effect was first discovered in 1839. The first photovoltaic cells were made in 1918. Since then Einstein developed photovoltaics. There was a lot of research and development during the 1960's Space Race, when satellites were powered by solar panels. The 1970's saw the beginning of residential solar use. For houses living far off the electricity grid, photovoltaics made financial sense. Prices have since fallen from $30 a watt down to $7 a watt for residential installations. Now due to technology advancing and power costs rising, the price of solar energy is still falling. The future of solar energy looks bright indeed.
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POPSThin Film Photovoltaics Thin film photovoltaics are an interesting develpment. Fuelled by a worldwide shortage of silicon (caused by a huge growth in demand for solar energy) thin film solar has risen in popularity. While less efficient (now) than traditional solar panels, thin film is cheaper to produce.
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POPSGreening the Big Blue Cleantechblog offer some tantalising speculation about IBMs move into the solar cell business. Greenwash, or clean-up? We will have a better idea in the next eighteen months.
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POPSSuperefficient solar cells 2x as conventional silicon cells Because energy from the sun, although abundant, is diffuse, generating one gigawatt of power (the size of a typical utility-scale plant) using traditional photovoltaics requires a four-square-mile area of silicon, says Jerry Olson, a research scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Golden, CO. A concentrator system, he says, would replace most of the silicon with plastic or glass lenses or metal reflectors, requiring only as much semiconductor material as it would take to cover an area the size of a typical backyard.
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POPSSolar breakthrough: now households can power the grid Australia's future energy may be secured by a grid of good, old fashioned, trusty nuclear. Nuclear families, that is, and the roofs over their heads linked into a giant electranet, if the following breakthrough in photovoltaic cells holds true to its market promise.
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POPSTransparent Solar Cells Become Safer Previously, transparent solar cells used toxic liquids that were prone to evaporating. A new method uses safer and less-volatile ingredients. The result is a bit less efficient than opaque photovoltaics, but their transparency and their acceptance of a much wide incident angle of light means that things like windows and skylights can also be energy collectors. (Note - the picture is not of these new cells)
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POPSSolar powered cars...coming soon i hope The more progress we make in devloping alternative, renewable sources of energy, the more we stick it to the corrupt regemes in the middle east...if only that seemed like a priority of the Bush administration.
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