- Email: [email protected]
UK delegation visits Japanese PV, London dissemination event
NEWS systems offer high quality as well as simple and easy installation, and thus can be marketed through a wide range of sales channels, including consumer electrical goods stores and electrical contractor outlets. In the future, Sharp plans to aggressively promote the development of easily manageable, clean systems to meet the demand for electricity and which are appropriate to the economic conditions in these non-electrified areas. To expand demand even further, it also intends to introduce these systems to markets in Europe, the Americas and Japan as convenient AC power generating systems. For more information on Sharp Corporation, go to: sharp-world.com
Sunny Boy inverter gains UL approval German solar power inverter manufacturer SMA has gained Underwriters Laboratories (UL) approval of its Sunny Boy 1100 W gridtie inverter. The approval means that SMA can now offer the US market a complete line of inverters. The approval of the 1100 inverter follows recent UL approval of the company’s Sunny Boy 700 inverter. The two endorsements mean that the Sunny Boy product line is now broad enough to offer solutions for all system sizes. SMA offers the Sunny Boy inverters at 700 W, 1100 W, 1800 W and 2500 W ratings for solar electric PV installations. All units offer system modularity, and are designed as grid-tie inverters ideal for residential or commercial PV applications. For more information on SMA, go to: www.sma.de or www.sma-america.com
Kyocera Solar aids Nigerian village US-based Kyocera Solar recently supplied solar products and technical support for a unique rural electrification project designed to pump water and power homes, schools, clinics, mosques and local micro-enterprises in three agriculture-based villages in Nigeria. The project will strive to spawn a grassroots solar industry that can sustain its momentum with new jobs and businesses that focus on system installation and maintenance. It is jointly sponsored by the US Agency for International Development, the US Department of Energy and the Government of Jigawa State in Nigeria.
November 2003
The Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), a nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC with extensive experience in developing village electrification, is supplying management and onsite assistance. For more information on Kyocera Solar, go to: www.kyocerasolar.com For more information on the Solar Electric Light Fund, go to: www.self.org
Princeton researchers develop large-area organic PV Engineers at the Center for Photonics & Optoelectronic Materials (POEM), the Department of Electrical Engineering and the Princeton Materials Institute at Princeton University in New Jersey have invented a technique for making solar cells that could lead to a highly economical source of energy. The results, reported recently in Nature, move scientists closer to a new class of solar cells that are not as efficient as conventional ones, but could be much less expensive and more versatile. The materials are ultra-thin and flexible, and could be applied to large surfaces. Organic solar cells could be manufactured in a process something like printing or spraying the materials onto a roll of plastic, says Peter Peumans, a graduate student in the lab of electrical engineering professor, Stephen Forrest. Peumans and Forrest co-wrote the paper in collaboration with Soichi Uchida, a researcher visiting Princeton from Nippon Oil Company in Japan. The cells could also be made in different colors, making them attractive architectural elements, or they could be transparent so they could be applied to windows. The Forrest group changed the organic compounds used to make their solar cells, yielding devices with efficiencies of more than 3%. The most recent advance reported in Nature involves a new method for forming the organic film, which increased the efficiency by half as much again. The researchers are now planning to combine the new materials and techniques. Doing so could yield at least 5% efficiency, which would make the technology attractive to commercial manufacturers. By comparison, conventional silicon chipbased solar cells are about 24% efficient. ‘Organic solar cells will be cheaper to make, so in the end the cost of a watt of electricity will be lower than that of conventional materials,’ explains Peumans.
Solar cells are made of two types of materials sandwiched together: one that gives up electrons and another that attracts them, allowing a flow of electricity. The Princeton researchers figured out how to make those two materials mesh together like interlocking fingers, so there is more opportunity for the electrons to transfer. The key to this advance was to apply a metal cap to the film of material as it is being made. The cap allows the surface of the material to stay smooth and uniform while the internal microstructure changes and meshes together – an unexpected result, says Forrest. The researchers then developed a mathematical model to explain the behavior, which will likely prove useful in creating other micromaterials. For more information on the Optoelectronic Components & Materials Group at Princeton, go to: www.ee.princeton.edu/~ocmweb The Nature paper is available at: www.nature.com/ cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v425/ n6954/abs/nature01949_fs.html
UK delegation visits Japanese PV, London dissemination event The aim of a recent UK Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) initiative was to gain firsthand information to help accelerate the UK’s position by interaction with counterparts in some leading Japanese facilities. The results of two complementary visits will be shared with the UK’s PV community through a single dissemination event in London on Tuesday 18 November. The DTI initiative, called the ‘Global Watch Mission’, made two visits to Japan in 2003. The first mission was sponsored by one of the UK’s regional development agencies, Advantage West Midlands (AWM), and set out to identify the current status of the PV industry in Japan, and the deployment of PV technology in the country. The second mission was organized and sponsored by the Integration of New & Renewable Energy in Buildings (INREB) Faraday Partnership. This mission was to consider the processes required for the incorporation of low-carbon technologies into buildings, and study how PV is being integrated into buildings. For a copy of the mission report and details of the dissemination event, contact: Dr Geoff Hogan, ERIN Consulting Ltd, UK. Tel: +44 (0)1865 883416, Email: [email protected]
Photovoltaics Bulletin
9
Sunny Boy inverter gains UL approval German solar power inverter manufacturer SMA has gained Underwriters Laboratories (UL) approval of its Sunny Boy 1100 W gridtie inverter. The approval means that SMA can now offer the US market a complete line of inverters. The approval of the 1100 inverter follows recent UL approval of the company’s Sunny Boy 700 inverter. The two endorsements mean that the Sunny Boy product line is now broad enough to offer solutions for all system sizes. SMA offers the Sunny Boy inverters at 700 W, 1100 W, 1800 W and 2500 W ratings for solar electric PV installations. All units offer system modularity, and are designed as grid-tie inverters ideal for residential or commercial PV applications. For more information on SMA, go to: www.sma.de or www.sma-america.com
Kyocera Solar aids Nigerian village US-based Kyocera Solar recently supplied solar products and technical support for a unique rural electrification project designed to pump water and power homes, schools, clinics, mosques and local micro-enterprises in three agriculture-based villages in Nigeria. The project will strive to spawn a grassroots solar industry that can sustain its momentum with new jobs and businesses that focus on system installation and maintenance. It is jointly sponsored by the US Agency for International Development, the US Department of Energy and the Government of Jigawa State in Nigeria.
November 2003
The Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), a nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC with extensive experience in developing village electrification, is supplying management and onsite assistance. For more information on Kyocera Solar, go to: www.kyocerasolar.com For more information on the Solar Electric Light Fund, go to: www.self.org
Princeton researchers develop large-area organic PV Engineers at the Center for Photonics & Optoelectronic Materials (POEM), the Department of Electrical Engineering and the Princeton Materials Institute at Princeton University in New Jersey have invented a technique for making solar cells that could lead to a highly economical source of energy. The results, reported recently in Nature, move scientists closer to a new class of solar cells that are not as efficient as conventional ones, but could be much less expensive and more versatile. The materials are ultra-thin and flexible, and could be applied to large surfaces. Organic solar cells could be manufactured in a process something like printing or spraying the materials onto a roll of plastic, says Peter Peumans, a graduate student in the lab of electrical engineering professor, Stephen Forrest. Peumans and Forrest co-wrote the paper in collaboration with Soichi Uchida, a researcher visiting Princeton from Nippon Oil Company in Japan. The cells could also be made in different colors, making them attractive architectural elements, or they could be transparent so they could be applied to windows. The Forrest group changed the organic compounds used to make their solar cells, yielding devices with efficiencies of more than 3%. The most recent advance reported in Nature involves a new method for forming the organic film, which increased the efficiency by half as much again. The researchers are now planning to combine the new materials and techniques. Doing so could yield at least 5% efficiency, which would make the technology attractive to commercial manufacturers. By comparison, conventional silicon chipbased solar cells are about 24% efficient. ‘Organic solar cells will be cheaper to make, so in the end the cost of a watt of electricity will be lower than that of conventional materials,’ explains Peumans.
Solar cells are made of two types of materials sandwiched together: one that gives up electrons and another that attracts them, allowing a flow of electricity. The Princeton researchers figured out how to make those two materials mesh together like interlocking fingers, so there is more opportunity for the electrons to transfer. The key to this advance was to apply a metal cap to the film of material as it is being made. The cap allows the surface of the material to stay smooth and uniform while the internal microstructure changes and meshes together – an unexpected result, says Forrest. The researchers then developed a mathematical model to explain the behavior, which will likely prove useful in creating other micromaterials. For more information on the Optoelectronic Components & Materials Group at Princeton, go to: www.ee.princeton.edu/~ocmweb The Nature paper is available at: www.nature.com/ cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v425/ n6954/abs/nature01949_fs.html
UK delegation visits Japanese PV, London dissemination event The aim of a recent UK Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) initiative was to gain firsthand information to help accelerate the UK’s position by interaction with counterparts in some leading Japanese facilities. The results of two complementary visits will be shared with the UK’s PV community through a single dissemination event in London on Tuesday 18 November. The DTI initiative, called the ‘Global Watch Mission’, made two visits to Japan in 2003. The first mission was sponsored by one of the UK’s regional development agencies, Advantage West Midlands (AWM), and set out to identify the current status of the PV industry in Japan, and the deployment of PV technology in the country. The second mission was organized and sponsored by the Integration of New & Renewable Energy in Buildings (INREB) Faraday Partnership. This mission was to consider the processes required for the incorporation of low-carbon technologies into buildings, and study how PV is being integrated into buildings. For a copy of the mission report and details of the dissemination event, contact: Dr Geoff Hogan, ERIN Consulting Ltd, UK. Tel: +44 (0)1865 883416, Email: [email protected]
Photovoltaics Bulletin
9