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GTM Research’s newest report says the regional market will more than triple again in 2015.
Latin America’s Solar Market Grew 370% in 2014, Installed 625MW : Greentech Media
Putting a new kind of photovoltaic material on top of a conventional solar cell can boost overall power output by half. Researchers at Stanford University added a type of material known as a perovskite to a silicon solar cell, validating an idea for cheaply increasing the efficiency of solar power that was first proposed several years ago.
A Cheap Material Is Set to Cut the Cost of Solar | MIT Technology Review
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Last year at this time, First Solar crushed the conversion efficiency mark for cadmium telluride with a world-record 20.4 percent. That figure has been easily eclipsed a year later with a new record of 21.5 percent. And with that mark, First Solar now expects to exceed its 22 percent in 2015 target.
First Solar Hits Record 21.5% Conversion Efficiency : Greentech Media
“Just as shale extraction reconfigured oil and gas, no other technology is closer to transforming power markets than distributed and utility scale solar,” writes Prajit Ghosh, an energy analyst at Wood MacKenzie and the study’s primary author.
Is Solar The Next Shale? - Forbes
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“In 2006,” said GTM Research Director MJ Shiao, “we could buy modules for close to $4 per watt. Today, we can install a residential system for the same price.”
It’s Solar Balance-of-System Innovation That Will Drive Cost Reduction : Greentech Media
International research consultant Wood MacKenzie’s Solar: The Next Shale suggests increasingly affordable distributed and utility-scale solar could transform wholesale power markets in the same way that shale gas supplies have transformed energy markets
NewEnergyNews: SOLAR COULD “TRANFORM” – WOOD MACKENZIE
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02-26-2015, 11:26 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-26-2015, 11:26 PM by admin.)
We've said it before, and we'll say it again. 2015 is going to be a huge year for the solar industry. A photovoltaic system is installed every four minutes in the US. There are now 142,000 jobs in the solar industry alone. Some experts are even saying that rooftop solar will reach grid parity in all 50 states by 2016. The research behind solar energy is booming, too. Scientists are discovering new ways to decrease costs and increase efficiency of solar panels and coming up with creative, impressive ways to generate power. Here are eight examples.
8 crazy new solar research breakthroughs - Yahoo Finance
Researchers at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have for the first time created electricity-generating solar cells with chemicals found in the shells of shrimps and other crustaceans. The materials chitin and chitosan found in the shells are abundant and cheaper to produce than the expensive metals such as ruthenium, which is similar to platinum, that are currently used in making nanostructured solar cells. Currently the efficiency of solar cells made with these biomass-derived materials is low but if it can be improved they could be placed in everything from wearable chargers for tablets, phones and smartwatches, to semi-transparent films over window.
Shrimp shells provide cheap sustainable solar cell material - Electronics Eetimes
French SME, DisaSolar, which specializes in custom made solar modules, has demonstrated the world’s first polychrome photovoltaic module. The module is the result of a three-year program funded by the DGA (Directorate General of Armaments) French army in collaboration with the French academic laboratories CNRS-XLIM-MINACOM and the CEA-INES.
Camouflaged organic solar cells attract architects' attention - Electronics Eetimes
While it's true that cost-effective power storage is going to be a big boon when it does come to market, we simply do not need such innovations to achieve much more renewables penetration than we currently have in the U.S. The facts are 1) the problem of intermittent renewables is overstated, at least at current generation-mix levels; and 2) there are a wide range of already-available solutions that greatly alleviate this problem anyway, without requiring additional storage innovations.
We Don’t Need New Energy Storage Innovations : Greentech Media
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JinkoSolar Q4 results were strong. Ongoing developments are very positive to the future of the company. I'm still long JKS, at least until the project business IPO.
JinkoSolar: Q4 Sheds More Light On The Business - JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. (NYSE:JKS) | Seeking Alpha
Chinese premier Li Keqiang on Thursday renewed pledges to tackle the country’s chronic pollution, without announcing any significant new environmental measures. The Chinese public are increasingly enraged by hazardous smog that regularly blankets cities, as well as water and soil that are laced with heavy metals and various other toxic pollutants.
China vows to fight pollution 'with all our might' | Environment | The Guardian
A University of Cincinnati research partnership has developed a blend of polymers which could make solar cells stronger, lighter, more flexible and less expensive when compared with the current silicon or germanium technology on the market.
Polymer blend improves solar cell efficiency by 200 percent - Electronics Eetimes
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In the US, for instance, we believe solar is currently competitive in more than 14 states without any additional state subsidies. Solar LCOE in these states ranges between 10-15c/kWh and compares to retail electricity price of 12-38c/kWh. By 2016, using our cost estimates, nearly 47 states would be at grid parity in the US, in our view. Similarly in Japan, solar LCOE of ~$0.14/kWh compares to retail electricity price of ~$0.26/kWh. In India, the ratio of coal based electricity to solar electricity was 7:1 roughly 4 years ago. That ratio is now less than 2:1 and likely approaching 1:1 this year.
Solar Electricity Is Competitive Globally: Deutsche - Asia Stocks to Watch - Barrons.com
Solar stocks have been on a tear of late. The news is not just earnings. It is not just low energy prices not being as bad as some investors may have feared. The other driving force is the so-called YieldCo ambitions of the solar companies. 24/7 Wall St. wanted to take a look at the powerful moves that have been seen in the sector.
Earnings and Yieldco News Driving Solar Stocks Higher and Higher - 24/7 Wall St.
The cost of producing solar power in central and southern Europe will have dropped to between €0.04 and €0.06 per kilowatt hour by 2025, the study found. The report, commissioned by NGO Agora Energiewende, revealed that cost would plummet to between two to four cents by 2050. The research only used “conservative assumptions” about possible future technological breakthroughs in solar, and did not factor in innovations that could make electricity cheaper either. Currently, large solar plants in Germany currently deliver power for less than nine cents. According to the study, electricity from new coal and gas-fired plants costs between five and ten cents per kilowatt hour. Nuclear plants charge 11 cents, the report, published today (24 February), said.
Solar could be cheaper than coal and gas by 2025, study says | EurActiv
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India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, made headlines last fall by announcing his ambition to install 100 gigawatts of solar power capacity—over 30 times more than India has now—by 2022. Skeptics noted Modi’s lack of a detailed plan and budget, but some well-capitalized industrial players have apparently caught Modi’s solar fever: at a renewable energy summit called by Modi last month he collected pledges for 166 gigawatts of solar projects.1
India’s Solar Ambitions Face Challenges | MIT Technology Review
Researchers from the University of Granada and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a theoretical model for an atomic switch that could facilitate the design of more efficient solar panels and more robust quantum computers.
Looking at quantum symmetry for better solar panels - Electronics Eetimes
The idea of powering humanity by gathering an endless supply of solar energy from space has taken a huge step towards becoming a reality. Scientists working for JAXA, Japan's space administration, have announced a major breakthrough in wireless power transmission
Given the smaller system size, home installations are more costly than commercial or utility installations. However, by the end of 2014, residential rooftop PV system installed prices averaged $3.48 per watt, down from $3.83 cents per watt in the first three months of 2014. This represents the largest absolute decline across any of the market segments. According to the report, soft costs like customer acquisition, labor, and permitting make up 60 percent of system prices, and there is ample opportunity for improvement and efficiencies which will continue to lower system costs.
Solar PV Pricing Continues to Fall During a Record-Breaking 2014 : Greentech Media
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The GPM analyses show that full grid parity has been reached in several countries: Australia, Chile (Copiapó , Germany, Italy, Japan and Mexico for DAC consumers. The decreasing trend of installation costs, one of the main drivers of the cost of PV generation (expressed as LCOE), has recently slowed down in mature markets. Overall, from 2009 to 2014, the LCOE in the residential segment decreased in all of the cities analysed: from a 28% annual decline in Australia to a 5% in Spain. Figure 1: Evolution of PV LCOE for residential consumers from 2009 to 2014 (1st half)
NewEnergyNews: TODAY’S STUDY: RESIDENTIAL SOLAR APPROACHES GRID PARITY
Caltech has invented a technique to produce graphene at room temperature which could help pave the way for commercially feasible graphene-based solar cells and light-emitting diodes, large-panel displays and flexible electronics.
Graphene-based solar cells and LEDs take step closer - Electronics Eetimes
China raised its solar target for 2015, promising to add almost 2 1/2 times as much capacity as the U.S. added last year, as it races to clear its increasingly polluted air. The world’s biggest emitter of carbon aims to install as much as 17.8 gigawatts of solar projects in 2015
China Boosts Solar Target for 2015 as It Fights Pollution - Bloomberg Business
An EU-funded research project is claiming a number of successes at its mid-term review of technologies being developed to facilitate roll-to-roll (R2R) production of organic optoelectronic devices such as solar cells and LED lighting panels.
Roll-to-roll printing of organic solar cells and LEDs - Electronics Eetimes
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there anything better than powering your home with solar? The electricity generation comes with no air or water pollution. There are no carbon dioxide emissions to contribute to climate change, outside of the manufacture of solar panels. Because they're on roofs, land use impact is basically nil. Solar power generates more jobs per unit of energy than fossil fuels, and those jobs can't be outsourced because construction is local by definition. It also consumes much less water than sources like coal, natural gas, or nuclear, preventing strains on community supplies.
Can Google bring solar power to the masses?
One possible breakthrough, however, is becoming clearer—literally. The engineers at Ubiquitous Energy are developing solar panels that are completely transparent and as thin as a laminate. They can do this by creating see-through solar cells that absorb only the invisible parts of the solar spectrum—ultraviolet and infrared radiation.
See-Through Solar Is Tomorrow’s Threat to Oil - Bloomberg Business
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California is now the first U.S. state to get 5 percent of its annual utility-scale electricity from the sun. But that's really understating what just happened. The chart above, released this week by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, shows that in just one year, big solar jumped from 1.9 percent to 5 percent of the state's total power generation. California isn't just producing the most utility-scale solar electricity of any state; it's producing more than all the other states combined.
California Just Had a Stunning Increase in Solar - Bloomberg Business
Costa Rica deserves a huge round of applause, and perhaps even a high five, for managing to produce all of its electricity from renewables for 75 days straight. According to the state-owned Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE), the country hasn't had to burn fossil fuels to supply the grid with electricity so far in 2015, a stretch that has never been previously attained by any nation.
Costa Rica has run on completely renewable energy all year - Business Insider
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