THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for March, 2010

The European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) released figures yesterday showing that the global solar photovoltaic industry had a record year in 2009. But it is expecting a lot from 2010 as well.

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This is a lesson to all weeds: dream big.  Camelina is a scrawny looking plant that also goes by the unflattering moniker “false flax,” yet it may turn out to be the biofuel of choice for U.S. military aircraft.  The U.S. Air Force has just announced the successful flight of an A-10C Thunderbolt II using a blend of half camelina and half conventional jet fuel, and it plans to test the blend on additional aircraft over the next couple of years.  Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy has also set its sights on camelina-based jet fuel.

Weed though it may be, camelina has also been cultivated as an oilseed crop for centuries and therein lies its charm, sustainably speaking.  Camelina been championed by a number of biofuel companies including Sustainable Oils, which has supplied camelina biofuel for both the Air Force and the Navy test runs.  The company may soon have company; Shell (yes, the petroleum company) is set on becoming the biggest of the big-oil companies to use biofuel as a profitability-booster.

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Rapid growth of the solar photovoltaic industry in Europe in recent years has created an extremely fertile market for not only the solar photovoltaic industry, but also for the solar inverter industry. Inverters are devices that are installed in line with solar arrays to convert the direct current (DC) electricity it produces into stable, usable alternating current (AC) found in homes and on the power grid.

The market for inverters has been so robust, in fact, that analysts are suggesting the PV inverter market is set to more than double over the coming years, growing to an estimated $8 billion annually in the next four years.

But because of that healthy PV demand and the fact that there are a growing number of new entrants into the sector, the solar solar inverter industry supply chain is fluid and a bit unstable. (more…)

So who knew? The manufacture of cooking oil involves hexane, a solvent that separates the oil from crushed seeds.  Hexane is a volatile organic compound found in gasoline.  Hexane is also a degreaser used in the printing industry.  It dissolves glues, varnishes, and inks.  Aside from the ick factor of having the same compound used to dissolve glues and inks pop up in the production of your bake sale items, hexane is a pollutant that contributes to smog and greenhouse gas emissions.

This is where Queens University of Ontario, Canada comes in.  Researchers there have discovered a new energy efficient way to use the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide to help separate oils from seed and vegetable crops including corn, canola, peanut safflower, sunflower, and soybean.  That’s the sustainable twofer we’re so fond of: a new twist on a conventional process that reduces negative impacts while providing a remedy for additional problems as well.

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It looks like our energy future is at least partly in the hands of cows, now that agribusiness giant Cargill has joined the manure-to-biogas gold rush.  The company has just announced that its second biogas project is up and running at the Bettencourt Dairy B6 Farm in Jerome, Idaho.   Using manure produced by the farm’s 6,000 cows, the biogas project is generating enough renewable methane to make electricity for about 1,100 typical homes.  That’s just the latest installation in a trend that is seeing manure-to-biogas facilities popping up on farms across the United States like mushrooms after a rain.

This is Cargill’s third foray into dairy cow biogas in Idaho.  The venture also boosts the company’s involvement in the global renewable energy market, because it will generate about 28,000 tons of carbon emissions offsets.  It underscores how rapidly the renewable energy sector is growing from small scale experimental roots  into a fully commercialized global market force that is chewing away at the dominance of fossil fuels.

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