THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for April, 2010

Despite the economic recession, the solar industry grew significantly in 2009. The solar industry added 17,000 jobs to the US economy in 2009. Installed solar capacity grew by approximately 37%. And we saw a serious drop in the cost of solar. (more info and graphs below)

46,000 jobs are supported by the solar industry now, but that number is expected to climb to over 60,000 by the end of 2010.

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A pyramid-scale solar power plant is well under way in Kuraymat, Egypt, and the 150 megawatt giant could prove to be a key indicator for the success of a much larger project such as the pharaohs could only dream of.  That would be the international DESERTEC solar power network, which would rim northern Africa with solar and wind power plants capable of supplying solar energy to European markets. It’s an ambitious plan that rests on two key elements – the ability to collect solar energy on a massive scale, and the ability to transmit it.

As reported in Energy Boom, the Kuraymat plant will tackle the collection half of the equation.  It will consist of 2,000 solar collectors covering 130,000 square meters.  A solar thermal facility, it is designed to collect solar energy in the form of heat rather than directly converting it to electricity as is the case with photovoltaic cells.

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Two vulcanologists published a paper in 2008 suggesting that as climate change continues, the next decades could see more volcanic activity in regions such as Iceland that are now under ice.

Climate change could spark off more volcanic eruptions in the now frozen volcanic rim regions, Alaska, Patagonia and Antarctica and Iceland says Dr Carolina Pagli,  at Leeds University; one of the authors of the research. As ice melts above volcanic rocks they are able to expand to turn into magma more readily as pressure from above is reduced.

Global warming melts ice and this can influence magmatic systems, says Dr Freysteinn Sigmundsson, the paper’s other author, at the Nordic Volcanological Centre at the University of Iceland.  “Our work suggests that eventually there will be either somewhat larger eruptions or more frequent eruptions in Iceland in coming decades.” (more…)

Scientists in Spain and Germany are working on a new material that could set the refrigeration industry back 80 years – in a good way, that is.  As reported by Science Daily, instead of fluorinated gasses the new material is a solid, like the familiar old blocks of ice from a bygone era only in a high tech form for the sustainable new millenium.

The push to find alternatives to fluorinated gasses (HFCs) is urgent, because they have been identified as a group of particularly powerful and long lasting greenhouse gasses that contribute to global warming.  Mechanical refrigeration will enter more households as the world’s population grows and more regions adopt modern technology, so the potential market for a non-polluting alternative to HFC’s is enormous.

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As I discussed yesterday, it looks like streetcars are making a comeback. Curious about which cities are on the move? The Community Streetcar Coalition held a summit earlier this year in Alexandria, Virginia where it brought together people working to get new streetcars running in 22 cities across the nation.

Cities that may be constructing streetcar lines within a year or two are below, as well as a few insights on and expectations for those most likely to be built.

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