THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for October, 2010

Envision Solar has long made large commercial solar arrays for large commercial parking lot installations. Tomorrow, its first single vehicle Solar Socket goes on display for the first time at the California Center for Sustainable Energy in San Diego.

Each shade structure holds a 1.8 kW array, which provides enough electricity to fully charge the electric vehicles they provide shade for; making 8-10 kWh in a six hour day. Thus, this one, the smallest unit the company makes, is specifically designed to provide enough power to fully charge the Chevy Volt during a six hour day while parked there.

This is their first solar electric vehicle charger with a residential application, and COO Desmond Wheatley is very excited about the engineering challenges they were able to address because of this, enabling a “tree” shape with a single “trunk”. Each Solar Socket is perfectly engineered to power just one car, and the trunk enables the use of a finely engineered tracking system to gently move the array to maximize power production. The tracker boosts the power production by 25%.

But Wheatley told me that he also envisions parking lots full of these Solar Sockets, all gently following the sun in unison: “Quite a sight from out of your office window!” He assured me that because it is so carefully balanced – and of course, the tracking needs only an infinitesimal movement each time it moves to stay with the sun – that the tracker uses only a negligible amount of the power it produces.

This particular unit is designed to be portable, by GM’s request, because it is traveling to shows around the US over the next few months, so instead of the ” trunk” of the solar tree being rooted in the ground, this sample has these orange “feet” under the car, with the car providing ballast. But to install one in the ground, he says it would take about a five foot hole in the ground to set the 8″ pipe into a concrete footing.

The shade provided by the solar array also provides an additional benefit, he says, since 80% of the energy needed in an EV can easily go to cooling the battery. Cars parked in the sun can get to 150 degrees, which – as hard as that is for you or me, is actually even harder on the battery. The shade provided as the sun crosses this on an average sunny day cuts this to about 100 degrees, which helps to keep the batteries from freaking out while you’re at work!

Each measures six feet across and sixteen feet in length – which, serendipitously enough, is the exact size of a typical parking space, and also about the size of the average driveway at home.

Susan Kraemer@Twitter

AQT Solar’s CEO Michael Bartholomeusz discusses how the company leverages the equipment and expertise from HDD manufacturing to build CIGS solar cells, in a podcast interview for Solar Power International (SPI) 2010.

The following is a special guest post from the President of OnGreen.com, Stanley Holt (more info on Stanley and OnGreen.com is on the bottom of this post). I know a number of our regular readers are clean tech experts and entrepreneurs, so I’m hoping the following opportunity is useful to some of you.

USC Energy and Stevens Institutes, CleanTech Los Angeles and OnGreen.com are hosting an invitation-only green technology showcase on November 16, 2010 at USC: Building Sustainable Cities Through Green Innovation.

We are looking for promising green start-ups from the greater Los Angeles area to demonstrate at this event, which will have 150-200 attendees from the business and investor community, academia, government and the media.  If you are an early-stage green company based around L.A. — or considering a move to L.A. — this event is a great opportunity for networking and exposure.

Planned participants include:

• The City of Los Angeles
• USC Stevens Institute
• CleanTech LA of the City of Los Angeles
• OnGreen.com
• UCLA
• Department for Housing and Urban Development
• OECD: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Featured speakers (invited) include:

• Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
• Raphael Bostic, Assistant Secretary from the U.S. Dept of Housing and Urban Development

For demonstrations, we are seeking technologies with applications in the Housing area. Examples include:

• Energy Efficiency
• Water Purification
• Air Purification
• Construction & Building Materials
• Food technologies
• Renewable Energy

To apply to demo at this program, there is a 3-step submission process — and all three steps are completely free:

1. Register for an account on OnGreen. Click here to go to the registration page. Takes about 2 minutes.

2. Create an overview of your technology and business plan at OnGreen’s Green Exchange. Takes about 30 minutes. http://www.ongreen.com/deal-marketplace

3. Email the URL of your OnGreen overview to: usc@ongreen.com.

To be eligible for the event, overviews must be filled out completely on OnGreen.com and submitted by October 29, 2010. If your company is NOT seeking funding at this time, leave the “Amount Sought” field blank when filling out the overview.  Winners will be announced during the first week of November, and they’ll be chosen based on the following criteria:

• Proximity to Los Angeles (or interest in locating there)
• Fit with housing/community theme of event
• Quality and comprehensiveness of company overview
• Views and reviews of company overview on OnGreen.com

If you have any questions, please email usc@ongreen.com.  We’d be happy to get on the phone to discuss.

Stanley Holt is President of OnGreen.com, a B2B social network that drives investment to the most promising green tech ideas. Stan previously managed media divisions at eHarmony and Internet Brands, and before that he was a reporter in Latin America.  More than 200 entrepreneurs from 30+ countries have posted business plans on OnGreen, and a September survey indicated that more than half are contacted by potential investors as a result of being on the site.

Photo Credit: johnwilliamsphd via flickr under a CC license

In an article in the New York Times, US to Investigate China’s Clean Energy Aid, Senator Schumer voiced a complaint that China is engaging in unfair trade practices by supporting clean energy development with government funds.

Schumer is right. It is unfair. Don’t they know we are a plutocracy! How can we compete? The US is unable to emulate china in this level of support, because our hands are tied. The corporate control of all the Senate Republicans (and two or three Senate Democrats) in this country by the fossil fuel industry effectively eliminates competition by the newer renewable energy industry.

Chinese legislation encourages renewable energy. It nationalized its transmission in two weeks in order to allow huge amounts of new renewable energy. It passed legislation requiring utilities buy any and all the renewable energy put onto the grid, along with a clear cap and trade policy, a national Feed in tariff, and this week a carbon tax, all of which encourages investment with the market certainty that investors need, and the results have been both predictable and astoundingly encouraging.

But now the losers are complaining.

It’s not China’s fault. It is our fault. We have Senate rules that allow a minority party to prevent votes on clean energy. Senate Republicans are now openly and officially committed by party platform to fossil energy protection for the foreseeable future, since now only climate deniers need apply. They must now adhere to the the fossil industry’s no “climate tax” pledge, advanced by one of its many front groups, Americans for Prosperity.

The one clean energy investment splurge we have been able to do in the last thirty years, within the stimulus bill in March (not the Bank Bailout bill of 2008) was during a freak event.

Democrats held 60 seats in the Senate for a few months before Kennedy died, for the first time since Republicans started using the 60 vote tactic to prevent simple majority votes a few decades ago.

The Recovery Act invested a one time $90 billion in renewable energy to build 16 Gigawatts of renewable energy, which will have doubled renewables once all spent. Some of it is in the form of investment tax credits for next year, some of it in the form of grants funded only once the new clean energy farms open for business. This was the greatest investment in thirty years.

But the US Senate is unlikely to ever write policy that is as progressive again.

Susan Kraemer@Twitter

Eurostar announced a little more than a week ago that is was planning to invest £700 million ($1.114 billion) in its rolling stock and that the company would have some of the greenest trains in the world by 2014 as a result.

Siemens, based in Germany, is the company Eurostar said would be awarded the contract to manufacture the new, energy-efficient electric trains. The e3202 high-speed trains Eurostar would be provided with are:

“an updated version of Siemens’ Velaro, the fastest high-speed train in the world, which over a distance of 100km consumes 0.33 litres of petrol equivalent per seat – about the same as a can of cola – and produces at least three times less CO2 per person-kilometre than a standard passenger flight.”

The e3202 trains are expected to go up to 320 kph (200 mph), making it possible for up to 900 passengers to go from London to Paris in a little over two hours.

Sounds great, right? Not according to the transport minister of France.

French Transport Minister Says Siemens Trains Not Safe

While the trains above might sound great to us, the French Minister of Transport, Dominique Bussereau, has a different opinion, claiming these high-speed trains will not meet safety standards.

“The French transport minister has attacked the safety credentials of Eurostar’s new green high-speed trains in an extraordinary outburst on live television,” Business Green reports.

France Bitter Alstom Trains Weren’t Chosen by Eurostar?

The problem might come from the fact that French engineering company Alstom was not selected to provide Eurostar with the trains. Up until this point, Alstom has manufactured all of the trains running through the channel tunnel.

“The decision Eurostar took is null and void,” Bussereau said. ”We have told the management of Eurotunnel and Eurostar that material other than Alstom material cannot be used.”

Bussereau said the Siemens trains were not long enough to safely evacuate the tunnel in a fire.

The Channel Tunnel Intergovernmental Commission and Eurostar disagree.

Eurostar says that it intends to “proceed as planned” and Siemens has not commented on this issue.

Photo Credit: victoriapeckham via flickr under a CC license