San Francisco based Suntech, the world’s largest producer of solar panels, announced it will develop a 10MW solar installation on the roof of the world that will generate decades of clean electricity for thousands of residents of the Tibetan Plateau. Located in Chek Kang village in the Sangri County, Shannan Prefecture, Tibet, the solar power plant will be one of the highest on earth at around 4,000 meters above sea level. With target completion by the middle of the 2011, the facility will generate around 20,000MWh of renewable electricity per year to help facilitate sustainable economic development in Tibet.

Historically, the mountainous region has relied heavily on hydroelectric resources for much of its baseload power production. However, shifting weather patterns in recent years have caused more frequent droughts and reduced water volumes in hydroelectric reservoirs. These changes have led to peak power shortages that are an impediment to the region’s continued economic growth. The new 10MW solar power plant will help to alleviate peak power shortages and serve as a strong complement to existing hydroelectric resources.

“With intense sunlight and cool temperatures, Tibet is extremely well-suited for the utilization of advanced photovoltaic technology,” said Dr. Zhengrong Shi, Suntech’s Founder, Chairman and CEO. “We’re proud to invest in preserving the region’s fragile ecosystem by providing an economically-viable and sustainable solution for electricity generation. From the desert sands of Arizona to the peaks of the Himalayas, anyone can look up and harness nature’s cleanest and most abundant energy resource.”

Suntech has been active in rural electrification projects in Tibet. Over the last few years, Suntech has donated more than fifty independent solar systems for schools, community centers, and houses throughout the region. In 2008, Suntech installed a solar system at Mt. Everest base camp to provide trekkers with clean and reliable access to power. In gratitude, a team of mountaineers carried a Suntech flag to the very peak of the world.

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The sun provides more than enough energy for all our needs, if only we could harness it cheaply and efficiently. Solar energy could provide a clean alternative to fossil fuels, but the high cost of solar cells has been a major barrier to their widespread use. Stanford researchers have found that adding a single layer of organic molecules to a solar cell can increase its efficiency threefold and could lead to cheaper, more efficient solar panels. Their results were published online in ACS Nano.

Chemical engineering Professor Stacey Bent first became interested in a new kind of solar technology two years ago. These solar cells used tiny particles of semiconductors called “quantum dots.” Quantum dot solar cells are cheaper to produce than traditional ones, as they can be made using simple chemical reactions. But despite their promise, they lagged well behind existing solar cells in efficiency.”I wondered if we could use our knowledge of chemistry to improve their efficiency,” Bent said. If she could do that, the reduced cost of these solar cells could lead to mass adoption of the technology. In principle, quantum dot cells can reach much higher efficiency, Bent said, because of a fundamental limitation of traditional solar cells.

Solar cells work by using energy from the sun to excite electrons. The excited electrons jump from a lower energy level to a higher one, leaving behind a “hole” where the electron used to be. Solar cells use a semiconductor to pull an electron in one direction, and another material to pull the hole in the other direction. This flow of electron and hole in different directions leads to an electric current. But it takes a certain minimum energy to fully separate the electron and the hole. The amount of energy required is specific to different materials and affects what color, or wavelength, of light the material best absorbs. Silicon is commonly used to make solar cells because the energy required to excite its electrons corresponds closely to the wavelength of visible light. Read more

PICTURE ECO FASHION

SunPower Corporation just  announced that, under a strategic supply agreement, Toshiba Corporation  will order 48 megawatts of high-efficiency solar panels from SunPower during the 2011 Japanese fiscal year ending March 31, 2012. Toshiba will use the panels to support the company’s residential solar offering in Japan, which was launched last year with a supply agreement for 32 megawatts of SunPower panels.

“Japan is the leader in Asia in the residential solar market, which is an excellent fit for SunPower’s world-leading, high efficiency solar panels,” said SunPower CEO Tom Werner. “We are pleased to extend our partnership with Toshiba, a global business leader, to make high-efficiency SunPower panels available to more homeowners in Japan who value our reliability and guaranteed performance.”

“Since we launched our residential solar business in Japan early last year, we have recorded solid achievements by implementing comprehensive sales and marketing activities, including expansion of sales channels,” said Takeshi Yokota, general manager of Photovoltaic Systems Division, Toshiba Corporation. “We look forward to building on this success and increasing market share in Japan by further reinforcing our partnership with SunPower.”

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