Rain Drops Powered Solar Panels: Electric Rain

Over the years, advancement in technology has helped in harvesting sun’s energy to maximum potential using solar panels. A recent development takes solar technology to the next level, here, the technology will not only help in generating electricity during rainfalls but also when the sky is covered with clouds. Thus, rain and sun both can trigger the innovative solar cell design. 

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Tesla Powerwall: Energy Storage System for a Sustainable Home

Elon Musk aka Tony Stark of the real life leave no stone unturned when it comes to denting the universe. He concretizes stuff which we can only dream off. His idea of privatizing space travel with Space X, revolutionizing conventional automobile mechanics by introducing electric cars via Tesla motors, his unconventional open tube transport system, the Hyperloop are not the ‘only’ examples of his unlimited desire for uplifting the future of humanity. He has now come up with an energy storage system for home users, called the Powerwall.

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Solar Power Farms scorching Birds to Death: Solar facilities to Avian Extinction

During the testing of 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project near Tonopah, Nevada, 130 birds were caught by fire mid-air. As per the experts glow of the farm’s tower might have been the reason that have led to the attraction for the birds, however, the owners of the project said that they would devise a way of reducing such fatalities in the future.

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Affordable Artificial Leaf to produce Clean Hydrogen Fuel: Nanowire Mesh for Direct Solar Water Splitting

Today nations across the world are trying to cut down their greenhouse gas emissions. Alternative energy sources are being tried and tested to replace non-renewable fuel sources and in this race, hydrogen fuel also known as zero emission fuel, definitely seems to have a promising future. Many automobile companies are doing R & D to come up with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the auto market. Unfortunately, availability of naturally occurring pure hydrogen on Earth is very limited and therefore, production of hydrogen gas requires tremendous energy. To overcome this…

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New Spray-on Solar Cells: Thin-film Photovoltaic Technology

In an interesting way, a group of researchers at the University of Sheffield was able to develop perovskite solar cells with the help of spray-painting process. Although the process is not new but using perovskite as a spraying material is being employed for the first time. Sheffield’s experts from the department of Physics and Biological Engineering have already used the spray-painting process to fabricate solar cells but the material used was organic semiconductors. In 2012, the researchers were able to successfully demonstrate the efficiency of photovoltaics based on organometal halide…

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World’s Largest Wind Solar Hybrid: Saving Over $2 Million in Energy Costs

Lately, in Jamaica wind-solar array has been installed, which happens to be the world’s first such arrangement. This hybrid array boasts of providing the maximum renewable energy density of any technology on the market. Energy limit of more than 106,000 kWh is expected to churn out yearly. WindStream Technologies, the renewable energy tech firm envision that the longevity of the project is around 25 years and the energy cost savings is graphed to go beyond $US 2 million. However, the return on investment will start showing itself within the consequent…

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Photovoltaic Panels and Agave Cultivation: A New Model for Solar Farms

“Agrivoltaics” is relatively a new concept that involves cultivating plants like agave in the spaces between and beneath the photovoltaic panels which allow solar plants to use sunlight for electricity generation and also providing crops for biofuels. It offers optimal solutions for problems that are associated with large solar plants. The solar plants located in the arid regions require constant cleaning of its panels from dust, sand particles or bird droppings. The process of cleaning requires water, which apart from cleaning the panels, dampen the soil to suppress the dust…

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Water Free Robotic Cleaning System Takes Over The Ketura Sun Solar Park

The increasing consumption of electricity, due to rise in population and limited availability of natural resources, countries have been focusing on generating energy from alternative sources. Sun energy in one among them and is widely preferreddue to its long hours availability at no cost at all. Though its conversion technology involves crystalline panels and other components, the panels require a regular look after to sustain effectively for years and decades. The large capacity solar plants consisting huge number of these panels suffer some difficulty in smooth operations as dust, sand…

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High Haze Paper Might Replace The Plastic Substrates Of Solar Cells

Paper coming from wood fibers would now be replacing plastic substrates that are employed in the manufacturing solar cells. Researchers from University of Maryland, the South China University of Technology, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have proposed this evolutionary step towards future technology. As per the researchers, solar cells gives maximum output when the materials involve have high optical transparency and high optical haze. Diffusion of light is of high quality when the optical transparency is high. And high optical haze helps in increasing the scattering of light which further…

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Sinfonia’s Robot Up For Cleaning Solar Panels

We already know the importance of solar energy in this era when our regular fuel sources are being depleted. Need of the hour is to construct bigger solar plants to meet with the ever rising demand. However, it is not easy to maintain such immense Solar Plants. Dust particles, bird droppings or sand grains, bar the sunlight and result in lowering the overall output of the plants by 30% in just one month (as per some research). However, until now there was no cost effective and potent solution for the…

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Solar Energy Saved For Nights And Rainy Days

Solar energy, the outcome of the most innovative technology employed ever to harness sun’s energy. It is being widely used as an alternative source of energy mainly for electricity generation, transportation (solar car), in agriculture & horticulture (greenhouse), solar water heater to name a few. Nevertheless, there are certain drawbacks with solar energy, for instance, cost involved in the set up and irregularity/ unavailability during night or rainy days, as storage of solar energy was not so far possible. Giant Ivanpah is the largest solar thermal plant in the world…

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Aluminum Studs Replacing Flat Solar Panels To Increase Efficiency

Architectural framework for capturing solar energy has been done using layers of materials one over the other. It has been an expensive module to work upon. So in order to reduce the overall cost, the number of layers has been restricted, which lowered its total efficiency level. In order to counter act this problem, researchers came up with a solution according to which, the effectiveness of panels can be increased upto 22% by using aluminum studs on the plane surface of the material that’ll be exposed to the sun light.…

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