Secretary Chu Announces more than $200 Million for Solar and Water Power Technologies April 22, 2010

On the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that the department will invest more than $200 million over five years to expand and accelerate the development, commercialization, and use of solar and water power technologies throughout the United States. This funding underscores the administration's commitment to foster a robust clean-energy sector in the United States—that will create American manufacturing jobs and a workforce with the required technical training to speed the implementation of cutting-edge technologies. Today's announcement represents a down payment that will help the solar and water power industries overcome technical barriers, demonstrate new technologies, and provide support for clean energy jobs for years to come.

"Expanding the U.S. clean-energy manufacturing base is an important part of the Administration's goals to diversify electricity supply options, increase national security, and accelerate green jobs development," said Secretary Chu. "These investments will help strengthen American competitiveness in renewable energy and transform the U.S. into a lasting manufacturing presence in the 21st century clean-energy economy."

Today's investments include:
Photovoltaic Manufacturing Initiative

Up to $125 million over five years

The department will invest in manufacturing-focused research projects that will have near and mid-term impact on the U.S. solar industry and will catalyze greater cooperation within the industry. Funding will be available for applicants in two topic areas: University-Focused Development and Industry-Focused Development. Both topics will consider collaborative research models to accelerate manufacturing-related technologies and provide maximum leverage to federal funding.

This funding opportunity requires that each applicant organization submit a concept paper in addition to standard application materials. These papers will allow DOE to provide feedback to applicants on the potential of their proposal to meet the PV Manufacturing Initiative's goal of strengthening the U.S. PV industry.

Concept papers are due June 3, 2010, with full applications due in early August.
Photovoltaic Supply Chain Development

Up to $40 million over three years

This funding is focused on identifying and accelerating unique products or processes for the photovoltaic manufacturing supply chain that will have a major impact on the industry. The projects will help meet the department's goal of achieving cost-competitive solar PV systems compared with conventional forms of electricity, and accelerating and facilitating the widespread implementation of solar technology.

The department is seeking projects focused on component and manufacturing technologies that show a strong potential to impact a substantial segment of the photovoltaic industry within two to five years. Examples include engineering lower cost coating materials, electrical components to improve performance, processes that reduce manufacturing waste, or equipment that dramatically improves manufacturing or installation speed.

The department plans to select both large and small companies that can quickly develop new photovoltaic supply chain solutions. The department anticipates that approximately $10-$15 million annually will be available to fund these PV supply chain projects.

Applications are due July 2, 2010.
National Administrator of the Solar Instructor Training Network

Up to $4.5 million over five years

This funding opportunity will select a national administrator that will act as a central coordinating body for the training network. The network was created in 2009 by the Department of Energy to establish high-quality, local, and accessible training for personnel involved in the sales, design, installation, commissioning, and inspection of solar photovoltaic and solar heating and cooling systems. Awards were made to nine regional resource and training providers.

The national administrator will manage the collaboration of the training network members, disseminating their products and conducting other outreach efforts, such as providing recommendations for the adoption of best practices. The selected organization will also serve as a national point of contact for the training network and will work with a broad set of stakeholders to define, prioritize, and address issues related to solar training and workforce development.

Applications are due June 15, 2010.

For more information on these funding opportunity announcements, please visit the Solar Energy Technologies Program's Financial Opportunities site.
Marine and Hydrokinetic Technologies (MHK)

Up to $39 million over four years

The department will accelerate the technological advancement and commercial readiness of emerging water power technologies that can produce renewable, cost-competitive electricity by harnessing the energy of waves, currents, tides, and free-flowing rivers, or energy stored in ocean thermal gradients. DOE will use "technology readiness levels," a tool which has been effectively used by numerous companies and federal agencies to measure and compare the maturity of evolving technologies, to evaluate and select projects.

This funding opportunity seeks to leverage private-sector investment in MHK technologies by providing cost-shared funding to industry and industry-led partnerships in order to advance the technological and operational readiness of MHK systems and components. The goal is to effectively transition leading MHK system and component designs toward commercialization.

Applications are due June 7, 2010.

The complete Funding Opportunity Announcement can be viewed on the Wind and Water Power Program's Financial Opportunities site.
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Ontario Solar Power could match US Nuclear Power

April 20th, 2010 - 1 Comment

Ontario Solar Power Queen’s University Applied Sustainability Research Group located in Kingston, Canada comes out with two studies that claim solar power in southeastern Ontario can be created in abundance. The natural question is how much abundance? The answer is mind-boggling. Southeastern Ontario has the potential to produce almost as much power as all the nuclear reactors in the United States! Queen’s mechanical engineering professor Joshua Pearce is the first person to find out the astounding possibilities of the region’s solar energy potential. He says, “The number is enormous. Solar can no longer be laughed off as something that can only power your cottage.”

Professor Pearce was surprised by how many gigawatts could be produced.

The researchers from the university in Kingston, Ontario is of the view if they can mount solar panels on the rooftops and on those areas that are economically unproductive they can produce enormous amount of solar power. They have already marked 365,000 hectares of land in southeastern Ontario suitable for solar farms. That amounts to about 7.6 per cent of the 48,000-square-kilometre wedge of land between Toronto, Ottawa and the Quebec-Ontario border.

So many gigawatts of solar power can be produced but Prof Pearce still claims, “We came up with enormous numbers and we were being conservative. There are about 95 gigawatts of potential power just in southeastern Ontario — that shows there is massive potential.” It is needless to say that Professor Pearce specializes in solar photovoltaic materials and applied sustainability.

According to one study, if some of the roof tops in southeastern Ontario were covered with solar panels, they could generate five gigawatts, or about five per cent of all of Ontario’s energy. The study paid attention to the shading and orientation of the roofs. This study will be published in the journal Computers, Environment and Urban Systems.

Professor Pearce further pushes his point, “To put this in perspective, all the coal plants in all of Ontario produce just over six gigawatts. The sun doesn’t always shine, so if you couple solar power with other renewable energy sources such as wind, hydro and biomass, southeastern Ontario could easily cover its own energy needs.”

Canada is a vast country and has plenty of land. If that land can be utilized for generating solar power, it can produce substantial amount of clean and green energy. This second study will appear in May issue of the journal Solar Energy. It studied the barren, rocky, non-farmable areas near electrical grids and arrived at a conclusion that it has the potential to produce 90 gigawatts.

Professor Pearce claims, “Nuclear power for all of the United States is about 100 gigawatts. We can produce 90 on barren land with just solar in this tiny region, so we are not talking about small potatoes.”

The researchers identified 25 million square metres of shade-free, south-facing roofs in southeastern Ontario suitable for solar panels. They say if high-efficiency panels were installed on all the roofs, they could provide 24 per cent of current peak Ontario power demand, and 157 per cent of peak demand in southeastern Ontario.

Professor Pearce is preparing the ground for solar power. He comes out with real facts for the policy makers of the country. He is also on the look out for the possible solar farm locations for developers.

The government is creating conducive environment for the clean and green energy. Ontario’s new Green Energy Act offers feed-in tariffs, or FITs incentive. This FITs has generated “an enormous stampede” by solar companies to set up shop in Ontario. Prof Pearce says, “It’s opened up the market.” Pearce said, if one or two known solar power manufacturers set up their plants in Canada, more will be tempted to do the same and it will lead to generating thousands of manufacturing jobs. “They’ll cluster together like the semi-conductor manufacturers in California, and we’ll be in great shape.”

Sunlight to Electricity with Solid-State Photovoltaics

Conventional solid-state solar cells are suffering from the problem of the bandgap voltage limitation. Scientists are trying to capture more and more of sunlight and convert it into electricity. If scientists are able to increase the efficiency of the conversion rate that will put solar energy into fossil fuel league minus its undesirable effects. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researchers have found a mechanism to deal with the problem of bandgap voltage limitation. In the language of solid state physics, a bandgap is also known as an energy gap. It is the amount of energy needed to release an outer shell electron from its orbit to become a mobile charge holder. This electron can move freely within the solid material. In conductor materials, the two bands often overlap, so they may not exhibit a huge bandgap.

Berkeley Lab’s News Center has devised a novel method that enables the photovoltaic effect to take place in semiconductor thin-films. The compound that make it possible is bismuth ferrite. Bismuth ferrite is a ceramic composed of bismuth, oxygen, and iron. Bismuth ferrite has a unique property known as multiferroic property. This property allows bismuth ferrite to exhibit both ferroelectric and ferromagnetic properties. When scientists were utilizing the bismuth ferrite to their pleasant surprise they discovered that the photovoltaic effect can voluntarily arise at the nanoscale because of the ceramic’s rhombohedrally distorted crystal structure.

Jan Seidel is a physicist who holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and the UC Berkeley Physics Department. He put forth his views, “We’re excited to find functionality that has not been seen before at the nanoscale in a multiferroic material. We’re now working on transferring this concept to higher efficiency energy-research related devices.”

If we explore a bit of physics, we can find that conventional solid-state solar cells is a p-n junction. p-n junction acts as the interface between a semiconductor layer having plenty of positively-charged “holes,” and another layer having plenty of negatively charged electrons. When sunlight falls on solar cells, photons from the sun are absorbed. This absorption helps electron-hole pairs that can be separated within a “depletion zone.” This zone is a microscopic area at the p-n junction. The end result of the whole process is the generation of electricity. But the whole process is not so easy. Certain conditions are required. First condition is the photons have to penetrate the material to the depletion zone. The next condition is their energy has to exactly match the energy of the semiconductor’s electronic bandgap. What is the consequence of all this? According to Seidel, “The maximum voltage conventional solid-state photovoltaic devices can produce is equal to the energy of their electronic bandgap. Even for so called tandem-cells, in which several semiconductor p-n junctions are stacked, photovoltages are still limited because of the finite penetration depth of light into the material.” In a simplified world, all this conditions lowers the efficiency of solar power conversion.

How the Berkeley Lab’s Helios Solar Energy Research Center is able to increase the efficiency rate of solar power? Because, Seidel and his teammates found that by applying white light to bismuth ferrite, they could produce photovoltages within submicroscopic areas between one and two nanometers across! These photovoltages were definitely higher than bismuth ferrite’s electronic bandgap.

Seidel points out the advantages of his work, “The bandgap energy of the bismuth ferrite is equivalent to 2.7 volts. From our measurements we know that with our mechanism we can get approximately 16 volts over a distance of 200 microns. Furthermore, this voltage is in principle linear scalable, which means that larger distances should lead to higher voltages.”

Is the US Losing the Clean Energy Race?

As the president pushes for a new energy strategy, China pushes ahead of the G20 pack in 2009.

Washington, D.C., United States [RenewableEnergyWorld.com]

Ready to move to new domestic issues after a win on health care, U.S. President Barack Obama has again turned his focus to energy. But many clean energy advocates are criticizing the President's plan, saying that it will put too much focus on oil and gas drilling, and not enough on renewables.

The U.S. came in eleventh in investment relative to the size of its economy, falling behind China, Brazil, Germany and the UK.

The details of the President's plan have not been fully laid out, but in recent days he has announced plans to increase offshore gas and oil drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf of the U.S. Some onlookers see this as a way for the President to get bipartisan support for a broader energy strategy that all political parties can support.

“He's clearly trying to mainstream it in the U.S....trying to get republicans and independents engaged in the issue as well — not just democrats,” says Michael Northrop, directror of sustainable development for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. “I think that's a positive, especially as we move into a new debate around climate change legislation.”

And after a year of bitter partisan battles over health care, the White House could use any positive political bargaining chip it can get.

But some environmental groups and renewable energy advocates say this move contradicts Obama's earlier campaign pledge to avoid more offshore drilling and will delay an aggressive focus on renewables, putting the U.S. further behind other countries in the race to develop clean forms of energy.

A new report released from the Pew Charitable Trust shows that the U.S. is already getting outpaced by other G20 countries in renewable energy investment. Although the U.S. is seen as a leader in risk-taking and innovation, other countries like China and Brazil are investing more money in clean energy relative to the size of their economies.

The report, titled “Who's Winning the Clean Energy Race?” looked at the top 20 economies in the world, which make up around 90 percent of investment in renewables. Overall, the trends were positive: Since 2005, there has been a 230 percent increase in capital flow to the industry. Throughout that time period the U.S. has lead the pack with the most installed capacity and the most total yearly investment. Until last year that is.

China took the lead in 2009 as the country made a comprehensive effort to develop more wind, solar thermal and biomass, as well as scale up its solar PV manufacturing. The country invested $34.8 billion in renewables last year, which was $16 billion more than was invested in the U.S.

While the news is not surprising, given China's rapidly growing energy needs and its top-down approach to developing industries, the report highlights another telling statistic: The U.S. came in eleventh in investment relative to the size of its economy, falling behind China, Brazil, Germany and the UK.

The report authors conclude that U.S. policymakers and citizens should be “concerned about America’s competitive position in the clean energy marketplace.”

Some see this report as a good way to get the conversation around clean energy back on track. If the U.S. is to stay competitive in the changing global economy, it will need to match or surpass the investments being made by other G20 countries — especially China.

“I think it's a big part of how to talk about it. Clearly people's dander gets raised anytime you talk about an economic race with the Chinese. I think it's a very helpful frame for us to be working in,” says Northrop of the Rockefeller Brother's Fund.

China, of course, is sucking up oil around the world and developing far more coal power plants than wind or solar farms. So while total investment in renewables is increasing, the country's domestic efforts may be impeded by its dirty, centralized energy system. But its export industry will rival any country in the world.

Northrop points out that of the ten largest wind companies in the world, the U.S. only has one. And of the ten largest solar companies in the world, the U.S. has two. That's unacceptable, he says, given that the country – known as a bastion of innovation and risk taking — consumes 25% of the world's energy.

“I hope now that health care has passed in the U.S., the president will start to speak out more forcefully about this issue,” he says. “We need the public engaged and we need to get people off the fence – and if we can do that, the future looks bright.”

For a breakdown of the investment figures for each country, see the Pew report here.