Solar-Powered School in Copenhagen

This is one more interesting news that represent another effort to be developed colored solar panels.

The International School in Copenhagen is using custom-built colorful solar panels as a featured architectural element. Each panel is individually angled and the result is really cool impression. The materials that were used in the new building are entirely natural. Thus the school made both an aesthetic and sustainable decision.

The campus of the cosy school is covered by 12,000 solar tiles making it the largest solar facade in the world. On sunny days the solar panels generate electricity that is contribute to the grid and to the school itself.

The solar panels are spanning over an area of 65,100ft2 and provide it with 300 MWh of electricity per year, meeting over half of the school's energy needs. One of the key vision of the school is to educate thair students of a sustainable world.

The unique building stands out because the panels are a distinctive sea green, the same of Copenhagen’s symbol - Andersen’ mermaid, which welcomes tourist in the Danish capital. Although no pigments were used to make them, the color comes from a process of light interference developed over more than a decade in the labs of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale in Lausanne (EPFL).

Based on a new technology developed in Switzerland the process that produced color of these panels is a similar to the effect seen in soap bubbles.

The researchers developed special filters, which they applied to the glass panels in nanometric layers. This filter determines which wavelengths of light will be reflected as visible color. The rest of the sunlight is absorbed by the solar panel and converted into energy.

“The iris effect creates a colorful rainbow on a very thin layer. We used the same principle and adapted for glass,  said Jean-Louis Scartezzini, the head of the Solar Energy and Building Physics lab at EPFL.

The school building won the 2017 Iconic Award - an international award program for architecture and urban planning professionals in the architecture category.

Green Colored Solar Panels

Highly rated models of solar panels are now running in excess of 20-percent efficiency at turning sunlight into electricity. But they are bulky and still aren't very pretty. In addition, traditional solar panels take up a lot of room.

Fortunately, solar technology is changing continuously. Earlier this year Tesla began selling solar shingles that can generate power for the home and still look like ordinary shingles. Other solar panel developers have made solar windows, skylights, patio covers, carports, and roads to generate electricity. And now researchers in the Netherlands say they have developed a process for making conventional bluish-black solar panels bright green. Probably the same technology might also make it possible to create panels in other colors, and even in white which would be a really big step in the solar industry. 

Researchers from AMOLF, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) have developed a method for imprinting existing solar panels with crystalline silicon nanocylinders. The nanocylinders are about 100 nanometres wide and exhibit electromagnetic resonance that scatters a particular wavelength of light. They produce the green color by scattering green frequencies of light back while letting other frequencies of light pass through. They are laid down on the solar cells via a process the researchers likened to rubber stamping. The panels have a green appearance from most angles and they are only about 10 percent less efficient than conventional panels.

The method used for the colored solar panels is called soft-imprint lithography. “In principle, this technique is easily scalable for fabrication technology,” AMOLF scientific group leader and senior author Albert Polman said.

Such colored solar panels would afford a level of versatility - for example, red panels could be used on rooftops, white ones on walls, and the green ones could blend in with nature. Thus would encourage the reliance on solar energy and integration of solar technology into every part of our daily lives.

“You have to combine different nanoparticles, and if they get very close to each other they can interact and that will affect the color,” said Polman.

These aren't the first colored solar panels. But the ones already on the market use dyes and reflective coatings that give them their color, greatly reduce efficiency and they are about 45 percent less efficient than ordinary solar panels at generating electricity.

The new design was published online on August 15, 2017, in Applied Physics Letters.

Solarpro’s Yankovo PV Power Plant Put into Operation

On 24 August the first stage of the photovoltaic plant of Solarpro in the village of Yankovo, northeastern Bulgaria, has been officially put into operation. The first phase of the project "North-East 1" features installed capacity of 338kWp . The plant had been successfully acceded to the power grid of E. ON and delivers electricity to the electricity distribution company. The project is scheduled to reach full capacity by the end of the year. The whole plant "North-East 1" has nominal power of 2404kWp will be the largest photovoltaic park in the country.

Solarpro, 80% owned by Bulgarian miner Kaolin, has launched production of photovoltaic (thin-film amorphous-silicon PV module) solar panels at its factory in Silistra, on the Danube. At the end of March the first panels of the first production line of the photovoltaic plant in Silistra were produced.

The "North-East 1" PV power plant is constructed with 8064 thin-film photovoltaic panels, manufactured by Solarpro, in its Silistra-based factory. It is the only company in Bulgaria, which concludes the entire PV module manufacturing – power plant integration chain. The components of the power plant are mainly made in Bulgaria, and all subcontractors are local companies.

Solarpro is the first and only manufacturer of solar panels in Bulgaria. Solarpro is the biggest solar panels manufacturer on the Balkans, with planned capacity of 18 MW annually, organized in three production lines, one of which currently operational. The company came into being in end-2007 in line with a strategy of its owner to bolster energy efficiency and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

Sources: solarpro.bg & alfafinance.bg

Silicon-Based Solar Cells for Flexible and Transparent Solar Applications

Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed new high-efficient silicon-based solar cells that are flexible enough to be incorporated on a curved surface or fabric, and transparent enough to be used to tint windows on buildings or cars.

The finding, reported in the journal Nature Materials, offers a new way to process conventional silicon by slicing the brittle wafers into ultra-thin layers and carefully transfers them onto a flexible surface.

"We can make it thin enough that we can put it on plastic to make a rollable system. You can make it gray in the form of a film that could be added to architectural glass. It opens up spaces on the fronts of buildings as opportunities for solar energy.” said John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who led the research.

Many international companies are making thin-film solar cells, but they are usually less efficient at converting solar energy into electricity than conventional cells.

Rogers' team uses a special etching method to slice very thin solar chips off the surface of single crystal silicon wafers which are highly efficient but, in their current form, rigid and fragile. The sliced chips are 10 to 100 times thinner than a normal silicon wafer, and the size can be adapted to the application. Once sliced, the bits of silicon chips are picked up by a special device and deposited on the target surface "like a rubber stamp".

“These silicon solar cells become like a solid ink pad for that rubber stamp. The surface of the wafers after we’ve done this slicing become almost like an inking pad,” said Rogers. “We just print them down onto a target surface." "The final step is to electrically connect these cells to get power out of them," he said.

Adding flexibility to the material would make the cells far easier to transport. Rogers envisions the material being “rolled up like a carpet and thrown on the truck.”

The technology has been licensed to a startup company called Semprius in Durham, North Carolina.

Sources: Reuters & Energy Efficiency News

"Green Olympics" - Beijing 2008

Beijing National Stadium - 'Bird's Nest'
Photo credit: Guo Lei/Xinhua

The 2008 Summer Olympics in China are in their apogee and they are drawing a lot of attention. Taking into account a massive global audience, the Beijing Olympic organizers are hoping to focus our attention to climate changes and popularize the idea of using eco-friendly technologies. The "Green Olympics" may help change peoples attitudes and set standards for future building projects in China and around the world.

The Olympic organizers are trying to make the Olympic Games environmentally friendly and Beijing a model city for using green technologies, zero net emissions and sustainable architecture. As a part of these efforts, more than a quarter of the energy used at Olympic venues is coming from renewable sources.

Beijing's Olympic Village is a great example of sustainable community development. All seven main Olympic stadiums are equipped with solar generators capable of outputting 480 kilowatts of energy at any given moment. The entire hot-water supply for the Olympic Village will be powered by solar energy. Photovoltaic panels are incorporated on the stadium walls and roofs for most of the outdoor lighting. Also, the main stadiums will receive power from Beijing's first wind farm.

Beijing National Stadium - 'Bird's Nest' includes a rainwater collection arrangement, a natural ventilation system and its upper surface is clad with Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) roof panels, that let in natural light. The stadium is referred to as the ‘Bird’s Nest’ because of its saddle-shaped steel roof and interwoven façade

The spectacular-looking structure called "Water Cube" looks like a building made of bubble-wrap. It is officially known as the National Aquatics Center and is completely surrounded with ETFE pillows. It is expected to cut energy use by 30 percent and has been built so that after the Olympic Games to be converted easily to a shopping area and leisure center.

The idea for the Beijing's "Green Olympics" makes perfect sense because China sees its energy costs rising and energy sources dwindling, as well as significant damage to the environment. And the so-called "Green Olympics", although will not solve China's environmental issues, they could point the way to a more sustainable future, according to officials and experts.

China is already a world leader in many renewable energy technologies, but so far many of the green technologies have been for export only, because they are too expensive for the country to use itself. China, for example, led the world in manufacturing and utilisation of solar water heaters and energy efficient light bulbs. It is also on the way to becoming the world leader in wind turbine manufacturing and installation.

Solar Energy from Saharan Sun Could Power Europe

Solar thermal parabolic trough power plant;Source: Solar Millennium, TREC

According to an article published recently in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, EU scientists are working on an ambitious plan to harvest the sun in the Sahara desert in Africa to provide electricity for Europe. Europe needs a lot of electricity, but gets little sun. Vast solar power farms in the Sahara desert could provide clean electricity for the whole of Europe.

The EU scientists are calling for the creation of a series of huge solar farms - producing electricity either through photovoltaic cells, or by concentrating the sun's heat to boil water and drive turbines - as part of a plan to share Europe's renewable energy resources across the continent.

Speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona (ESOF), Arnulf Jaeger-Waldau of the European commission's Institute for Energy, explained how electricity produced in solar farms in Africa, each generating around 50-200 megawatts of power, could be fed thousands of miles to European countries by using high-voltage direct current (DC) transmission lines instead of the conventional alternating current (AC) lines. Energy losses on DC lines are far lower than AC ones where transmission of energy over long distances is uneconomic.

Depending on the size of the grid, building the necessary high-voltage lines across Europe could cost up to €1-billion a year every year till 2050, but Jaeger-Walden pointed out that the figure was small when compared to a recent prediction by the International Energy Agency that the world needs to invest more than $45-trillion in energy systems over the next 30 years.

Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK's chief scientist, welcomed the proposals: "Assuming it's cost-effective, a large-scale renewable energy grid is just the kind of innovation we need if we're going to beat climate change."

The idea for developing a major innovative super-grid based on renewable energy is already gaining political support in Europe, with both the UK Prime Minster Gordon Brown and and the President of France Nicolas Sarkozy, recently backing the north African solar plan.

The scientists say that harnessing solar energy from the Sahara would be especially effective, because the sunlight in that area is much more intense: solar photovoltaic panels in northern Africa could generate up to three times the electricity compared with similar panels in northern Europe. And it would require the capture of just 0.3%of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts to meet all of Europe's energy needs.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/22/solarpower.windpower?gusrc=rss&feed=environment

Note: An earlier article in Spiegel Online from April 30, describes the project and also how it will benefit Africa because it is important that such an ambitious development is sustainable and beneficial to both continents. Read more: "Is Desert Solar Power the Solution to Europe's Energy Crisis?"

For the original plan visit: http://www.desertec.org/concept.html

Solar-powered Tech Chair on the Beach

The solar-powered Tech Chair is definitely an interesting idea thought up by experts from the UK-based computer retailer PC World. It may easily become the summer favorite possession especially for the geeks as it boasts all the essential ports for various gadgets to hook up to while you're lying on the beach and tanning under the summer sun. Keep in mind, however, that you should place all your gadgets in a shaded area or under an umbrella, since the direct exposure to sunlight is incompatible with electronics.

The major feature of the chair is that it is solar-powered, harnessing energy from the sun so you can plug in all your gadgets. The overhead shade maker is equipped with solar cells to power the docks for your phone, MP3 player, camera, video recorder, and laptop, plus there's a game console holder, LCD screen, speakers, and headphone sockets. An interesting feature also is the automatic sunshade which follows the sun to keep your face shielded. The special solar fabric will provide protection from sun, wind, sand, water and suncream.

Perhaps most useful is the built-in long-range WiFi and Bluetooth antenna for keeping you connected. Another nice thing is a sliding laptop table which is available so you can work in the sun. And at the foot of the tech chair there is even a GPS device.

Anina Castle, spokesperson for PC World said: "We're also looking to incorporate a mobile text reservations system, whereby the Tech Chair can be booked by text and located via GPS so Britons don't have to worry about getting up before their early-rising European cousins."

"The Tech Chair unites a number of electrical products in a lightweight portable package that can be folded into a compact suitcase design small enough to take as carry-on luggage.", a PC World spokeswoman also said.

The solar-powered Tech Chair is still a concept design and experts have not yet worked out how much it will cost to buy.

Sources: The Design Blog, Sky News, Metro Headlines

Rotating Skyscraper Powered by Wind and Sun in Dubai

The Italian architect David Fisher said he is ready to start construction on a  futuristic rotating skyscraper in Dubai that will be "the world's first building in motion". The modern "Dynamic Tower" construction, which would be energy self sufficient and cost about 700 million dollars to build, will represent an 80-storey tower with revolving floors that give it an ever-shifting shape. 

The spinning floors, hung like rings around an immobile central column, would offer residents a constantly changing view of the city's skyline and the Persian Gulf. Each floor will rotate independently at different speeds. It will take between one and three hours for the floors to make a complete rotation.

Rotating floors are just one of several futuristic features in the building. Using wind and solar power, it will generate more electricity than it uses. Horizontally mounted giant wind turbines fitted between each rotating floor will generate enough energy to power the tower and nearby buildings. 20% of each roof will be exposed to the sun and photovoltaic cells placed on the roof of each rotating floor will produce solar energy. For the interior of the luxury apartments will be used only natural and recyclable materials, including stone, marble, glass and wood.

The dwellings will be assembled in a factory outside Bari in southern Italy, equipped with plumbing and electricity systems, kitchens, bathrooms and ceilings. They will arrive also painted, decorated and, in some cases, with walls hung with artwork. An apartment will cost between $3.7 million to $36 million dollars. Lifts will allow penthouse residents to park their cars right at their apartments.

The plan was revealed by Mr Fisher in a press conference at the Plaza Hotel in New York on June 24. "Today's life is dynamic, so the space we are living in should be dynamic as well," he said. "Buildings will follow rhythms of nature. They will change direction and shape from spring to summer, from sunrise to sunset, and adjust themselves to the weather. In other words, buildings will be alive."

Construction of the rotating skyscraper is scheduled to be completed by 2010.

Update 2020: The project has not been completed yet.

Mandatory solar panels in German town of Marburg

The central German town of Marburg is the first in German to make solar panels mandatory for almost all rooftops of private and commercial buildings. The controversial new law requires a solar panel for every new building and every old building that is being renovated. The historical buildings such as the Marburg Castle, Marburg's City Hall, and the Elisabeth Church will be exempt from the requirement.

The solar law was approved by the town's council on June 20, and will take effect Oct. 1. According to the law, a 1 square meter (10 square feet) panel must be installed for every 20 square meters (200 square feet) of surface area. Installing the panels could cost homeowners up to €5,000 ($7,800). The cost would be paid off through savings in energy bills over a 15-year period, the town's mayor, Franz Kahle, said. Those violating the law will face fines starting at €1,000 ($1,500).

The town is home to Marburg University and has about 80,000 residents. Most of the residents support the decision made by the Social Democrats and Greens, but the opposition leaders say that to force people to equip their homes with solar panels equates to a "green dictatorship," and that "nobody dares to say anything."

"Sometimes you must force the hand of consumers for their own good", says the specialist in solar Vajen Klaus, a professor at the University of Kasel.

European Solar Days

The First European Solar Days will be celebrated on the 16th and 17th May 2008 with more than 4000 events and will reach thousands of European citizens throughout Europe.

The 'Tag der Sonne' was first celebrated in Austria in 2002, and the idea has already been adopted by Germany, Switzerland and The Netherlands. In the case of Germany a whole week is dedicated to the campaign. This wonderful idea is now for the first time extended to more countries: France, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Slovenia, and Norway. In 2009 other countries are expected to join the initiative and the event is planned to be ex-tended throughout Europe in the future.

The European Solar Days will bring together major players from the solar thermal and solar photovoltaic electricity sectors throughout Europe and will help in promoting the use of renewable energy.

The aim of the ESD is to raise awareness and promote the possibilities of solar power, Solar Thermal and Solar Photovoltaic, among both decision makers and the general public.

Comprehensive information on the European Solar Days is available at: www.solardays.eu