Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: sustainability – Page 645

Solar power has been gaining more and more popularity worldwide since the efficiency of solar panels has significantly increased during the recent years, along with the dramatic decrease in the costs. However, its popularity is not only due its affordability to a wider audience but also to the growing awareness about the benefits of clean sources of energy. Yet, the costs of transportation and production often make it extremely difficult to implement solar technology in developing countries. Printed solar cells could offer a solution to this problem.

Thanks to the advances in printed solar cell technology during the past few years, its energy efficiency has increased from 3% to 20%.

“Its success is due to its cost-effectiveness and simplicity. A 10×10 cm solar cell film is enough to generate as much as 10–50 watts per square meter,” said Scott Watkins from the Korean company Kyung-In Synthetic.

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This illustration shows a prototype device comprising bare nanospring photodetectors placed on a glass substrate, with metal contacts to collect charges (credit: Tural Khudiyev and Mehmet Bayindir/Applied Optics)

Researchers from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, have shown that twisting straight nanowires into springs can increase the amount of light the wires absorb by up to 23 percent. Absorbing more light is important because one application of nanowires is turning light into electricity, for example, to power tiny sensors instead of requiring batteries.

If nanowires are made from a semiconductor like silicon, light striking the wire will dislodge electrons from the crystal lattice, leaving positively charged “holes” behind. Both the electrons and the holes move through the material to generate electricity. The more light the wire absorbs; the more electricity it generates. (A device that converts light into electricity can function as either a solar cell or a photosensor.)

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Meeting the basic needs of humanity is increasingly brought into question as we begin to resemble a cancer to the living organism we inhabit. As mass extinction continues to become an omnipotent reality, it’s apparent that more humans equals more problems. To fix this, we have to approach them in the same way farmers do: with resiliency. Farmers try to nurture their crops and hope for the right season. Although, even the predictability of spring, summer and fall’s outcome can be misleading. Nature has a way of leading things in the exact opposite direction than they seem to be headed. And it is those who’ve treaded, but still embark that truly encounter the rewards. For if farmers were to give up after an adverse season, there’d be no food next year. There’d be no continuity of supply for society. There’d be no method of feeding the hungry. No solution to ease the growing population and its rising demands.

So, with exponential gain in human births this century, how do we combat such problems? One possible solution is to build “green skyscrapers” for the sole purpose of farming, where we are able to control the environment and have multiple levels of plant growth. This could be done by utilizing an array of mirrors to redirect sunlight to every floor, while supplementing with multi-spectral, energy-efficient LED’s. With advanced humidity control and water-recycling techniques, we’d contribute towards the global conservation of water and open up valuable land to reforestation — all through subjugating the unpredictability of nature. This ensures the utmost quality and care goes into producing local, high-quality food, with the added benefit of honing the technology needed for interplanetary colonization.

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A group of Japanese researchers have managed to improve the design of a transparent lithium-ion battery so that it’s now able to recharge itself when exposed to sunlight without the need for a separate solar cell.

The transparent battery was first developed by the researchers, led by Kogakuin University president and professor Mitsunobu Sato, back in 2013. The electrolyte used for the battery’s positive electrode is made mostly from lithium iron phosphate, while the electrolytes used for the negative electrode include lithium titanate, and lithium hexafluorophosphate.

Those are all common ingredients used in Li-ion rechargeable batteries, but the thickness of these electrodes are just 80 to 90 nanometers, which allows a lot of light to pass through and makes these batteries almost completely transparent.

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NASA Glenn Research Center, GRC, currently has several programs to advance near-term photovoltaic array development. One project is to design, build, and test two 20 kW-sized deployable solar arrays, bringing them to technology readiness level (TRL) 5, and through analysis show that they should be extensible to 300 kW-class systems (150 kw per wing). These solar arrays are approximately 1500 square meters in total area which is about an order-of-magnitude larger than the 160 square meters solar array blankets on the International Space Station (ISS).

The ISS has the four (pair) sets of solar arrays that can generate 84 to 120 kilowatts of electricity. Each of the eight solar arrays is 112 feet long by 39 feet wide and weighs 2400 pounds. There were space missions involving astronauts working in space to install and deploy the ISS solar panels.

Alliant Technical Systems, ATK, was selected in 2012 by NASA’s Space Technology Program under a Game Changing Technology competition for development of a promising lightweight and compact solar array structure. The MegaFlex™ engineering development unit, EDU, was tested at NASA GRC Plumbrook facility this year. See below for the ATK deployment of the demonstration unit.

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Solar energy in the United States has seen immense momentum throughout the years. When the Solar Energy Industries Association released its annual report in 2008, it concluded that U.S. solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity reached a total of 1.183 gigawatts — a stellar achievement at the time.

Contrast that figure with today, and the number is dwarfed by the United States’ installed capacity of 21.3 gigawatts, enough energy to power 4.3 million homes.

As to what is powering this widespread adoption, one only needs to look at the residential market. According to recently released research by GTM, 72 percent of the market growth in 2014 is a result of solar tech companies offering diverse financing solutions and easy-to-navigate web platforms. Going solar for homeowners has become as easy as online shopping.

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