Solar Installations Near Denver, Colorado

The following two photos show the large photovoltaic array in front of the Denver International Airport. It's an impressive sight for arriving and departing travelers to see--a reminder about how available and accessible solar power really is!





The following two photos are from a housing area near Longmont, Colorado. Not sure whether the panel installation is for the neighborhood or for just one of the individual houses. Interesting to see, however.





The following two photos are of a solar photovoltaic installation for a water treatment facility near Longmont, Colorado (north of Denver).

Santa Barbara, California, Dedicates Their Solar Power System Today, March 11, 2009

Santa Barbara, California, dedicates their solar power system today, March 11, 2009 with a ceremony and educational tour from 2:00pm through 3:00pm in the David Gebhard Meeting Room, at 630 Garden Street.

Santa Barbara's City Corporate Yard solar system can produce 550,000 kWh of energy per year, effectively offsetting 421,466 lbs, or 191 metric tons, of carbon dioxide emissions. Similarly equal to removing about 35 cars from the road, saving 21,328 gallons of gasoline, or powering over 100 Santa Barbara-area homes a year (based on a single family occupancy energy use of 5,000 kWh per year). And of course, reducing the City's need for power grid use (and their subsequent power bills)!

The solar power system, spread among the Corporate Yard's roofs, was installed through a partnership of Suntech Power Holdings Co., Ltd and Tioga Energy in which the City of Santa Barbara. The system was installed over a three-month period in the last part of 2008.

To read more about this event, see the event press release.

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Solar Happenings in the San Francisco Bay Area

Chinese solar photovoltaic manufacturer Trina Solar Ltd. of Changzhou, China, has chosen San Francisco, California as its base for North America sales operations. A few miles south, in the Silicon Valley, the San Jose Tech Museum of Innovation dedicated a 185 kW solar-electric system on the roof of their Parkside Hall--an ancillary building next to their main facility. The solar installation of SunPower solar panels mounted on non-roof-penetrating T10 Solar Roof Tiles was designed and installed by SunPower Corporation.

Thin-film Photovoltaic (TFPV) -- Printing Your Solar Panel?

By 2015 (6 years from now), amorphous silicon photovoltaic technology will use more than $900 million in silane gas and other silicon-based materials (sand will be a good thing to have a lot of).

It used to be that the crystalline silicon photovoltaic materials were the hot technology (as seen in the solar panels developed for space flight and the early PV panels used on home and business installations) for electricity generation.

But now, the thin-film PV materials are strong light absorbers and only need to be about 1 micrometer thick..... so the material costs are significantly reduced. The most common materials for thin-film PV are amorphous silicon, cadmium telluride (CdTe), and copper indium (gallium) diselenide (CIS or CIGS).

Each of these three is suitable for large-area deposition (on substrates of about 1-meter wide) and thus are suitable for high-volume manufacturing. The thin-film semiconductor layers are deposited onto either coated glass or stainless steel sheets.

Research organizations and manufacturers are now exploring how to apply this chemistry to photovoltaic-capable inks--that when applied and dry, will generate a current when exposed to light and other inks that will conduct a current. This enables the high-volume printing of circuits and electricity generating components.

It's technological advances such as the one described above that will raise the bar on solar and alternate energy electricity generating processes!


Want Solar Options? Check Out the Variety Here!


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So... another blog about alternate energy?

Yup. Another blog about alternate energy. Hey, maybe with more of us squawking about the problem with fossil fuels (oil and coal), we might get some action from our leaders (funny how that might work!).

Remember--the *first* oil crisis in 1973-1974?... when folks lined up at gas stations to get their cars filled up based on whether they had an odd-numbered or even-numbered license plate? We were hearing that the world would run out of oil by the year 2000. (Uh, it didn't, but maybe we should have thought more about alternate energy at that time anyway!) But back in 1974, the year 2000 was more than 25 years away. Now, however, the year 2000 is in the past.

So, we have seen advances in technology for solar photovoltaic panels, advances in energy-saving devices, better battery types, and so on that we can use to beat this new "oil crisis".

You Want Solar Options? Check Out the Variety Here!



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