On October 21, the National Research Council (NRC) began operations on a new high-efficiency solar energy experiment at the Canadian Centre for Housing Technology, located on NRC property in Ottawa.

“Semiconductors Using Nanostructures for Record Increases in Solar-cell Efficiency” (SUNRISE) is a project that will benefit both the green economy and those eager to make solar energy more efficient.

The SUNRISE project is primarily funded by the NRC, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and the Business Development Bank of Canada. Its purpose is to test nanostructures for their ability to increase output from concentrator PV cells.  The solar cells used in the project are designed to capture and convert a much wider portion of the light spectrum than traditional panels – from X-rays, through the visible light spectrum, into the infrared range.

Students preparing for renewable energy careers at the University of Ottawa and L’Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec will analyze the experimental data – if the project succeeds, these students’ careers could prove to be quite lucrative given how in-demand solar energy expertise is throughout the country.

Environment, Solar Economy Benefit from SUNRISE

The green technology used in the SUNRISE project is the result of years of research performed by Ottawa’s Cyrium Technologies, Inc. (Cyrium), and Connecticut-based OPEL Solar, Inc. (OPEL), which has an office in Toronto.  Both companies produce concentrator PV cells that contain technology previously used only in space-based applications.  Cyrium guarantees on its Web site that its modules operate at between 38-40% efficiency.  This certification suggests a promising starting point for the SUNRISE project.

Chief researcher for SUNRISE, Karen Hinzer, says that the technology’s efficiency is rising rapidly and that the theoretical upward limit is 80%.  “We’re now testing methodologies at the University of Ottawa to… see how these cells perform outside in the environment.”

While the new technology shows promise in terms of efficiency, its effects on the future of PV installation in Ontario are unclear.  PV training and certification programs will have to adapt in order to ensure its safe and successful introduction into the market.  The CSA, for example, may have to make changes to certification criteria it is drafting for construction electricians who work with PV.

Despite the potential hurdles the project presents to the green economy, the benefits are clear – more solar energy in Ontario’s electrical grid and more solar dollars in Ontarians’ pockets.

Special Discount: CleanTechies readers get $100 off any course offered by Solar Academy International. Simply use discount code ”CleanTechies100” when registering.

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When solar energy companies think about how to reduce the cost of their product, typically a lot of time and money goes toward increasing the efficiency of solar panels and their manufacturing process. Reducing the production cost decreases the final cost the consumer will have to pay.

However, few solar companies start by making the building more energy-efficient, even though this effort can significantly drop consumer costs. Energy efficiency lowers the demand for energy in a building. If a building needs less energy, it requires fewer solar panels, which drives down the cost of the installation for the building owner.

But you may be wondering, how significant are the energy savings in a building after energy efficiency upgrades?

Buildings are large energy consumers, accounting for 40 percent of US energy consumption, according to the US Department of Energy. Homes make up 22 percent.

Not only are buildings big energy users, but they are also big energy wasters. In fact, 40% of the energy we use in buildings is wasted due to poor insulation and air leaks.

So the first thing to do is improve the building envelope. After that, it’s important to consider how solar energy will be used in the building and what kind of installation is most efficient. People tend toward solar photovoltaic panels because PV has become the image of solar energy, said Rick Reed, president of Solaray Corporation, at the Solar Power International conference in Los Angeles earlier this month.

But solar PV is typically only about 20 percent efficient, whereas solar thermal is about 90 percent efficient. “Many people are heating their water from solar PV instead of using solar hot water systems,” he said. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

Solar thermal systems use much simpler, reliable technology and are much cheaper to install than PV systems. Still, they are largely an after-thought in the US.

For consumers, the cost of solar thermal and energy efficiency upgrades are typically much less than solar PV installations. However, most consumers interested in upgrading their homes to solar do not realize how much energy their houses could save before installing solar PV. And historically their solar installers have not told them either. Why would a solar PV installer want to promote energy efficiency if it would translate to selling fewer panels?

Thankfully, that’s changing, partly because new financing options focus on reducing the overall cost of solar for the consumer, rather than on simply selling them solar panels. As a result, more solar companies are beginning to move into the energy efficiency business. SolarCity is one example of a company that now combines energy efficiency services with solar installation.

This has huge implications. Retrofitting 40 percent of the residential and commercial building stock in the US would create over 625,000 full-time jobs over a decade, spark $500 billion in new investments, and generate as much as $64 billion a year in cost savings for ratepayers, according to a September report by The Center for American Progress.

So if you have been scared away by daunting up-front costs of solar, now may be the perfect time to get a home energy audit and begin discussing solar financing options available in your area. You may be surprised what you find.

To read the full report by The Center for American Progress, Efficiency Works:Creating Good Jobs and New Markets Through Energy Efficiency, go to http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/08/pdf/good_jobs_new_markets.pdf

Article by Christopher Wold, Editor of the Energy Efficiency Markets newsletter

photo: kqedquest

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“Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.” Often attributed to Mark Twain, whoever said that seemed to have quite a bit of foresight, something the mainstream cleantech community is only recently warming up to.

The fights over water use facing utility scale solar thermal projects in the desert Southwest may have a lot to do with opening the eyes of the clean-tech community, but the sector’s challenges and opportunities are much broader than that, as scores of Californians, Middle Easterners, and Australians will attest.  So why, with the problems so immediate and demand remaining strong in the $58 billion annual market for water technologies, has water investment as a percentage of venture investment declined since 2005?

To be fair, said Michael Hanemann at last Friday’s BERC Energy Symposium at UC Berkeley, the private sector has been scratching its head about how to take advantage of business opportunities in water for years, but the opportunities are just not that easy to monetize.  He noted that nearly 90 percent of Americans receive their drinking water from public water systems.

While about half of drinking water utilities in the U.S. are privately owned, these companies provide water to just one tenth of Americans served by public water systems, and only 3 percent of Americans get wastewater services from private utilities (National Association of Water Companies).  There are some giants in the water industry – GE, Siemens and Halliburton are heavily involved, but many may have never even heard of the world’s largest water company, France-based Veolia Environnement.

But despite the lack of hype about the water industry over the last decade, there seems to be an awakening as of late as academics, nonprofits, investors, and entrepreneurs align to take a shot at breaking through the barriers to innovation in the water sector.

For those interested in catching up on the space, the Cleantech Group featured quite an interesting corps of water leaders at its February San Francisco Cleantech Forum, and UC Berkeley’s BERC Energy Symposium had an excellent panel of water experts including Steve Weismann of the California Center for Environmental Law and Policy, Matthew Heberger of the Pacific Institute, Laurie Park of Navigant Consulting, and Noah Goldstein of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in addition to world-renown professor Hanemann.

Numerous prizes have also recently been announced for water sector startups in an effort to jumpstart investor interest in the sector, and it will be interesting to track the winners’ progress.  The Cleantech Group and The Guardian’s Global Cleantech 100 included 12 water and wastewater companies, and the nonprofit Artemis Project’s annual competition highlights its top 50 water technologies.  Imagine H2O announced French-American vineyard water efficiency startup Fruition Sciences as the winner of its Water Innovators Prize just this past week.

The Water Innovators Prize was particularly focused on water efficiency, an area that has led to a massive decline in industrial water use over the past fifteen years but has had little impact on residential water use.  Let’s all hope that some of these incubators are able to nudge water technologies into the marketplace to make more of a dent in this space and others.  If they succeed, it will be an exciting year for an often-overlooked industry.

Water event tonight:
Imagine H2O is hosting a showcase on water innovations tonight. Learn about exciting new businesses that have risen to the surface. Meet the winning teams and other finalists from Imagine H2O’s recent Water Innovation Prize, the elite water experts who selected them, and Imagine H2O’s ecosystem of water leaders, including John Bohn, Chairman of the California Public Utilities Commission. Learn more…

photo: laszlo-photo

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GE just invested in them. Now, Guy Sella, founder and CEO of Israeli company SolarEdge, is planning a revolution. Don’t be alarmed though, this one isn’t dangerous. His goal is to transform the way photovoltaic systems are now operated, in terms of efficiency, safety and cost.

“People haven’t been looking at photovoltaic systems from a holistic point of view,” Sella tells ISRAEL21c. “Panel manufacturers care only about the panels and panel conversion efficiency. The people that develop classical inverters only care about the efficiency of the inverter. I asked: can we create a system that is better than we currently have?”

The answer, according to SolarEdge, is yes. The Herzliya-based has created “intelligent panels” that work together with a central Power Box, which would replace the passive panels that are the current norm. These new panels provide 25 percent more energy as well as solutions to some of the serious problems that plague current systems.

No feedback, no function

Today’s photovoltaic systems have a number of major disadvantages, according to Sella. For instance, there is no feedback from individual panels. If a panel is broken or not functioning properly, there is no monitoring system to detect the problem.

“In fields today you have hundreds of thousands of panels,” says Sella. “Even if some of them are not working, they don’t have any monitoring level, so you as the field owner can’t know if they are working. After a big hailstorm, people habitually walk through the field with a notebook, visually checking each panel and writing down its condition.”

Another problem with having no monitoring system is that people can easily steal the panels, which are worth between $600 to $800 each. These antediluvian conditions would be abolished by SolarEdge’s technology.

Turning passive panels into intelligent devices

In current systems, all the panels in a photovoltaic system are connected to an inverter box, which in turn connects the system to the power grid. SolarEdge, however, has taken all the technology in the inverter box and put it into an electronic chip, or ASIC.

Each photovoltaic panel contains its own ASIC chip, turning each panel into an electronic device that can alert the owner both to its functionality and possible theft. The system will also be connected to the internet, so the owner can go online to check the status of each panel.

These intelligent panels also provide more energy than current photovoltaic panels. “The panel can now optimize its energy output, and can verify that it is converting the maximum energy that it has,” explains Sella.

An additional advantage is that the very different voltage system created by this technology is much safer, says Sella. Current systems use thousands of volts in their DC lines, and are impossible to turn off, a serious hazard in cases of fire. The inability to shut off powerful voltages also makes these systems potentially dangerous to install.

With the SolarEdge system, the panel-embedded electronics can be shut down individually, either through the central power box or via the panel itself.

An excellent rate of growth

Confidence in SolarEdge is high. Founded in 2006, by Sella and co-founders Yoav Galin, Lior Handelsman, Meir Adest and Amir Fishelov, who met in an elite technology unit of the Israel Defense Forces, the 70-member company has raised $23 million in the past year, despite the poor economic climate.

It plans to start shipping products from mass production lines in Israel late this month.

“SolarEdge has partners all over the globe – in the US, Germany, Spain, France, and Japan,” explains Sella. “Through our partners we have access to 40-50 percent of the world market, which is basically wherever there is solar energy.”

This market is in the range of $30-40 billion; and Sella estimates that the worth of his own product is somewhere in the region of $3 billion.

Not surprisingly then, Sella is optimistic about the solar energy market even in the current recession. “The growth rate of the solar energy market makes it interesting. I’m not aware of any market since bubble days that has had this level of growth rate,” he says.

Eventually, Sella predicts, “Solar energy will be cheaper than fuel cells, and energy harvested from photovoltaics will either be cheaper or the same as fossil fuels.”

Article by Ilana Teitelbaum appearing courtesy of Green Prophet; first published on ISRAEL21c

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