Evergreen Solar (Evergreen), a Massachusetts silicon PV maker, recently announced that it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and would try to sell its assets under the reorganization.

According to the Greentech Media report, those assets include “the String Ribbon technology that is at the core (more…)

According to a UK solar panel expert, silicon—the primary material in solar panel manufacturing today—may soon be a thing of the past. So what material has the versatility to take its place? You guessed it: plastic.

While there is a variety of reasons plastic trumps silicone, it comes down to three main (more…)

During Solar Power International 2010 (SPI 10), each afternoon there were more than eight concurrent conference sessions. It was not possible to attend them all, but the “The Next Great Solar Cell Material: What Technology Will Emerge Dominant on the Market?” session was particularly interesting. I briefly attended two other sessions. It was more than a little ironic that (more…)

Advances in solar energy efficiencies have so far been made with irregular surfaces, thinner tabbing between cells, more optically perfect glass and even special coatings, but now Stanford engineers say the best efficiency is via ultra-thin polymer films inside solar cells that allow more “bounce room.”

Add to that a slightly rougher surface, such (more…)

U.S. investors have invested $129.4 million in a promising solar technology that uses plastic lenses to concentrate sunlight onto small but highly efficient solar cells.

The so-called multijunction cells, developed by California-based Amonix, generate more electricity than conventional photovoltaic panels and require fewer costly semiconducting materials, such as silicon.

The company has successfully tested the technology at small solar farms in Spain and the United States. (more…)

Shrink Nanotechnologies is one of several companies that is using bioplastics to find a new way of making devices that will minimize the use of increasingly-scarce rare metals.

The company’s OptiSol Solar Concentrator is billed as a nanotechnology-based plastic solar concentrator and solar film. Traditional silicon solar cells absorb only a small fraction of the total incident solar radiation potential, with a majority of the light either reflected or converted to thermal energy.

(more…)