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Posted Thu Mar 30, 2011
In a move that will put Vietnam on the renewable energy producing map, First Solar has officially broken ground on a solar plant in the Dong Nam Industrial Park near Ho Chi Minh City. Not only does this translate to cleaner energy for surrounding areas, but it also means a boost in local jobs and economy.
First Solar is certainly going big with this photovoltaic module manufacturing facility—the plant is slated to produce more than 250MW of renewable energy with its thin-film solar panel modules by the time it’s up and running in 2012.
The plant is expected to cost around $300 million, but will bring with it 2,000 jobs during the construction process, and 600 jobs for associates once construction is complete. And that’s just to start, since the four manufacturing lines could be expanded in the future.
The company will use its regular manufacturing process, making a complete solar module from a sheet of glass in an impressive 2.5 hours. Despite the short turnaround time, the thin-film modules are designed to be extremely energy efficient, making the payback period shorter than those of other solar products.
Taking up 342 hectares (or approximately 1.3 square miles) of Dong Nam Industrial Park, the plant will offshoot this by employing eco-friendly business practices of their own. They will install 3MW of solar power on the roof of the facility, and plan on including an in-house recycling plant. This will ensure that the semiconductor materials and glass come from recycled products.
President of First Solar Bruce Sohn believes the new facility will benefit all those involved. “Our Dong Nam factory will play a key role in our plan to nearly double First Solar’s capacity by 2012 and further reduce the cost of solar electricity,” Sohn said. “We look forward to working closely with the Vietnamese authorities in the months and years to come.”
While the construction process will put the launch of the First Solar plant into next year, as of now the plans look promising. New jobs and cleaner energy are something every community should strive for.
Kayla Albert is CalFinder’s go-getter. From green home remodeling to solar power, she is always on the cutting edge of new trends in any arena. Find information about home solar power and solar installers at CalFinder.
Posted Thu Sep 3, 2009
The first Apple-certified solar iPod chargers will be hitting shelves at the end of the month courtesy of company Novothink. Their Surge charger is a hard case compatible with the latest generation of iPod and iPod Touch. A version for the iPhone 3G and 3GS will be available by the end of the year.
The case is outfitted with solar panels on the back and has openings for headphones, USB cable and all external controls like a standard iPod case. The energy harnessed from the sun's rays are stored in a lithium-ion battery that holds 120 percent of the iPod Touch's internal battery capacity. While in use, the charger provides a constant charge to the iPod. Four LED lights let you know how much battery power is left.
The Novothink website has a Solar Planner that allows you to input how long you need the charge to last and how you'll be using your device and then calculates how much time in the sun is required. It also lets you specify whether you'll be in full sun, cloudy or rainy conditions.
The Surge will be available in four different colors for the iPod and eight colors for the iPhone.
Fri Sep 11, 2009 3:51PM
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -
Google Inc is disappointed with the lack of breakthrough investment ideas in the green technology sector but the company is working to develop its own new mirror technology that could reduce the cost of building solar thermal plants by a quarter or more.
"We've been looking at very unusual materials for the mirrors both for the reflective surface as well as the substrate that the mirror is mounted on," the company's green energy czar Bill Weihl told Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Google, known for its Internet search engine, in late 2007 said it would invest in companies and do research of its own to produce affordable renewable energy within a few years.
The company's engineers have been focused on solar thermal technology, in which the sun's energy is used to heat up a substance that produces steam to turn a turbine. Mirrors focus the sun's rays on the heated substance.
Weihl said Google is looking to cut the cost of making heliostats, the fields of mirrors that have to track the sun, by at least a factor of two, "ideally a factor of three or four."
"Typically what we're seeing is $2.50 to $4 a watt (for) capital cost," Weihl said. "So a 250 megawatt installation would be $600 million to a $1 billion. It's a lot of money."
That works out to 12 to 18 cents a kilowatt hour.
Google hopes to have a viable technology to show internally in a couple of months, Weihl said. It will need to do accelerated testing to show the impact of decades of wear on the new mirrors in desert conditions.
"We're not there yet," he said. "I'm very hopeful we will have mirrors that are cheaper than what companies in the space are using..."
Another technology that Google is working on is gas turbines that would run on solar power rather than natural gas, an idea that has the potential of further cutting the cost of electricity, Weihl said.
"In two to three years we could be demonstrating a significant scale pilot system that would generate a lot of power and would be clearly mass manufacturable at a cost that would give us a levelized cost of electricity that would be in the 5 cents or sub 5 cents a kilowatt hour range," Weihl said.
Google is invested in two solar thermal companies, eSolar and BrightSource, but is not working with these companies in developing the cheaper mirrors or turbines.
In wide-ranging remarks, Weihl also said the United States needs to raise government-backed research significantly, particularly in the very initial stages to encourage breakthrough ideas in the sector.
The company has pushed ahead in addressing climate change issues as a philanthropic effort through its Google.org arm. Weihl said there is a lack of companies that have ideas that would be considered breakthroughs in the green technology sector. After announcing its plans to create renewable energy at a price lower than power from coal, it has invested less than $50 million in other companies.
Weihl said Google had not intended to invest much more in early years, but that there was little to buy.
"I would say it's reasonable to be a little bit discouraged there and from my point of view, it's not right to be seriously discouraged," he said. "There isn't enough investment going into the early stages of investment pipeline before the venture funds come into the play."
The U.S. government needs to provide more funds to develop ideas at the laboratory stage, he said.
"I'd like to see $20 billion or $30 billion for 10 years (for the sector)," Weihl said. "That would be fabulous. It's pretty clear what we have seen isn't enough."
Jun 3, 2009 10:58am
The first of 1,100 planned solar-powered bus shelters has been unveiled in San Francisco. The other 1,099 will be installed across the city over the next four years.
The roof of the bus shelter is made up of thin-film solar panels embedded in a 40 percent post-industrial recycled polycarbonate material in a rolling wave shape. The structure of the shelter is made of recycled steel and other materials.
The solar roof powers an intercom, LED lighting and wireless routers, so that the bus shelters will become wireless hot spots around the city. The shelters will feed any excess energy generated by the solar panels to the city grid.
While solar-powered bus shelters are not a new concept, it's cool to see an American city deploying them, especially using them to spread wi-fi throughout the city. San Francisco is once again setting a great example.
May 11, 2009 11:15am
While not necessarily the most efficient use of solar power, I sure wouldn't mind having a few of these in my town.
Some crazy designers with some extra time on their hands have put together a design for a solar-powered wifi and lighting system that would be built into a park bench. A simple thin-film solar panel would sit under a glass pane ... and then you or I would sit on the glass pane. The system would also include a 3G-linked WiFi node so people sitting on or around the bench could get free Internet access.
The price, of course, would be a bit steep, but what worries me more is that the system would suffer greatly if it were actually popular. I mean, in some cities, free WiFi would pretty much guarantee that several people would be sitting on the bench 24 hours a day (especially during sunny times). And if your butt is blocking the sunlight ... what's powering your WiFi??
Wed Mar 4, 2009 11:43pm
The Coolerado air conditioner sounds like a technological marvel. It only draws 600 watts, compared to 6,000 for standard air conditioner. It doesn't use compressors. The only moving parts are the intake fan and a valve inside, both of which are powered by solar panels that Coolerado installs with its AC. So it's renewable and clean, right?
Well, except for one little detail -- the Coolerado draws four gallons of water every hour that it operates. In their promotional video, Coolderado brushes this off by saying "it's just like taking an extra shower or two every day&rdquo". That's a really lame way of covering up the fact that instead of sucking electricity, this air conditioner sucks water. As much as I worry about the grid being strained by AC units, I can only imagine the horror the water utility would face if suddenly everyone who wanted air conditioning was using an extra shower or two's worth of water.
This is greenwashing at its worst. Sometimes a company will claim that its product is green when it is just an ordinary product. But this goes beyond that -- the Coolerado is arguably much more environmentally taxing than a regular air conditioner, yet its sellers will try and convince you that it is renewable, sustainable, and, above all, the right choice for a green consumer.
Don't believe them.
Copyright 2007 SC Origin. All rights reserved. Solar Power Mart is a division of SC Origin. Solar Power Mart is a trademark of SC Origin.
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