Solar Power Authority

It's common knowledge in the solar industry that thin film solar is on it's way and will revolutionize the way solar panels are produced and used. No longer will PV solar panels require the clean-room style processes and expensive silicon parts that microchips popularized in previous generations. It's the expensive silicon wafers and heavy shipping weight that really bump up the cost of "going solar" in today's marketplace. The current generation of solar panels already use much thinner glass and plastic mounting (which reduces weight) and only 1-2% of the silicon per megawatt of energy produced as the older panels....

The United States just had it's first cap-and-trade greenhouse-gas auction which raised nearly $40 Million dollars. This money in turn will be used to fund reduction or avoidance of CO2 in end-use energy efficiency in the building sector using solar (among other technologies). Auctions like this one have been scheduled to occur quarterly and are being fed by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) which requires all fossil fuel-burning power plants in a 10-state Northeaster US region to buy credits to offset the carbon they emit. This first auction is part of a series that is being used to...

SunPower has released a new line of single-axis tracking systems for large-scale solar electric projects and power plants. SunPower already offers the highest efficiency photovoltaic solar panels commercially available for residential use, and it will be interesting to see if they make solar tracking technology available for residential use as well. The SunPower Tracker system has been in use for a while now, and has been proven to deliver more energy per land area than competing systems. The SunPower Tracker also has unique backtracking algorithms that allow the panels to tilt out of alignment with the sun at low sun...

We recently received the following question from one of our users:  Is it ok to connect a 100 watt and a 45 watt solar panel together ??? and what is the best way to do this to charge a battery bank the quickest?In order to answer the question properly we reached out to a few of our engineering friends around the country and came up with the following: The answer is maybe... If you just connect a solar panel to a battery, when there is light, the battery charges. But at night the solar panel looks like a resistor and...

Last week we reviewed the Woodgas-Stove by iENERGY over on Biomass Authority and came away very impressed with the product. This week we wanted to explore the solar power option for this stove and provide some tips for sustainable camping. While the woodgas stove is more of a biomass product than a solar one, it does rely on a small electric fan to achieve high burn temperatures and this fan can be powered either by traditional batteries or solar power. Guess which option we prefer? In case you haven't read our review of the wood gas stove we'll catch you...

There are two common ways to collect energy from the sun. One is to use a thermal solar collector to gather the sun's heat and the other is to use a photovoltaic (PV) array which converts the sun's energy to electricity. Which is better? In the case of solar thermal, the conversion efficiency is much higher than PV. You can extract as much as 70% of the sun's energy with a solar collector, which is accomplished by circulating a fluid through a solar panel collector and capturing the heat rise that naturally occurs when the sun shines on the collector....

In most situations over half the cost of installing a solar power system on a residential house is spent on inverters, brackets, structural support (reinforcing the roof, repairing the roof, patching holes, etc.), and retrofitting the homes electrical system. For example, in California a 5Kw system costs about $45,000 and is reduced to $35K after the rebate. Most people don't realize that nearly $15,000 of the total cost on a system like this would be spent on installation costs...Having been inspired by a post we found on the Tesla Founders Blog (Tesla is a company that makes electric cars), we...

We just received this press release from Coherent Solar - a local company that we've written about before on Solar Power Authority when they were presenting at the Photovoltaics Summit 2008 in San Diego. This press release announces the details of a new laser system that they have developed to produce solar cells.The Talisker system is a new ultra-short-pulse laser designed to produce high efficiency cell concepts. It is optimized for next-generation solar cell manufacturing and was designed as a drop-in turn-key solution to benefit both production line equipment suppliers and cell manufacturers.Traditionally, laser scribers akin to the Talisker have...

This morning one of our readers sent us a little do it yourself tip for heating a swimming pool based on what one of her friends is doing. The full comment follows: "Not a question, but a little info: Knowing how hot the water gets in a garden hose, a friend with a swimming pool bought a bunch, I do not know how much, of black garden hose. She spread it out in big curls on top of a nearby flat roofed building. She then fixed up a small recirculating pump, ran the water to the swimming pool to warm...

Question submitted to Solar Power Authority on July 10th: Where in Colorado can you get training for PV and solar hot water, other than the place in Carbondale? Thanks. Question clarification to sender by Solar Power Authority: Thanks for your question! In order to help you find the best answer we wanted to clarify your question. It sounds like you are searching for places in Colorado where you can get training on how to install electric generating and water heating solar panels. Is that correct? Are you a do-it-yourselfer or are you actually looking to become a professional installer? Are there any...