Photovoltaic Cells

Siemens Solar Industries in Camarillo said it won a $10-million, three-year contract from the Department of Energy to develop solar cells for the government's Photovoltaic Manufacturing Technology Initiative. The initiative is intended to improve U.S. manufacturing and technology of photovoltaic cells, which are made of single crystal silicon and convert sunlight into electricity.

MIT researchers have developed an inexpensive technique to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, a feat that would allow energy produced by sun-powered photovoltaic cells to be stored for future use. Daniel Nocera and Matthew Kanan reported Friday in the journal Science that they had created an unusual catalyst for the reaction by dissolving cobalt and phosphate in water containing conductive glass electrodes. When a current was applied, the catalyst plated onto the surface of the electrodes, and hydrogen began forming at one and oxygen at the other.

NASA has built and flown a remote-controlled plane powered from the ground by the beam of an invisible laser. In indoor flights conducted last month at a NASA center in Alabama, the plane flew lap after lap, gliding to a landing once the laser beam was turned off, the agency said Thursday. While in flight, the laser tracked the 11-ounce, 5-foot-wingspan plane, striking the photovoltaic cells that powered the tiny motor that turned its lone propeller.

Photovoltaic cells that convert 31% of the energy in sunlight into electricity have been developed by researchers at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. The rate is the highest ever recorded for solar cells and is about 50% higher than the efficiency of commercial solar cells, which are 18% to 20% efficient. The cells were produced by combining gallium arsenide cells produced by Varian Associates Inc. of Palo Alto, and crystalline silicon cells produced at Stanford University.

Utility diversification is not an issue limited to San Diego Gas & Electric. It is, in fact, a statewide issue. "It's an idea whose time has come, and it's a very necessary next step in the development of our industry," according to Steve Edwards, manager of special projects at SDG&E.

Watching the progress of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster, one wonders again why we continue to pursue this source of energy. The irony, of course, it that if we had spent half as much money on developing solar energy as we have on nuclear, we would now have on hand efficient photovoltaic cells truly capable of producing electricity "too cheap to meter." Instead, we have growing pools of spent nuclear fuel, which will be radioactive for thousands of years, and no more idea of how to dispose of it than we did 30 years ago. We have reactors that cost 10 to 15 times what they were supposed to, which will have to be retired (meaning buried in cement)

AFG Industries Inc., the Irvine-based glass maker, said Thursday it will be part of a three-company joint venture to build a new factory to manufacture photovoltaic modules, devices used to convert sunlight directly into electricity, for an Alabama utility. AFG will join Southern Electric Investment Inc. and Chronar Corp. to build the six-foot-high modules that will provide off-peak hour, reserve power for the investment company's parent, Alabama Power Co. Start-up of the $7.

Students at Alamitos Intermediate School will get a firsthand education in solar energy this fall when they become Orange County's first school to generate energy from a solar patio cover. The $30,000 shelter will be installed for free by Southern California Edison in a program that brings energy-generating solar panels to schools. The company will build a 46-by-49-foot patio shelter, equipped with 48 rooftop solar panels, extended over campus lunch tables.

Straight from the sun, the latest breakthrough in clean fuels involves a solar-powered Ford Ranger pickup truck. The only exhaust emitted is water vapor. A joint project of Xerox Corp. and Clean Air Now, an environmental group, the experimental technology to be unveiled today in Los Angeles makes hydrogen fuel from sunlight concentrated in photovoltaic cells.

In a move that took experts by surprise, Houston-based Enron Corp., a giant energy developer, has proposed building the world's largest photovoltaic power plant at the Energy Department's Nevada Test Site, near Las Vegas. Equally unexpected, in an industry now producing electricity at a pricey 25 cents a kilowatt-hour, Enron says it will make power at 5.5 cents--which would make power converted directly from sunlight competitive with fossil fuel plants.