Solar Cells

When it comes to high-tech competitions for college students, the race may not be to the swiftest, but the richest. Three Southland campuses are gearing up for a solar-car shoot-out next year. None has a vehicle ready at this stage, but all have left the starting blocks in the dash for donors. Cal State Los Angeles even has a big gun concentrating on fund raising for the "Solar Eagle"--Raymond B. Landis, dean of the School of Engineering and Technology.

When it comes to high-tech competition for college students, the race may be not to the swiftest but the richest. Three Southland campuses are gearing up for a solar-car shoot-out next year. None have a vehicle ready at this stage, but all have left the starting blocks in the dash for donors. Cal State Los Angeles even has a big gun concentrating on fund-raising for the "Solar Eagle"--Raymond B. Landis, dean of the School of Engineering and Technology.

Solar Electric Engineering Inc. has signed an agreement to enter into a joint venture to manufacture and commercialize a new photovoltaic cell developed by scientists at International Solar Electric Technology. The company said the goal is to produce a cell that will allow the average homeowner to generate low-cost electricity from sunlight. Solar Electric, a 12-year-old California company, will jointly own the manufacturing plant with ISET.

Good morning, fellow sun-lovers. Here we are in Southern California, home of the New Year's Day Rose Parade, which customarily reminds the world at large that we loll around outdoors in winter without hats and coats. (Never mind the stormy weather of the last week.) But what the whole world doesn't know--and what many otherwise hip Californians aren't aware of--is that right here in Ventura County, El Sol is the basis of an important industry. And I'm not talking tourism.

One of the holy grails of solar cell technology may have been found, with researchers at UCLA announcing they have created a new organic polymer that produces electricity, is nearly transparent and is more durable and malleable than silicon. The applications are mind-boggling. Windows that produce electricity. Buildings wrapped in transparent solar cells. Laptops and phones - or even cars or planes - whose outer coverings act as chargers. It might even be sprayed on as a liquid. The promise of cheap and easy-to-apply site-generated solar electricity might now be a lot closer to reality.

This famously foggy city, home to cold, cloudy and often capricious weather, now wants to lighten its image to something decidedly sunlit: as the nation's leading municipal producer of solar power and renewable energy. On an unseasonably bright Thursday, Mayor Willie Brown unveiled what officials hope will be the first of several solar power refurbishment projects to make the city less reliant on aging fossil fuel-burning generators.

A spindly solar-powered aircraft took to the skies Friday from Moffett Federal Airfield, near San Francisco, on a pioneering coast-to-coast flight that will not use one ounce of fossil fuel. The plane, called Solar Impulse HB-SIA, has an immense 208-foot wing covered with 12,000 solar cells that soak up the sun's rays and power the plane's four electric motors while simultaneously charging batteries. That means the plane can keep flying at night. The goal is not speed, because it's traveling a leisurely 43 mph. Nor is it endurance, because it's making the trip in five legs.

An experimental type of solar power cell has reached record efficiency levels, and one version continued to provide power at night, scientists reported last week. Although the experimental cells still are less efficient than photovoltaic cells, they may compete commercially in the future. The experimental cells use solids and a liquid solution to generate power, while existing commercial photovoltaic cells use only solids.

On a coastal plain near Camarillo not far from a U.S. Navy base and an outlet mall, the future of California farming is taking shape. Rising out of verdant acres of strawberries and artichokes between Highway 101 and the Pacific Ocean in Ventura County are two mammoth, high-tech greenhouses. Climate change is a serious threat to California's $36-billion agricultural economy.