Energy and Global Warming News for August 23rd: Self-cleaning technology from Mars can keep terrestrial solar panels dust free; China closes factories as green deadline looms

Self-Cleaning Technology from Mars Can Keep Terrestrial Solar Panels Dust Free

Find dusting those tables and dressers a chore or a bore? Dread washing the windows? Imagine keeping dust and grime off objects spread out over an area of 25 to 50 football fields. That’s the problem facing companies that deploy large-scale solar power installations, and scientists have now presented the development of one solution — self-dusting solar panels “• based on technology developed for space missions to Mars.

In a report at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) on August 22, they described how a self-cleaning coating on the surface of solar cells could increase the efficiency of producing electricity from sunlight and reduce maintenance costs for large-scale solar installations.

“We think our self-cleaning panels used in areas of high dust and particulate pollutant concentrations will highly benefit the systems’ solar energy output,” study leader Malay K. Mazumder, Ph.D. said. “Our technology can be used in both small- and large-scale photovoltaic systems. To our knowledge, this is the only technology for automatic dust cleaning that doesn’t require water or mechanical movement.”

Mazumder, who is with Boston University, said the need for that technology is growing with the popularity of solar energy. Use of solar, or photovoltaic, panels increased by 50 percent from 2003 to 2008, and forecasts suggest a growth rate of at least 25 percent annually into the future. Fostering the growth, he said, is emphasis on alternative energy sources and society-wide concerns about sustainability (using resources today in ways that do not jeopardize the ability of future generations to meet their needs).

Large-scale solar installations already exist in the United States, Spain, Germany, the Middle East, Australia, and India. These installations usually are located in sun-drenched desert areas where dry weather and winds sweep dust into the air and deposit it onto the surface of solar panel. Just like grime on a household window, that dust reduces the amount of light that can enter the business part of the solar panel, decreasing the amount of electricity produced. Clean water tends to be scarce in these areas, making it expensive to clean the solar panels.

“A dust layer of one-seventh of an ounce per square yard decreases solar power conversion by 40 percent,” Mazumder explains. “In Arizona, dust is deposited each month at about 4 times that amount. Deposition rates are even higher in the Middle East, Australia, and India.”

Working with NASA, Mazumder and colleagues initially developed the self-cleaning solar panel technology for use in lunar and Mars missions. “Mars of course is a dusty and dry environment,” Mazumder said, “and solar panels powering rovers and future manned and robotic missions must not succumb to dust deposition. But neither should the solar panels here on Earth.”

The self-cleaning technology involves deposition of a transparent, electrically sensitive material deposited on glass or a transparent plastic sheet covering the panels. Sensors monitor dust levels on the surface of the panel and energize the material when dust concentration reaches a critical level. The electric charge sends a dust-repelling wave cascading over the surface of the material, lifting away the dust and transporting it off of the screen’s edges.

Mazumder said that within two minutes, the process removes about 90 percent of the dust deposited on a solar panel and requires only a small amount of the electricity generated by the panel for cleaning operations.

China closes factories as green deadline looms
China, facing the risk of embarrassment if it misses a looming environmental deadline, has ordered thousands of companies to close high-polluting plants as its leadership vies to retool economic growth.

Beijing has pledged to slash China’s energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product by 20 percent between 2006 and 2010, as the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter seeks to reduce pollution and clean up its environment.

Official data suggest China is likely to miss the year-end deadline — potentially causing red faces for top leaders who have trumpeted efforts to curb emissions growth and develop renewable energy. “It is a gesture to show that the country is trying its best to achieve the target,” Andy Xie, an independent economist based in Shanghai, told AFP.

The leaders need to save face.” Beijing this month ordered 2,087 firms producing steel, coal, cement, aluminium, glass and other materials to close their old and obsolete plants by the end of September — or risk having bank loans frozen and power cut off.

Clean energy laws, utility costs make New Jersey a solar hotbed
Edward Fischer of Pompton Lakes finally got solar panels this week on his tidy, 1950s Cape Cod with sky blue shutters. He had been trying for nine years to figure out how to afford them. But two years ago he gave up when he was quoted an out-of-pocket price “” with rebates “” of $30,000.

Then, he read a newspaper article in January about a California company that had a better method for financing solar power. “I called them in a flash, and when they said it was going to cost me $600 I said, ‘Hallelujah, my dream of having the power meter go backward was finally going to be granted,’ ” Fischer said.

New Jersey is the hottest place in the United States for solar energy these days, and it is not because it is so sunny. The Garden State’s progressive clean energy laws and high electricity costs make it the best place to install solar power because systems can pay for themselves in less than five years “” faster than any state in the nation.

Mercury Solar Systems, one of the larger solar installers in New Jersey, built the array on Fischers’ steep roof. But the financing, insurance and maintenance was handled by SunRun, the California-based company that caught Fischer’s eye.

The state’s burgeoning solar industry is attracting the attention of companies from around the country, especially from California, which has long been the nation’s largest solar market. Its 66,000 solar installations dwarf New Jersey’s 6,500 projects.

Greens’ Electoral Gains Spur Hope for Australian Clean Energy

A surge in voter support for the Australian Greens has sparked optimism that the government may increase efforts to stimulate the development of the renewable energy industry and combat climate change.

“Any government would ignore that at their peril,” Michael Ottaviano, managing director of Perth-based Carnegie Wave Energy Ltd., said by phone yesterday. “This should send a very clear message to both sides of the political spectrum that the Australian people want action on climate change.”

The Greens party won its first lower house seat in a general election, with lawyer Adam Bandt taking Melbourne from the Labor Party, and will hold the balance of power in the Senate. Prime Minister Julia Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott are fighting to form the next government after neither of their parties won a majority in the general election over the weekend.

Disaster at the Top of the World

STANDING on the deck of this floating laboratory for Arctic science, which is part of Canada’s Coast Guard fleet and one of the world’s most powerful icebreakers, I can see vivid evidence of climate change. Channels through the Canadian Arctic archipelago that were choked with ice at this time of year two decades ago are now expanses of open water or vast patchworks of tiny islands of melting ice.

In 1994, the “Louie,” as the crew calls the ship, and a United States Coast Guard icebreaker, the Polar Sea, smashed their way to the North Pole through thousands of miles of pack ice six- to nine-feet thick. “The sea conditions in the Arctic Ocean were rarely an issue for us in those days, because the thick continuous ice kept waves from forming,” Marc Rothwell, the Louie’s captain, told me. “Now, there’s so much open water that we have to account for heavy swells that undulate through the sea ice. It’s almost like a dream: the swells move in slow motion, like nothing I’ve seen elsewhere.”

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and this summer its sea ice is melting at a near-record pace. The sun is heating the newly open water, so it will take longer to refreeze this winter, and the resulting thinner ice will melt more easily next summer.

A Mountain in the Stream

It is now possible to imagine the beginning of the end of a ruinous form of mining called “mountaintop removal.” Local opposition is growing, and the Environmental Protection Agency is tightening rules and threatening to veto one of the largest projects ever proposed.

Enormous harm has already been inflicted on Appalachia’s environment, most acutely in West Virginia. Mountaintop mining involves blasting the tops off mountains to expose subsurface coal seams. The coal is trucked away, but the debris is dumped over the side into the valleys, forests and streams below. As many as 2,000 miles of clear-running streams have been poisoned or buried in this fashion.

The dumping is a clear violation of the Clean Water Act. Regulators during the administration of President George W. Bush willfully looked the other way. The Obama administration is trying to turn things around. First it agreed to review about 80 existing permits. Then it raised the bar for new permits “” tightening stream protections and promising a case-by-case analysis of new projects instead of the blanket approvals granted before.

Energy Department defends use of stimulus dollars

The Energy Department official overseeing the agency’s distribution of billions of dollars in stimulus funding on Friday struck back at critics who say DOE is moving too slowly.

Matt Rogers “” who advises Energy Secretary Steven Chu on stimulus spending “” took to DOE’s blog Friday afternoon to make the case that stimulus funding has created tens of thousands of jobs.

“Sometimes the media is quick to criticize the pace of Recovery Act spending in the energy sector. Here’s a key fact that is often overlooked: more than 90 percent of the Department of Energy’s $32 billion in Recovery Act funds has been allocated to clean energy projects around the country, creating tens of thousands of direct jobs and even more along the supply chain – doing everything from installing wind turbines and solar panels, to manufacturing electric car batteries, to making homes more energy-efficient,” he wrote.

The department’s inspector general recently issued a pair of reports that gave mixed reviews on the pace of spending under the stimulus. One report this month found that DOE has distributed about $2.7 billion of $3.2 billion in energy efficiency and conservation block grants provided in last year’s stimulus. Yet grant recipients had used only 8.4 percent of the $3.2 billion after more than a year.