IKEA invested $2.8 billion in renewable energy infrastructure in 2019. It put 1 million solar panels on 370 0f its stores and warehouses, and also built 535 wind turbines and 2 solar parks.
The goal is to be climate positive by 2030. IKEA shows that we have the solutions.
Read more: cleantechnica.com
People in quarantine are searching for solar power.
New data from The Harris Poll and LG show that LG’s solar web traffic, as well as quote requests for residential systems are both trending high since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, the issue becomes turning this interest into concrete sales.
The trend is extending beyond just base-level consumer interest, as Wicka shares that requests for system quotes have skyrocketed since the onset of the pandemic. From March to April, quotes for solar systems rose 44% month-over-month.
Read more: pv-magazine-usa.com
The U.S. Department of the Interior on Monday signed off on Nevada’s Gemini Solar Project, which could be the largest U.S. solar plant once constructed.
The 690-megawatt Gemini project won federal approval despite lingering controversy over its environmental footprint.
Gemini would feed solar power to the Las Vegas load center.
Read more: greentechmedia.com
A new kind of solar technology has set a world record for the most efficient generation of energy by a solar cell.
By stacking six different photoactive layers, the record-setting multi-junction cell has reached nearly 50 percent efficiency in the lab and nearly 40 percent in “single sun” real-life conditions.
Researchers say the same technology could be fine-tuned to reach a full 50 percent efficiency.
Learn more at : popularmechanics.com
Washington ranchers, farmers and state agencies are learning that certain land features make them ideal for renewable energy projects.
Ranchers are losing land to solar farms, but help is on the way.
Leases canceled from the Department of Natural Resources are hurting ranchers. But a new bill would compensate those forced off public land for more profitable uses.
New designs for perovskite-silicon solar cells have reached a conversion efficiency of 27.7 percent.
The use of solar photovoltaic cells as a renewable energy source is booming, as the technology becomes more efficient and less expensive. Stacking perovskite solar cells on top of silicon ones is one way to increase the amount of sunlight harnessed, and now researchers at Australian National University (ANU) have broken a new efficiency record for these tandem solar cells.
Already outperforming most commercially available solar cells, which hover around the 20-percent efficiency mark, these are based solely on silicon, and that technology is expected to bump up against its maximum upper limit in the next few years.
Read more: New tandem perovskite-silicon solar cell breaks efficiency record (newatlas.com/energy)
An innovative solar project in Toledo, Ohio, will do triple duty when it’s completed this spring. It will provide renewable power to a nearby axle factory. It will use otherwise unproductive land. And hundreds of thousands of dollars from the sale of the project’s electricity will benefit nearby low-income communities.
A joint project in Toledo by the port authority, a community foundation and local industry earmarks profits for community needs.
Read more: Ohio solar project will benefit low-income communities (energynews.us)
Researchers from the University of California, Davis explain in a recent paper, published in the journal ACS Photonics, that if you want to create a solar panel that generates electricity at night, you have to create one that operates the exact opposite way solar panels work during the day.
It’s referred to as the “anti-solar panel.”
Solar panels are cold compared to the Sun, so they absorb the Sun’s light and turn it into energy. Space is very cold, so if you point a panel on Earth that is comparatively warm toward it, it will radiate heat as invisible infrared light. This allows you to generate electricity by capturing that power. The paper claims such a device could generate about a quarter of the electricity at night that a normal solar panel generates during the day.
Read more: Anti-solar panel can generate electricity at night, researchers say