L.L.Bean Installs Solar Panels at Flagship Store

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Excerpt: AUGUSTA, MAINE -  ­ L.L.Bean has long been recognized as an outdoor company with strong environmental values. In 2007 the company joined the EPA's Climate Leaders Program and formalized a corporate goal to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) 20 percent by 2012. In addition to ongoing cost …

NASA Technology Translates Into Self-Cleaning Solar Panels

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Excerpt: 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 today present …

PV Vision Sensor Identifies Smallest Solar Cell Inconsistencies

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Excerpt: SensoPart Industriesensorik GmbH (Wieden, Germany) expanded its program of vision sensors by adding a solution for photovoltaics: The new vision solar sensor FA 46 is the only sensor in its price category available on the market that measures each individual cell and is consequently able to ident …

Fused Quartz, A Critical Component Of The Solar Power Industry

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Excerpt: As the photovoltaic industry advances, the use of fused quartz becomes more vital, in creating thin films and silicon chips as well as manufacturing and laboratory ware.Much of the success of sustainable energy sources depends on the achievement of improved efficiencies, and photovoltaics are …

Report: Solar Energy Cheaper Than Nuclear Energy

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Excerpt: The costs for solar photovoltaic (PV) systems have fallen steadily while construction costs for new nuclear power plants have been rising over the past decade, which now makes electricity generated from new solar installations cheaper than electricity from proposed new nuclear power plants, acco …

New Solar Cell Generates Electricity Via Sun’s Light & Heat

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Excerpt: A team of scientists has invented a new type of solar cell that converts both the sun's heat and light into electricity, potentially giving a boost to the efficiency of solar energy harvesting devices. The cell combines a photovoltaic process that turns light into electricity with another that c …

DOE Confirms Stick-On PV Film Improves Efficiency 12%

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Excerpt: A stick-on photovoltaic film developed by Soloptics can improve solar panel efficiency rates by over 12 percent, thereby reducing the cost of solar power for the consumer. The US Department of Energy confirmed the products' effectiveness on August 2.In tests performed by NREL at its Golden, …

China’s Solar Powered Buses That Can Drive Over Cars

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Excerpt: Instead of spending millions to widen roads, the Shenzhen Huashi Future Parking Equipment company is developing a "3D Express Coach" (also called a "three-dimensional fast bus") that will allow cars less than 2 meters high to travel underneath the upper level carrying passengers. According to …

Researchers Cool Silicon Until It Melts

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Excerpt: Like an ice cube on a warm day, most materials melt -- that is, change from a solid to a liquid state -- as they get warmer. But a few oddball materials do the reverse: They melt as they get cooler. Now a team of researchers at MIT has found that silicon, the most widely used material for comput …

WAGO IPCs Aboard Largest Solar-Powered Boat

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Excerpt: WAGO 758 Series IPCs are managing solar energy for Tûranor PlanetSolar, the world’s largest solar-powered boat. Conceived by Raphaël Domjan, a Swiss eco-adventurer and PlanetSolar founder, Tûranor is a catamaran research vessel for solar power utilization. Tûranor will embark on a solar-p …