Solar Funding in Germany Will Stop at 52 Gigawatts

Germany's energy policies have been very friendly towards the continual production of clean energy sources such as solar and wind power. While some of these policies tend to be structural and permanent, others are designed to be "temporary boosts" to help society rely less on fossil fuels and more on renewable energy sources. 

Peter Altmaier, Germany's federal minister of the environment, has announced that Germany will stop subsidizing solar energy by the year 2018 at the latest because the pre-set ceiling of 52 gigawatts of capacity should be reached by that time. 

          

AFP writes: "The system of subsidies, under which solar energy producers are paid a guaranteed price for each kilowatt-hour of power generated, created a boom in recent years, making Germany a global leader in the field. The farm sector in particular seized upon solar power as a chance to supplement income, and the low price of solar panels from Asia contributed to the craze."

Solar-Powered Computers for Off-Grid Schools

      In 2009, a 19-year-old graduating senior from Hong Kong's International School, Charles Watson, carrying a rudimentary computer, had took off a year from entering a university to travel to Nepal to work on a project he came up with while still in school: to provide off-the-grid schools with solar-linked computing power. "Once I got to Nepal, I was running a blog, taking photos and so on, saying 'We need computers,'" he says. "I did a fundraising run in Nepal and that raised enough to buy 30 computers at $300 each - $10,000 if you include the solar panels."
      Watson, an American who has be raised in Hong Kong, is currently 23 and still is not attending a university, despite being accepted at the University of Illinois, and doesn't plan on attending any time in the foreseeable future. Instead, he is the founder and chief of SolarLEAP, a nonprofit organization company whose computers are often assembled by his parents at their kitchen table, but they are delivering computing power to schools without reliable electricity, or none at all, in countries as diverse as Nepal, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and, he hopes, across the world.
       "As many as 1.3 billion people, a fifth of the world's population, remain without access to electricity," he says. Ten countries--four in developing Asia and six in sub-Saharan Africa--account for two-thirds of those without electricity. Unless further action is taken, it is projected that close to one billion people will be without electricity still in 2030.

Charles Watson and friends

        Watson has since branched out to Ghana, where he has installed 24 computers, each running on solar power in off-grid schools. After the projects in Nepal and Ghana were completed, demand in rural communities began to grow. Within weeks, organizations in India and Ethiopia were looking for unique low-power consumption computers to run in schools without electricity. Furthermore, Watson was looking for a way to continue the work without his direct, on-the-ground involvement, and thus SolarLEAP was born.
        Today, he has installed 200 of solar-powered computers in five countries with funding from non-governmental organizations and anybody he can solicit money from. "The transformation of schools is dramatic," he says. In 2010, after installation of his computers in Canumay School near Antipolo in the Philippines, the school moved from last place to a first ranking in its school district. He provided the first solar-powered computers to any school in India. "One in four people around the globe don't have access to electricity," he said. "More than 100 million children don't have access to education and a large share of students fortunate enough to be in school don't have access to quality education materials."

Solar "Power" Couple Wins Award

        Dr. Jianhua Zhao and Aihua Wang were joint recipients for an Advance Global Australian Award for contributions to the field of clean technology. The award ceremony, organized in partnership with the Australian Government and the Australian Financial Review, was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney on March 21, 2013.
        The pair, who are the first Chinese-Australians ever to receive this award, also won a special Australia in the Asian Century Award for their contribution in the Asia region. Australia's Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, also made a video speech to them to endorsing the award. "Jianhua and Aihua were excellent students and staff members here at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), and prolific researchers," says Scientia Professor Martin Green, Director of the AFC Photovoltaics Center of Excellence, and who nominated Dr. Zhao and Dr. Wang for the award. "They took us to the position where we can now make the most efficient cells in the world and nobody yet has been able to catch up. They are both well-respected internationally and have played an influential role in establishing China as a major producer of solar power and PV technology."
        In 1999, the pair developed the high efficiency crystallized Silicon PERL cell and set a new record, demonstrating 25% energy conversion efficiency, which remains the highest level achieved in the world so far.
       In 2004, Zhao co-founded the Chinese solar cell and manufacturing company China Sunergy, where he is now Chief Technology Officer and Director. Wang, who also completed her Ph.D. degree and worked at UNSW for more than a decade, is the company's Vice-President of research and development.
       The duo are now leading China Sunergy's participation in an 863 program, a National High Technology Research and Development Program in China that supports and encourages the development and commercialization of solar cells with a high efficiency rate (over 20%) and a low production cost.

Source : UNSW