Solar Power Helps Pump Oil

      Built by GlassPoint Solar, a Fremont company that uses renewable power to squeeze oil from the ground, a new solar steam plant has been developed in the Middle East, specifically the Omani desert. GlassPoint Solar, raising approximately $32 million in venue capital, has a small pilot plant in Kern County that has been generating steam for two years. Known as the Oman plant, it is 27 times bigger than the relatively small pilot plant, producing a average of 50 tons of steam per day.
       "Oman doesn't have the massive oil reserves of some of its neighbors, and its production started declining more than 10 years ago," said John O'Donnell, GlassPoint's Vice President of Business Development. "Steam-flooding an old field can help boost production. Plus, Oman has heavy oil deposits that are hard to develop without steam." O'Donnell added, "most steam-flooding operations burn natural gas to generate the steam, but Oman doesn't have large gas reserves of its own. And the price of importing it is high, more than three times its current cost in the United States."
         GlassPoint's technology is a low-cost twist on the conventional display of solar power plants in the past. GlassPoint's mirrors are made from thin, lightweight and inexpensive aluminium sheets. A decent breeze could knock the mirrors out of alignment so GlassPoint has them inside of glass greenhouses. Most of the materials can be bought from shelves from many suppliers. "Solar will be, by far, the cheapest way of complying with the standard," O'Donnell said. "As that develops, obviously we'll be keenly interested. We're a California company."

GlassPoint Solar

BioSolar announces the Production of BioBackSheet

           BioSolar Inc., a manufacturing company specialized in creating solar panel components, has discovered a technological technique that can help improve solar panels in a drastic way. Solar photovoltaic panels are originally equipped with a clear lamination coating, known as a backsheet, which protects the sensitive solar cells underneath. Generally, this coating would be developed from non-biodegradeable petroleum-based plastic and glass. However, BioSolar has developed a product, BioBackSheet, which is the coating made from cotton and castor beans.
          In some cases, while trying to use renewable energy resources, it can develop waste or pollution when creating and harvesting them. For instance, solar panels have increasingly been used and had produced an extreme amount of toxic and pollution, created by the production of the traditional backsheet. With this problematic issue, BioSolar has developed a solution, whereas a new era in solar power collection may be dawning in that materials, used to harvest energy, will be as clean as its energy source.
           To develop the BioBackSheet, BioSolar processes and uses cotton rags to provide the strength needed to withstand the harsh outdoor environment. Castor beans provide resin, which after processing, can be used to create a material similar to nylon. When combined, the result is a transparent material very similar to currently produced backsheets, excluding the use of petroleum-based materials. BioSolar notes that backsheets are easy to produce, cost-efficient, and are toxic-free from the chemicals needed to traditionally produce backsheets. BioSolar also remarks that the newly produced product has a high degree of thermal conductivity and has electromagnetic properties equivalent to conventional materials as well as the mechanical strength and stability needed for solar panel applications--all in addition to the obvious advantages of using a biodegradable material for manufacturing purposes, particularly as a component in a so-called "green" technology.
           The reason for late widespread adoption of the new biodegradable backsheet can possibly be because of the availability of the caster seeds, which are not grown in the United States due to its natural state being toxic and highly allergenic. For this reason and others, other research efforts are undergoing development in creating caster seeds that do not produce any negative effect.

3D Printing can indeed help the Solar Power Industry too!

     The exact definition of the term "3-Dimension Printing" would be referred to as a process of making a three-dimensional solid object of virtually any shape of a digital model by using an additive process, which is the process of layers of material being laid down successively in different types of forms. Since the 21st century has begun, 3D printing has been used increasingly in various types of industries in society such as jewelry, dentistry, prototyping and even human organs.
     Energy strategist John Licata, whom also founded Blue Phoenix Inc., an independent energy and metals research company, comments his enthusiasm in seeing potential of how 3D printing can revolutionize solar panel and photovoltaic (PV) cell manufacturing. In this present stage of the rising solar power industry, it is accurate to point out that solar panels is somewhat lacking in energy storage and thus, solar cells must be developed to be more sustainable.
     With this complexity of solar power, John Licata has brought to our attention of possibly producing 3D solar cells, which, in turn, can capture more sunlight directly than with conventional PV cells. He believes that "they are more precise (using copper, indium, gallium, selenide: CIGS), less complex and has less weight." Researchers in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) believe they can be 20% more efficient than solar panels.
     Another key factor he points out is the cost, which if 3D printing is successful in producing more efficient solar cells, it could drop the production cost by 50% (because they wouldn't be using costly materials as glass, poly-silicon, or indium). Not only this but he believes it would provide us more convenience in the future because it may be able to produce extremely thin solar cells onto paper, plastic or even fabric instead of the expensive glass used in solar panels. This, he theorizes, would help produce mass appeal for solar energy if it can be turned into wearable high-tech clothing, radios or other electronics. Perhaps in the future, we may find 3D printing incorporated with the use of solar power energy, who knows what the future holds for us.