Marine Solar Park built as a landmark in Changwon, Korea

The Marine Solar Park was first constructed by the Ministry of Knowledge and Economy as the world's tallest solar tower, which was built as the nation's landmark in 2006. The solar park is composed of two sections: the exhibition floor and the solar panel tower that is constructed above it. The solar tower stands firm in 136 meters high and the entire floor space is 6,336 square meters across a spacious lot of 14,977 square meters. With a shape of a sailing ship, the solar tower can generate 1,264 kW a day with a capacity of 600 kW/h, equivalent to the total energy consumption of 200 households. The four story exhibition floor will accommodate a 644 square meter conference room that can seat 500 people at a time. In the near future, the Marine Solar Park will not only be a tourist attraction but a learning site to steer many towards a cleaner environment with sustainable renewable energy and a business center for companies.

Marine Solar park constructed on top of Eumjido in Jinhae-gu

Outside view inside the exhibition floor

Hyundai's 50 Acre rooftop covered with PV systems will be South Korea's largest

The South Korea's Automaker will mount their country's largest solar-panel system after the production of about 40,000 solar voltaic panels on the rooftops of its Asan plant later this year. The panels will supply approximately 11.5 million kilowatts per hour, or the corresponding power consumed by 3,200 households. As you might have not known, Hyundai produces the Sonata Hybrid at the plant advancing towards greener energy. Hyundai also had announced that the solar systems will eliminate about 5,600 tons of CO2 emissions. Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) purchases the electricity and redistributes all around the factory.

(credits to Danny King from Autobloggreen)

Brazilian-made Plastic Solar Panels

       Brazilians emphasize upon increasing their knowledge in terms of green technology research and have concluded to discover and develop plastic solar panels, which can help revolutionize power generation from such an amazing source of energy.

Tiago Maranhao Alves holding a strip of newly developed plastic solar panel

      This solar panel may seem like it is a thin sheet of plastic, but it is actually a solar panel covered with photovoltaic cells, which converts sunlight into electricity. Unlike other heavy and costly silicon-based solar panels commonly used in society today, this plastic solar panel was created by scientists at CSEM Brazil, a research institute in the southeastern state of Brazil, Minas Gerais.
      These solar panels are similar to transparent sheets of plastic with stripes where they printed with carbon-based organic polymers, in that they were made by incorporating organic photovoltaic cells into common polymers. The technology to produce the organic photovoltaic cells has been studied in Europe and the United States, but Brazil has made further development usage pertaining to the technology.
      "While the capacity for power generation is almost the same, its small size means that it can be given uses that are impossible for silicon panels," said Tiago Maranhao Alves, chairman of CSEM Brazil and physical engineer who directly participated in the research. This material is able to power electrical components of automobiles and in electronic devices such as mobile phones, wireless keyboards and mice. "A panel with a surface of two or three square feet meters can be sufficient to generate the energy needed in a house lived by a family of four," Alves also remarked.
       Transportation is also an advantage of the solar panels, compared to the common silicon-based panels. "Because they are easy to transport, logical costs are lower. In addition, people can take them with them when they move to a new home," Alves noted. The plastic solar panel is able to be used in covering buildings and venues like airports and sports stadiums, avoiding the need to set aside an area for installation of the silicon panels.

Walmart in Ohio is now powered by solar!

Walmart has announced that it has worked with SolarCity on progressing towards 12 Walmart stores & Sam's Clubs all over Ohio with installing solar panels that generates up to 6,000,000 kWh of energy, enough to power more than 820 homes and is also apprehended to accumulate about 5-20% of each store's energy consumption. Walmart has committed to increasing the use of renewable energy on all the stores in Ohio and across the country. Pretty effective knowing almost all Walmart stores are open 24 hours and finally being able to say bye bye to those outrageous electric bills.

"Walmart's installation of solar on 12 store rooftops is the largest solar commitment ever made by a retail business in Ohio," said Bill Spratley

New Solar Technology made from Carbon

Scientists at Sanford University developed a solar panel made entirely from Carbon making it more economical for everyday use. The panel is formed of a thin film that can be applied from a solution which means it could be coated onto buildings, cars, or even glass to generate electricity. The one downside of having the film all carbon is the fact that the efficiency is not so great, but the durability resulting much greater compared to our modern solar panels being manufactured today. Wonder how our economy may benefit greatly from this technological approach in renewable energy, this may be the beginning of a new revolutionary invention bringing many new ideas and innovations to our world, at the same time establishing a sanitary and sustaining environment.

How to build a Solar Panel

1. Treat yourself to some powdered doughnuts and herbal tea. The powdered sugar on US-style doughnuts contains titanium dioxide (TiO2 or E171). This is a semiconductor that can be used to make solar cells. To extract the TiO2 in a useful form, first scrape off all the powder and put it in a cup of warm water. Stirring this will dissolve all the sugar (there is a lot of it).

2. Running the whitish water through a coffee filter will leave behind a white blob -- this is the precious TiO2, along with some unwanted fat.

3. Because the fat is useless for solar cells, you'll need to put the residue in a hot oven for a few hours to vaporise it. The TiO2 remains as nanoparticles, each around 100nm wide.

4. Throw these particles into high-proof ethanol (vodka will do: use 1ml per doughnut) and shake.

5. Now conductive glass is needed (tough to find, but indium-doped tin oxide is best). With an eye dropper or syringe, drop ten layers of the nanoparticle spirit on the glass, allowing it to dry with each layer. Then put it back in the oven.

6. This is now a solar cell, but it will work only with UV light (the bad kind). Here is where the tea comes in. Leave the nanoparticle solar cell sitting in a cup of hibiscus tea for a couple hours, and soon it will have absorbed the colour, shifting its useful range from UV (useless) to visible light.

7. To collect energy from this solar cell, you'll need a counter-electrode. Take another piece of conducting glass and use a dark pencil to cover the surface with graphite.

8. To get your electricity to your counter-electrode, a generous amount of iodine in high-proof alcohol works well as an electrolyte. Use one part alcohol to three parts Lugol's solution -- available from health stores and aquarium suppliers.

9. Cut a hole in some thin plastic or tape to use as a spacer, and place it on the nanoparticle cell. Drop some electrolyte on top, and quickly sandwich the two electrodes together with some bulldog clips.

10. You're done! A multimeter connected to both of the conducting electrodes should show about half a volt when in the sun.

This article was taken from the March issue of Wired UK magazine.

Google headquarters are more eco-friendly than ever

As we all know "Google" had been most recognized for their most trustworthy search engine that has now been branched out towards many technological innovations such as tablets, smartphones, netbooks, browsers, and smart televisions. It had also been discovered that Google had been charging their vehicles with solar energy by driving around campus with commuter vehicles powered by electricity.

George Clooney's tango T600

Google had worked on a project for fairly quite some time, regarding to charging their electric vehicles cost effectively  Therefore, Google had built carports all around their parking lot involving closely to 9000 solar panels made from Sharp Electronics, a unit of Japan's Sharp Corp, and using their parking lot as a charging station for their vehicles. Google is still looking for ways to make its campus more environmental friendly. “This is definitely just the tip of the iceberg,” Radcliffe said.

Solar distribution cuts down school's energy costs

The Murrieta Valley Unified School District, located in Southern California, has been reported to be saving approximately $23 million in electricity cost for the next two decades. Their solar panels, which they had invested in, is providing them with a total of 2.3 megawatts in the midst of the 19 school districts "Solarcity" had distributed. The schools has been mounted with 10,000 PV panels atop of parking lot carports. The project has been expected to cut down $1 million per year in electricity costs for the first five years bringing them the desire to enhance academic excellence towards their students.

Murrieta Valley Unified Assistant Superintendent Bill Olien- "As these solar projects demonstrate, we want to continue to save money while doing our part for our environment."

African huts glow with solar power

KIPTUSURI, Kenya - Sara Ruto's yearn for electricity began with a purchase of her first cellphone for receiving money transfers, contacting relatives, or even calling nearby markets for the prices of chicken. However, powering her phone was no simple matter, due to the fact that there is no electricity to begin with in farming villages residing in Kenya. Therefore, Ruto walked 2 miles to hitch a 3 hour ride on a motorcycle taxi bound to Mogotia, the nearest town with electricity  to charge her phone for 30 cents. It doesn't end there; with such high demand of locals needing to charge their phones, Ruto has no choice but to leave her phone there for 3 days before returning home. However, Ruto's distressful routine ends in February when the family saves up their money as well as selling their cattle for a solar panel made from China costing them $80 but well worth the investment. The solar panel provides enough electricity to charge their phones and also running 4 overhead lights with switches. Ever since Ruto had hooked up her solar panel, her children of six drastically improved their school grades from having light in their home as well as avoiding burns from kerosene lamps.

Sara Ruto holds a small solar-powered LED light, part of a system that also charges cell phones, at her home in Kiptusuri, Kenya. Ruto, who used to travel miles to charge her mobile phone at the nearest town with electricity, purchased a solar panel for about $80 to charge her phone and power several lights.

Ed Ou / New York Times News Service

Thanks to this solar panel, Sara Ruto no longer takes a three-hour taxi ride to a town with electricity to recharge her cellphone.(Ed Ou/The New York Times)

Robots taking over the world!

Introducing "Qbotix," the world's first monorail robot, equipped with 20 solar panel arrays, trailing behind a small tuna-shaped robot called the "Solbot." Over time, the sun moves 10 degrees in approximately every 40 minutes, decreasing the efficiency of our solar panels that are being engineered today all across the world. So, in order to get the job done more efficiently in harvesting the energy of the sun from sunrise to daybreak, "Qbotix" had designed a robot that moves through steel pipes like a small roller coaster, tracking the position of the sun while moving with it in order to retrieve the most efficiency of the sun without consuming much energy during the process.

A California based startup, Qbotix, has now come up with a robot that does the job efficiently without consuming a lot of energy in the process.

However, here's Germany with their huge robotic arms engineered to install solar panels onto steel racks. This robot is called "Momo" and it could do the work of 250 workers required to build a 100 megawatt photo voltaic power plant. The main idea of this project was to save large amounts of money, mainly towards labor. Towards a construction of a 14 watt solar plant, reports say that the company could cut the cost nearly half of what they had originally paid in which it came up to approximately $2 million in total. 

Renewable robot: A robotic arm places a large photovoltaic panel onto a frame during the construction of a solar plant near Leipzig, Germany. The panel is nearly six square meters in size and weighs 120 kilograms.

Taiwan with their National Stadium "solarized"?

I know rooftops with solar panels may not be something new but seeing Taiwan's stadium, hosting many world games and powered only by the sun to no fewer than 8,844 solar panels, is a whole new level than many commercial buildings currently residing in the United States. Total funds that were put into the stadium was approximately $152 million dollars. Early reports say that the stadium can cover 75% of the energy consumption and on days that are sidelined, the power would be fed on the grid to power local communities with sustainable energy. So whose ready for some baseball?