Solar Energy System is Installed in the U.S. every 4 Minutes

            Many things occur in the United States in a matter of 4 minutes. During that short time span, 30 babies are born, 4,080 Big Macs may be consumed, and 48,000 tons of carbon dioxide are being exhaled. As it also seems, the U.S. is currently installing one solar photovoltaic system every 4 minutes as well. If market growth continues steadily at its current pace, the American solar industry can install a solar system 1 minute and 20 seconds by 2016.
           There has been a drastic difference from 2006, when installers were only putting up one system every 80 minutes. Shayle Kann, Vice President of GTM Research, has conducting a study and produced documents of the accelerating speed of solar deployment in the charts below:

Solar Panels Helps Cool Buildings (like Trees)!

         Usually, trees provide us shade for buildings, whereas we are kept cooler than in if it were to be fully exposed by the sun. However, these days, solar panels, when mounted onto the rooftops of buildings, are able to also provide us comfort and shade (along with generating clean electricity). 

          Researchers at the University of San Diego took a closer look at the solar panels' cooling effect to see how big the effect is and what kind of panel orientation can reap the most benefits." They note that "Using thermal imaging, researchers determined that during the day, a building's ceiling was 5 degrees Fahrenheit cooler under solar panels than under an exposed roof."

Recyclable Solar Cells Created using Trees

       Researches have developed recyclable and efficient solar cells using natural substrates from plants like trees. Georgia Institute of Technology and Purdue University researchers wrote in the journal Scientific Reports about how the solar cells can be recycled quickly in water at the end of their lifecycle. The team's solar cells are capable of reaching a power conversion efficiency of 2.7%.
       During the recycling process, the solar cells are immersed in water at room temperature, and within minutes, the CNC substrates on which the solar cells are fabricated can be separated easily into its major components.
       Georgia Tech College of Engineering Professor Bernard Kippelen, who led the study, said the method opens up the door for a truly recyclable, sustainable and renewable solar cell technology. "The development and performance of organic substrates in solar technology continues to improve, providing engineers with a good indication of future applications," Kippelen, who is also the director of Georgia Tech's Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE), said in a statement. "But organic solar cells must be recyclable. Otherwise we are simply solving one problem, less dependence on fossil fuels, while creating another, a technology that produces energy from renewable sources but is not disposable at the end of its lifecycle."
       Current organic solar cells are fabricated on glass or plastic, but neither is easily recyclable or very eco-friendly. If cells fabricated on glass were to break during the manufacturing process, the material would be difficult to dispose of. The team's cells are made from wood and are green, renewable and sustainable. "Our next steps will be to work toward improving the power conversion efficiency over 10%, levels similar to solar cells fabricated on glass or petroleum-based substrates," said Kippelen. The US forest product industry projects that tens of millions of tons of cellulose nanomaterials from wood could be produced once large-scale production begins in the next 5 years.
        Another new manufacturing method for producing solar cells was unveiled in the journal Advanced Materials in February. MIT researchers described a new process that allows scientists to passivate silicon at room temperatures, which helps with the high price of manufacturing computer chips and solar cells. In the MIT team's process, they decompose organic vapors over wires heated to 572 degrees Fahrenheit. Heating these wires requires less power than illuminating an ordinary light bulb. This process not only opens the door for cheaper solar panels, but also new applications for computer chips.

Source : Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com -- Your Universe Online