WOLEDs and Organic Photovoltaics: Recent Advances and Applications (Green Energy and Technology)

---

The future is already happening, be part of it!

Navigation menu

The best way to change the world is taking care of it. From purpose to realization. Get to know Sunew. Where and how this history is being told:. Cases Innovative solutions with high added value. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles While electric cars are not accessible to everyone and with expectations such as the sale of Applications The cleanest energy everywhere with endless possibilities. Smart Buildings In buildings, the OPV can be integrated with various conventional building materials such as facades, windows, skylights, tiles, brises and so on.

This new intelligent and sustainable building modality has… More. Urban Furniture Organic Photovoltaics can be integrated into different urban structures, delivering sustainability, energy and design for smart cities and off-grid solutions. This type of application enables citizens to remain always connected… More. Most solar installations would be in China and India.

Many industrialized nations have installed significant solar power capacity into their grids to supplement or provide an alternative to conventional energy sources while an increasing number of less developed nations have turned to solar to reduce dependence on expensive imported fuels see solar power by country.

Long distance transmission allows remote renewable energy resources to displace fossil fuel consumption. Solar power plants use one of two technologies:. A solar cell , or photovoltaic cell PV , is a device that converts light into electric current using the photovoltaic effect. The first solar cell was constructed by Charles Fritts in the s.

The array of a photovoltaic power system , or PV system, produces direct current DC power which fluctuates with the sunlight's intensity. For practical use this usually requires conversion to certain desired voltages or alternating current AC , through the use of inverters. Many residential PV systems are connected to the grid wherever available, especially in developed countries with large markets.

From purpose to realization.

In certain applications such as satellites, lighthouses, or in developing countries, batteries or additional power generators are often added as back-ups. Such stand-alone power systems permit operations at night and at other times of limited sunlight. Concentrated solar power CSP , also called "concentrated solar thermal", uses lenses or mirrors and tracking systems to concentrate sunlight, then use the resulting heat to generate electricity from conventional steam-driven turbines. A wide range of concentrating technologies exists: Various techniques are used to track the sun and focus light.

In all of these systems a working fluid is heated by the concentrated sunlight, and is then used for power generation or energy storage. A parabolic trough consists of a linear parabolic reflector that concentrates light onto a receiver positioned along the reflector's focal line. The receiver is a tube positioned along the focal points of the linear parabolic mirror and is filled with a working fluid.

The reflector is made to follow the sun during daylight hours by tracking along a single axis. Parabolic trough systems provide the best land-use factor of any solar technology. Compact Linear Fresnel Reflectors are CSP-plants which use many thin mirror strips instead of parabolic mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto two tubes with working fluid. This has the advantage that flat mirrors can be used which are much cheaper than parabolic mirrors, and that more reflectors can be placed in the same amount of space, allowing more of the available sunlight to be used.

Concentrating linear fresnel reflectors can be used in either large or more compact plants. The Stirling solar dish combines a parabolic concentrating dish with a Stirling engine which normally drives an electric generator. The advantages of Stirling solar over photovoltaic cells are higher efficiency of converting sunlight into electricity and longer lifetime. Parabolic dish systems give the highest efficiency among CSP technologies. A solar power tower uses an array of tracking reflectors heliostats to concentrate light on a central receiver atop a tower.

Power towers can achieve higher thermal-to-electricity conversion efficiency than linear tracking CSP schemes and better energy storage capability than dish stirling technologies. A hybrid system combines C PV and CSP with one another or with other forms of generation such as diesel, wind and biogas. The combined form of generation may enable the system to modulate power output as a function of demand or at least reduce the fluctuating nature of solar power and the consumption of non renewable fuel.

Hybrid systems are most often found on islands. The early development of solar technologies starting in the s was driven by an expectation that coal would soon become scarce. In the mids, development of both, residential and commercial rooftop solar as well as utility-scale photovoltaic power stations , began to accelerate again due to supply issues with oil and natural gas, global warming concerns , and the improving economic position of PV relative to other energy technologies.

For several years, worldwide growth of solar PV was driven by European deployment , but has since shifted to Asia, especially China and Japan , and to a growing number of countries and regions all over the world, including, but not limited to, Australia , Canada , Chile , India , Israel , Mexico , South Africa , South Korea , Thailand , and the United States.

Concentrated solar power CSP also started to grow rapidly, increasing its capacity nearly tenfold from to , albeit from a lower level and involving fewer countries than solar PV. This was surpassed by the MW Solar Star complex. Commercial concentrating solar power CSP plants, also called "solar thermal power stations", were first developed in the s. The principal advantage of CSP is the ability to efficiently add thermal storage, allowing the dispatching of electricity over up to a hour period. The typical cost factors for solar power include the costs of the modules , the frame to hold them, wiring, inverters, labour cost, any land that might be required, the grid connection, maintenance and the solar insolation that location will receive.

Process improvements and a very large boost in production have brought that figure down to 68 cents per watt in February , according to data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. And in sunny Dubai large-scale solar generated electricity sold in for just 2. Photovoltaic systems use no fuel, and modules typically last 25 to 40 years. Thus, capital costs make up most of the cost of solar power. Operations and maintenance costs for new utility-scale solar plants in the US are estimated to be 9 percent of the cost of photovoltaic electricity, and 17 percent of the cost of solar thermal electricity.

Also, Renewable portfolio standards impose a government mandate that utilities generate or acquire a certain percentage of renewable power regardless of increased energy procurement costs. In most states, RPS goals can be achieved by any combination of solar, wind, biomass, landfill gas , ocean, geothermal, municipal solid waste , hydroelectric, hydrogen, or fuel cell technologies. The electrical energy generated is sold in units of kilowatt-hours kWh. The product of the local cost of electricity and the insolation determines the break even point for solar power. Shi Zhengrong has said that, as of , unsubsidised solar power is already competitive with fossil fuels in India, Hawaii, Italy and Spain.

He said "We are at a tipping point. No longer are renewable power sources like solar and wind a luxury of the rich. They are now starting to compete in the real world without subsidies". In its edition of the Technology Roadmap: Solar Photovoltaic Energy report, the International Energy Agency IEA published prices for residential, commercial and utility-scale PV systems for eight major markets as of see table below.

In , prices continued to decline. The SunShot Initiative modeled U. Grid parity, the point at which the cost of photovoltaic electricity is equal to or cheaper than the price of grid power , is more easily achieved in areas with abundant sun and high costs for electricity such as in California and Japan. These cost levels are driving three emerging trends: Grid parity was first reached in Spain in , [82] Hawaii and other islands that otherwise use fossil fuel diesel fuel to produce electricity, and most of the US is expected to reach grid parity by In , General Electric 's Chief Engineer predicted grid parity without subsidies in sunny parts of the United States by around ; other companies predicted an earlier date: The productivity of solar power in a region depends on solar irradiance , which varies through the day and is influenced by latitude and climate.

The locations with highest annual solar irradiance lie in the arid tropics and subtropics. Deserts lying in low latitudes usually have few clouds, and can receive sunshine for more than ten hours a day. Different measurements of solar irradiance direct normal irradiance, global horizontal irradiance are mapped below:. In cases of self consumption of the solar energy, the payback time is calculated based on how much electricity is not purchased from the grid.

For example, in Germany, with electricity prices of 0. The electricity is sold, and at other times when energy is taken from the grid, electricity is bought. The relative costs and prices obtained affect the economics. In many markets, the price paid for sold PV electricity is significantly lower than the price of bought electricity, which incentivizes self consumption.

A good match between generation and consumption is key for high self consumption, and should be considered when deciding where to install solar power and how to dimension the installation. The match can be improved with batteries or controllable electricity consumption.

The political purpose of incentive policies for PV is to facilitate an initial small-scale deployment to begin to grow the industry, even where the cost of PV is significantly above grid parity, to allow the industry to achieve the economies of scale necessary to reach grid parity. The policies are implemented to promote national energy independence, high tech job creation and reduction of CO 2 emissions.

Three incentive mechanisms are often used in combination as investment subsidies: With investment subsidies, the financial burden falls upon the taxpayer, while with feed-in tariffs the extra cost is distributed across the utilities' customer bases. While the investment subsidy may be simpler to administer, the main argument in favour of feed-in tariffs is the encouragement of quality. Investment subsidies are paid out as a function of the nameplate capacity of the installed system and are independent of its actual power yield over time, thus rewarding the overstatement of power and tolerating poor durability and maintenance.

In net metering the price of the electricity produced is the same as the price supplied to the consumer, and the consumer is billed on the difference between production and consumption. Net metering can usually be done with no changes to standard electricity meters , which accurately measure power in both directions and automatically report the difference, and because it allows homeowners and businesses to generate electricity at a different time from consumption, effectively using the grid as a giant storage battery.

With net metering, deficits are billed each month while surpluses are rolled over to the following month. Best practices call for perpetual roll over of kWh credits. In New Jersey, annual excess credits are paid at the wholesale rate, as are left over credits when a customer terminates service. With feed-in tariffs , the financial burden falls upon the consumer. They reward the number of kilowatt-hours produced over a long period of time, but because the rate is set by the authorities, it may result in perceived overpayment.

The price paid per kilowatt-hour under a feed-in tariff exceeds the price of grid electricity. Net metering refers to the case where the price paid by the utility is the same as the price charged. The complexity of approvals in California, Spain and Italy has prevented comparable growth to Germany even though the return on investment is better. Alternatively, SRECs allow for a market mechanism to set the price of the solar generated electricity subsity. In this mechanism, a renewable energy production or consumption target is set, and the utility more technically the Load Serving Entity is obliged to purchase renewable energy or face a fine Alternative Compliance Payment or ACP.

Solar power

In principle this system delivers the cheapest renewable energy, since the all solar facilities are eligible and can be installed in the most economic locations. Uncertainties about the future value of SRECs have led to long-term SREC contract markets to give clarity to their prices and allow solar developers to pre-sell and hedge their credits. Financial incentives for photovoltaics differ across countries, including Australia , China , [99] Germany , [] Israel , [] Japan , and the United States and even across states within the US.

The Japanese government through its Ministry of International Trade and Industry ran a successful programme of subsidies from to By the end of , Japan led the world in installed PV capacity with over 1. In , the German government introduced the first large-scale feed-in tariff system, under the German Renewable Energy Act , which resulted in explosive growth of PV installations in Germany. At the outset the FIT was over 3x the retail price or 8x the industrial price.

Search form

The principle behind the German system is a year flat rate contract. The value of new contracts is programmed to decrease each year, in order to encourage the industry to pass on lower costs to the end users. The programme has been more successful than expected with over 1GW installed in , and political pressure is mounting to decrease the tariff to lessen the future burden on consumers.

Subsequently, Spain , Italy , Greece —that enjoyed an early success with domestic solar-thermal installations for hot water needs—and France introduced feed-in tariffs. None have replicated the programmed decrease of FIT in new contracts though, making the German incentive relatively less and less attractive compared to other countries. All California incentives are scheduled to decrease in the future depending as a function of the amount of PV capacity installed. Unlike net metering, all the electricity produced was sold to the OPA at the given rate.

The overwhelming majority of electricity produced worldwide is used immediately, since storage is usually more expensive and because traditional generators can adapt to demand. However both solar power and wind power are variable renewable energy , meaning that all available output must be taken whenever it is available by moving through transmission lines to where it can be used now. Solar electricity is inherently variable and predictable by time of day, location, and seasons.

How much of a special challenge solar power is in any given electric utility varies significantly. In a summer peak utility, solar is well matched to daytime cooling demands. In winter peak utilities, solar displaces other forms of generation, reducing their capacity factors. In an electricity system without grid energy storage , generation from stored fuels coal, biomass, natural gas, nuclear must be go up and down in reaction to the rise and fall of solar electricity see load following power plant.

While hydroelectric and natural gas plants can quickly follow solar being intermittent due to the weather, coal, biomass and nuclear plants usually take considerable time to respond to load and can only be scheduled to follow the predictable variation. Integrating large amounts of solar power with existing generation equipment has caused issues in some cases.

For example, in Germany, California and Hawaii, electricity prices have been known to go negative when solar is generating a lot of power, displacing existing baseload generation contracts. Conventional hydroelectricity works very well in conjunction with solar power, water can be held back or released from a reservoir behind a dam as required. Where a suitable river is not available, pumped-storage hydroelectricity uses solar power to pump water to a high reservoir on sunny days then the energy is recovered at night and in bad weather by releasing water via a hydroelectric plant to a low reservoir where the cycle can begin again.

Concentrated solar power plants may use thermal storage to store solar energy, such as in high-temperature molten salts. These salts are an effective storage medium because they are low-cost, have a high specific heat capacity, and can deliver heat at temperatures compatible with conventional power systems. This method of energy storage is used, for example, by the Solar Two power station, allowing it to store 1.

In stand alone PV systems batteries are traditionally used to store excess electricity. With grid-connected photovoltaic power system , excess electricity can be sent to the electrical grid.

Net metering and feed-in tariff programs give these systems a credit for the electricity they produce. This credit offsets electricity provided from the grid when the system cannot meet demand, effectively trading with the grid instead of storing excess electricity. Credits are normally rolled over from month to month and any remaining surplus settled annually. As prices are rapidly declining, PV systems increasingly use rechargeable batteries to store a surplus to be later used at night.

Batteries used for grid-storage stabilize the electrical grid by leveling out peak loads usually for several minutes, and in rare cases for hours. In the future, less expensive batteries could play an important role on the electrical grid, as they can charge during periods when generation exceeds demand and feed their stored energy into the grid when demand is higher than generation. A recent review article found that careful system design would enable such systems to meet all technical, though not all safety requirements.

Common battery technologies used in today's home PV systems include, the valve regulated lead-acid battery — a modified version of the conventional lead—acid battery , nickel—cadmium and lithium-ion batteries. Lead-acid batteries are currently the predominant technology used in small-scale, residential PV systems, due to their high reliability, low self discharge and investment and maintenance costs, despite shorter lifetime and lower energy density.

However, lithium-ion batteries have the potential to replace lead-acid batteries in the near future, as they are being intensively developed and lower prices are expected due to economies of scale provided by large production facilities such as the Gigafactory 1. In addition, the Li-ion batteries of plug-in electric cars may serve as a future storage devices in a vehicle-to-grid system.

Sunew - Sunew, Greenest Energy Everywhere

Since most vehicles are parked an average of 95 percent of the time, their batteries could be used to let electricity flow from the car to the power lines and back. Other rechargeable batteries used for distributed PV systems include, sodium—sulfur and vanadium redox batteries, two prominent types of a molten salt and a flow battery, respectively.

The combination of wind and solar PV has the advantage that the two sources complement each other because the peak operating times for each system occur at different times of the day and year. The power generation of such solar hybrid power systems is therefore more constant and fluctuates less than each of the two component subsystems.

Research is also undertaken in this field of artificial photosynthesis. It involves the use of nanotechnology to store solar electromagnetic energy in chemical bonds, by splitting water to produce hydrogen fuel or then combining with carbon dioxide to make biopolymers such as methanol. Many large national and regional research projects on artificial photosynthesis are now trying to develop techniques integrating improved light capture, quantum coherence methods of electron transfer and cheap catalytic materials that operate under a variety of atmospheric conditions.

Unlike fossil fuel based technologies, solar power does not lead to any harmful emissions during operation, but the production of the panels leads to some amount of pollution. Similar to all energy sources were their total life cycle emissions primarily lay in the construction and transportation phase, the switch to low carbon power in the manufacturing and transportation of solar devices would further reduce carbon emissions. BP Solar owns two factories built by Solarex one in Maryland, the other in Virginia in which all of the energy used to manufacture solar panels is produced by solar panels.

A 1-kilowatt system eliminates the burning of approximately pounds of coal, pounds of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere, and saves up to gallons of water consumption monthly. GHG emissions factors for PV solar are inversely proportional to insolation.

The New Zealand Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment found that the solar PV would have little impact on the country's greenhouse gas emissions. The country already generates 80 percent of its electricity from renewable resources primarily hydroelectricity and geothermal and national electricity usage peaks on winter evenings whereas solar generation peaks on summer afternoons, meaning a large uptake of solar PV would end up displacing other renewable generators before fossil-fueled power plants.

The energy payback time EPBT of a power generating system is the time required to generate as much energy as is consumed during production and lifetime operation of the system. Due to improving production technologies the payback time has been decreasing constantly since the introduction of PV systems in the energy market. Another economic measure, closely related to the energy payback time, is the energy returned on energy invested EROEI or energy return on investment EROI , [] which is the ratio of electricity generated divided by the energy required to build and maintain the equipment.

This is not the same as the economic return on investment ROI , which varies according to local energy prices, subsidies available and metering techniques. With expected lifetimes of 30 years, [] the EROEI of PV systems are in the range of 10 to 30, thus generating enough energy over their lifetimes to reproduce themselves many times 6—31 reproductions depending on what type of material, balance of system BOS , and the geographic location of the system.

Solar power includes plants with among the lowest water consumption per unit of electricity photovoltaic , and also power plants with among the highest water consumption concentrating solar power with wet-cooling systems. Photovoltaic power plants use very little water for operations. Life-cycle water consumption for utility-scale operations is estimated to be 12 gallons per megawatt-hour for flat-panel PV solar.

Only wind power, which consumes essentially no water during operations, has a lower water consumption intensity. Concentrating solar power plants with wet-cooling systems, on the other hand, have the highest water-consumption intensities of any conventional type of electric power plant; only fossil-fuel plants with carbon-capture and storage may have higher water intensities.

The subsequent report noted that dry cooling technology was available that, although more expensive to build and operate, could reduce water consumption by CSP by 91 to 95 percent. Of 15 CSP projects under construction or development in the US as of March , 6 were wet systems, 7 were dry systems, 1 hybrid, and 1 unspecified. Although many older thermoelectric power plants with once-through cooling or cooling ponds use more water than CSP, meaning that more water passes through their systems, most of the cooling water returns to the water body available for other uses, and they consume less water by evaporation.

One issue that has often raised concerns is the use of cadmium Cd , a toxic heavy metal that has the tendency to accumulate in ecological food chains. Current PV technologies lead to cadmium emissions of 0. Life-cycle cadmium emissions from coal is 3. In a life-cycle analysis it has been noted, that if electricity produced by photovoltaic panels were used to manufacture the modules instead of electricity from burning coal, cadmium emissions from coal power usage in the manufacturing process could be entirely eliminated. In the case of crystalline silicon modules, the solder material, that joins together the copper strings of the cells, contains about 36 percent of lead Pb.

Moreover, the paste used for screen printing front and back contacts contains traces of Pb and sometimes Cd as well. It is estimated that about 1, metric tonnes of Pb have been used for gigawatts of c-Si solar modules. However, there is no fundamental need for lead in the solder alloy. Some media sources have reported that concentrated solar power plants have injured or killed large numbers of birds due to intense heat from the concentrated sunrays.

A published life-cycle analysis of land use for various sources of electricity concluded that the large-scale implementation of solar and wind potentially reduces pollution-related environmental impacts. For CSP, the footprint was 9 and 14, using parabolic troughs and solar towers, respectively. Concentrator photovoltaics CPV systems employ sunlight concentrated onto photovoltaic surfaces for the purpose of electrical power production.

Contrary to conventional photovoltaic systems, it uses lenses and curved mirrors to focus sunlight onto small, but highly efficient, multi-junction solar cells. Solar concentrators of all varieties may be used, and these are often mounted on a solar tracker in order to keep the focal point upon the cell as the sun moves across the sky. Concentrated photovoltaics are useful as they can improve efficiency of PV-solar panels drastically. In addition, most solar panels on spacecraft are also made of high efficient multi-junction photovoltaic cells to derive electricity from sunlight when operating in the inner Solar System.

Floatovoltaics are an emerging form of PV systems that float on the surface of irrigation canals, water reservoirs, quarry lakes, and tailing ponds. Media related to Solar power at Wikimedia Commons. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about generation of electricity using solar energy.

For other uses of solar energy, see Solar energy. Not to be confused with Solar luminosity. A solar photovoltaic system array on a rooftop in Hong Kong. This solar resource map provides a summary of the estimated solar energy available for power generation and other energy applications. Renewable energy portal Environment portal.

Deployment of Solar Power. Capacity in MW by Technology. List of photovoltaic power stations. List of solar thermal power stations. Swanson's law — the PV learning curve. This section needs to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. Energy storage and Grid energy storage. The Andasol CSP plant uses tanks of molten salt to store solar energy.

This facility in Geesthacht , Germany, also includes a solar array. Energy portal Sustainable development portal Environment portal.

Archived from the original on 14 April Retrieved 19 April Archived PDF from the original on 7 October Retrieved 7 October Archived from the original on 25 May Retrieved 8 November Archived from the original on 12 October Archived PDF from the original on 10 September Retrieved 19 August Archived from the original PDF on 10 September Retrieved 2 July University of Las Vegas.

Archived from the original on 3 September

• Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers
• Der goldene Regenbogen (German Edition)
• Secrets in Sanctuary [Sanctuary, Montana 6] (Siren Publishing Menage Everlasting)
• ENQUETE SUR LEXISTENCE DES ANGES REBELLES (French Edition)
• All Medicines are Poison!
• The Demise of Newark
• Postmarked in Europe: Journal from 2005