Solar power manufacturing makes good business sense for governments, study finds

Canadian and provincial governments could spend $2.4 billion to build a large scale solar photovoltaic manufacturing plant and then give it away for free and still earn a profit in the long run, according to a financial analysis conducted by the Queen's University Applied Sustainability Research Group in Kingston, Canada

Queen's University Mechanical Engineering Professor Joshua Pearce conducted the study -- to be published in the August edition of the academic journal Energy Policy -- to find out if it makes economic sense for governments to support solar cell manufacturing in Canada. He was surprised to discover the answer is an overwhelming yes even in extreme situations and feels governments should be aggressively supporting this industry to take advantage of the financial opportunity.

"This study uses hard financial numbers. Everything we did is transparent and all our equations are in the study," says Professor Pearce. "The benefits of encouraging solar manufacturing in Canada are clear and massively outweigh the costs."

The report looked at six different scenarios: everything from building a plant and giving it away or selling it to more traditional and less costly loan guarantees or tax holidays for a private sector company to construct the plant. In all the scenarios, both federal and provincial governments enjoyed positive cash flows in less than 12 years and in many of the scenarios both governments earned well over an eight per cent return on investments ranging from hundreds of millions to $2.4 billion.

The revenues for the governments of nearly $500 million a year, were determined from taxation (personal, corporate and sales), sales of panels, and saved health, environmental and economic costs associated with offsetting coal-fired electricity.

Queen's started the study last summer, before the Ontario government announced a $7-billion power production and manufacturing deal with Samsung in January. Some criticized the deal but Professor Pearce says Canadians are the winners.

"Canada will really make out if Samsung comes through with what they said they are going to do. We gave them a little bit of incentive and Samsung will give us a lot of jobs, less pollution, and a long term substantial source of revenue. We are absolutely winning on this deal -- there is no question," Professor Pearce says. "The market is much larger than the Samsung deal. The question now is how to bring even more photovoltaic manufacturers to the province."

The Energy Policy report, co-authored by Queen's student Kadra Branker, studied the financial impact in Ontario but Professor Pearce says the numbers can apply to all provinces in Canada.

View the Original article

Mapping system for photovoltaic surfaces to improve performance of solar panels

A group of researchers of the University of Cádiz has designed a new mapping system for the study of photovoltaic surfaces.

The system can detect, at the micrometric level, all the defects existing in a solar panel. This should have a significant influence on the overall performance of these photovoltaic cells. The team headed by Professor Joaquín Martín Calleja has developed the methodology for detecting faults in photovoltaic solar panels resulting from manufacturing errors.

The defects identified can then be made good and the overall performance of the panel will be enhanced.

Confocal laser scanning microscopy

This device, which has now been patented by the University of Cádiz, determines whether or not the cells mapped present irregularities in their functioning, according to the particular zone of the surface that is analyzed. These defects have a negative effect on the overall performance of the panel, since the defective cell will generate photoconversion values that are lower than the maximum theoretically possible.

The mapping of the photosensitive surfaces allows the possible causes of the reduced performance of the panel to be determined. Although devices that make point-to-point measurements of the cell by laser currently exist, none of these has achieved the accurate emulation of solar light. The majority of these systems are not available on the market, and they suffer from evident limitations through utilizing only monochromatic light as the source of irradiation. This represents a serious limitation since the photoconversion panels function when exposed to sunlight; therefore measurements obtained with laser beams are not true to the real conditions to which these solar panels are subjected.

Faced with this situation, the research group on the Simulation, Characterization and Evolution of Materials (FQM-166) has developed a system based on "trying to adapt the theories of vision to this system by mixing three laser beams (one red, one green and another blue). We perform the same scanning with each laser, having adjusted their strength in such a way that a species of light is generated whose chromatic composition is similar to that of solar light," explains Professor Martín Calleja.

"The objective is to study how the surface behaves by analyzing it point-to-point, at the micrometric level of the solar cells, under conditions as close as possible to actual sunlight," according to the head of the research group. And, he stresses, "This system can detect all the defects that there may be in a solar panel at the micrometric level. In the overall performance of such a panel, the reduced efficiency of the bad points is compensated by the high efficiency of the good points. However, if we can identify precisely which are the bad points and detect the causes giving rise to their negative functioning, this deficiency can be made good."

This work therefore offers three clear advantages over previously developed systems:

It provides the simulation of a source of white light that matches the specifications of a solar emission. It enables high resolution maps of photoconvertor efficiency to be obtained. It allows possible manufacturing defects in photoconvertor surfaces to be detected.

"This new mapping equipment has not been designed with a direct commercial objective; rather, it is a scientific development that will facilitate our research work for future studies. However, this advance may be of interest to those universities working with energy conversion systems, and who may be doing research in this field. It could similarly be made available commercially to laboratories of companies engaged in the design and manufacture of solar energy equipment and who may be carrying out their own research work," states Professor Joaquín Martín Calleja.

He also wants to emphasize that "the studies we have carried out in these cells were made possible by our collaboration with the department of Environmental Sciences of the University of Pablo de Olavide. In fact, we are also studying jointly with researchers of the UPO a non-commercial type of cell that is being developed fundamentally for research purposes, and is designated DSSC. These cells are based on a technology different from that of silicon: titanium oxide activated with a colorant. We make these cells utilising not only synthetic but also natural colorants, from petals of bougainvillea and other flowers, as activators.

Obviously the output obtained with them is much less than that obtainable with commercial silicon cells; but they are a good system to study since their fabrication does not require very substantial technological resources, to which universities do not usually have access."

After outlining the advances made, it only remains to say that "our most immediate future task is to improve the system patented and, to this end, we are already working on some modifications."

View the Original article