Solar Desert Land Grab
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If you're new here, you may want to ![](http://www.solartradingpost.com/info/subscribe/>subscribe</a> to my site. Thanks for visiting!</p><div > A very interesting use for otherwise less valuable desert land. </div>
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That’s putting it mildly. A solar land rush is rolling across the desert Southwest. Goldman Sachs, utilities PG&E and FPL, Silicon Valley startups, Israeli and German solar firms, Chevron, speculators - all are scrambling to lock up hundreds of thousands of acres of long-worthless land now coveted as sites for solar power plants. |
It’s not just a federal-land grab either. Buyers are also vying for private property. Some are paying upwards of $10,000 an acre for desert dirt that a few years ago would have sold for $500. |
No doubt the prospect of potential riches is overheating expectations. But California and surrounding states have mandated massive increases in renewable energy in the next few years. That has led some experts at Emerging Energy Research of Cambridge, Mass., to predict that Big Solar could be a $45 billion market by 2020. |
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It’s already slightly that way, for instance you can get tax rebates for buying solar panels.
If it was broken down into ‘per capita emissions’ though, this would be a very different story.
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Camel Portable Solar Generator
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2 billion people have no electricity. That’s about one third of the world’s population.
This company made an innovative portable solar generator to help developing countries transport medical equipment by camel back through the desert. And yes, I think that the CFS49IS of the generator name does stand for Camel Fridge System.
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 clipped from www.edn.com |
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“One of the monumental health projects of our time has to be the effort to bring vaccines into remote, rural regions of the world. Vaccines must be kept cool, and in remote rural regions where it’s too darn hot to begin with, a reliable source of electricity is usually not a feature.” |
A Finnish company, NAPS Systems, addressed this need in the 1980’s with this mobile camel-solar-powered refrigerator. This version evolved into a more boring, but presumably more universal system, today’s CFS49IS.
To understand how photovoltaics work, you first need to understand a bit about solar energy. Basically, sunlight is loaded with photons. Think of these as little packages of solar energy. Photovoltaics are silicon panels that turn this sun power into electricity.
When the photons from sunlight hit a silicon molecule, they knock loose one of its free-floating electrons. This electron hits another silicon molecule, shunting it’s electron out of it’s molecule. This starts a chain reaction, rather like one domino striking another, which knocks over another, and another…
The final result of this chain reaction is what is known as an flow of electrons, or an electrical current.
This solar electrical current then flows through the electrical circuits of your house. It powers whatever you have on at the time lights, fridges, computers. And that’s how you turn sunlight into electricity.
Thin Film Photovoltaic Price
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Thin Film Solar is one of the fastest growing areas in the solar panel market. This has a lot to do with the cost of thin film photovoltaic.
Thin film is cheaper than traditional silicon panels. There are several reasons for this.
One is that thin film solar cells use a lot less of the material that make makes electricity: silicon. Silicon is very abundant natural, but in its purest form, it is expensive. Thin film uses extremely thin layers of silicon, lowering the cost.
The other reason thin film photovoltaics cost less is the manufacturing process. Traditional photovoltaic require a lot of expensive manual labour. The process of applying silicon to the backing for thin film is similar to that of a printing press. This means lower labour costs and fast production.
The main disadvantage of these type of solar panels is that they are less efficient than traditional solar. This means you need more roof area to produce the same ammount of solar energy.
One innovation in this area is solar tiles. These tiles have photovoltaics in built, eliminating the need for traditional roofing. This can lower the cost of installation.
In conclusion, thin film photovoltaics have advantages in their price and their range of applications. While they are not as efficient as traditional solar panels, they are developing fast and may indeed overtake traditional silicon panels.