New technique announced to turn windows into power generators

August 10, 2010 Enlarge

Images depicting the inside of the deposition chamber were taken when scientists were depositing the insulating film. The different colors are due to the different gases being used. Credit: Prof. Chris Binns, University of Leicester

 

An international team of scientists and industrialists is to meet at the University of Leicester to develop of a revolutionary new technique for harnessing green energy.

Norwegian company EnSol AS has patented a ground breaking, novel thin film solar cell technology which they seek to develop commercially by 2016.

The company is now working with experts in the University of Leicester Department of Physics and Astronomy to develop the revolutionary new type of solar cell material that could be coated as a thin film on, for example, windows in buildings to produce power on a large scale.


Enlarge

Images depicting the inside of the deposition chamber were taken when scientists were depositing the insulating film. The different colors are due to the different gases being used. Credit: Prof. Chris Binns, University of Leicester

Experts will meet at the University from August 10- 11 to officially launch the collaboration between EnSol AS and the University of Leicester.

Professor of Nanotechnology at the University of Leicester, Professor Chris Binns, said the collaboration offered a tremendous opportunity to develop a new method for harnessing solar energy:

"The material has been designed by EnSol AS and is based on nanoparticles that can be synthesised in Leicester. In fact, following some initial investment by the company, the equipment we have here at the University of Leicester is uniquely suited in the world to produce small amounts of the material for prototypes

"The work is important since the solar cells are based on a new operating principle and different to Si solar cells. One of the key advantages is that it is a transparent thin film that can be coated onto window glass so that windows in buildings can also become power generators. Obviously some light has to be absorbed in order to generate power but the windows would just have a slight tinting (though a transmission of only 8-10% is common place for windows in the "sun belt" areas of the world) . Conversely the structural material of the building can also be coated with a higher degree of absorption. This could be side panels of the building itself, or even in the form of "clip-together" solar roof tiles.


Enlarge

Images depicting the inside of the deposition chamber were taken when scientists were depositing the insulating film. The different colors are due to the different gases being used. Credit: Prof. Chris Binns, University of Leicester

"Also since it is a thin film that can be coated onto large areas it could become very much cheaper than conventional devices.

"Photovoltaics are destined to form a key power generating method as part of a low carbon economy and the new technology will bring that a stage closer."

The material is composed of metal nanoparticles (diameters ~ 10 nm) embedded in a transparent composite matrix..

A spokesperson for EnSol AS said: "The basic cell concept has been demonstrated, and it will be the objective of this research and development project to systematically refine this PV cell technology to achieve a cell efficiency of 20% or greater.

"A thin film deposition system with nanoparticle source, will be designed and constructed in collaboration with the University of Leicester for the fabrication of prototype cells based on this design.

"This experimental facility will be designed to produce PV cells with an active area in excess of 16 cm2 (40 mm x 40 mm) deposited onto standard glass substrates. These prototype cells will subsequently be characterised and tested in collaboration with our academic partners.

"EnSol's next generation PV cell technology has tremendous potential for industrial scale, low environmental impact, cost effective production via standard "spray on" techniques."
Provided by University of Leicester (news : web)

Newscribe : get free news in real time

Attributes of a leader

By WINNIE YEOH
winnie@thestar.com.my

BESIDES diligence and thrift, there are other attributes that can propel certain personalities to the top.

According to Oriental Holdings Berhad chief executive officer and managing director (property/plantation) Datuk Lim Su Tong, such attributes are not exclusive to only a certain of group of people.

His company is part of the Boon Siew Group and Lim is the son-in-law of the late Penang tycoon Tan Sri Loh Boon Siew, the man acclaimed for being the first to import Honda motorcycles into Malaysia in the 1950s.

Lim was delivering a keynote address titled ‘The Attributes of An Illiterate’ during the YMCA Toastmasters Club of Penang’s 25th anniversary at the Bayview Hotel Georgetown recently.

Portrait of a tycoon: An old picture of Loh testing a Honda motorbike. 

 

“Even an illiterate (referring to Loh) can humbly seek and use such skills.

“I worked for 25 years with him. I had the privilege and opportunity to observe his attributes,” he said.

Lim said his father-in-law was knowledgeable, trustworthy, sincere and caring. He also had a passion to lead.

“Loh migrated to Penang from China at a young age. While other children had the opportunity to enjoy their childhood, he had to go through the university of hard knocks.

“The young boy had to make a living and he chose to work as an apprentice mechanic although the salary was lower than that of other manual jobs.

“With his acquired knowledge, he was able to start related businesses.
“Later in life, the knowledge enabled him to procure a franchise for motor vehicles,” Lim told an attentive audience.

He said although his father-in-law was an illiterate, he would listen attentively to the professionals and emulate the management skills of the franchiser.

“He engaged professionals to run his business and thus, his businesses expanded.

“His trustworthiness was also a key to his success. He was humble in explaining business plans to his partners although he was the major shareholder.

“His partners trusted him and would leave it to him to make the business decisions.

“Hence directors’ meetings were only a formality and more like a form of fellowship for them,” he said.

He added that Loh also implemented incentive policies based on the performances of his workers.

“He was a careful and decisive man. Before committing to a new project, he would study all the details with care and passionately explain its prospects to us,” he said.

“Those attributes of his inspired us to ensure that his projects were successful. His leadership footprints are still visible in our corporate endeavours today.”

As for Lady Luck, Lim said sometimes she was around to help Loh and his partners but not always.

America Goes Dark

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times  By PAUL KRUGMAN 

The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno.

PAUL KRUGMAN

Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.

And a nation that once prized education — that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children — is now cutting back. Teachers are being laid off; programs are being canceled; in Hawaii, the school year itself is being drastically shortened. And all signs point to even more cuts ahead.

We’re told that we have no choice, that basic government functions — essential services that have been provided for generations — are no longer affordable. And it’s true that state and local governments, hit hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn’t be quite as cash-strapped if their politicians were willing to consider at least some tax increases.

And the federal government, which can sell inflation-protected long-term bonds at an interest rate of only 1.04 percent, isn’t cash-strapped at all. It could and should be offering aid to local governments, to protect the future of our infrastructure and our children.

But Washington is providing only a trickle of help, and even that grudgingly. We must place priority on reducing the deficit, say Republicans and “centrist” Democrats. And then, virtually in the next breath, they declare that we must preserve tax cuts for the very affluent, at a budget cost of $700 billion over the next decade.

In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble — literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education — they’re choosing the latter.

It’s a disastrous choice in both the short run and the long run.

In the short run, those state and local cutbacks are a major drag on the economy, perpetuating devastatingly high unemployment.

It’s crucial to keep state and local government in mind when you hear people ranting about runaway government spending under President Obama. Yes, the federal government is spending more, although not as much as you might think. But state and local governments are cutting back. And if you add them together, it turns out that the only big spending increases have been in safety-net programs like unemployment insurance, which have soared in cost thanks to the severity of the slump.

That is, for all the talk of a failed stimulus, if you look at government spending as a whole you see hardly any stimulus at all. And with federal spending now trailing off, while big state and local cutbacks continue, we’re going into reverse.

But isn’t keeping taxes for the affluent low also a form of stimulus? Not so you’d notice. When we save a schoolteacher’s job, that unambiguously aids employment; when we give millionaires more money instead, there’s a good chance that most of that money will just sit idle.

And what about the economy’s future? Everything we know about economic growth says that a well-educated population and high-quality infrastructure are crucial. Emerging nations are making huge efforts to upgrade their roads, their ports and their schools. Yet in America we’re going backward.

How did we get to this point? It’s the logical consequence of three decades of antigovernment rhetoric, rhetoric that has convinced many voters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted, that the public sector can’t do anything right.

The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud — to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around.

But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed.

And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.

So the end result of the long campaign against government is that we’ve taken a disastrously wrong turn.

America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere. 

Read All Comments (717) »

Newscribe : get free news in real time
Rightways's Blog