Plastic Solar Cells Going to Make Their Market Breakthrough
filed in Solar Power on May.06, 2009
Even though plastic solar cells are cheaper to produce and they have some advantages like lightweight and flexibility, they still miss one important thing: the efficiency. Researchers are optimistic that in the years to come, the polymer solar cells will be able to compete from the efficiency point of view with the silicon solar cells, taking into account the fact that plastic solar cell have improved their efficiency each year.
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Silicon photovoltaic cells are preferred in today’s market conditions and technological implementations because they are cheap, silicon is abundant and the ongoing research has made them more and more efficient. Still, manufacturing the PV cells is very energy consuming, and silicon PVs are very fragile and prone to breaking in the most mildly hostile situations (hailstorms). 
Sometimes, what we get is not what we expect - at all. For example, a team of scientists from Northeastern University and from NIST discovered by mistake how to produce more solar power by using the residue of a process used to build arrays of titania nanotubes. Now, physorg.com interprets this invention through the perspective of better hydrogen production, but improving the solar power capturing ability gives a lot more useful applications than only that of hydrogen production. 
Do you want to charge your phone? Put in into direct sunlight and you won’t depend on plugs and cords anymore. At least this is what we are promised by this new cell phone.
Although it has many opponents even among green technology sustainers, the good-old battery still evolves to help us have those all-electric vehicles beneath us, and make us drive cleaner and faster than ever. 
The transition to a fully-renewable global energetic system has to be done in small but sure steps. New inventions pave the way towards sustainable technologies, and their experimentation on small and medium scale improves their survival chances and lowers their implementation price. 
If we could somehow invent a reliable technology that could “eat out” all the excess CO2 from the atmosphere in a large scale, we could turn back to where we started from a hundred years ago, reducing global warming and the change of climate. 
The run after the new gold, the unlimited and cheap energy, is being pursued all over the world, not only in the US. There are states, like Israel, where solar power has been harnessed for decades in the form of hot water for its inhabitants. All those solar water heaters have been build by economical needs. In fact, only economical needs can stimulate the world to such an extent that it develops new technologies. 
The Holy Grail of energy was, is, and will be the solar power. Numerous solutions of converting solar power have existed along the centuries, and people have always used the Sun to power things up, except for the last hundred years or so - that’s the main reason we all got into troubles with mother nature. 
More and more research studies show the fact that biofuels, ethanol, and other zero-carbon burning fuels do more damage than they do good in the long run. According to a recent study, it looks like ethanol, the petrol companies’ saving field, consumes up to three times more water than it was previously thought, as MIT’s Technology Review states. 
A space-based solar electricity program could soon power the Californians’ homes. The project belongs to the state’s biggest energy company, PG&E, and it aims to generate 200 megawatts in the next 15 years. The company hopes that its plans will become operational until 2016 and is now trying to establish a partnership with a company called Solaren. 
The world’s largest solar plant is about to be built in Florida. The construction will begin in June next year, and the entire project will cost approximately two billion dollars. A Florida utility company and a real estate developer intend to establish the United States’ first town powered completely by solar energy 
As I have said it many times before, inventions in the field of hydrogen storage are most desired, because hydrogen can be created easily from solar power, and offers nothing but water at the other end of the equation. 
There have already been successful experiments involving solar powered boats, and there have already been people sailing them in the last ten years. Still, all of them have something in common: they use photovoltaic cells as an intermediate between the sunlight the mechanical work.
Burning things to get energy is not something new, in fact this is what we’re trying to get rid of. I usually don’t promote “habits” like this on this green blog, but, nevertheless, there are a few cases where this can be considered alternative energy. Or, at least, you could say it’s an alternative to nothing. Still, if the heat comes from the Sun, the whole situation changes dramatically from black to green. 