Solar Events

I couldn’t resist this beautiful and rare picture of the setting sun. A classic “Etruscan vase” sunset imaged by Michael Myers as he looked over Pamlico Sound.

Link

Excessive exposure to ultraviolet radiation is responsible for up to 60 000 deaths a year worldwide, according to a report released this summer by the World Health Organisation. Many of those deaths, however, could be avoided through simple preventive measures such as seeking shade when the UV Index is high, the report says.

Thanks to an innovative service called HappySun, the UV Index can be delivered directly to mobile phones via SMS or can be accessed on the Internet. HappySun calculates the UV Index throughout the day by using ESA satellite data on radiation, ozone and cloud coverage. The service has just completed its two-year-long test phase and has received positive feedback from users.

Link

A worldwide shortage of solar-grade silicon, the key material that turns sunlight into electricity in most solar-power systems, is constraining market growth.

According to a report by Photon Consulting, the research and consulting arm of trade magazine Photon International, there’s worldwide demand for 5 gigawatts of solar power, but only enough silicon to supply between 2.2 and 2.4 gigawatts.

Solar manufacturers and integrators are trying to ensure they will have enough products to grow by signing long-term agreements for silicon and solar modules. On Thursday, for example, PowerLight announced it signed a five year, $150-million agreement to buy solar cells from Q-Cells, a large German solar cell manufacturer (see PowerLight Snaps Up Solar Cells).

The efficiency of solar cells today is limited, among other reasons, by the fact that the longwave, low-energy part of the sunlight cannot be used. A process that increases the low level of energy in the light particles (photons) in the longwave range, shortening their wave length, would make it possible for the solar cells to use those parts of light energy that, up to now, have been lost, resulting in a drastic increase in their efficiency.Such an innovative process has now been demonstrated by a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz and at the Sony Materials Science Laboratory in Stuttgart.

The successful outcome of this process could lay the foundation for a new generation of more efficient solar cells.

Link here

Tomorrow sees the start of the largest solar conference so far in the United States.

It runs from October 16th-19th, in San Jose , California.

More than 3,500 attendees have pre-registered for Solar Power 2006, and the Solar Energy Industries Association is expecting on-site registrations to bring that number to at least 5,000, said Noah Kaye, the association’s director of public affairs, Friday.

Link to conference

New Solar Ventures announced the completion of the first-phase for its Solar 1.0 Deming solar farm in New Mexico, the Power Transmission Study, which is required by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for power providers that intend to place their privately generated power on the grid.

Link to RenewableEnergyAccess article

World Bank is willing to offer loans to consumers who use renewable solar energy technology to generate power for use at home or the workplace.
The only stipulation with the announcement of the “renewable energy credit” is that the building must face the sun.
Half of the financing for suitable projects will come from the World Bank.

Link to article

If you are into watching transits, this should be a good one. Transit will be visible in its entirety only from the West Coast.

A satellite designed to collect vital information about the Sun’s magnetic field successfully took off from Japan’s Uchinoura Space Centre early on Saturday local time. The Solar-B mission will attempt to understand how the field triggers solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which can cause communications blackouts on Earth. Data from the mission could even be used to predict when these massive explosions occur.

Link to article on PhysicsWeb

See our newly posted article giving a variety of interesting facts about solar energy and its capabilities at Facts about Solar Energy.

Fascinating stuff.