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Severe shortages of silicon have plagued the solar photovoltaic market over the past few years. According to a Frost & Sullivan press release a turnaround can be expected this year with polysilicon catching up with the demand

A new report has found that thin-film cadmium telluride solar cells have the lowest life-cycle emissions primarily because they consume the least amount of energy during the module production of the four types of major commercial PV systems: multicrystalline silicon, monocrystalline silicon, ribbon silicon, and thin-film cadmium telluride (CdTe).

By using silicon nanowires as the anode, in rechargeable lithium ion batteries, instead of graphite the amount of lithium the anode can hold is extended tenfold and thus the battery’s life.

A new life-cycle assessment study from the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York examined the four most common types of photovoltaic (PV) solar power cells - multicrystalline silicon, monocrystalline silicon, ribbon silicon and thin-film, if you were wondering - to find out how much energy and waste was involved in their creation.

Photovoltaic (PV) technologies have shown remarkable progress recently in terms of annual production capacity and life cycle environmental performances, which necessitate timely updates of environmental indicators. Based on PV production data of 2004–2006, this study presents the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions, criteria pollutant emissions, and heavy metal emissions from four types of major commercial PV systems: multicrystalline silicon, monocrystalline silicon, ribbon silicon, and thin-film cadmium telluride. Life-cycle emissions were determined by employing average electricity mixtures in Europe and the United States during the materials and module production for each PV system. Among the current vintage of PV technologies, thin-film cadmium telluride (CdTe) PV emits the least amount of harmful air emissions as it requires the least amount of energy during the module production. However, the differences in the emissions between different PV technologies are very small in comparison to the emissions from conventional energy technologies that PV could displace. As a part of prospective analysis, the effect of PV breeder was investigated. Overall, all PV technologies generate far less life-cycle air emissions per GWh than conventional fossil-fuel-based electricity generation technologies. At least 89% of air emissions associated with electricity generation could be prevented if electricity from photovoltaics displaces electricity from the grid.

Now there are some new twists and turns—essentially, three very positive developments that would not have been generally anticipated a decade ago. First, silicon-based solar technology has decoupled from the semiconductor industry and is achieving steady cost reductions, so that those following PV discern a kind of Moore’s law at work. In 2005, production of silicon for solar cells already surpassed production of silicon for semiconductors.

Two separate teams, one at Caltech and the other at the University of California, Berkeley, reported that they could increase silicon's ability to convert heat into electric current by as much as 100 times. If they can use what they've learned to improve silicon even further, or translate their findings to other materials, the discovery could lead to new ways to cool computer chips, build refrigerators, or get more power out of car engines.

Wacker Chemie AG and Schott Solar GmbH have officially commissioned a new solar silicon wafer factory in Jena, Germany. Wacker Schott Solar GmbH, a joint venture between the two companies, plans to ramp up the factory's annual capacity to 50 megawatts (MW) by the autumn of 2008, increasing total annual capacity to 120 MW by year's end.

he plant uses traditional silicon PV cells and provides enough power to juice about a quarter of the Air Force base. Really, 14 MW is still a pretty insignficant amount of energy. And this plant doesn't approach the production power of Nevada-One, a solar thermal plant. But many people believe that the true future of solar power is converting the sun's energy directly into electricity instead of using the heat from the sun.

Solar-wafer production capacity is set to expand in stages, reaching about one gigawatt/year by 2012.