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Metallic nanoparticles can direct light better into the solar cell and prevent light from escaping. In conventional 'thick-film' solar cells, the nanoparticles would have little effect because all the light is absorbed by the film due to its thickness. For thin films, however, the nanoparticles can make a big difference.

Egbe has achieved an efficiency of four percent and is trying to find out how to improve the efficiency in general. Not only for his system, but also for other systems researchers are working on. "The efficiency of organic solar cells has already reached eight percent and commercial products are on the market," he said.

Solar Cells, Solar Panels, Do It Yourself Turnkey Systems Cheapest Solar Panels I have ever found

The size, shape and organization of light-harvesting complexes such as chlorosomes are critical factors in electron transfer to semiconductor electrodes in solar devices. Understanding how chlorosomes function in nature could help scientists mimic the chlorosome's efficiency to create robust biohybrid or bio-inspired solar cells.

"Combining these traits and achieving large-scale patterning could enable a wide range of practical applications, such as energy-generating solar windows, transparent solar panels, and new kinds of optical displays," said co-author Zhihua Xu, a materials scientist at the CFN.

While the use of solar cells is become increasingly widespread, the silicon technology used in many types is becoming obsolete. JP Casey looks at concentrated solar power, micro-trackers and perovskite compounds as innovations that could potentially improve solar efficiency.

Solaroad is a road that also works as a solar panel. The combination of these two functions is special, and makes it possible within the space we still got to road use even solar energy to capture and converting it into electrical energy, which then can be used for street lighting, traffic systems, but also households.

The Solar Impulse is the brain child of Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss adventurer and environmentalist, who launched the project back in 2003 with the aim of promoting the use of renewable energy sources. Now, in 2009, he is closing in on that dream. His plane has a 200-foot wingspan which is lined with 12,000 photovoltaic solar cells that will draw energy from the sun to power its four engines.

In a boon for the local solar industry, a team of researchers from Swinburne University of Technology and Suntech Power Holdings have developed the world's most efficient broadband nanoplasmonic solar cells with an absolute efficiency of 8.1 per cent.

From concentrated solar power to floating wind turbines and from printable organic solar cells to biomass gasification, power-technology.com picks six of the most promising new green power technologies. Concentrating solar power technology Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technology involving the use of mirrors to focus sunlight onto a receiver that captures and converts the solar energy into heat for electricity generation has been in use since 1980s.

In this initial project, it will be important to demonstrate the possibility of manufacturing high-purity silicon from desert sand and constructing a high-temperature superconducting, long-distance, DC power supply system. The aim is to achieve a solar plant with annual capacity of at least 100 GW, which would truly help to solve the world's energy problem.

Mildura Solar Power Station is a concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) project being built in Carwrap, south of Mildura in the state of Victoria, Australia. The project will use high performance solar cells used to power satellites. The plant was proposed to have an installed capacity of 100MW initially to reduce the annual greenhouse gas emissions by 396,000t.

The University of Toronto Edward S Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering researchers in Canada have developed and demonstrated a new class of solar-sensitive nanoparticle.

Way cool! :-D

ZTE showed off the first affordable cell phone featuring solar power. Now, it looks like the company is planning on releasing a version for Android users

For cell phone charging, the Emerald has USB and cell phone ports and will come with a bag of adapters. It can fully charge a smartphone in the same time it would take at an outlet, developers say. It recharges in full sunlight in three hours.

That's an important discovery for looking further into earth-abundant, non-toxic materials that could help make solar cells inexpensive and absorb sunlight more efficiently than silicon, Prieto said.

Green is the most efficient "semi-transparent" colour for producing electricity, although red and purple also work well. Oxford PV predicts that manufacturing costs of its product will be around 50% less than the current lowest-cost thin film technology and expects its new mechanism will eventually match the unsubsidised cost of electricity generated from fossil fuels.

A new class of economically viable solar power cells--cheap, flexible and easy to make--has come a step closer to reality as a result of recent work at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where scientists have deepened their understanding of the complex organic films at the heart of the devices.

Racing against other companies around the globe, International Battery isn the front lines of an effort to build smaller, lighter, more powerful batteries that could help transform the American energy economy by replacing gasoline in cars and making windmills and solar cells easier to integrate into the power grid.