Sentences with phrase «made photovoltaic»

Expensive batteries, relatively inefficient energy conversion and the scarcity of sunny days in many regions have made photovoltaic passenger vehicles impractical.

Panasonic makes the photovoltaic cells used in the solar tiles.

That in turn makes photovoltaics bulky and expensive.

Spectrolab has been making photovoltaics pay for years by concentrating on a niche market: photovoltaic modules for space.

Engineers are using leading - edge physics to try to make photovoltaic cells a mainstream power source.

Those ultra-thin films are partially transparent (films of standard thickness are black and opaque), so they could be used to make photovoltaic windows, the researchers say.

However, some toxic materials and chemicals are used to make the photovoltaic (PV) cells that convert sunlight into electricity.

Making photovoltaic panels requires the work of many skilled workers, including semiconductor processors, computer - controlled machine tool operators, glaziers, and coating and painting workers.

But one of the biggest hurdles in making the photovoltaic dream come true is the cost.

After company scientist Elliot Berman found a way to slash the cost of making photovoltaic solar cells by 80 percent, Exxon's chairman Clifton Garvin publicized how he heated his family swimming pool with solar power to show support for energy diversification.

Not exact matches

Bob Johnson, director of photovoltaics at research firm Strategies Unlimited, in Mountain View, Calif., says PV cells may drop below their current price by 30 % or more by 2010, even without big technological advances, making the cost of solar energy competitive with conventional sources.

There's no new physics here: The first fission reaction was in 1939, the first photovoltaic cell was created in 1954, windmills date to the Middle Ages, and making alcohol (the dominant biofuel) predates recorded history.

Tesla's Solar Roof tiles would be made of glass over a photovoltaic substrate.

The Chinese are exporting 95 percent of the solar photovoltaics that they make.

For comparison, a conventional photovoltaic cell made of crystalline silicon turns nearly 20 percent of incoming photons to electricity, and lasts much longer because it is not as susceptible to corrosion by water vapor.

These human - made materials were introduced in the 1990s, and researchers around the world are working on ways to use them as molecular sponges for applications such as hydrogen storage, carbon sequestration, or photovoltaics.

The thin - film copper - indium - gallium - selenide (CIGS) photovoltaic layer also helps to lower the price so that they're cheaper conventional solar cells made from silicon.

«The combination of natural (leaves) and artificial (photovoltaic cell and electronic components), and the need to make these components communicate with each other, are complex engineering challenges that required us to join forces.»

Even if we fail to find the miracles that allow us to make and then transport hundreds of gigawatts of power over 3,000 miles at pennies per kilowatt - hour, and even if we can never find photovoltaics that are as cheap as dirt, the enterprise of trying to do it will push our science and our engineering so far forward that we'll generate a cornucopia of unexpected new technologies that will be the basis of vast new industries.

«Likewise, it's not sensible to build energetically expensive batteries for an energetically cheap resource like wind, but it does make sense for photovoltaic systems, which require lots of energy to produce.»

A new system combines the power of plants and photovoltaics to make solar power cheap and durable.

M.I.T. professor Ely Sachs gave up his faculty position to go all - in on a company that he believes can make solar energy competitive with coal via smart photovoltaic manufacturing.

The trouble, from an electric utility's perspective, is the tens of thousands of Arizona's total of three million or so homes that have installed small solar: photovoltaic panels made from wafers of semiconducting material, typically silicon, that use incoming sunlight to create an electric current.

Companies have been using these dots to produce more efficient photovoltaic cells as well as to make light - emitting diodes (LEDs) more versatile.

Both layers were then placed on a solar cell made of perovskite, another promising photovoltaic material.

Although they are just a few microns tall, the wires — made of a metal, often silver, and coated in a thin layer of photovoltaic amorphous silicon — can substantially boost efficiency.

Laser technology, photovoltaic technology, and aircraft technology have advanced to the point where we can make this happen.»

Another potential use for this material, besides photovoltaics, is that in microscopy or imaging, researchers often need to «label» a protein or other feature with a nanoparticle «probe» to make it light up so it is easier to see and study.

In a thermo - photovoltaic device, heat from an external source (chemical, solar, etc.) makes a material glow, causing it to emit light that is converted into electricity by a photovoltaic absorber.

The price of photovoltaic panels has plummeted in recent years, making plants cheaper than concentrating solar plants.

Owners of home photovoltaic systems will soon be able to make their households even more sustainable, because PV power is also suitable for charging personal electronic vehicles.

The company has built a machine in Auburn Hills Michigan that churns out nine miles of such photovoltaics in 62 hours — and Guha hopes to make the revolutionary machine even bigger soon.

That is, says Sharp's Wormser, «you have the opportunity with thin film to make what people refer to as a semitransparent photovoltaic module in place of a window on a building.

That goal is still lower than the conversion ratio achieved by modern cells made from silicon, but organic photovoltaics would be cheaper and could be used in fabrics, plastics and even inks and paints.

For photovoltaics, Venkataraman points out, «The next thing is to make devices with other polymers coming along, to increase power conversion efficiency and to make them on flexible substrates.

Two new solar thermal technologies — which focus sunlight to create heat rather than convert it directly to electricity, as photovoltaics do — promise to make solar power practical at vastly different scales.

SMUD has signed five - year contracts with several manufacturers who make components for photovoltaic solar power systems.

That's because the gas can be used to make several of the layers in a silicon photovoltaic — from the top of the cell where it is used to deposit a layer of silicon nitride that ensures that all sunlight is absorbed, to the bottom where it can be used to deposit another layer that helps reflect back any missed photons of sunlight, boosting the efficiency of the cell at converting light into electricity.

Regardless, silicon in its many forms makes up more than 80 percent of the current mix of photovoltaic production.

By making diodes, it is possible to produce all three basic optoelectronic devices — photodetectors, photovoltaic cells, and LEDs; the MIT team has demonstrated all three, Jarillo - Herrero says.

Bringing the cost of just the photovoltaic cells down to about $ 1 per watt is the magic number solar manufacturers are aiming for, figuring that will make them cost - competitive with electricity produced by burning natural gas.

Photovoltaic solar panels made from crystalline silicon can produce energy for between $ 2.25 and $ 3 per watt.

«We need [companies such as] IBM making this technology to get this stuff to the marketplace,» says Larry Kazmerski, director of the National Center for Photovoltaics at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colo..

Today's most efficient photovoltaic cells use a combination of semiconductors that are made from rare and expensive elements like gallium and indium.

Falling prices for photovoltaics are making that kind of system increasingly attractive.

The existing photovoltaics market is dominated by modules made of single - junction silicon solar cells, with efficiencies between 17 % and 24 %.

«Scientists discover material ideal for smart photovoltaic windows: Researchers make thermochromic windows with perovskite solar cell.»

In the past, attempts have been made to create photovoltaics that could be incorporated into textiles, but typically they lacked at least one of the important properties — long - term stability in both air and water, energy efficiency, and robustness including resistance to deformation — that are key to successful devices.

«For photovoltaics, an array of lenses placed atop a solar cell can serve as a light collector to enhance the efficiency of the photovoltaic system by making it less sensitive to the inclination angle of the solar light with respect to the cell surface.»

Such a material — a photovoltaic glass that is also reversibly thermochromic — is a green technology researchers have long worked toward, and now, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have demonstrated a way to make it work.