The maintenance facility and solar array are located in Caltrans District 5. Director Rich Krumholz noted in a press release, “We are thrilled to be a part of the green energy movement,” and went on to emphasize the importance of the local public/private partnership with Earth Electric and Green Earth Engineering that facilitated the projects design and completion.

In California, government entities are not required to undergo a bidding process for energy-related projects like the Caltrans solar system. However, the district decided to go ahead and open the project up to local bidders in an effort to stretch public funding as far as it could go. These savings, perhaps, have helped make possible existing plans for solar arrays at Caltrans sites in Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo, Santa Maria, Buellton and Santa Barbara.

The focus on local companies ensures the creation and maintenance of local jobs and revenue. It also means that public money invested in government infrastructure is spent in a way that reinvests as much of that as possible back into the local community.

“Every bid that is awarded to local business not only supports the local economy but serves to educate and improve the process for everyone involved, including engineers, installers and inspectors,” said Angelo Perez, CEO of Green Earth Engineering.

Matthew Welch, president of Earth Electric and solar instructor at San Jose City College, added that because of this public-private connectivity, ““My company is stronger, local installers gain experience, and my students benefit from first-hand knowledge of the solar bid and installation process. The positive effects of local government agencies supporting local green businesses are felt long after the project is complete.”

Story and Photo Via Earth Electric

But times have changed.

Every letter that arrives in our mailboxes comes with a portfolio of carbon footprints: paper used, adhesive used, distance traveled (fuel emissions), product life-cycle, emissions from manufacturing and processing, and more.

Then there’s overseas cargo shipping—by far the dirtiest mode of transport, accounting for 14% of nitrogen emissions from fossil fuels and 16% of sulfur emissions from petroleum. Two-thirds of products purchased by U.S. consumers come to our shores via these cargo ships (Grist). And without some immediate action, it’ll soon be Climate Change rather than the postman ringing at our doors.

But there are goals to work toward. Greener buildings, greener cars and trucks, greener transport and a greener energy grid will all help to reduce the environmental impact of products shipped and received. Not to mention the ways you or I—the average consumer or business—can work to green our shipping, and in the process push the international shipping community into more large-scale sustainable action.

Business Solution – UPS Smart Pickup

For business owners, signing up for UPS Smart Pickup (and similar services offered by other delivery companies) is a good way to ensure that fuel emissions embedded in daily or weekly deliveries are minimized. Businesses with frequent UPS service often do not have packages arriving or departing every single day, despite being registered on a daily route for delivery drivers. Smart Pickup automates the service, notifying a specific route’s driver whether or not there is any need to stop by on a given day. If not, your stop is skipped, saving time, miles traveled and subsequent emissions. An excellent idea for the frequent postal customer.

Reusable Boxes

Recycling requires a great deal of energy, and often shipping to a recycling plant some significant distance from your curbside. Simply tossing the box your new iPhone came in to the recycling bin is not as green as it could be (though much better than the garbage). Sometimes packages are not reusable, but many times they are. Depending on what happens in transport, a cardboard box can often be reused again.

But even that buys only single, maybe double reuse. For this reason, reusable boxes are making their way into the shipping community. eBay, for example, is providing 100,000 reusable shipping boxes to select sellers. These boxes are intended to be shipped, emptied, refilled and shipped again—several times. eBay says that if each box was reused just five times, it would save 4,000 trees, 2.4 million gallons of water and conserve enough energy to power 49 homes for a year. Other reusable boxes are available online, including tutorials about how to make a used shipping container look brand-new (turn it inside out, essentially).

Paperless Shipping

Every major carrier—UPS, FedEx, DHL and USPS—offers paperless shipping. In more modern terms, this entails e-labeling, e-receipts and e-notifications. Instead of a paper trail following your shipment, everything is done electronically. You’ll get a receipt and package status update via e-mail. The same can go for the recipient of a package you’re sending. Businesses use a whole lot of paper, so paperless shipping can save a lot of trees and a lot of energy.

Buy Local

Perhaps the best way to reduce the environmental impact of your shipping, most of which is wrapped up in transportation, is to buy as locally and regionally as possible. When you’re ordering online, opt for the vendor shipping from a location nearest to yours. If you live in California, choose the product coming from in-state or in the Southwest as opposed to the same product coming from the East Coast or overseas. This may not always be an option, but it is an avenue to look out for and a good start to greening your shipment.

Shipping Offsets

An easy, if not entirely verifiable way to green your shipping is to make it carbon-neutral. This typically involves giving a sum of money (equivalent to the calculated carbon footprint of a shipment) to the development and/or deployment of renewable energy. Offsetting carbon footprints is all too easy these days—a prime example being GreenShipping.com. Here they track your package from departure  at its source to arrival at your home or business, including any stops and transfers. The carbon dioxide emitted and the price of the offset necessary to counterbalance those emissions is calculated and paid. Green Shipping can track any package sent through UPS, FedEx or the United States Postal Service. UPS also offers a similar offset service for its customers.

Alternatively Fueled Vehicles

UPS proudly boasts a fleet of alternative fuel vehicles in the thousands, led by hundreds of delivery vans powered by “clean natural gas” (CNG). While CNG does burn cleaner than conventional gasoline, there are unfortunate hidden costs involved with natural gas, primarily in its extraction from the earth.

Investigate hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” or start with the documentary Gasland to learn more.

However, UPS also has a fleet of diesel electric hybrid trucks that offer at least a partial alternative to conventional fuels. These trucks, according to the company, improve on-road fuel economy by nearly 29 percent. By choosing to do business with them, you’re encouraging UPS and other carriers to begin or expand alternative fuel delivery fleets. It’s a good way to green your shipping and help green the shipping and receiving industry as a whole.

Who are the Greenest Shipping Carriers?

You may notice a lot of references to UPS in this article, but don’t think that they are necessarily the greenest shipping company out there. In fact, in 2008 Climate Counts ranked the top four carriers on green shipping criteria.

All showed improvement from the year before, but DHL and FedEx led the way, followed by the USPS and UPS in fourth place. UPS has since upgraded their sustainability mission and report, with plans to increase fuel economy for its entire fleet by 20 percent before 2020. In turn, FedEx installed the largest rooftop solar array in the United States.

Much is being done to green the shipping industry. While the motive here is cutting down on costs (which renewable energy and alternative fuels are very good at for these companies, given their monumentally high fuel consumption), but we the consumers can ensure that this trend continues by spending our green on the greenest shipping possible—and buying local wherever we can.

Photo Credits: MDH Cards, eBay Green, & TreeHugger

The Carter Panel Movement, we’ll call it, is an effort to re-raise awareness about climate change and our immediate environment, as well as the solutions already within our reach for solving (or at least curbing) these eco-systemic problems.

The White House solar story goes something like this.

In the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter and Congress enacted incentives for renewable energy very similar to what we’ve seen over the past decade. Carter also installed a solar hot water system on the White House roof. However, when Ronald Reagan entered office, the focus changed quickly from renewable energy back to oil, coal and fossil fuels. Reagan even went so far as to remove Carter’s solar panels from the White House roof (not to mention help kill federal solar incentives, setting the industry back about two decades).

In a somewhat odd twist, solar was once again revived at the White House by George W. Bush, who very quietly installed solar thermal systems on the presidential spa and on a maintenance shed. Now Sungevity, a San Francisco Bay Area solar installer, is offering the Obama family free installation of a photovoltaic (PV) solar energy system on the actual White House, a more than $100,000 donation that would see 17.85 kilowatts (kW) of solar electricity pumped into the very large, very power-hungry building. The panels would provide up to 81 percent of the First Family’s power needs.

It’s an obvious offer one couldn’t refuse, right? Well, Obama hasn’t refused it, but he hasn’t accepted it either. This, in part, is why Bill Mckibben and cohorts are on their way to D.C. from Maine with a Carter-era solar collector, which, by the way, has been producing solar hot water for the three decades since Carter installed it (for Unity College in Maine rather than the White House).

It, much like the Sungevity offer, is a symbolic effort to put solar power and renewable energy back on the forefront of the President’s mind, and at the top of his home. The power of White House symbolism to do that, notes Mckibben, is evidenced by the White House Garden. After Michelle Obama very publicly planted it shortly after occupying the house, seed sales increased nationwide by 30 percent over the following year. What would happen if President Obama very publicly and very proudly unveiled a hundred-solar-panel array on the White House roof — in plain view for all to see? The PR ripples would be felt the world round and could boost the excitement level needed to maintain an active, successful climate movement over.  For the next two years, we’ll likely be in limbo on climate change in Congress following this summer’s epic failure — even amid the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history. A movement like this is much, much needed.

Sungevity, Bill Mckibben and others want Obama to agree to install the panels by October 10, 2010 (10/10/10), a day that is being transformed into a Global Work Party focused on clean energy and sustainability. Why Obama has not accepted the Sungevity offer is unclear, given his ostensibly strong support of renewable energy (although his lack of leadership in this summer’s congressional climate change fight has been widely criticized).

Perhaps Mckibben, with Jimmy Carter’s solar panel in tow, can lead the way.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has confirmed results for a record-breaking conversion efficiency in solar cell technology. Oerlikon Solar and Corning Incorporated have combined technologies to produce a tandem solar cell using thin-film silicon. Oerlikon’s proprietary Micromorph® solar cells and Corning’s specialty, advanced light-capturing glass combined to achieve 11.9-percent stabilized conversion efficiency in NREL tests.

That efficiency beats out the previous record of 11.7 percent in 2004. This is the latest advancement in Oerlikon’s ThinFab line of solar panels, which, according to the company, have also achieved a world record in production cost per watt at 50 euro cents per watt-peak (about $0.64 USD).

Micromorph technology is itself an advancement on amorphous silicon solar cells (a-Si cells). Put simply, a-Si cells consist of a thin layer of silicon deposited onto a transparent conductive oxide (TCO). Oerlikon’s Micromorph technology adds another layer in tandem with the first. This added microcrystalline absorber enables the solar cell to absorb a wider spectrum of light, edging into the red and near-infrared spectrum which conventional silicon solar cells cannot do. According to Germany-based Oerlikon this extra absorption increases cell conversion efficiency (the rate at which sunlight is converted into electricity), by 30 percent.

Corning Inc.’s proprietary glass, or glazing, technology ensures that a higher amount of light is available for absorption by the solar cells beneath it. It is in this way that the two companies continue to make advancements in thin-film silicon.

Low production costs have long been a point of pride for thin-film technologies. Last year, American firm First Solar broke the coveted $1.00/watt barrier (now residing at about $0.76/watt) for its cadmium telluride solar cells (CdTe). Yet low conversion efficiency has been the only factor preventing thin-film products from surpassing their crystalline silicon predecessors, which still dominate more than 90 percent of the global solar market.

However, with efficiencies nearing 12 percent and production costs approaching a half dollar, the gap continues to close between first- and second-generation technologies. Most crystalline silicon (c-Si) modules on the market produce at efficiencies between 15 and 20 percent, but cost well over $1.00 per watt to manufacture. a-Si products use much less silicon and are cheaper to produce than conventional panels. It’s for this reason — and based on advancements such as Oerlikon and Corning’s — that thin-film solar cells are expected to take over dominance of the solar market within the next decade, depending on a variety of technological and commercial factors.

Oerlikon Solar is presenting its record-breaking Micromorph technology this week at the 25th Annual European Photovoltaics Solar Energy Conference in Valencia, Spain.

The 11 hybrid electric-diesel buses heading out to neighborhoods in the Oconomowoc school district are expected to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 to 40 percent compared to traditional diesel-only buses. A battery-driven electric motor will work in tandem with a conventional diesel motor to power the buses. This is much like the famed Toyota Prius passenger car, but these buses will have the ability to plug into electrical outlets to recharge (though a small number of Priuses do have this ability through the Google-sponsored RechargeIT experiment).

The Oconomowoc Transportation Company’s small fleet is expected to have twice the fuel efficiency of their diesel counterparts. The buses are supplied by the IC Corporation, an affiliate of Illinois-based truck and engine manufacturer Navistar International. In addition to fuel and fuel cost savings, the buses should save money through less maintenance costs due to reduced wear and tear on their engines.

Solar Charging Stations

To avoid trading fossil-fueled driving emissions for fossil fuel power plant emissions (used when recharging the buses’ batteries), a solar-powered recharging station was installed at the fleet’s garage. The solar system will produce over 60,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year to charge bus batteries.

Another Wisconsin school transit company, the Riteway Bus Service, is scheduled to receive 13 IC Corporation plug-in hybrid buses as well, including its own solar recharging station.

Recovery Act Funding

$3.6 million was handed out by the Wisconsin Clean Transportation Program to help fund the 24 buses and two solar recharge stations. That money is part of the state of Wisconsin’s funding allocation under the federal Recovery Act, signed by President Obama and used to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy development in all 50 states.

Source: Brighter Energy
Photo Credit: IC Bus

A project of NextEra Energy Resources, the largest developer of renewable energy in the United States, the Beacon solar project will cover more than 2,000 acres of western Mojave Desert with parabolic trough collectors that will focus sunlight onto liquid-filled pipes. The solar-heated liquid will be channeled to a boiler, where it will produce steam to spin an electricity-generating turbine.

The power plant will create 250 megawatts (MW) of solar electricity when performing at peak production. The project has been wading through the complex permitting process since 2008. This and many other projects have been hampered by environmental concerns as to their impact on the local environment, including wildlife habitat and water issues.

While the Beacon Solar Energy project has the advantage of being located on private land in Kern County, CA, most of the 150 similar projects up for approval by the CEC are located on public lands administered by the U.S. Department of Interior, under its Bureau of Land Management (BLM) division. Only in the wake of extensive environmental impact surveys, and in some cases, important concessions by the developer, are some of these projects getting close to seeing the light of day.

NextEra’s Beacon project will have to secure a power purchase agreement with a utility before it can really break ground. I’d like to assume that this wouldn’t be very difficult, considering California utilities’ rush to meet state energy mandates requiring 20 percent of their energy to come from renewable resources by the end of 2010. But time is of the essence for NextEra and other developers as well, as the federal government’s Treasury Grant Program, which allows solar projects to opt for up-front grants in lieu of federal tax credits otherwise paid over time, is scheduled to expire at the end of this year. That initial funding is key to projects gaining financing from lenders wary of the perceived risk associated with intermittent solar power.

Other projects OK’d by a siting committee and slated for approval by the CEC — following 30 days of public comment — include the 400 MW Ivanpah Solar Plant from Brightsource Energy and the Genesis Solar Energy Project, yet another NextEra Energy Resources project (by subsidiary Genesis Solar). For more information on pending utility-scale solar projects in California, visit the CEC website and scroll down to “Power Plant Licensing Under Review.”

Source: LA Times Business Blog
Photo Credit: Colorado Energy News

It’s been a matter of debate for centuries. How exactly do electrical charges form in the air and cause atmospheric phenomena such as lightning? Until now, scientists believed that water in the air remained electrically neutral, even when coming into contact with the tiny particles of dust pervading natural air supply, but new research coming out of Brazil suggests that water does in fact pick up an electric charge, and that this charge could be harnessed in high-humidity climates as another alternative energy source.

Similarly to solar cells, panels could be placed on rooftops that capture this electrical charge as it strikes the device’s surface. That charge could then be used to power a home or charge an electric car. It could also help prevent death and damage from lightning strikes by reducing the amount of electrical charge in the air around people and buildings.

“Our research could pave the way for turning electricity from the atmosphere into an alternative energy source for the future,” explains Fernando Galembeck, Ph.D., lead researcher on a study performed at the University of Campinas in Brazil. “If we know how electricity builds up and spreads in the atmosphere, we can also prevent death and damage caused by lightning strikes.”

Galembeck discovered through lab experiments that when water droplets in the air come into contact with silica and aluminum phosphate, both common substances in air, the silica became more negatively charged while the aluminum phosphate picked up a positive charge. This phenomenon occurred when the substances were subjected to air with a high humidity content, i.e. higher presence of water vapor. This research confirmed that water can indeed pick up an electrical charge in the air and transfer it to other substances.

Therefore, it may be possible, according to Galembeck, to create “hygroelectric” devices, such as the panels alluded to above, that can harness this electrical energy and channel it for use within a home or other building. The ideal locations for such technology would obviously be areas with exceptionally humid climates like the tropics, or more locally, the southeastern and northeastern United States, where thunderstorms and the electrically-charged lightning that comes along with them are a common occurrence.

This research is quite new and any development of a hygroelectric (humidity electricity) panel is naught more than a concept. But Galembeck, his team, and other researchers around the world are already working to develop just such a device.

Could lightning, or more accurately, electrically charged particles in water vapor be our next renewable resource? Who knows for sure… but this discovery made in Brazil is important, if for no other reason than that it solves a riddle puzzling scientists for more than 200 years. Perhaps Benjamin Franklin’s legendary kite-and-key discovery of electricity will someday lead to our harnessing of that lightning-born power.

Source: ScienceDaily
Photo Credit: flickrimglas & opethpainter via Flickr

Geothermal energy in the United States has reached its golden anniversary. 50 years ago, construction began on America’s first commercial-scale geothermal power plant just north of San Francisco. It was named The Geysers and has grown over the years from a single 11-megawatt power plant to a complex of 22 individual plants drawing energy from 350 wells and providing more than 1.5 gigawatts of renewable electricity to Californians. The Geysers is the largest geothermal power plant in the world.

In fact, over the 50 years since the birth of geothermal, the United States has grown to be the world leader in geothermal production, led by California where more than 40 plants are in operation and provide 5 percent of the state’s electricity.

Geothermal in the United States

Currently, reports the Geothermal Energy Association, the U.S. has over 3 gigawatts of installed geothermal capacity. This energy comes from 77 power plants spread out over nine states. Seven new plants were brought online in 2009, and 188 projects in 15 states are being considered or under development — projects that would add up to another 8 gigawatts of capacity. Geothermal power has seen fairly steady growth since its inception in 1960, but is certainly enjoying the current rush to renewable energy and may just be entering its prime at the age of 50.

While California leads in existing geothermal production, Nevada is the state leader in new geothermal projects, with 3 gigawatts under production all by itself. Other western states are not far behind. Utah quadrupled its geothermal output last year, New Mexico tripled, Idaho doubled and Oregon reported a 50-percent increase. Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas all reported their first commercial geothermal projects earlier this year. Other states with geothermal projects in the works are Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Washington and Wyoming.

Not surprisingly, the geothermal energy industry grew by 26 percent in 2009, according to the GEA, no doubt aided by roughly $800 million in investments in the same year. Furthermore, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the U.S. Department of Energy have estimated that 100 GW of geothermal power could be produced by 2050, which would make the energy source’s 90th birthday party quite a celebration.

Geothermal also produces electricity at a rate much cheaper than other renewables, due in large part to its ability to operate much like a conventional power plant does.

Ups and Downs of Geothermal

Geothermal’s main advantage over other renewable resources is its ability to provide 24/7 baseload power, avoiding the intermittency and complicated storage problems plaguing wind and solar power. The only problem for geothermal is caused (and fixed) by plant operations. If not operated wisely, a geothermal well can run dry. It is possible for a power plant to use up water faster than the Earth’s vast ecosystem can replenish it. Water is extracted from (or injected into) heated rock beneath the Earth and used to spin a steam turbine on its surface, creating electricity.

In response to this issue, closed loop systems have been developed that exchange heat with the “molten” water and then pump back down through a return well. In the case of Geysers, geothermal’s celebrated golden child, well operators pump in treated wastewater from urban centers to replenish the wells — another avenue to ensuring that geothermal remains a renewable resource.

Photo Credit: Richard C Norman via Flickr

But there’s already so much info about this efficient building or that green power plant, so I decided to look on the fringe—off the green, if you will. To get below the fast-moving mainstream to the undercurrent below, where small or niche green businesses rule. They are no doubt connected to the green zeitgeist propelling Western society forward, but are largely unheralded as yet, e.g. still businesses rather than business trends. I found seven green services most of us haven’t heard of. Here are their stories, complete with mainstream eco-buzzwords to help guide these outlanders onto the green.

#1—Green Pest Remover

“Exterminator” is so brown. “Remover” is the green word of choice for Joe Franco when he describes his small seasonal pest control business (with a heart) in BC, Canada. Every summer, wasps, bees and bumblebees come out of hiding to populate homeowners’ yards, eaves, siding, decks and a myriad other home locations they might find to be suitable to their apian or vespine needs.

Rather than breaking out the spray can of RAID, as most people still do, Franco shows up in a white Toyota Tercel with ladder and custom-made vacuum. With the vacuum, he sucks the wasps or bees out of their nest. With the car, he transports them somewhere well away from human populations and releases them. Franco understands the intimate part that bees and wasps play in the local (and global) ecosystem. Hence, his “green” pest removal business. Read more about “Joe Wasp” at BC Local News.

#2—Eco-Friendly Dentist

In an office filled with chemicals, X-ray machines and plastic molds, one might wonder how well a green business model could fit. This was exactly the thinking of Gabriela Garcia-Rojas, longtime dentist in Mill Valley, California. Her practice is now certified as a green business by the Marin County Board of Supervisors. How did she do it? Common green business upgrades like energy efficient lighting and sustainable waste management, as well as some industry-specific tactics, e.g. an amalgam separator that removes mercury residue from old fillings, the use of porcelain fillings, performing digital scans of teeth rather than plastic molds, and digital X-rays that avoid the chemicals of traditional X-ray processes.

#3—Environmentally-Friendly Cosmetics

Perhaps I’m gender-specifying myself as a cosmetics-ignorant male, but green cosmetics is certainly fringe to me, especially on the global, independently-owned scale achieved by Lavera. This natural cosmetics company has been at it for over 20 years, preceding any society-wide green movement. Using only natural materials, Lavera, based in Germany, has over 330 natural cosmetic products, employs 250 employees and uses renewable energy and organic ingredients as much as possible. Products come in recycled packaging and recyclable or refillable bottles wherever possible. And, for those men as ignorant as I am about the cosmetics industry, there is a dedicated men’s line as well. See more at Cosmetics Business.

#4—Sustainable Dog Boutique

Welcome to the Healthy Spot Dog Boutique, recent recipient of the Enviromental Sustainability Award by the California State Senate. Healthy Spot was one of Santa Monica’s first certified green businesses, a pioneer in an increasingly less-fringy green business realm. Reductions in solid waste, recycling promotion, water and energy efficiency, and eco-friendly products are some of the steps making the Healthy Spot the premier green spot for pet owners to shop. Shelves are stocked with eco-friendly toys, treats, supplies and grooming products, and the store even offers the best in green doggy daycare and grooming.

#5—Eco-Chic Rubber Jewelry

Recycled rubber is a very common product ingredient these days, but to see rubber reused as jewelry is a new one. Enter My Sister’s Art; definitely on the fringe—or forefront—of eco-chic fashion. Everything from decorative flowers to feather duster earrings to elaborate chandelier necklace are represented—proof that one woman’s tire can be another woman’s black gold.

#6—Certified Green Tire & Auto Shop

How can a tire and automotive service store be green? Good question. Amazingly, it seems several locations in Arizona have figured it out. Six Firestone Complete Auto Care centers in and around Phoenix have been certified as “green shops” through Arizona’s voluntary Green Business Automotive Program administered with the state’s Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ). One thing is for sure about auto shops: there’s plenty of room for greening up practices, which for these six locations includes eco-friendly cleaning and degreasing, recycling oil, using low-hazard solvents, energy efficient lighting, green office equipment, reducing paper use and water conservation. It would be nice to see oil services in general become a fringe practice (in favor of electric transportation), but it’s also good to see them cleaning up their act as much as possible.

#7—Earth-Friendly Burials

Burial with dignity now means more than a rifle salute or meaningful epitaph, as those planning for their afterlife are choosing to honor the earth through natural burial. Currently, 22 cemeteries nationwide offer natural burial services, a very small amount relative to the whole but a growing trend nonetheless (see the Green Burial Council).

Options include biodegradable caskets, lack of embalming chemicals and, increasingly as it becomes legal in more states (California next?), “resomation.” Resomation avoids the carbon emissions unfortunately common with cremation by placing human remains inside a stainless steel tank filled with water and potassium hydroxide, where they are heated over several hours until the remains melt. Some of the resulting “residue” is placed in an urn, the rest recycled into the sewer system. Odd to talk about, and almost certainly the oddest of fringe green business practices, but also a serious contender for common burial practices of the future. Read more at Newsweek.

Researchers at ZSW in Stuttgart, Germany have broken the world record for CIGS solar cell efficiency. After breaking a previous record in April long held by the NREL, ZSW has now toppled their own mark, reaching 20.3% conversion efficiency.

Cadmium-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) solar cells are barely skimming the surface of the solar industry today. But several manufacturers are now taking this technology to market, many in the U.S., including Miasolé, Nanosolar and Solopower. Marketable CIGS cells currently operate at about 11% efficiency — competitive among thin-film products but well short of crystalline silicon (c-Si). However, they are expected to increase into the 15-16% range within five years. CIGS have the potential to be as or more efficient than c-Si, and are produced much more cheaply. CIGS also have the ability to “print” onto flexible substrates.

ZSW achieved their second world record through a modified co-evaporation process, reports PV-Tech, at their CIGS cell coating plant. It is a method that “in principle” can be leveled up to mass production.

Renowned German solar installer Würth Solar partnered with ZSW on the CIGS research and has recently signed a strategic alliance with a third firm, Manz Automation, to help develop the record-breaking technology researched at ZSW.

Miasolé Inks Deal

Speaking of CIGS solar cells on the market, Greentech Media reports that Miasolé has signed a deal to ship 7.5 MW-worth of CIGS modules to Germany. Juwi Solar will be the recipient of the solar panels, having already received 1 megawatt from Miasolé in the second quarter.

Miasolé has very ambitious goals for itself in this, its first year of commercial production. The company aims to match First Solar’s low production costs (currently at a formidable 76 cents per watt), increase its modules’ 10.5 percent efficiency to 13 percent and ship 22 MW of solar panels by year’s end. The 7.5 MW heading to Germany helps, but two more such deals will be needed to meet the company’s production goals. Miasolé remains staunchly confident that they will be producing 13 percent efficient CIGS solar modules by the end of 2010.

Photo Credit: GA Tech News