The electric car has come a long way in recent years, and it’s going to go further. Believe it or not, electric car prototypes have been around since the 1830s!  Companies are producing bigger and better batteries, power providers are brainstorming ways to implement charging stations to charge them (electric cars draw as much electricity as a typical house during charging), and vehicle manufacturers are working on ways to reduce the price tag, which, at the low end, currently sits between $25,000 and $30,000 dollars.  Also, pure electric vehicles can only drive about 80 to 100 miles before requiring a charge, though there are some neat ideas out there, such as the battery-and-gasoline-generator hybrids.

Breaking Down the Stats

Experts anticipate a slow transition, estimating that by 2014, only 1% of all vehicles will be purely electric.  However, there is a bright spot – they also estimate that 25% of cars in 2014 will be hybrid, like the Toyota Prius, which uses a mix of internal combustion and electric propulsion.  We’ve got to start somewhere, after all. (more…)

Popularity: 2% [?]

Innovalight’s “Cougar Process” of producing PV cells could raise the bar for solar cell efficiency and lower production costs for Innovalight’s new production partner, China-based JA Solar.  JA Solar is a leading manufacturer of solar cells that has begun research and development into using Innovalight’s patented process.

Innovalight has devised a method of producing high-efficiency cells by adding a step to the manufacturing process: an industrial inkjet printer.  Innovalight’s website states that the cost reduction comes from using silicon in its liquid form rather than traditional solid or gas forms, thus lowering overhead and equipment cost for manufacturers.

Skeptical of the efficiency rating?  The results have been recognized by the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the IEEE,  an “association for the advancement of technology” that has been around for 125 years. (more…)

Popularity: 2% [?]

Single points of failure can plague a home solar system with a central inverter.

Think of a centralized solar system as a string of Christmas lights run in series.  If one bulb goes out, the rest go with it.  Even shading a portion of one panel in an array can drag the entire array’s energy harvest down.  Enphase Energy has laid claim to being the first to produce a microinverter system available for commercial or residential applications. According to a friend of mine in the solar industry, “[Enphase Microinverter systems] are taking the solar world by storm.”

Microinverters reduce the bulk, space and noise of traditional inverters.  A microinverter mounts below each PV panel, converts that panel’s DC current to AC and then ties directly into the existing wiring and power panel of the house.  This saves the expense of heavy gauge copper wire, as well as the task of running it to your garage (or other centralized location) from the PV array.  At a few dollars per foot, that wire amounts to a lot of money in labor and material. (more…)

Popularity: 3% [?]