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Some installers and developers snatch up panels at bargain prices, while credit crunch limits others’ participation.
The cost of solar panels in dropping in Europe thanks to a growing inventory languishing in Spanish ports, according to Clean Technology Insight.

Some project developers aren’t making payments for panels they’ve ordered, leaving manufacturers along the supply chain such as Germany’s Q-Cells with extra inventory (see Bad news from Q-Cells spreads through solar supply chain). Other manufacturers such as SunPower are lowering earnings projections because of the rise of the dollar against the euro, in which contracts are signed (see Dollar’s strength hurts SunPower).

The availability is driving down prices; however, the tight credit market is leaving some firms without funds to buy the overstock, even at discounted prices. Some installers and developers are finding the cash to snap up the supplies for bargain prices.

Crystalline silicon panels, which cost about €3.50 a watt a few months ago, are now being offered for €2.10 to €2.70 per watt.

“We receive an offer every day now to rescue large consignments of modules tied up in Spanish ports. It seems like mayhem over there,” said Joseph Deignan, CEO of OptieEnergy Group, a Bulgarian solar developer, to Clean Technology Insight.

The problem in Spain is compounded by high feed-in tariffs earlier in the year that drew new players to the market from sectors such as real estate. The government scaled back the tariff in September and is now investigating fraudulent claims for incentives that are potentially so widespread that they could make up the country’s entire 500-megawatt cap next year.

“As a result of this bonanza of greed that occurred in the Spanish region pre-Sept. 28 and the fraudulent project developer activity, we could see these fraudulent solar farms take up the entire 500 MW cap next year given the new scope of the investigation. This would lead to no new shipments into this key region of demand,” wrote Jeff Osborne, an analyst at Thomas Weisel Partners.

In 2009, the solar sector’s growth will likely be less than previous years but still in the 15 percent to 20 percent range, Clean Technology Insight reported.

In an effort to expand the supply of renewable energy to Korean households and support its producers, the government laid out an action plan that includes the construction of a wind-generated power complex and subsidies for the purchase and use of hydrogen fuel cells.

The plan, announced by the Presidential Committee on Green Growth, hopes to raise the competitiveness of the renewable energy industry by helping it commercialize new technologies.

It calls for the government to establish a 40-megawatt wind power complex on the Saemangeum tidal flat by 2014.

The power generated from such a complex could supply roughly 13,000 households with electricity. The Saemangeum site will be used to test the commercial viability of wind turbines developed by Korean companies. A locally developed wind generator capable of producing more than 2 megawatts of electricity is nearing completion, and if cost-effective it could open a new global market to Korean companies.

The committee said it is also looking into creating a large wind farm on the ocean along the west coast. The complex would cost 400 billion won ($322.8 billion) and generate 100 megawatts of electricity. It is scheduled for completion by 2014.

The government also said it will expand the local solar energy market by 100 megawatts by 2011. That amount could power about 33,300 households.

The government plans to accomplish this through the application of the Renewable Portfolio Standards, which oblige energy suppliers to provide a certain percentage of their electricity from renewable sources. The standards will be mandatory in 2012, but companies that adopt them earlier will receive benefits.

Starting next year through 2020, the government also plans to cover 30 to 80 percent of the cost of buying and installing hydrogen fuel cells to power and heat homes.

Fuel cells use a reaction of hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity and heat. The only waste product from the reaction is water.

The government will pay 80 percent of the cost of purchasing and installing a fuel cell in one’s home until 2012. The subsidized percentage will drop to 50 percent from 2013 to 2016, and to 30 percent in the last three years leading up to 2020.

“Starting next year we hope to receive requests from 100 to 200 households to install hydrogen fuel cells and to expand that number to 1,000 every year from 2013,” said an official at the Ministry of Knowledge Economy. Currently the cost of buying and installing a hydrogen fuel cell for domestic use is roughly 50 million won. The government estimates that will fall to 10 million won in 2015 and 5 million won by 2018.

Although the government has been trying to increase the supply of renewable energy through various projects including the building of 1 million “green homes,” renewable energy has remained rare. In 2005, it accounted for just 2.13 percent of electricity used here, rising to 2.24 percent in 2006, 2.39 percent in 2007 and 2.49 percent last year. The portion for solar, wind and fuel cell power was even smaller at 0.1 percent.

By Lee Ho-jeong [ojlee82@joongang.co.kr]

It is one of evolution’s crowning achievements – a mini green power station and organic factory combined and the source of almost all of the energy that fuels every living thing on the planet.

Now scientists developing the next generation of clean power sources are working out how to copy, and ultimately improve upon, the humble leaf. The intricate chemistry involved in photosynthesis, the process where plants use sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into sugar, is the most effective solar energy conversion process on Earth. And researchers believe that mimicking parts of it could be the ticket to a limitless supply of clean power.

The untapped potential for using the sun’s rays is huge. All human activity for a whole year could be powered by the energy contained in the sunlight hitting the Earth in just one hour. Harnessing even a small amount of this to make electricity or useful fuels could satisfy the world’s increasing need for energy, predicted to double by 2050, without further endangering the climate.

Most solar power systems use silicon wafers to generate electricity directly. But although costs are coming down, these are still too expensive in many cases when compared with fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. Scientists are keen to develop more efficient and cheaper alternatives sources of energy.

At Imperial College London, researchers have embarked on a £1m project to study, and eventually mimic, photosynthesis. Part of a project called the “artificial leaf”, involves working out exactly how leaves use sunlight to make useful molecules. The team then plans to build artificial systems that can do the same to generate clean fuels such as hydrogen and methanol. These would then be used in fuel cells to make electricity or directly to power super-clean vehicles.

Similar projects are gathering pace around the world: the US is poised to approve a federal research budget of around $35m a year for ideas that could create fuels from sunlight and the Dutch government has allocated €40m for similar research.

According to James Barber, a biologist at Imperial College London and leader of the artificial leaf project, if artificial photosynthesis systems could use around 10% of the sunlight falling on them, they would only need to cover 0.16% of the Earth’s surface to satisfy a global energy consumption rate of 20 terawatts, the amount it is predicted that the world will need in 2030. And unlike a biological leaf, the artificial equivalent could be placed in the arid desert areas of the world, where it would not compete for space agricultural land.

Ultimately, Barber hopes to improve on nature’s own solar cell. “If the leaf can do it, we can do it but even better,” he said. “[But] it doesn’t mean that you try to build exactly what the leaf has. Leonardo da Vinci tried to design flying machines with feathers that flapped up and down. But in the end we built 747s and Airbus 380s, completely different to a bird and, in fact, even better than a bird.”

Photosynthesis starts with a chemical reaction where sunlight is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is released into the atmosphere while the hydrogen is used to create sugars and other organic molecules for the plant. The aim of Barber’s artificial leaf project is to find an efficient way of mimicking that water-splitting reaction to create a clean and limitless source hydrogen. Unlike normal leaves, the new devices would not suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Hydrogen is a clean, energy-rich fuel that could be used in fuel cells to make electricity or else combined with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (or from the exhaust of fossil-fuel power stations) to make methanol, a fuel that could be dropped into vehicles without the need for any engine modifications. “The challenge is to get hydrogen out of water using a ready supply of energy,” said Barber.

For domestic purposes, Dan Nocera, a chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has calculated that using artificial leaf to split a few litres of water a day into hydrogen and oxygen would be enough to supply all a home’s energy needs.

Scientists can already produce hydrogen by splitting water but current techniques are expensive, use harsh chemicals and need carefully controlled environments in which to operate. The critical part of the artificial leaf project is developing catalysts made from cheap materials that can be used to split water in everyday conditions.

John Loughhead, executive director of the UK Energy Research Centre, described the artificial leaf idea as very promising because “we know that plants have already evolved to do it and we know that, fundamentally, it’s a workable process on a large scale.”

He added: “Ultimately, the only sustainable form of energy we’ve got is the sun. From a strategic viewpoint, you have to think this looks really interesting because we know we’re starting from a base of feasibility.”

Barber’s colleagues at Imperial, led by chemist James Durrant, have recently developed a catalyst from rust that carried out part of the water-splitting reaction. So far the process is not very efficient, so Durrant’s team is looking at improving this by engineering the surface of the rust. “We’re looking at adding small catalytic amounts of cobalt onto the surface of the iron oxide to make it more efficient.”

Nocera is also working on a catalyst made from cobalt and phosphorus that can split water at room temperature. Speaking last year, when he published his preliminary results in the journal Science, he said efficient water-splitting technology would be useful as a way of storing solar energy,which is a major problem for anyone who wants to use large amounts of solar power. During the day, an artificial leaf could use sunlight to split water and, at night, the stored hydrogen would be used to make electricity as it was needed. Chemical fuels such as hydrogen can store far more energy per unit mass than even the most advanced batteries.

Both Durrant’s and Nocera’s catalysts are many years from becoming commercial products.

An entrepreneur has unveiled a hydrogen-powered car capable of travelling hundreds of miles between fuel stops at speeds of up to 50mph.

The Riversimple concept car, developed in an Oxfordshire workshop by former racing driver Hugo Spowers, aims to challenge the obstacles that have so far prevented a hydrogen-powered vehicle breaking into the mass market.

Mr Spowers told Sky News: “We are taking a whole system approach, we’re not just a fuel cell company, we don’t focus on the individual parts – it’s about the whole.”

The hydrogen cells that drive the electric motors are very light, meaning the two-seater car weighs just 350kg, considerably less than its rivals.

A mini Batmobile? Nope - it's the Riversimple hydrogen-powered concept car

Source : Sky News Online