About solar energy?

Question

i wanna have the newest information about solar energy,specaily solar plant that can work in cloudy weather t

Answer 1

The sun is the leading cause of global warming. By encouraging the use of solar energy, we are encouraging the sun to continue getting warmer and warmer until the earth will be so warm that many penguins and polar bears will die. I recommend the use of fossil fuels, since they are made from dinosaur bones, and since dinosaurs are all dead, its not really that big of a deal if we burn up all the fossil fuels. Thanks for taking an interest in saving mother earth!!!

Answer 2

Solar power plants work much better in very sunny areas.  However, solar panels work in a fairly wide range of locations.  

Solar thermal plants are especially more suited to these sunnier areas.  

There are several new technologies changing solar photovoltaics or PV.

Different kinds of thin film solar cells, which are cheaper to make because they use less materials.  But they aren't as efficient as regular solar cells.  They are more useful where more area is available.  There are silicon thin film, cadmium teluride thin film and

Copper indium diselenide  thin film.  I believe there is also copper indium gallium,

  solar cells both thin and regular are made from different forms of silicon.  Monocrystalline silicon,

Amorphous silicon thin film on plastic substrate , thin film on metal sheet, thin film on glass;

Multicrystalline silicon,  Amorphous silicon/ monocrystalline silicon hybrid,   String ribbon crystalline silicon,  as you can see, the answer is complex.

Some companies are using nanotechnology to improve design.

Power plants, could be  solar thermal, where the sun heats water to boiling and makes steam to drive a generator.  They use things like parabolic mirrors to concentrate sunlight on the part that holds the water.  Companies doing this say they can already produce electricity at prices competitive with gas and coal fired plants.

Power plants can be concentrating photovoltaic, similar to the thermal plants, but the sunlight is concentrated on PV panels.  One company said they increased the sunlight by a factor of 30 .

The best effeciency so far for PV cells is about 20%   Most are now up to 14-16%

Thin film efficiency is lower, mostly 10% or less.

Time for a solar panel system to pay for itself is roughly 15 years depending on variables, like tax credits, cost/watt of installation etc.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-so...  this is an article in Scientific American about a proposal to convert the U.S. electric grid into almost all solar by 2100, 65% by 2050,

using solar thermal and concentrating PV solar power plants in the U.S. southwest.

"Solar is one the most land-efficient sources of clean power we have, using a fraction of the area needed by hydro or wind projects of comparable output. All of America's needs for electric power – the entire US grid, night and day – can be generated with Ausra's current technology using a square parcel of land 92 miles on a side. For comparison, this is less than 1% of America's deserts, less land than currently in use in the U.S. for coal mines."

"Solar thermal power plants such as Ausra's generate electricity by driving steam turbines with sunshine. Ausra's solar concentrators boil water with focused sunlight, and produce electricity at prices directly competitive with gas- and coal-fired electric power."

from Ausra's website

Green Wombat has several articles on solar thermal plants being built in California.

http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/

Here are links to some solar thermal companies.  there are a few more.

http://www.ausra.com/

http://www.skyfuel.com/

http://www.solucar.es/sites/solar/en/ind...

http://www.esolar.com/

http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/

Here's a company at or near the cutting edge in thin film PV

http://www.nanosolar.com/

other thin film companies are

United Ovonics Solar (claims good performance in less sunny areas)

First Solar

Emkor

Heliovolt

Open Energy

Evergreen Solar( unique string ribbon technolgy)

Sunpower  has the most efficient cells

Answer 3

Any solar cell can work in cloudy weather. It will make less power but not zero power. If you want complete information consult wikipedia. If you think wikipedia is not reliable, then check their sources. All wikipedia articles give links to other web sites that are NOT part of wikipedia where they got their information.But it will take more work than just asking a question here. You need to read articles, then click on the links in them to find other sites, and use google to look up words or phrases, and you need to build up a network in information in your mind. In other words, you need to do RESEARCH.