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Fisher-Barton opens new materials research lab

The Fisher-Barton Group has opened a new $2-million, state-of-the-art materials research laboratory in Watertown, Wis. The lab’s capabilities include scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectrometry for high-magnification imaging, and elemental and chemical characterization; X-ray fluorescence and diffraction for analyzing complex, unknown bulk samples, and identifying the elements and crystallographic structure of the sample, and; drop-weight impact testing that produces a highly-sensitive time history of applied force and deformation during a test.

What utilities really think about solar

GigaOm’s Ucilia Wang reports about the Solar Power International conference in Dallas last week, where a panel of utility executives served up some telling views about their interest and misgivings about investing in solar. She provides five takeaway opinion points from the session.

Japan’s novel Okinawa Institute officially becomes graduate university

A budding new Japanese graduate school backed by the likes of Nobel laureates Sydney Brenner, Susumu Tonegawa, Jerome Friedman and others has cleared the last hurdle required to start teaching. Japan’s cabinet officially approved the law formally recognizing the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University. Proposed in 2001, OIST started operations as a research institute in 2005 with a handful of scientists working in borrowed space, with Brenner serving as president and a board of governors stacked with scientific luminaries, including five Nobel laureates. OIST supporters, including domestic politicians and scientists, want to shake up Japan’s universities by creating a new academic model emphasizing interdisciplinary research. It is also attempting to attract non-Japanese faculty members by using English for teaching and administrative affairs.

International team finds rhodium dihydride with high volumetric hydrogen density

Materials with very high hydrogen density have attracted considerable interest due to a range of motivations, including the search for chemically precompressed metallic hydrogen and hydrogen storage applications. As reported on in PNAS, a team using high-pressure synchrotron X-ray diffraction technique and theoretical calculations have discovered a new rhodium dihydride with high volumetric hydrogen density (163.7 g/L). Compressing rhodium in fluid hydrogen at ambient temperature, the fcc rhodium metal absorbs hydrogen and expands unit-cell volume by two discrete steps to form NaCl-typed fcc rhodium monohydride at 4 GPa and fluorite-typed fcc RhH₂ at 8 GPa. RhH₂ is the first dihydride discovered in the platinum group metals under high pressure. Their low-temperature experiments show that RhH₂ is recoverable after releasing pressure cryogenically to one bar and is capable of retaining hydrogen up to 150 K for minutes and 77 K for an indefinite length of time.

Engineering Ceramics in Europe and the USA: A Market and Strategic Study to the Year 2016

Engineering Ceramics in Europe and the USA: A Market and Strategic Study to the Year 2016, a 300-page market report that analyses the European and North American markets for engineering ceramics (also known as advanced ceramics), discusses the demand for various materials and products, and highlights new commercial opportunities. In the recent past, the possibilities offered by engineering ceramics have become recognised across a wide range of industrial applications, where their outstanding properties allow cost savings due to extended component lifespans in duties where metals and other materials may fail.

Are Bendable Smart Phones the Future?

Do you ever get tired of the simplicity and sensitivity of your smart phone’s touchscreen, or the elegance and intuitiveness of the now-standard pinch zoom? Do you want a way of interacting with your phone that requires two hands, and an element of brute force? If so, then this Nokia concept–a “kinetic device” that receives input by being bent or twisted–might be for you.

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At the end of each week, I end up with a list of a bunch of stories I started to write about, or started to investigate or didn’t even get that far even though the topic looked intriguing, but, I had a meeting to go to …

Anyway, it’s Friday, and rather than have these stories evaporate into the ether, I’ve close out each week by providing some raw links to some of these orphan tales. Check ‘em out:

VCU Researchers May Have a New Class of Highly Electronegative Chemical Species

Yale scientists trick bacteria into incorporating foreign small molecules and embedding them within the cell wall.

Kinetics of fiber solidification, such as solidification kinetics of nanotube composite fibers (PNAS paper)

Fundamental limit of nanophotonic light trapping in solar cells (PNAS paper)

Particle size matters more than previously thought in crucial redox reactions

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BrightSource solar array

First Solar announced yesterday that it and the Chinese government had agreed upon a memorandum of understanding that, if a few more bridges are crossed, will result in a 2 gigawatt solar power plant in Ordos City, Inner Mongolia, China.

That’s a huge plant. A story in today’s Wall Street Journal reports that it will be a 25-square-miles array.

This will be a 10-year, multiphase project beginning with a 30 megawatt demonstration project that is planned to get underway in June 2010. According to the company’s news release, phases 2, 3 and 4 will be 100 megawatts, 870 megawatts and 1,000 megawatts, respectively. Phases 2 and 3 will be completed in 2014 and phase 4 will be completed by 2019.

“This major commitment to solar power is a direct result of the progressive energy policies being adopted in China to create a sustainable, long-term market for solar and a low carbon future for China,” says First Solar CEO Mike Ahearn.

After building the plant, First Solar plans to sell it to yet-to-be-determined Chinese business. The value of such a power producer depends on the value of the hardware and, more importantly, the value of future revenue streams.

The latter, however, is uncertain at this time. China is expected to eventually enact a feed-in-tariff. Typically, feed-in-tariffs establish a guaranteed premium that will be paid for renewable energy, but the size of the tariff is currently under debate. Once it is set, it will provide a way of calculating the value of the electricity produced by the power plant over a long-term period.

“The Chinese feed-in tariff will be critical to this project,” Ahearn said yesterday. “This type of forward-looking government policy is necessary to create a strong solar market and facilitate the construction of a project of this size, which in turn continues to drive the cost of solar electricity closer to ‘grid parity’ – where it is competitive with traditional energy sources.”

The project still has a few more bureaucratic hurdles to cross, but according to the WSJ, it will be just one part of an enormous (12 gigawatt) renewable energy development zone in that area of Mongolia. The plan is to include wind, solar, biomass and hydroelectric energy sources.

Information, although sketchier, on two other mega solar projects has also just surfaced. The Clinton Climate Initiative has apparently just reached an agreement on an MOU to build a 3 gigawatt solar farm in the State of Gujarat in India:

Officials said the solar park will be developed on the non-cultivable wastelands available in Banaskantha and Kutch districts.

In an official press release, the government said that at present, about 34 internationally acclaimed companies are participating with the state government to develop solar projects in Gujarat.

The WSJ reports that CCI is also in talks for a second similarly size facility in Rajasthan.

Finally, a number of sources have just reported that Brightsource has signed contracts to supply more than 2,600 megawatts of solar electricity to Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison. BrightSource is expected to set up as many as 14 concentrating solar power plants to deliver on this energy goal. Construction is expected to get underway in 2010. More on Brightsource’s California goals can be read in this recent CTT post.

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In a remarkable 30-day proposal-to-award cycle, the DOE announced on Tuesday the recipients of over $500 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act awards for large wind and solar projects located in eight states. The funding is expected to generate 2,000 new jobs.

This is the first round of awards. The Obama administration and the DOE originally planned on providing $3 billion for the projects in the form of tax credits, but restructured the awards to provide immediate cash instead of later-arriving tax credits.

According to a DOE news release, the agency believes the payments will eventually support an estimated 5,000 renewable energy production facilities in all regions of the country over the life of the program.

The DOE and the Treasury Department began accepting applications for the program on July 31, 2009 and was required to make the awards in 60 days. DOE and Treasury note that these first awards were made in half the mandated time. The DOE promised that the names of additional award winners would be “announced in the coming weeks.”

Here are the first round awardees:

A story in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, however, noted that half of the projects and $340 million of the funding is going to two companies headquartered outside the United States, Iberdrola SA (Spain) and Energias de Portugal SA. The WSJ also reports that despite the original $3 billion estimate, there apparently is no cap on funding and the DOE has pledged to award grants to all qualified applicants through 2011. The newspaper reports that some bankers estimate the total amount of awards could reach $10 billion.

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Credit: David Shankbone

The New York Times reported last week that the price of solar panels has dropped 40 percent in a little more than a year.

That’s good news for consumers who have been scared off by the initial upfront costs for installing a solar array. The federal 30 percent subsidy for renewable energy projects has helped increase the number of installations and the number of the number of consumers willing to consider these units. State and local incentives have been helping, too. When coupled with falling panel prices, the all-important payback period can be significantly reduced.

But the news is probably a mixed bag for panel makers. Clearly, more efficient manufacturing has been a factor, but so, too, has heighten competition. According to the article, materials sourcing and manufacturing in China may be a bigger factor:

Until recently, panel makers had been constrained by limited production of polysilicon, which goes into most types of panels. But more factories making the material have opened, as have more plants churning out the panels themselves — especially in China.

“A ton of production, mostly Chinese, has come online,” said Chris Whitman, the president of U.S. Solar Finance, which helps arrange bank financing for solar projects.

While business is up for solar installers, the Times reports that some domestic PV makers are still losing money. Some market watchers have been cautioning about the possibility that elements of the solar manufacturing industry were facing a major downturn in revenues and venture capital because of a purported beginnings of an oversupply of PV units. In early 2008, we reported in the ACerS Bulletin (see p. 5) that Lux Reseach Inc., for example, said supply will begin to “exceed demand in 2009, leading to falling prices and a shake-out among companies, particularly crystalline silicon players that haven’t invested in thin-film technologies.”

A recent posting on Lux’s blog notes that many well-known PV manufacturers didn’t show at the July Intersolar conference, but a host of Chinese companies had a big presence.

In a somewhat related followup story, the Times also reports on how a shift to the use of microinverters on each panel can decrease performance problems sometimes experienced with multipanel arrangements and allow consumers to install an initially small solar system but add more panels later as the prices drop.

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