The Italians voted “NO” to Nuclear Energy in a recent referendum and have taken on solar energy in a big way. The Country had set an ambitious target of having 8GW of electricity generated by solar energy. Now the Italians can take pride in their achievement of already passing that barrier and have set a much larger goal for themselves.

The hope is to achieve 30GW, that is nearly 4 times the previous target. The country lacks any massive domestic electricity generation with the majority if its power being imported.

Italy has also just opened its largest photovoltaic production plant. The plant in Catania will initially produce 160 MW of panels per year with that rising to 480 MW.

The production plant is a joint venture between Enel Green Power, Sharp and STMicroelectronics and will produce panels for markets in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

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Rooftop Solar Panel

We can compare this somewhat to how amazed we are at the clarity of our TV display or computer screen after giving it a good clean. Or giving the car windows a good clean and everything seems a bit more crisper. The light has been getting reflected away by all that dirt – wherever it may have come from – and reducing the quality of the display or views. Solar arrays suffer just as much and can benefit from a good regular clean.

Luckily the surfaces of your panels are treated and with the help of some rain or a watering hose the most of the dirt may was away by itself. The will still need a regular light service to maximize their performance. At home this would be relatively easy to perform if your panels are easier to access. Sometimes it might take a bit more effort if the mountings are hard to reach.

All this is really trivial when we compare residential solar with the massive solar farms that are being developed across the world. The crave sun, sun and well more sun. This often means low rainfall and hot dry locations like deserts which are ideal places for millions of little particles of dirt and sand to become airborne by a  slight blow of wind. No doubt much of this ends up on the solar panels and keeping them clean is a necessary task that needs to be done regularly to keep up the efficiency of the electrical output.

The answer may come from Outer Space.

Not from aliens but from a development by NASA for it’s planetary robots. On far distant planets calling up a man is a space suit to give the solar powered robots a clean is not going to be practical. So the scientists have come up with a novel idea and this is to electrocute the dirt. Running a small short electric charge over the solar panels that causes most of the dirt to be repelled from the panels keeping them clean.

The amount of energy used is small and easily produced by the solar panels and the cleaner arrays perform much better. Using this idea back on earth based solar farms would add to the cost of the solar plants but the benefit from the solar efficiency would more than pay for itself many times over. It would not guarantee 100% that the panels will be clean, small dust particles could be easily shifted but as the grains get bigger then it would still need a wiped by damp cloth.

For all of us with solar panels at home, whether they are mounted on our roofs or  on a smaller scale as part of a solar battery charger, the story here is quite clear. Dirty panels do not perform at their best. Keep them clean and maximize their power output.

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Another acronym comes along in the solar industry for us to remember. This time it is CPV which stands for Concentrated Photo Voltaic. The difference here between the more common Photovoltaic (PV) is the the addition of a lens in front of the solar cell. This acts a bit like a magnifying glass to focus the solar energy on the cell, it gets Concentrated.

The added factor of  the Amonix units being steerable keeps them at the optimum angle to capture more of the suns energy than fixed solar panels. Efficiency of the units comes out at around 25% of the suns energy converted in to usable electricity. The actual individual cells themselves can capture 39% of sunlight. The solar array has an output of around 72 kilowatts and all this is done using a much smaller area than a solar farm using just standard photovoltaic panels.

Just like cooking eggs, there is more than one way to do it. Capturing solar energy is possible in many forms to suit many purposes. The Amonix fills a gap for utilizing a much smaller area that produces more power.

Plans as afoot for Amonix to build solar farms in the South West USA capable of producing up to 20 megawatts of energy

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Currently Morocco relies on Oil which currently supplies 95% of its energy needs. Unlike some other African and Middle East nations, Morocco has a lack of mineral resources in its territory and depends mostly on oil imports.

Concentrated solar power

It is hoped that by the year 2020, up to 2,000 megawatts of energy will be supplied by a combination of photovoltaic solar and solar thermal generating plants. This would reduce the countries dependence on Oil by 1 million tons each year.

The solar project, when completed, would produce up to 40% of the countries energy production. Morocco is one of many counties that can implement solar production to produce such a large percentage of its energy due to its location which is highly suited for solar production. The European Union, with its Desertec projects, is also planning to take advantage of the North African location in its own ambitious project.

With energy security becoming more important in the years to come, the reduction of the reliance on importing Oil will be top priorities for many countries in North Africa and the rest of the world. Solar energy might not be suitable for every country, wind or geo thermal might be alternatives,

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Using Oerlikon Micromorph end to end  manufacturing solution has enabled the Parmac plant to achieve production in just seven months after the facility was completed. Capable of producing 30 megawatts of thin film photovoltaic solar panels each year, the factory has created 150 high technology jobs for the region.

Solar Array

The beginning of production will allow Parmac to start gaining a return for its investment much quicker than without the Oerlikon process. This has shortened the time for module certification and allowed production to speed up to capacity with less delay.

This is Switzerland’s first thin film silicon module production line which is based on the Micromorph technology which was also invented in the country.

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