Solar Impulse made history when its HB-SIA airplane touched down at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, completing an entire cross-country United States flight relying solely on solar energy. Meanwhile, President Obama kicked-off a soccer ball with a difference.  Invented by two Harvard University graduates, it can generate electrical power for lights and cell phones. And in Singapore, the Economic Development Board (EDB) announced the award of $12 million in grants to research projects aimed at coming up with innovative and more efficient ways to tap solar energy. Read More

Solar Impulse’s Solar-Powered Coast-To-Coast U.S. Flight Touched Down Safely This Weekend

Colleen Taylor in tech crunch (7 July 2013):

Solar Impulse made history this weekend when its HB-SIA airplane touched down late Saturday night in New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, completing an entire cross-country United States flight relying solely on energy from that big old star in the Earth’s backyard.

The Switzerland-based Solar Impulse organization, founded by Swiss scientist/pilots Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, described the milestone thusly:

“For the first time a plane capable of flying day and night powered exclusively by solar energy has crossed the USA from the West to the East Coasts without using a single drop of fuel.”

The completion of a cross-country journey is a huge step for solar-powered flight, as it was just three years ago that a Solar Impulse airplane flew a straight 26 hours in what then seemed to be an impossible journey. But in many ways, sunshine still has a long way to go before it catches up to traditional jet fuel. The Solar Impulse aircraft, which is called the HB-SIA and weighs just over 3,500 pounds, attains an impressive altitude, but its pace is much slower than what we expect from typical air travel. The Los Angeles Times explained the pace like this:

“The aircraft, powered by about 11,000 solar cells, soars to 30,000 feet while poking along at a top speed of 45 mph. Most of the 11,000 solar cells are on the super-long wings that seem to stretch as far as a jumbo jet’s. It weighs about the size of a small car and soars with what is essentially the power of a small motorized scooter.

The Solar Impulse left San Francisco in early May and has made stopovers in Phoenix, Dallas-Fort Worth, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Dulles.”

But the plan is to keep making the technology better, faster, and stronger. In fact, the Solar Impulse crew has a much bigger new journey on its horizon now that it is already working toward. The organization’s stated “ultimate goal” is to circumnavigate the entire earth. Its website says that its round-the-world trip is scheduled for 2015, and the aircraft for that mission, the HB-SIB, is currently under construction.

Source: www.techcrunch.com

By David Nakamura, Published: July 2 at 5:17 am

DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA — President Obama, an avid hoops player, hit the pitch Tuesday — the soccer pitch, that is

It was actually during a tour at a power plant here that Obama and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete got a look at the “soccket ball” — a soccer ball that has an electric generator placed inside of it. Invented by two Harvard University graduates, the balls can generate electrical power for lights and cell phones after they are played with for a while.

Obama took the ball and tossed it in the air. Then he let it drop and kicked it back up to himself. Finally, to the delight of the photographers at the scene, he threw it in the air and headed it to himself.

He later handed the ball to Kikwete, who didn’t try to duplicate the feat. Obama asked aides how much power the balls generate and how much they cost. Finally he walked toward reporters, including members of the Tanzanian press, and explained how the device works.

“There is a mechanism inside so that the kinetic energy when you kick the ball creates a battery,” the president explained. “So now you can power this.”

He and an aide attached one end of a cable to the ball and the other end to a cell phone.

“You can play with this for two hours and now you’ve got half an hour’s worth of, an hour’s worth…” Obama began.

The woman interjected: “thirty minutes of play, several hours of battery.”

They held up the cell phone. Obama said his administration is distributing the balls across Africa as part of an initiative aimed at doubling access to electrical power on the continent.

Source: www.washingtonpost.com/

$12m EDB grant for solar power research

The Business Times  by Malminderjit Singh (26 June 2013):

THE Economic Development Board (EDB) yesterday announced the award of $12 million in grants to research projects aimed at coming up with innovative and more efficient ways to tap solar energy.

Five research teams will be given funding. Three of them are from the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore at the National University of Singapore and two are the Energy Research Institute @ NTU of the Nanyang Technological University and a Singapore-based private enterprise, SiPro Pte Ltd.

The Energy Innovation Programme Office (Eipo), through the Energy Innovation Research Programme, expects these teams to focus their research on two areas.

One is in finding ways to raise the efficiency of how solar power is tapped in sunny Singapore, including reducing the use of materials and implementing novel designs and test methods for photovoltaic materials, wafer cells, modules and systems. The other area is in the recycling of silicon wafers, cells and modules.

As poorly performing solar modules are taken out of commission from existing solar farms, ways need to be found to recycle these wafers, cells and modules.

The EDB, aware that the cost of generating solar power is falling, wants these research projects to make breakthroughs so that solar power can be adopted more widely here.

The agency notes that the cost of solar modules has come down by about half in the last couple of years alone, creating “grid parity” in regions receiving significant amounts of sunshine.

In a grid parity situation it is just as, if not more, economical to generate electricity using an alternative energy source – solar power in this case – than it is to buy it off an electricity grid. (The assessment of costs here encompasses the costs over the lifetime of the energy-generating system – initial outlay, running and maintenance costs, cost of fuel and of capital.)

The EDB hopes to see a continued focus on cost reduction throughout the entire value chain, from wafers to cells and modules, and, finally, entire power-generating systems, in order to achieve mass adoption of solar energy without the need for subsidies.

This is why the agency is on the lookout for improved design innovations that will create cost-effective silicon wafers, cells and modules, and for ways to recycle used silicon wafers, cells and modules, so that the industry as a whole raises its operational efficiency and environmental standards.

Yeoh Keat Chuan, the managing director of EDB and co-executive director of Eipo, said: “Declining costs of solar energy has led to escalating adoption of solar energy in many countries. The research projects selected for this competitive funding call reflect the growing sophistication in Singapore’s solar research ecosystem.”

He added that the funding will enable the clean-energy industry here to strengthen its value chain – from research through to innovation and commercialisation of new solutions scalable for global markets.

Source: www.timesdirectories.com