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Channel: Phys.org news tagged with:solar power plant

A solar booster shot for natural gas power plants

Natural gas power plants can use about 20 percent less fuel when the sun is shining by injecting solar energy into natural gas with a new system being developed by the Department of Energy's Pacific...

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'Salted' catalysts for chemical energy storage: Basic alkali-metal salts...

(Phys.org) —The storage of hydrogen in the form of methanol is a highly promising method for using excess energy produced by wind and solar power plants. However, this technology requires an effective...

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Wind power—even without the wind

Offshore wind could provide abundant electricity—but as with solar energy, this power supply can be intermittent and unpredictable. But a new approach from researchers at MIT could mitigate that...

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Power plants: Researchers explore how to harvest electricity directly from...

(Phys.org) —The sun provides the most abundant source of energy on the planet. However, only a tiny fraction of the solar radiation on Earth is converted into useful energy.

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Morocco launches solar mega-project at Ouarzazate

Morocco on Friday officially launched the construction of a 160-megawatt solar power plant near the desert city of Ouarzazate, the first in a series of vast solar projects planned in the country.

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Morocco to harness the wind in energy hunt

Morocco is ploughing ahead with a programme to boost wind energy production, particularly in the southern Tarfaya region, where Africa's largest wind farm is set to open in 2014.

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Study shows wind and solar plant benefits vary by location

(Phys.org) —A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University has published a paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggesting that governments and utility companies...

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Report firms up land-use requirements of solar: 1,000 homes would require 32...

The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has published a report on the land use requirements of solar power plants based on actual land-use practices from existing solar...

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The grid of the future

The outlet in your living room doesn't know a lot—yet. Unaware of whether they are drawing power from wind, solar, gas, or coal plants, the electrical lines that bring us power in many ways still...

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World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency

German Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Soitec, CEA-Leti and the Helmholtz Center Berlin announced today that they have achieved a new world record for the conversion of sunlight into...

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Ivanpah solar plant in California starts energy feed to grid

The world's largest solar thermal plant began to feed energy into the power grid on Tuesday, considered a solar energy milestone, in a project scheduled to be fully operational by the end of the year....

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Arizona solar plant achieves six hours after sun goes down

(Phys.org) —Abengoa's Solana plant in the desert near Gila Bend, Arizona, passed commercial testing this week The 280-megawatt Solana solar thermal power plant producing electricity without direct...

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Air, water and sun: The ingredients of 'green gasoline'

(Phys.org) —Mimicking a natural process perfected over billions of years to capture solar energy, researchers are creating artificial photosynthetic systems that will turn air and water into transport...

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Producing your own power in post-Fukushima Japan

A remote Toyota plant in northeastern Japan bears few scars from the devastating quake-tsunami more than two years ago that completely shut it down.

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Japanese firm proposes LUNA RING to send solar energy from moon to Earth

(Phys.org) —Japanese construction firm Shimizu Corp. has unveiled a proposal that entails building a solar panel array around the moon's equator, then sending the power it collects back to Earth. They...

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Satellites help power grid keep its balance

Imagine a generator pumping more electricity than a nuclear power plant into the grid, but inconsistently and without the grid's caretakers being able to see what it was doing. How could they maintain...

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Self-cleaning solar panel coating optimizes energy collection, reduces costs

Soiling—the accumulation of dust and sand—on solar power reflectors and photovoltaic cells is one of the main efficiency drags for solar power plants, capable of reducing reflectivity up to 50 percent...

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Huge US thermal plant opens as industry grows (Update 2)

A windy stretch of the Mojave Desert once roamed by tortoises and coyotes has been transformed by hundreds of thousands of mirrors into the largest solar power plant of its type in the world, a...

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'Home-made' electricity creating buzz in Germany

Klaus Meier lists three reasons for generating his own electricity in his family hotel in Germany's southern city of Freiburg—"cost savings, energy efficiency, climate protection".

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Researchers use real-world data to model the effect of more solar on the grid

American electrical utilities do a pretty fantastic job of getting us electricity when we need it. In 2006, the power was out on average for just 0.03 percent of the year in the United States. But...

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New solar power material converts 90 percent of captured light into heat

A multidisciplinary engineering team at the University of California, San Diego developed a new nanoparticle-based material for concentrating solar power plants designed to absorb and convert to heat...

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Huge US solar plant lags in early production

The largest solar power plant of its type in the world—once promoted as a turning point in green energy—isn't producing as much energy as planned.

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Researcher suggests storing solar energy underground for a cloudy day

Over the last few years, Mark Jacobson, a Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering, and his colleague, Mark Delucchi of the University of California, Berkeley, have produced a series...

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For Israeli firm, an answer to global warming blowing in the wind

For an Israeli start-up, one answer to global warming is blowing in the wind. The company called NewCO2Fuels, or NCF, has been developing its own version of a technology that allows heat-trapping...

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Vast desert sun farm to help light up Morocco

On the edge of the Sahara desert, engineers make final checks to a sea of metal mirrors turned towards the sun, preparing for the launch of Morocco's first solar power plant.

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Preparing for large-scale solar deployment

Deploying solar power at the scale needed to alleviate climate change will pose serious challenges for today's electric power system, finds a study performed by researchers at MIT and the Institute for...

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Researchers discover solar heat island effect caused by large-scale solar...

Large-scale solar power plants raise local temperatures, creating a solar heat island effect that, though much smaller, is similar to that created by urban or industrial areas, according to a new study.

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Low-cost 'solar absorber' promising for future power plants

Researchers have shown how to modify commercially available silicon wafers into a structure that efficiently absorbs solar energy and withstands the high temperatures needed for "concentrated solar...

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Scientist invents way to trigger artificial photosynthesis to clean air

A chemistry professor in Florida has just found a way to trigger the process of photosynthesis in a synthetic material, turning greenhouse gases into clean air and producing energy all at the same time.

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Firing up your car with lipids

Sometimes, when a science experiment doesn't work out, unexpected opportunities open up.

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