Sun power is the absolute largest known source of continous free power on earth, but we are currently quite bad at harvesting it.The Danish news channel, Politiken, presented a news reel today (by Clavs Sylvest) on the Japanese Ota City that is being fully self sufficient in sun powered electricity.
This is a goverment sponsored program including about 500 homes. Each home has been given sun cells. The project is a national experiment testing how to avoid power cuts with the use of sun power. The house owners are allowed to sell the electricity back to the power compagny when producing excess electricity. This amounts to about 50 US dollars/month per house, on top of the electricity saved. However, sun cells are still expensive to produce and buy, and not using the electricity optimally due to reflection.
Good news though, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (US, also source of foto) has figured out how to coat the sun cells with tiny hairs that capture the otherwise reflected sunlight, much like hairs on a polar bear. The improvement allows the cells to harvest close to 100% of incoming rays, in contrast to about 67% now. So let us hope this will arrive on the market one day, that goverments will support people buying them, and that power compagnies will buy surpluss energy.
The video on Ota City can be watched here: http://politiken.tv/nyheder/udland/article597272.ece (in Danish)
The article on the new sun cells: http://ing.dk/artikel/92983-beklaed-nutidens-solceller-med-nanohaar-og-faa-50-procent-ekstra-energi (in Danish)
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