If you’ve been wondering where our solar cells are and why they’re not just everywhere yet as the green revolution churns onward, there’s a reason for that.  So far their construction still requires all manner of expensive rare materials such as silicon and cadmium.  And because of the way that they’re manufactured, silicon panels grown in vacuum, they’re just plain expensive to produce.  So as much as we’d like to see a solar renaissance, where we finally go from wow to now, it’s just not happening.

But all that may change.

Researchers at IBM think that they’ve hit the next best thing since sliced silicon: “High-Efficiency Solar Cell with Earth-Abundant Liquid-Processed Absorber”  It’s a completely new take on producing solar cells, based primarily on more “earth-abundant” materials such as copper, zinc, tin, selenium, and sulfur in a chalcogenide compound.  In fact, unlike silicon-based photovoltaics which have to be grown in a vacuum, these materials can just be sprayed on.  They’re applied in a slurry state, so spraying, dunking, printing, spin-coating, or what have you can be done to apply them to the solar cells.  So not only are the materials more friendly and available, but they’re applied in a process that is much cheaper and easier to manufacture.  And because they’re basically painted on, they can be applied to all sorts of shapes that would cause traditional solar panels to shatter if attempted.  The next paint job on your car or house might be “High-Efficiency Solar Cell with Earth-Abundant Liquid-Processed Absorber”.

The only downside is that so far the efficiency rate is only around 9.6 percent.  That’s a bit shy of today’s silicon-based photovoltaic efficiency between 10 and 15 percent.  Though researchers do like to point out that the technology is still in an early phase and efficiency may improve as the process is refined.  And still, for the price and theoretical availability, what one lacks in efficiency one can easily make up for in volume.

But Big Blue isn’t the only horse in this race.  Researchers from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena have made their own headway in a new photovoltaic direction: silicon wires.

In a new paper published in Nature Materials entitled “Enhanced absorption and carrier collection in Si wire arrays for photovoltaic applications” is described an entirely new process of solar absorption using arrays of 1mm thick silicon wires to create a flexible polymer.  This is a markedly different direction from the normal use of silicon in solar panels.  It uses far less material, a mere 1 percent of the silicon needed for traditional solar panels.  And yet in spite of the incredible reduction in the amount of silicon used (or perhaps because of it) panels made from these silicon wires have been measured at 17 percent efficiency, blowing away the competition.

What’s more, the bundles of silicon wires absorb solar energy “over a broad range of incidence angles“, meaning that they don’t need to be adjusted for optimum absorption nearly as often as traditional solar panels.

And just as amazing, because these panels are made from bundles of silicon wires, they’re flexible.  So not only are they much less likely to be damaged from things that would normally ruin the traditional brittle silicon panels, it’s a technology that would be easy to adapt to locales that aren’t traditionally flat, such as car roofs, or even the curtains in your window!

With the incredible savings and improvements in manufacturing that each of these new solar technologies offer, we just one day may find photovoltaic solar panels common building materials available to every home.  And with the flexibility that they offer, solar energy just may make the jump from small electronics and home panels to … everything and anything.  What a wonderful world it would be.

Researchers at Rochester University in New York have found a nifty and easy way to improve the incandescent lightbulb.  All that it takes, actually, is a quick zap (a femtosecond-long pulse) with an extremely high energy laser.  The burst of intense light travels through the glass of the bulb and into the tungsten filament (that wire that makes the light happen) causing a complex series of nano-scale and micro-scale structures to form on the surface of the filament.  This makes the filament more efficient, on an order of approximately 40%.

The handy thing is, any production facility could easily add this extra lasering step into their manufacturing line, automating the efficiency improvement with nary an effort.

The less-than-stellar problem is however that not only have greener compact-fluorescent lightbulbs been around forever now, practically replacing all incandescent use in many businesses and homes, but even LED lightbulbs with a much higher order of magnitude in energy savings, yet at a price point similar to compact fluorescents.  One wonders then where the actual benefit of these new green incandescents may be.

Still, there are a lot of people slow to uptake on the greener lightbulbs.  So if green incandescents can reach the shelves at the same price as the energy-wasting incandescents, the technology possibly could still do quite a lot of good.

As I explained before, while electric cars may be the green machine of the future, it is the battery technology that keeps them from replacing standard gasoline automobiles today.  Well, the battery, or the hydrogen fuel cell, which is actually just another type of battery – the same as a lithium-ion battery – to power an all-electric car.  The only difference is that hydrogen fuel cells are “recharged” by adding back in the spent hydrogen where as normal batteries are recharged by adding back in the spent electricity.

The thing is, while we have electrical lines, well, everywhere … we really don’t have hydrogen recharging stations much of, well, anywhere.  In the US they’re pretty much all in California, which is rather inconvenient if you want to own a hydrogen fuel cell car in Wisconsin.  And even if the technology can all be worked out and commercialized in the near future, it is this lack of an infrastructure that really puts hydrogen in last place in the green race.  Even the Obama Administration is now on that page.

So what is a green car manufacturer to do?

Develop better batteries!

Enter two new contenders for better batteries, adding options 4 and 5 to the superbattery list:

Option 4 – Lithium-Sulfur Batteries:

The first is Scion Power Corporation and their Lithium-Sulfur (Li-S) battery technology.  They’ve been puttering around with the idea for a while now.  In theory it holds great potential as it has a much higher energy density (stores more power in the same size battery) than the standard old lithium-ion technology we’ve been using forever.  Their last generation Li-S batteries can hold 350 WH/Kg.  Their newest generation Li-S bring the density up to 450 WH/Kg.  (Compared to Li-ion’s storage capacity of 150 to 200 WH/Kg.)  As you can see on their webpage, when packed into a Toyota RAV4 EV, using the exact same volume for their Li-S battery pack as the Li-ion battery pack they replace and less than half of the weight, they can expand the measly Li-ion’s 27kWh battery capacity to 70kWh with Li-S.  This takes the electric range from 81 miles to a whopping 226 miles!

The downside?

Scion Power Corporation has been having difficulty with the recharge cycles, able to only squeeze out 150 to 200 recharges before the batteries become useless.  To that end, they’ve gone into a partnership with BASF to co-develop the Li-S battery, hoping that BASF’s chemical expertise can uncover a way to the expand battery life in a commercial production line of Li-S batteries.  How soon this partnership can crack the battery life problems is anyone’s guess, but the Li-S technology holds great promise.

Option 5 – The St Andrews Air (STAIR) or Lithium-Oxygen (Li-O) Batteries:

Across the pond in Scotland at the great St Andrews University, Professor Peter Bruce and his team of geniuses had a brilliant idea.  Rather than load a battery full of every chemical needed for the discharge-recharge process, why not use a re-agent readily available in nearly every environment?  And so they sought out to use oxygen as the re-agent, saving loads of weight from the battery, thereby creating the Lithium-Oxygen (Li-O) battery.

As the Li-O battery discharges the lithium ions from the electrolyte combine with drawn in oxygen to form Li₂O₂.  And as the battery is recharged, the lithium ions free the oxygen molecules back into the air.  And so, because of this use of oxygen from the air instead of extra chemicals in the battery, the power density is astounding.  The in-lab estimates for the technology are around 3050 WH/Kg, nearly 20 times the storage capacity of a Lithium-ion battery.

The technology does, of course, have a few minor caveats.  In that it takes in oxygen to work, this would not exactly be suitable battery technology for space use, or likely even submarine use.  (Vehicles would however be fine.)  And because it puts out concentrated oxygen as the batteries recharge, it might be a bit dangerous without good ventilation.  It’d be a shame if your shiny new electric car blew up because it had filled with concentrated oxygen, a highly ignitable and explosive invisible vapor.  But, again, simple ventilation to circulate the air would save the day.

The other dilemma for the Li-O superbattery is that it only exists in a labratory so far.  Commercialization could easily take another five years.  But the potential in energy density is so astounding compared to the standard Li-ion batteries that we use now that I don’t see where anyone would have a problem jumping onto this idea to make it happen.  Where electric cars using Li-ion batteries could have ranges of 200 miles per charge, electric cars based on Li-O batteries could have ranges of 4000 miles per charge.  That would right solve anyone’s range limitation problems with an electric car.

Conclusion:

As time marches on it is becoming more and more clear that not only are hydrogen fuel cell cars becoming a pipe-dream for electric cars, but that new battery technologies may well far exceed any potential that hydrogen fuel cells could ever offer the automobile.  The potential to create an electric car that really can recharge in the time it takes you to fill a gas tank is there.  As is the potential for an electric car that fan far outdistance a petrol or diesel car between refills/recharges.  And, of course, electricity is cheaper and less polluting than fossil fuels and readily available anywhere you go.  As the enthusiasts, universities, and goverments push harder and harder to advance battery technologies in an effort to go green the nails keep pounding into the coffins of both hydrogen fuel cell and petrol-powered vehicles.  The superbattery is now just around the corner.  Are you ready?

The Obama Administration, who are literally throwing money at everything, are going to stop throwing their money at hydrogen fuel cell cars and the infrastructure (AKA gas stations) to support them.  Steven Chu, the Energy Secretary, explained that they were, “moving away from vehicular hydrogen fuel-cells to technologies with more immediate promise.”  Because since former President Bush started funding hydrogen fuel cell vehicles back in 2003 (strangely, alternative-fuel and fuel-efficient vehicles were about the only thing he did for the green world) all that we’ve gotten since then are the Honda FCX Clarity and a supposed Chevrolet Equinox SUV, all in numbers too small not to ignore, with a handful of fueling stations … in California.  Hydrogen vehicles and infrastructure have completely failed to make a presence in the six years they’ve been government funded.

So, according to the Obama Administration, it’s time for a change.

Next year’s budget will see only $68.2m spent on hydrogen fuel cell technologies, and of those, only the actual battery-replacement kind for laptops and whatnot, not for vehicles.

Likely the budget will shift to green vehicles that show actual promise.  This would be the plug-in hybrid where in a larger battery back than a normal hybrid allows one to charge their car overnight and drive with much better fuel economy, at least until the battery goes dry.  The Toyota Prius has had such modifications done in private garages for years now, and easily gets over 100 MPG while the main battery is charged.  And then there’s the plug-in serial hybrids (otherwise known as Range-Extended Electric Vehicles) which only use electricity to drive the wheels, and use generators attached to gas engines to extended their driving range once the batteries go dry.  These plug-in hybrids tend to go at least 40 miles without ever using a single drop of gasoline.  One can only hope that Toyota switches the Prius to this type of technology soon, as it make so much more sense.

But either way, whatever the Obama Administration throws money at next year, it won’t be hydrogen cars, because they’re getting American nowhere.  In the end, hydrogen fuel cells are just batteries.  And (hopefully) the hydrogen is produced by electrolasis, AKA water and electricity.  Plug-in hybrid vehicles offer the exact same green advantages, but anyone can plug one in anywhere.  You don’t have to live in California to use them.

In a world of green and electric start-ups trying to manufacture their very own vehicles from scratch, it’s nice to see companies taking a different, if not smarter, twist.  Raser Technologies has just unveiled their Extended-Range Electric Vehicle (E-REV) plug-in hybridization of an H3 Hummer.  And for 40 miles from a full charge, it can run purely on electricity, using no gasoline whatsoever.  Even after the first 40 miles the Raser H3 Hummer runs in your more typical hybrid fashion for a fuel economy that still puts a Honda Insight or Toyota Prius to shame (which … really … is not all that difficult with today’s technology), at least until it hits around 200 miles after its last battery recharge.

It’s a Hummer that even ultra-green California and its Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, can get behind.  (Or in front of, for a good photo-op.)

The 100+ MPG Raser H3 Hummer hybrid has Arnold Schwarzenegger smiling.

Make no mistake though, this hybridized H3 Hummer is no simple upgrade.  The standard Hummer engine is replaced by a 260-horsepower 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine, as is used in the Pontiac Solstice, and drives a 100-kilowatt generator to provide electricity.  Yes, that’s right.  As is the standard in extended-range hybrid designs now, the gasoline engine never actually moves the transmission or wheels directly.  The gas engine is there only to power a generator, and the vehicle is actually entirely powered by electric motors.  A move that Toyota and Honda should seriously consider to upgrade their Prius and Insight lines respectively.  The electric motor in the Raser H3 is a 200kW advanced AC induction motor specifically designed by Raser.  And in the H3 this one electric motor is all that actually powers the 4WD transmission, powerful enough to retain the Hummer’s off-road capabilities while simultaneously giving the Raser H3 a top-end of 90MPH.

The conversion further adds a 40 kWh battery pack near the rear weighing in at 600 lbs that can be recharged anywhere from three to ten hours, depending on the line being used to recharge the vehicle.  (For comparison the Chevy Volt’s battery pack will supposedly be 16 kWh at 375 lbs and the Tesla Roadster has a massive 53 kWh battery pack at almost 1000 lbs.)  All of that doesn’t come easy to fit in a vehicle even as large as a Hummer.  The transmission was moved, necessitating drive shafts changes as well, which further required an exhaust pipe adjustment.  The fuel tank has even been relocated and reduced in size, from the standard 22 gallon down to a mere 11 gallon fuel tank.  Not that you’ll be needing a large fuel tank anymore though!

All of these adjustments don’t come cheap, and the retail pricing has yet to be unveiled.  But Raser Technologies is sure that customers will be lining up.  And not just for green Raser H3 Hummer hybrids either!  By completely replacing the engine and transmission Raser has created an off-the-shelf drop-in that can be adapted to most similarly large trucks and SUVs, opening up a wide potential for big bad hybrids that are greener than nearly any vehicle on the road.

Raser Technologies says that full-scale production will begin “soon” and that they sincerely hope to have two thousand such hybrid conversions of SUVs and trucks on the road by 2010.  It’s being a bit on the hopeful side perhaps, but certainly a goal worth aiming for, as the whole world can benefit from such fuel-efficient vehicles.

And what of California’s Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger?  Well supposedly he’s already in line for one of Raser’s first shiny green H3s.  A green auto enthusiast himself, Arnold already owns two alternative-fuel modified Hummers, and the Raser H3 would certainly be a shining pinacle of mean green machine for his garage.