Better Place has released the video below demonstrating its battery swapping process.
Better Place is planning a network of charging stations and battery swap facilities in Israel, Denmark, Australia and the United States. See this article at Aussie Renewables for more details.
The battery swap demonstration at Yokohama took 1 minute and 13 seconds. Power to recharge the batteries was drawn from photovoltaic panels.
A new approach to converting heat into electricity using solar cells could make a technology called thermal photovoltaics more practical. A Boston company, MTPV Corp, claims it can deliver "an order of magnitude" more power than regular thermal photovoltaics.
Thermal photovoltaics use solar cells to convert the light that radiates from a hot surface into electricity. A conventional solar panel absorbs light from the entire spectrum but it only converts certain colours efficiently. As a result, the maximum theoretical efficiency of a conventional solar cell is 30 percent. If the sunlight is first concentrated using mirrors, 41 percent efficiency is possible. In a thermal photovoltaic system, light is concentrated onto a material to heat it up. The material is selected so that when it gets hot, it emits light at wavelengths that a solar cell can convert efficiently. As a result, the theoretical maximum efficiency of a thermal photovoltaic system is 85 percent.
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Solar photovoltaic cells convert sunlight into electricity.
A solar powered laundry in California
Light falling on a layer of n-type silicon releases negative electrons which try to flow to positive "holes" in the p-type silicon layers. But the silicon semiconductor does not allow direct flow. So, if we provide an external path, it produces a current.
The New South Wales Department of Energy, Utilities and Sustainability has produced two Guides to solar energy use: "Solar Power: Your Questions Answered" and "Solar Power Case Studies". Some of the questions covered in the first guide include:
Click here to download "Solar Power: Your Questions Answered" (378K .pdf).
or here to download "Solar Power Case Studies" (1452K ,pdf).
