Thermal storage gets more solar on the grid CSP and PV for all times and seasons ASI, CSIRO, UNSW and project partners Research tour de force Solar Smorgasbord Himin cooks up a solar banquet ISSN: 0729-6436
Autumn
05/12 The Official Journal of the Australian Solar Energy Society
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THE FUTURE OF SOLAR TECHNOLOGY
Bill Parker Editor
John Grimes Chief Executive, Australian Solar Energy Society The Australia China Solar Partnership In early April I returned from a 12 day trip to China, visiting 11 cities and meeting with more than 50 companies, travelling 4000 kilometres by rail and road. What became clear to me is that we have an outdated view of the Chinese economy, are ignorant of the connections that already exist between solar in Australia and China, and are oblivious to the opportunities that lie ahead. China has made a strategic investment in solar. China is now the solar superpower in manufacturing and will soon emerge as the largest solar market on the globe. Seven of the top ten solar PV manufacturers are now Chinese companies. This competition has helped drive down the cost of PV modules by more than 60 per cent over the past three years, sending PV closer to parity than ever before. In these top tier companies I saw brand new manufacturing lines, high quality panels and genuine competition between the various manufacturers. China forecasts that it will reach grid parity for industrial users by 2014; and for residential users by 2017. By this point, China is expecting to have more than 100 gigawatts of installed solar capacity. The dramatic change in the economics of solar is a game-changing outcome with profound implications for Australia. It may well be the driver that enables Australia to meet the International Energy Agency’s projection of five per cent of Australia’s electricity coming from solar by 2020. China’s solar story has an Australian heart. Everywhere I went in China, I met Aussies. In almost every company I visited, their Chinese leaders were trained in Australia.Not just in companies like Suntech, which claim to be Chinese-Australian companies, but also in Trina, JA Solar, Yingli, Sunergy, Hanwha, LDK, Jinko and many others. There is a fantastic basis of good will between our respective solar sectors, and we should be doing more to advance the interests of both countries in this important sector. But the Chinese remain puzzled to why Australia does not have a strong solar industry. I confessed I too was puzzled, but I am confident we are closer to solving that puzzle, and are beginning to meet our potential as the sunburnt country.
John Grimes 2 | AUTUMN 2012
A differential feed in tariff in WA’s outback In what is a first for Australian utilities, Horizon Power in Western Australia will introduce a differentiated feed in tariff for its 100,000 residential customers and 9000 businesses on July 1. The rates offered are dependant on the location and the local cost of electricity production; in Meekatharra (once famous for its solar thermal power station) the rate offered is 50cents/kWh. And in towns close to the Lake Argyle hydro station, the rate is 16cents/kWh. Horizon is providing an incentive to householders and businesses to invest in distributed generation. Clearly this approach is applicable across all of outback and remote Australia and offers more than just an offset for high demand for electricity during the day. At its basic level, capital costs are avoided, like they were at Magnetic Island in Queensland when a new undersea power cable was avoided by installing more PV for power supplies on the ‘solar city’ island. Energy policy in WA has driven a different approach. The ‘Uniform Tariff’ was intended to avoid disadvantaging rural people by setting one electricity tariff for all across the state. Time to reconsider. The other less obvious value (to the public) of Horizon’s innovation is the opportunity it creates for development of new engineering approaches to solar, and both Horizon and Western Power have engineers working on the integration of distributed energy. Start modestly and learn from the experience. Australia’s largest PV farm takes another step forward First Solar has under construction a 10MW solar farm south east of Geraldton at the northern tip of the WA’s integrated grid (covering the south west corner of the state). The plant will offset the demand of a desalination plant at Binningup, south of Perth. This, Australia’s first utility scale PV project, is watershed for the technology and the industry. Financed by the WA state government owned Verve Energy, GE finance, and money from the Royalties for Regions program, the project is debt free.
Bill Parker
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Contents
4
8
16
34
Solar society
Solar developments
Review of solar landscape by AuSES CEO and Solar Progress Editor 2 AuSES state branch reports 42 East Solar Expo and Conference 47 AuSES membership 48
Technical corner
Thermal storage on the grid, by NREL 8 Real world PV testing: ASI funded CSIRO research 11 Himin’s solar cooking tubes 24 High-performance, cost-effective cells: a high-level undertaking 26 Adelaide Solar City sets a shining example 38
Glen Morris explains grid voltages and inverter output 36
Special features
News and views Technical and political solar developments 4 Hot water at your service, by Giles Parkinson 29 The world of Distributed Energy according to Nigel Morris 32 Wayne Smith discusses Renewable Energy Targets 40
SOLAR PROGRESS Published by CommStrat for Australian Solar Energy Society Ltd.
12 46
Janis Birkeland examines building ratings 16 Solar plants and wind turbines – RE resources across Australia 20 Smart grids, smart move: SMA well positioned in the market 22 Affordable solar architecture, by Tobias Danielmeyer 34
Editor Dr Bill Parker, AuSES Phone: 0403 583 676 editor@auses.org.au Contributors: Janis Birkeland, Tobias Danielmeyer, Chao Lin, Glen Morris, Nigel Morris, Giles Parkinson, Bill Scanlon and Wayne Smith. Contributing editor Nicola Card National Sales Manager Brian Rault Phone: 03 8534 5014 brian.rault@commstrat.com.au
Design & production Annette Epifanidis CommStrat Melbourne Level 8, 574 St Kilda Rd MELBOURNE 3004 Phone: 03 8534 5000 Australian Solar Energy Society Ltd CEO John Grimes PO Box 148, Frenchs Forest NSW 1640 www.auses.org.au ABN 32 006 824 148 CommStrat ABN 31 008 434 802 www.commstrat.com.au
Front cover: ‘Sunny disposition’ Hope and joy radiate from young Pip’s face, but what sort of a clean energy future awaits his generation and those beyond? This issue of Solar Progress reviews a diverse and powerful range of solar energy developments that help lay the foundation for a cleaner, greener economy. Our thanks to Glen Morris for the image of his son amid sunflowers on the banks of Europe’s Blue Danube.
Solar Progress was first published in 1980. The magazine aims to provide readers with an in–depth review of technologies, policies and progress towards a society which sources energy from the sun rather than fossil fuels. Except where specifically stated, the opinions and material published in this magazine are not necessarily those of the publisher or AuSES. While every effort is made to check the authenticity and accuracy of articles, neither AuSES nor the editors are responsible for any inaccuracy. Solar Progress is published quarterly
Making news
Image caption:
Solar beauty emerges at Bridgewater
Go Aussie, go -
Silex Systems joins the ranks of big solar Operations are in full swing at the Solar Systems’ Bridgewater test facility, which is proudly touted as Australia’s largest concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) power station. Located in central Victoria, the 500 kilowatt grid-connected facility will be used for the demonstration and testing of Solar Systems’ proprietary ‘Dense Array’ CPV solar conversion system. Solar Systems is the wholly owned subsidiary of Silex Systems, whose CEO Dr Michael Goldsworthy was pleased to announce the successful commissioning of
the eight dish systems (pictured). He explained that the remaining eight dishes are to be brought online progressively and the special technology used at the facility “is expected to provide very low cost electricity from large utility-scale solar power stations”. The Bridgewater facility received financial support from the Federal Government and the Victorian State Government. In further ‘big picture’ developments, Solar Systems is constructing a larger CPV Solar Power Station in Mildura, Victoria’s north west, and is eyeing up opportunities
International business In March the three Australian based directors of the International Solar Energy Society, Monica Oliphant (ISES Immediate Past President), Steve Blume (Vice President Public Affairs) and John Grimes travelled to Freiburg in Germany and met with around 15 other global directors to help set the priorities for ISES for the coming year. 4 | AUTUMN 2012
AuSES believes ISES can play an extremely important role by becoming the global voice of solar. “Our vision for ISES is as a modern, responsive organisation, focused on member’s needs,” John Grimes said. “We will travel to Colorado in May and will again put the case strongly for a dynamic, responsive ISES.”
for additional large-scale solar power stations in key offshore markets, including the USA and the Middle East. On a related matter, Solar Systems has been awarded a $2 million ASI grant for the development of high efficiency MultiJunction Solar Cells on low cost large area silicon substrates. Goldsworthy says this has the potential to slash the cost of energy production from CPV technologies by as much as 20%. Silex Systems – definitely the one to watch.
Vale Warren Bonython Warren was a visionary and a great environmental activist. He was always interested in and supportive of solar energy and was instrumental in establishing the SA branch of the Australian Solar Energy Society in 1963. The society is greatly appreciative of his input.
Making news
Successful fund raiser Australian “clean-tech” company Dyesol Limited has raised $5 million through take-up by shareholders of the recent Share Purchase Plan (with approximately $3.9 million of proceeds) and a supplementary placement to sophisticated investors (1.1 million in shares at 18 cents per share). The total number of shares to be issued will be approximately 27.78 million. Dyesol Chairman Richard Caldwell (pictured) says the company looks forward to reporting “exciting developments in our world-class partner projects”. Dyesol is a global supplier of Dye Solar Cell (DSC) and supplies photovoltaic enabling technology and materials to manufacturers
seeking to value-add photovoltaic capability into their products, such as glass building façade or steel roofing products. DSC is a third generation photovoltaic technology enabling metal, glass and polymeric based products in the building, transport and electronics sectors to generate clean electricity and improve energy efficiency. DSC is a biomimetic nanotechnology which
Above: Dyesol Chairman Richard Caldwell Left: The world's biggest DSC mimics the natural process of photosynthesis to generate energy from sunlight. Special advantages of DSC technology are good performance in shade, haze/pollution, vertical installation, and at dawn and dusk, ie “real world” solar conditions.
Solar boosts Australia’s solar industry recently received a boost with $12 million channelled into The Australian Solar Institute (ASI) Round 3 funding to accelerate solar energy technology development. The funding was announced by Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson during a visit to Sydney’s Silanna Semiconductor Pty Ltd, which, as ASI Executive Director Mark Twidell explained, has used ASI funding matched with its own investment to demonstrate efficiency improvements to help reduce the cost of solar technology. “It is a great example of how ASI is able to assist Australian manufacturing companies to diversify and drive innovation in photovoltaic technology,” he said. “Silanna’s innovations, when commercialised, will be suitable for concentrating photovoltaic applications including power plants and spacecraft.” ASI Investment Director Olivia Coldrey explained that the ASI funding will cover an 6 | AUTUMN 2012
“exciting, diverse range of solar technologies, particularly concentrating solar power technologies [and] includes $1.6 million for CSIRO to develop solar hybrid fuels and almost $500,000 for BlueScope Steel Limited to collaborate with German researchers to develop thin-film solar cells which can be integrated into buildings.” All up $2.3 million has been committed to projects funded under the AustraliaGermany Collaborative Solar Research and Development Program in a bid to accelerate the commercialisation of solar technologies. The ASI is also announcing support for eleven PhD Scholars and seven Postdoctoral Fellows for the next three years, on top of eight early and mid career researchers already announced. ASI investments in solar technologies have a total leveraged portfolio value of almost $260 million. www.australiansolarinstitute.com.au
Coping with intermittency Intermittency is described as potentially one of the biggest hurdles to the successful adoption of large scale solar energy in Australia and the world. Now, CSIRO has partnered with Australian Energy Market Operator and Energy Networks Association to conduct a world first study on intermittency, and is one step closer to ensuring this is a “manageable variable rather than a daunting unknown”. Read more about this vital study in winter Solar Progress.
A powerful partnership Trina Solar is proud to partner with the Advanced Solar Research Team at ANU’s Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems, on the development of our next generation silicon cell technology. In a project supported by the Australian Solar Institute, the team in Canberra is using advanced nanotechnology for precise structuring of the solar cell surfaces to deliver significant increases in cell efficiency whilst cutting manufacturing cost. A powerful partnership. www.trinasolar.com.au
Solar developments
Thermal storage
gets more solar on the grid Here, Bill Scanlon from NREL in Colorado relates how two differing technologies can complement each other. A story from the USA but equally relevant in Australia.
It’s 4:45 on a sweltering summer afternoon, and the rooftop solar panels are starting to lose juice. The sun’s lower angles and that huge tree are interfering with the efficient photon-to-electricity transfer. What is an environmentally conscious — but air-conditioning-loving — homeowner to do? Peak demand for electricity in the United States typically hits between 4pm and 8pm, which doesn’t quite line up with the sun’s schedule. It’s fortunate that the sun is high in the sky during many of the hours when the air conditioning is in demand. But in summer, people tend to need air conditioning during the dinner hour and beyond, when kitchen appliances are whirring, lights are on, and TVs are blaring. To the rescue comes concentrating solar power (CSP), a technology being tested and deployed by utilities in America’s deserts and in southern Spain.
New analysis at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has found that CSP, with its greater grid flexibility and ability to store energy for as long as 15 hours, can enhance total solar power generation and actually give photovoltaic (PV) systems a greater presence on the grid. PV panels generate electricity — and are grabbing real estate on rooftops across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. CSP technologies use mirrors to convert thermal energy to drive turbines that produce electricity.
Thermal storage can even out the bumps Like Edison and Tesla or Dempsey and Tunney, the two major solar energy technologies never meant to play nice. Each had its niche — and its dreams of market share.
But that’s changing, said NREL analyst Paul Denholm, co-author with Mark Mehos of the study Enabling Greater Penetration of Solar Power via use of CSP with Thermal Energy Storage . Think of power from PV as a roller coaster of highs and lows, and power from CSP, via thermal energy storage, as a gently rolling train. PV panels and wind turbines contribute electricity to the grid, but without the ability to store that power, they cannot supply the grid after the sun sets, or after the wind dies. Even passing clouds can cause drops in the amount of solar energy that gets on the grid. Large fossil-fuelled power plants can’t be quickly stopped or started to accommodate variable energy sources. CSP can even out these ebbs and flows because it can store power and ramp up output when the amount of direct wind or solar power drops.
Crews work around the clock installing mirrored parabolic trough collectors — built on site — that will cover three square miles at Abengoa’s Solana Plant. When finished, the plant will generate 280 megawatts of clean, sustainable power. 8 | AUTUMN 2012
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Light is reflected in a 25-foot-wide, 500-foot-long, and 10-foot-high parabolic trough collector at Abengoa’s Solana Plant.
Grid flexibility is the key “It all gets down to grid flexibility,” Denholm said. “What sets of grid technologies do you deploy to make the grid respond faster and over a greater range to the input of variable energy such as solar and wind? “If you can’t respond quickly, you end up potentially throwing away wind and solar energy. We know that the more wind and solar you add to the grid, the harder it is to balance the grid and maintain reliability. “When a cloud passes over a PV panel, the drop in energy production is immediate. But because of the 10 or 15 minutes of thermal inertia, a cloud passing over a CSP tower doesn’t cause this immediate drop. Nor is there the immediate surge when sunlight returns. “The change is more gradual,” Denholm said. “That’s one reason CSP can bring a greater quality to the grid.” Still, the greater potential for CSP — and for CSP helping PV to expand its role on the grid — is its capacity to store the energy it captures from the sun for several hours, making it a source of reliable energy after the sun sets. “CSP can fill in that gap in the evening when there’s peak demand for electricity,” Denholm said. “Together, the solar resource can provide all that peak demand. And together they can reduce or eliminate the need to build new power plants for those peak periods.”
“The cost of PV has been plummeting, and it has a cost advantage over CSP. But CSP has the advantage of storage, and so teamed with PV can improve the benefits and bottom lines of both technologies.”
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Solar developments
The tanks that hold the molten salts at Abengoa’s Solana Plant are enormous. The salts can keep the solarheated fluids very hot for several hours, so they can be transferred to turbines to produce electricity even when the sun isn’t shining.
Molten salts a lowcost solution Thermal energy storage at CSP plants “is low-cost because it’s not exotic,” Denholm said. “It’s large tanks with salt to store energy before you use it to boil the water.” NREL’s Greg Glatzmaier believes the best medium for storage available today is molten salt. The salts are abundant and not very costly. They work well at the high temperature needed in a CSP plant — about 565°C. At a typical molten-salt CSP plant, the salts are stored in two tanks, one much hotter than the other. The molten salts used for storage are a mix of sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate. Sodium nitrate is mined in Chile, in surroundings similar to the Utah salt flats. Potassium nitrate also occurs in nature and is mined in Chile, Ethiopia, and elsewhere.
Plants with storage in Spain, Nevada, Arizona and California Abengoa Solar is building a 250-megawatt CSP plant near Gila Bend in Arizona that will cover 1900 acres and use 900,000 mirrors to direct sunlight to heat a working fluid inside its tubes. The plant’s six hours of thermal storage mean it can deliver electricity after the sun sets to approximately 70,000 homes. The 19.9MW power tower run by Gemasolar in southern Spain is 10 | AUTUMN 2012
configured to store enough energy during the summer to provide solargenerated electricity 24 hours a day, Glatzmaier said. In the winter, when there’s less sunshine, electricity comes from more conventional sources a few hours each day. The system aims to power 25,000 homes and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 30,000 tons a year. SolarReserve is building the 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project near Tonopah, Nevada, which will use molten salt to store the sun’s energy as heat for several hours. It will include more than 17,000 mirrors to focus the sun’s light on a tower 640 feet high. BrightSource is building an even larger CSP project in the Mojave Desert at Ivanpah that will have storage for just a couple of hours a day — but this will be enough to serve more than 140,000 homes during peak hours. Company executives say the plant will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 400,000 tons per year. (Editor’s note: read more about Ivanpah in the Spring 2011 issue of Solar Progress.)
PV/CSP symbiosis makes economic sense The cost of PV has been plummeting, and it has a cost advantage over CSP. But CSP has the advantage of storage, and so teamed with PV can improve the benefits and bottom lines of both technologies.
Storage does raise the price of a CSP plant, but “if you’re running your turbine more hours in a day, you’re amortizing your turbine cost over more generation time, and there’s a real cost benefit there,” Glatzmaier explained. The bottom line: when storage is added to a CSP plant, it increases the value of its electricity — both its energy value and its capacity value. Other thermal storage technologies being investigated by researchers include phase-change or thermal-chemical storage. Denholm and Mehos caution that the preliminary analysis in their study will require more advanced grid simulations to verify the actual ability of CSP to help wind and PV gain a larger presence on the grid. An important next step, they say, would be more complete simulations using utility-grade software. That will answer questions on the realistic performance of the generation fleet, transmission constraints, and actual CSP operations. This abridged version is used with kind permission of NREL. The paper can be read in full at www.nrel.gov/news/features/ feature_detail.cfm/feature_id=1788 Bill Scanlon is a writer with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). All images courtesy of Dennis Schroeder
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Solar developments
Real world PV testing
A CSIRO research team is on a mission to boost knowledge of solar PV panel performance under real-world conditions, thanks to ASI funding. Among the many benefits delivered by a greater degree of certainty would be more and larger PV projects. As told to Nicola Card.
“The resulting reduction in risk will also help to attract large-scale investment, driving economies of scale and a flow-on reduction in costs. Through this process, widespread grid parity by mid-decade is a very high probability.”
Someone recently posed a question about the value of spending research money on understanding photovoltaic performance rather than devoting all efforts to improving that performance. The carefully worded response delivered by Dr Chris Fell, Research Group Leader, CSIRO, covered the limitations of PV certification conducted in laboratories (using the 25°C standard) in predicting actual output, with higher panel temperatures actually decreasing the efficiency of silicon cells. Other matters impact on the output of a PV system – and when multiplied over a large scale installation the uncertainty is magnified, with small errors putting large dents in potential earnings. The performance anomaly is a topic close to Dr Fell’s heart as he is currently leading a small team of researchers in the ASI funded project: Improving translation models for predicting the energy yield of PV power systems. This project that is part of the US-Australia Solar Energy Collaboration Foundation Project and part funded by the ASI, aims to reduce risk for large-scale PV plants by investigating the relationship between a manufacturer’s power rating for solar panels and the energy those panels generate over time. In short, deliver and drive benefits through greater certainty.
Variables in cell performance Dr Fell explained that the energy yield of a PV system extends beyond just the temperature response; variables include the intensity of the sunlight, angle of the sun’s rays to the PV cells, and the spectrum (colour mix) of the sunlight. “The yield of a PV system is also constrained by the characteristics of the array, such as panel mismatch, line losses and the efficiency of conversion to AC,” he said. No stone will be left unturned in the project. To optimise impact, the project will seek to study, compare and contrast the outdoor performance of all the major PV technologies on the market, including monocrystalline, polycrystalline and amorphous silicon, cadmium telluride and copper indium diselenide. “We hope to also provide comment on the outdoor performance of emerging technologies such as organic solar cells and dye-sensitised solar cells, placed in the context of the existing technologies,” Dr Fell said. The collaborative venture involves systematic laboratory measurements of the fundamental performance of different PV technology types to changes in irradiance, temperature and spectral composition. These experiments will be conducted at the NREL in the USA, involving a stateof-the-art spectrally selective solar simulator not available in Australia, allowing a true scientific study of the energy yield for the different technology types, and the impact of the device parameters measured at NREL.
Left: Grounds for development 12 | AUTUMN 2012
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ASI/USASEC project Our thanks to Olaf Theden for this image
Central to the project is research under Australian conditions delivered via covariate analysis of data from 19 PV systems operating for the past five years at the Desert Knowledge Australia Solar Centre in Alice Springs. The analysis will incorporate a comparison of different software packages for predicting PV energy yield, and results will be compared with the output of commercial scale systems. Complementing this will be a purpose-built outdoor testing facility capable of currentvoltage sweeps of individual commercial-scale PV panels, which sidesteps the complexity of array-level performance.
Above: Making way for the future
Potential hiccups
Unique outdoor test facility
Given the variables delivered by
Commissioned at the half-way point (12 months), the facility will be constructed on land at the CSIRO Energy Centre in Newcastle, and will have the capacity for ongoing, automated testing of 120 commercial PV modules. Unlike other facilities around Australia, the panels at CSIRO will not be connected into arrays, but tested independently, which allows their performance to be linked to the fundamental properties of the technology used, without the complicating additional losses that are experienced when modules are connected into systems. These fundamental properties include the response of the solar panels to changes in temperature, as well as to changes in the irradiance (brightness) and spectrum (colour) of the sunlight, and also to whether the sunlight is direct or diffuse. “Our testing facility will provide rapid, automated I-V (current-voltage) testing of commercial scale modules, with concurrent monitoring of module temperature, plus very accurate monitoring of solar irradiance and spectrum,” Fell explained. “There is no other facility in Australia with this capability. “The large outdoor test facility will ultimately be a valuable asset to our development of new
the elements, one question that
14 | AUTUMN 2012
is sometimes levelled at Dr Fell relates to the impact of weather and soiling on cell performance outdoors. “Soiling is definitely a problem that we’ll need to manage”, he said. “Dust is the primary source of soiling on an inland system. Our partners at Desert Knowledge Australia will manage that. Salt in the air can also be a problem for systems very close to the ocean. If we don’t get enough rain we’ll manage it by rinsing the modules in our field, but at six kilometres from the
low-cost PV technologies, because it will enable controlled studies of the energy yield and the durability of the devices, in direct comparison with commercially available PV modules. “Hence the importance of our research: A good standard method for energy yield prediction will help consumers understand what they are buying, prevent manufacturers from making unrealistic claims about the performance of their panels, and help Government direct research funds to technologies that can bring the most benefit,” Fell said. “The resulting reduction in risk will also help to attract large-scale investment, driving economies of scale and a flow-on reduction in costs. Through this process, widespread grid parity by mid-decade is a very high probability.”
Spin offs One of the project’s aims is participation in development of Australian and international standards for in-field PV performance predictions. “We intend to engage with the working group that develops and maintains IEC60891, which is the international standard that underpins predictions of solar cell performance in the real world,” Dr Fell explained. “The result may be that we influence changes in the standard, or at the very least gain a better understanding of its strengths and weaknesses.” With this in mind - and the scope of the research - we can only conclude that the project outcomes will lend new meaning to the saying ‘knowledge is power’.
ocean I don’t anticipate this will be a significant issue. Birds are a problem everywhere. The only solution for a test facility like ours is regular inspection and remedial cleaning and running dust, nodust comparsions.”
Dr Chris Fell has been involved in Australian photovoltaics research for 12 years. Since 2006 he has led the Photovoltaics Team at CSIRO’s National Solar Energy Centre in Newcastle, focusing on the design and characterisation of new device architectures for low-cost solar cells.
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