The Alternative Energy blog – green renewable alternative energy

India currently has virtually no solar power now but that could all change soon. This week Indiadecided to push ahead with a vastly ambitious plan to tap the power of the sun to generate clean electricity, and after a meeting chaired by the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, it wants rich nations to pay the bill. The plan envisages the country generating 20GW from sunlight by 2020. Global solar capacity is predicted to be 27GW by then, according to the International Energy Agency, meaning India Read more [...]

Sanyo has announced the release of a new portable solar panel that can can charge portable devices through a USB connection. The system, which is part of Sanyo's Eneloop line, combines a portable solar panel with a Lithium Ion battery pack. It should work with many portable products including cell phones, music players and portable game devices, the company said at a Tokyo news conference on Wednesday. Two versions will be available, one with a single solar panel and one with two panels. Read more [...]

To heat your swimming pool, you can use a combination of solar pool collectors and thermal arrays. Thermal arrays can be used to heat water tanks,. These panels collect the sun's heat. The heat is then run through a piping system inside that's filled with water or antifreeze. Thermal pool covers or solar collector are made of special solar rings that can heat the pool's temperature five degrees. Solar collectors pump the pool water through a piping system like that of the thermal array. The Read more [...]

Concentrating solar power (CSP) involves using arrays of mirrors to focus large amounts of sunlight onto a small area. This creates extremely high levels of heat, which can be converted into electricity using a steam turbine or Stirling engine – or stored in tanks of molten salt to provide power at night or on cloudy days. The mirrors can be parabolic troughs or giant dishes. Alternatively, a large number of sun-tracking flat mirrors can direct sunlight to the top of a so-called "power tower". According Read more [...]