Italy, the country with the world’s first highway ever built (in 1926), is now preparing the addition of another motorway segment between Catania and Siracusa (the A18). But this is not just another motorway: it is the first fully solar-powered in the world, with 20 hectares-worth of solar panels.

A plan to install solar energy panels on two Reigate council buildings is set to save money and reduce carbon emissions, a councillor has said. Councillor Julian Ellacott said the solar panels could generate electricity worth hundreds of thousands of pounds over their 25-year lifespan.

Thailand will be supplied with some more solar panels for a new power plant, as a result of the signed agreement between the authorities and Suntech Power Holding Co. The latter will provide approximately 9.43MW worth of panels to the installation. The project is owned by Bangchak Petrolem and is scheduled to be finalized by the end of next year. Once online, the solar power plant should provide around 44MW of clean electricity

Solar panels are usually mounted in series, to sum up their voltages, and the resulting power is sent to a large inverter, which transforms the DC voltage into AC. One big issue with this scheme is that if shade falls on one panel, or it gets dirty, the inverter lowers the current of all the other panels, and causing power losses through inefficiency.

After participating in the GE Ecomagination Challenge and winning $50,000, Scott Brusaw and his wife Julie Brusaw are much more optimistic in what concerns their Solar Roadways project, which aims to make the road produce electricity through embedded solar panels.

In a first-of-its-kind melding of solar technology with high speed rail facilities, the clean energy company Enfinity will install 16,000 solar panels on the two-mile long roof of a rail tunnel in Belgium. If the name Enfinity doesn’t ring a bell it soon will. The Belgium-based company has trained its sights on the U.S. energy market and is poised to step up commercial and utility scale solar installations here, from coast to coast. New green jobs, much?

There are more than two billion people worldwide with no access to drinking water. This is the reason why researchers over the globe are trying to find solutions such as desalination. This reverse osmosis of water is the most efficient and economical form of desalination but the problem is that it needs 3 kWh per cubic meter of water. Solar panels and wind turbines can be used to supply this power.

After three days of prompt installation, at the end of October 18th 2010, 80% of the project installing grid connected solar panels on the rooftop of MOIT’s building has been completed as scheduled.

Solar panels are usually mounted in series, to sum up their voltages, and the resulting power is sent to a large inverter, which transforms the DC voltage into AC. One big issue with this scheme is that if shade falls on one panel, or it gets dirty, the inverter lowers the current of all the other panels, and causing power losses through inefficiency.

Solar panels, throughout their entire existence, have had the same issue over and over again: once the Sun’s light began to hit them with an angle, they became inefficient, so fixed solar panels were only great at noon. Soon after people realized that, they began constructing all sorts of contraptions that would modify the panels’ position so to face the Sun directly.

Previous news were saying that the Obama administration doesn’t have any plans of installing solar panels on the White House. Not even a month has passed, and a representative of the White House in Washington, DC says solar panels will be installed on the White House in order to impulse Americans to adopt green energy.

Enbridge Inc. and First Solar, Inc. have achieved commercial operation of the 80 MW Sarnia Solar Project, making it the largest operating photovoltaic facility in the world. First Solar, a manufacturer of PV solar panels and provider of solar solutions, will operate and maintain the Sarnia Solar Project for Enbridge under a long-term contract. First Solar developed, engineered, and constructed the facility, using its advanced thin film solar panels.

Prominent corporations are paying special attention to go green and create a conducive environment for clean and green energy. Walmart too is taking appreciative steps in the field of alternative energy. In the year 2007, Walmart entered into a partnership with Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to provide a thrust to the photovoltaic technologies. It was related with thin-film solar. They aimed for taking it out from labs to the real world.

The two companies, in cooperation with PetersenDean Roofing and Solar Systems, announced a partnership earlier this year to pre-install solar panels at no additional cost to homebuyers at The Preserve new home community. Last Friday, September 17, Toll Brothers hosted the official ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the community to the public.

As part of the National program on energy efficiency and conservation, Energy Efficiency Office has collaborated with the German Energy Agency, ALTUS AG Company of German and Hanoi University of Science and Technology’s Center of New Energy to start the project "Installation of grid-connected solar system at the headquarters of MOIT to save energy and protect the environment".

Doug Natelson and graduate student Dan Ward, from Rice University, have discovered how to make a light-harvesting antenna from two gold tips separated by a gap only a few nanometers wide. As light source they used a laser, whose rays, once trapped in the gold tips, get concentrated into a tiny space, increasing the light intensity in the gap by a thousand times.

New and unique ways of making solar panels more efficient in power generation are coming to light every day. The new kid in the block of one such device is a large transparent sticker applied to the front of the panel which increases the power output by about 10% or so. Genie Lens Technologies is the firm which has developed these polymer film stickers. These polymer films are imprinted with special kind of microstructures.

Dust, dirt, and the occasional bird-bomb can chip away at the efficiency of solar panels. Hand washing is fine for home-scale installations but that can add up to a huge problem for large installations that cover multiple acres of ground or roofs. Now scientists from Boston University have come up with a solution: self-cleaning solar panels based on technology used in missions to Mars.

The company has a thin film assembly line with an annual capacity of 40 MW. The company also has several manufacturing facilities around the country and exports solar panels to Germany, Italy in addition to setting up solar installations within the country.

The new bus shelter was designed and installed by Solade Concepts based in Corona, CA. The solar structure consists of products and solutions proposed by Go Green Solar, based in Los Angeles, CA, which include six SANYO HIT-210NKHA6 210-watt HIT Power® solar panels with six Enphase Energy M210-84-240-S12 micro inverters and a LED lighting solution in an on-grid solar system.