Last week, Enbridge and First Solar announced that the Sarnia Solar Project, an 80-megawatt (MW) solar project in Ontario, Canada was fully installed and commercially operating. Sarnia Solar Project is now the largest operating photovoltaic facility in the world.

A new discovery at Rutgers University looks likely to lead to the creation of efficient and inexpensive solar cells made of plastic. The researchers discovered that excitons - energy-carrying particles generated by packets of -can travel on the order of a thousand times farther in organic semiconductors than previously thought.

Great efforts have been made to improve public awareness about energy savings. Energy efficient appliances have replaced power consuming equipment. Millions of compact lamps and solar water heaters have been used, while many power saving models have been applied to factories and smart/green buildings.

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.

Ceatec Japan 2010 hosted Rohm’s new dye-sensitized solar cells that we were talking about a few months ago. Now, the Japanese company applied their plans to TV remotes, mice and sensors. The solar cell that the company presented is highly optimized for low room, fluorescent light, having a wavelength of 400 to 800 nm. The interesting fact is that the efficiency of the exhibited cells is 30%, a year after the company showed off with their latest 20% samples.

A new report out by the Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA) and GTM Research, the inaugural U.S. Solar Market Insight™ report, finds that solar power is going to continue its rapid growth in the United States.

Growing numbers of cities and towns are turning to solar-powered road warning and school safety signs to inform the public and save money and energy. In the past year, cities including Baton Rouge, Branson and Kansas City, Mo., and Lyndhurst, Wayne and Ringwood, N.J., have adopted the technology, officials in those municipalities say.

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.

The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) approved on October 5 the first large-scale solar energy plants ever to be built on U.S. public lands. The approval of two developments in California grants the U.S.-based companies behind the projects access to almost 6,800 acres of public lands for 30 years to build and operate solar plants. The approved plants could produce up to 754 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy, or enough to power 226,000–566,000 typical U.S. homes. The projects will generate almost 1,000 new jobs.

It seems that we are finding a new use for solar power everyday. Whether its grid-tie applications, lighting, or backup power, solar is rapidly becoming our green energy alternative of choice. Solar is rapidly evolving as the technology and applications for it are changing daily. In this light, here are 3 great contests that are stretching the limits of what solar can be used for and may just change the way we use energy in our everyday lives.

According to the latest data from the Bundesnetzagentur, Germany's solar industry added another 1,000 MW during July and August. This brings the total for the eight-month period from January through August to 4,900 MW from nearly 175,000 solar installations.

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.

A very large solar solar-powered yacht called Planet Solar has set out on a 31,000 mile trip around the globe. It is estimated it will maintain an average speed of 7.5 knots per hour. At that speed it should take about 160 days to travel around the planet.

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.

Solar cells currently used are mostly bulky and made from silicon and other non-recyclable materials, hence they’re not as green as they should be. Mimicking nature might be a solution to this problem. More exactly, North Carolina State University researchers have prototyped a water-based solar cell, mimicking the functioning of a leaf, to produce electricity.

Advances in solar energy efficiencies have so far been made with irregular surfaces, thinner tabbing between cells, more optically perfect glass and even special coatings, but now Stanford engineers say the best efficiency is via ultra-thinpolymer films inside solar cells that allow more “bounce room.”

The new nano-ceramics would be key components in the next generation of capacitors. Like batteries, capacitors store energy, but there the resemblance ends. Batteries are designed to collect energy over a relatively long period of time, then release it at a low, constant rate. Capacitors charge and release large amounts of power very quickly. The basic principle has been around since the 18th century, but until recently one roadblock has been how to reduce them down to an efficient size.

Light behaves differently in macro- and nano- scale environments, and this could be a starting point for those researchers who want to improve the solar cells’ efficiency. It was a starting point for some Stanford engineers, who found out that light ricocheting inside an ultra-thin polymer film solar cell behaves differently than if the film wasn’t so thin. The difference is enormous.