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13 September:
• Sun To Stars South Asian Festival (4:00 pm)

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Solar-Powered Film Series On For Tonight & Sunday- Not Saturday!

DUE TO THE TROPICAL STORM THAT SEEMS CERTAIN TO DRENCH THE NY-METRO AREA TOMORROW, WE WILL POSTPONE THE FINAL NIGHT OF THE SOLAR-POWERED FILM SERIES UNTIL SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 7 at 8PM. FOR AN UPDATE ON THE GREEN EDGE ECO-SCAVENGER HUNT, CLICK HERE. AND BRING YER COOKIES ON SUNDAY FOR THE COOKIE COMPETITION! FOR MORE INFO ON THE FILMS, CLICK HERE.

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Back to School!

Welcome back teachers and students!

Now with the new school year underway, our education team is putting together our calendar for education programs with our many school partners all over the city.

We are now accepting applications for programs for Fall 2008 and Spring 2009! Please email application forms to education[at]solar1.org or call 212-253-1813 to schedule a class today! This season we are expanding our K-12 enrichment programs to include:

• Renewable Energy
• Sustainable Design
• Estuary Ecology and Water Testing
• Environmental Art

Upcoming Events and News

Outdoor Education Fair
Tuesday | September 23rd | 4:30pm
New York City Outdoors! An Environmental Education Exposition on Tuesday, September 23^th, 2008 at Pier 66 Maritime in the Hudson River Park at West 26^th Street in Manhattan. The Expo showcases the environmental education resources for New York City teachers and educators. Soil and Water

Solar Sprint
Thursday | Sept. 25 – 4-7pm
The Junior Solar Sprint will be hosted at MS 74 in Queens, NY.

Harlem River Festival
Saturday | Sept. 27th
Join us for Harlem River Festial, celebrating National Estuaries Day and takes place at our Swindler Cove Park in Washington Heights/Inwood. Organized by New York Restoration Project.

Butterfly Tagging Day
Saturday | Sept. 27th | 1-3pm
Join us for a fun-filled day of monarch butterfly tagging and learning about the animals and plants of Stuyvesant Cove Park!

Hudson River Snapshot Day
October 7th | 9am – 1pm
Solar One will be a host site for NYC’s annual Hudson River Snapshot Day. Contact Chris Kennedy (kennedy [at] solar1 [dot] org) to sign up your school to be apart of this event. Learn more about the program here.

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Solar Success on the Market

The sun isn’t the only thing that’s hot these days.

First Solar Inc., one of the more high-profile manufacturers of solar technology, is raising eyebrows on Wall Street. The clean technology company recently reported a 57% increase in quarterly earnings, exceeding projected revenues by nearly 20%. Second quarter revenues equaled $267 million, more than triple last year’s 2Q earnings of $77.2 million. Over this time the company’s operating profit more than quadrupled to 33.2%, as compared with last year’s margin of 7.5% for the same quarter. “Despite expectations being so high, they completely outdelivered again,” gushed technology investment analyst Mark Bachman of Pacific Crest Securities.

First Solar credits the launch of a new production facility in Malaysia for its current spate of success; the plant’s output is helping the company meet the high consumer demand that is currently inflating the price of silicon. As production levels begin to meet this demand, however, raw costs should decrease, creating the potential for yet greater profit margins.

At the moment First Solar is pursuing utility-scale initiatives in California and emerging markets in France and Italy; it is also one of the largest makers of thin-film photovoltaic cells, a cutting-edge technology that is significantly cheaper to manufacture than traditional solar panels, though not yet as efficient. Recent experimental efforts by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have raised thin-film conversion efficiency to 19.9%, as opposed to 20.3% for traditional multicrystalline silicon panels. First Solar’s cells convert sunlight at an efficiency rate of 10.7%, but that is increasing with the development of these new techniques and applications.

Sources: “First Solar Q2 net soars past view, shares rise”, Scientific American; “19.9%: New Thin Film Solar Efficiency Record”, Treehugger; “First Solar’s Earnings Warms Investors’ Hearts”, Earth2tech.

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Bloomberg Announces RFP for Renewable Energy Projects

MAYOR’S OFFICE - August 19, 2008

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, speaking at the 2008 National Clean Energy Summit hosted by Senator Harry Reid, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, today announced New York City’s first steps toward developing new sources of renewable energy, including off-shore windfarms. The New York City Economic Development Corporation, on behalf of the City, today released a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) that will call for innovative ideas to help New York City develop sources of renewable energy. In addition to off-shore windfarms, these ideas could involve wind turbines on top of New York City’s bridges and skyscrapers and the generation of tidal power, solar power and geothermal energy. Responses to the RFEI are due September 19. (read more here)

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Family Day at Solar One!

This Saturday, Solar One hosted its monthly Family Day Series. With added bike traffic from Summer Streets, a car-free series of activities along Park Ave, families and kids of all ages joined us for Solar Car Building, Bike-themed Arts and Crafts and free bike maps from Transportation Alternatives.

Join us in September for a Butterfly Tagging Family Day - Saturday, Sept. 27th from 1-3pm. More info, contact Melissa.

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Solar One at the Annual Night Out Against Crime

On Tuesday, August 5th, the 13th Police Precinct held the Annual National Night Out Against Crime by opening up the schoolyard on 20th Street and Second Avenue to local organizations and providing music, free food and ice cream to neighborhood residents. Solar One’s information table was a big success. Councilman Dan Garodnick stopped by to say hello and wish us well. Several hundred people got to know more about Solar One’s green arts and education programs and received free CFL light bulbs when they joined our mailing list. Fun was had by all.

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Solar One visits Swindler’s Cove

Solar One’s Education Department visited Swindler’s Cove Park in Upper Manhattan this past Wednesday to deliver a program on Renewable Energy to 25 of NYRP’s (New York Restoration Project) Summer Nature Camp. Working with educators Robin Wadsworth, Akiima Price and other educators from NYRP, Solar One interns and educators conducted an activity on how to build a Solar Race Car. Students got to build their solar racers, learn about solar panels and had fun racing them in the site’s gardens!

The School season is fast approaching and if you would like to be involved in a Solar One Education program contact us via email here education [at] solar1.org

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The Future Cost of Solar Panels

Solar power used to be expensive.

The thought of a rooftop full of solar panels used to be so sci-fi, so utopian, so laughably idealistic. An experimental pipedream for those who could afford it; a whimsical indulgence of easy wealth and new-age guilt. Anything but practical.

Used to be.

Recent developments are promising to make pV more prole-friendly than ever, and more help is on the way. Creative legislation and policy measures at the municipal and state levels, such as property tax abatements, expanded net-metering policies and feed-in tariffs, are building incentive structures designed to blunt the daunting start-up costs associated with photovoltaic arrays. And greater technological efficiency coupled with an increase in the number of available panels at the supply end could turn solar into a veritable bargain.

MIT researcher Emmanuel Sachs has found a way - or more accurately, a couple of little ways - to increase the efficiency of multicrystalline silicon - a cheaper and less pure form of the material used to make pV panels - without increasing its price. Single-crystal panels, though pricier, are 20% more efficient on average.

One way utilizes an innovative process to create longer, thinner silver wires that transmit generated energy from the panel to the battery. These wires are more cost-effective because they take up less surface area on the panel and hence allow more light to be processed. They can also be placed closer together, allowing them to carry more current, and are made from a less expensive form of silver, thereby cutting raw material costs.

Another way places “mirrored surfaces” on the interconnect wires that collect current from these silver wires and link adjacent cells. These wide, flat wires can cut down on pV efficiency by shading the panel by as much as 5%. The mirrors allow light to be reflected back into the panel at a more acute angle, which causes the light to remain trapped in the panel for a longer period of time, leading to more efficient absorption and energy conversion.

These seemingly small steps in tandem would help to increase efficiency of multicrystalline panels by more than 20%, lowering the cost of their generated energy from $2.00 to $1.65 per watt, on par with single-crystal. Other small adjustments - more efficient coating, substituting copper for silver - could bring the cost down to $1.00 - coal-burning prices - within four years, according to Sachs.

And one other factor may help lower the price of photovoltaic panels further. According to the US Energy Information Administration, silicon itself will get significantly cheaper in coming years, mostly because so many people have been purchasing panels recently that supply is having trouble meeting demand. The price of solar-grade polysilicon rose by a factor of nearly 20 between 2004 and 2008 - from $24 per kg to $450; total global demand for silicon rose from 17 million to 28 million kgs between 2006 and 2007 alone. However, this global material shortage will soon be alleviated by the twenty-one new silicon manufacturing plants that came on-line in 2007, with more slated for production. As the second-most abundant element in the earth’s crust, silicon should remain affordable once the necessary processing infrastructure is in place. And this lower material cost will likely spur further demand and investment. Not so pie-in-the-sky, after all.

Click here for more info on Sachs and his latest developments.

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Solar One on WNYC!

Jocelyn Gonzalez reports on Solar One and its cultural programs. Interviews with Tamar Rogoff, Solar One’s Art Director explain the unique qualities of Solar One’s Dance Festival and other programming. Check out this great story about Solar One via WNYC New York Public Radio: here

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Introducing the New York City “Solar Empowerment Zone”!

Today, the New York City Council’s Infrastructure Task Force convened what was arguably the most substantive public forum ever held on the complex subject of distributed energy sources and the New York City electricity grid. During the course of the four hour hearing, which was hosted by Hunter College and included three separate panels of experts from the academic, engineering and business communities, solar photovoltaics were singled out during much of the conversation as the leading clean energy prospect for the five boroughs. A number of cost and technical issues were raised and discussed at length, but perhaps the single most exciting idea to emerge from the hearing was that of the Solar Empowerment Zone.

The term, coined by Council Member Dan Garodnick, describes a policy that would identify areas of the city wherein properties would be eligible for extensive incentives for solar investment. While the policy idea is in its earliest stages of development, zones would be designated on the basis of their vulnerability to summertime power disruption, as well as prevailing building type (buildings with few stories and large roofs would be given highest preference). Zones would be designed to scale up solar capacity in the city at an exponential, rather than incremental rate. Realization of the concept would establish, irrefutably, the Big Apple’s leadership position on the national stage in renewable energy adoption and innovative policy making.

Solar One staff consulted closely with Council Member Garodnick in the planning of the hearing, and moving forward, will mobilize its I Heart PV campaign in support of the Solar Empowerment Zone policy. We thank Council Members Garodnick and James for their leadership, hard work and vision.

Stay tuned for the next developments in this very encouraging policy direction.

Click here to read the NYT blog synopsis of the hearing.

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The Monarchs Are Here!!!

An extraordinary and fascinating 4,000-mile journey is about to get underway, originating in a humble terrarium in Solar One’s East River building and ending against odds about three months later in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico.

Each year for the past three years, Solar One has raised monarchs on its premises, eventually releasing the full-grown butterflies into Stuyvesant Cove Park during the latter half of the summer, just in time for their epic flight. Visitors to Solar One can witness the development of these remarkable creatures, from cream-colored globular eggs resembling beads of sap on the backs of milkweed leaves, to the large wrinkled, multi-colored caterpillars and the dusty-green-and-gold-foil chrysales from which they eventually unfurl like bright orange-and-black banners. Read the rest of this entry »

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Orange, Blue and Green

When construction on the New York Mets’ new home was started in November of 2006, new ground was broken in more ways than one.

Citifield, the state-of-the-art facility set to replace the current Mets’ home Shea Stadium next April, is destined to be one of New York City’s first sustainable large-scale public buildings in accordance with Mayor Bloomberg’s PlanNYC. The baseball stadium will possess a number of environmentally friendly amenities, including a 15,000-square-foot green roof, 95% recycled steel, ultra-efficient field lighting that will cut energy consumption by as much as 50% and an on-site irrigation system and low-flow plumbing fixtures such as waterless urinals and sensor-activated faucets that will help save an estimated 4 million gallons of water a year.

Many of the measures implemented have even exceeded EPA recommendations, according to Mets management. The team will also partner with the EPA by joining its Energy Star and WasteWise programs and will work with the MTA and the LIRR to make mass transit to games more inviting and convenient. Extensive bicycle racks will be installed as well to encourage both fans and employees to bike to games. To quote Alan Steinberg, the EPA’s regional administrator: “As an environmental official and a baseball maniac, it doesn’t get any better than this… The Mets deserve an environmental MVP for their efforts to reduce the carbon footprint and the waste stream from the construction and operation of their new ballpark.”

With a brick exterior facade and main entrance rotunda intended as an homage to the legendary Brooklyn Dodgers’ home Ebbets Field, Citifield will stir the nostalgia of our city’s colorful past, but more significantly, as a model of sustainable building, it will represent the possibilities and hope of a new Big Apple.

For a more comprehensive list of Citifield’s environmentally friendly features, click here. Meanwhile, take a look at what The Gotham Gazette and The NY Times have reported about the new Yankee stadium.

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Solar One July 26th Family Day is CANCELLED

Unfortunately our Family Day event is canceled this weekend, but please stop by our kids friendly Solar Powered Dance series. Our next Family Day will be on  August 16th. Be sure to check our events calendar for more details.

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Victory Garden Installed at SF City Hall!

Victory Gardens 2008+ is a pilot project from art collective the Future Farmers, funded by the City of San Francisco to support the transition of backyard, front yard, window boxes, rooftops, and unused land into organic food production areas. The SF Victory Garden program builds on the successful Victory Garden programs of WWI and WWII but redefines “Victory” in the pressing context of urban sustainability.  “Victory” is growing food at home for increased local food security and reducing the food miles associated with the average American meal.

The green thumbs were covered with brown dirt Saturday (July 12) at San Francisco’s Civic Center when 150 people who like to eat their vegetables planted an updated version of a World War II victory garden. more

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Another PV Breakthrough

If it seems like solar technology has been improving almost by the day, well that’s probably because it has. It takes some serious effort these days to keep up with all the reports about newer and more efficient ways to harvest the sun’s rays. But this latest development takes an approach that seems especially ingenious.

Many photovoltaic arrays attempt to boost their efficiency by changing the angle of their panels as the sun shifts position in the sky. However, there are a number of drawbacks to such “trackers”, including their expensive installation and maintenance, as well as the possibility of damaging the PV cells through overheating, and keeping them cool requires the installation of even more expensive technology. So scientists have begun to develop and experiment with devices called Lumiscent Solar Concentrators (LSCs), which capture the sun’s rays before focusing them on the solar cell regardless of the angle from which they arrive, thereby improving efficiency.

These devices, a throwback to technology initially developed during the 1970s, are essentially plastic sheets laden with dye molecules that absorb light and are similar in principle to fiber optic cables, trapping and bouncing photons (particles of light) between the plastic surfaces while steering them towards the cell. But determining the right amount of dye molecules is still tricky business. Too many leads to greater heat loss through dye absorption, hence greater inefficiency, and too few means less sunlight captured.

But one new LSC innovation could conceivably triple the efficiency of these devices, and make them cheaper to manufacture. As reported in a recent issue of Science (see abstract) , two MIT researchers have introduced a radical wrinkle by getting rid of the plastic sheet and spraying a pane of glass with a combination of dyes and an aluminum compound called tris (8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum. This novel combination joins two phenomena. First, the glass and dyes act together to capture light and prevent its escape. Second, the dyes and tris aluminum in tandem create a quantum effect (called Forster energy transfer) that re-emits the photons at a different wavelength, preventing their loss by dye molecule absorption. Together, these combined effects also mean that the solar cells can be significantly smaller and need only be placed at the edges of the glass pane rather than spread over a large surface area, further minimizing costs and installation difficulties.

Finally, by adding a second treated glass panel on top to absorb rays of shorter wavelength such as ultraviolet light, these LSCs are made even more efficient. This way the panel underneath will not only catch the longer wavelengths that elude the first, but will also recover any incidental photons lost after their initial capture. The end result is a prototype device with an efficiency potentially ten times greater than that of conventional solar cells. And they’re apparently so simple to manufacture that they could be on the market within three years. The future continues to gain speed…