An electromagnetic pulse or EMP is caused by natural or artificial phenomena initiating a brief burst of electromagnetic energy. Among the most common events where this type of energy is released are solar flares or nuclear detonations. The electromagnetic energy of EMPs can be so forceful that communication systems are disrupted, electronic equipment gets damaged or even, on very rare occasions, buildings collapse. Electromagnetic...

15 years ago, in March 2007, the first commercial solar power plant – PS10 (Planta Solar 10) – was put into operation in Sanlucar la Mayor near Andalusia, Spain. Although demonstration power plants with solar concentrators had already been built long before this date, the launch of PS10 marked the beginning of the large-scale development of this sector of solar energy. A tower-type solar power plant has several dozens or hundreds of...

2D materials are a promising and fairly new technology used in the field of solar photovoltaics. They have very good optical and electronic properties, a necessary feature when you want to develop advanced solar cells and other optoelectronic devices. 2D materials are, as a rule, more stable than commercial 3D materials and have great exciton binding energies. However, despite their efficiency in converting sunlight into energy, they...

Canadian Solar was founded in 2001 in Canada and is one of the world's largest solar technology and renewable energy companies. It is a leading manufacturer of solar photovoltaic modules, provider of solar energy and battery storage solutions. The Company operates in 2 segments: until July 2020 there were MMS (manufacture and sale of solar power products) and Energy (solar power project development and sale). Starting...

In the past few years, a broad variety of different solar cells fabricated from various materials have been designed by engineers around the globe. Some of them consist of cadmium telluride (CdTe), which is a stable crystalline semiconducting compound comprised of cadmium and tellurium. Solar cells consisting of this material are able to produce electricity at a low cost and have a lot of advantageous features, including fast cadmium...

Perovskites were first discovered in Russia in the first half of the 19th century and named after the Russian mineralogist L. A. Perovski. Nowadays, the term has been expanded to include a great variety of synthetic minerals whose structure is similar to the natural mineral, which consists of calcium titanium oxide. Perovskites have the formula ABX3 where A and B represent cations which are linked by an anion X. Perovskites can be...

Perovskite crystals are a material consisting of calcium titanate which are very suitable for the development of engineered materials, as a great variety of different cations can be embedded in their structure. They play an important role in the development of new materials for efficiently harvesting solar energy. Perovskites are not as expensive as the materials currently used for solar panels, and so far their conversion efficiencies...

Solar energy is one of the driving forces when it comes to achieving more sustainable energy production and enabling the energy transition. A reliable method to boost the efficiency of solar cells is to adapt the cells to different spectrums of light using tandem solar cells. Tandem solar cells consist of a series of connected cells which are grown as monolithic layers on a substrate. The individual cells are joined via junctions. They...

NextEra Energy, Inc. (NEE) is one of the largest electric power and energy infrastructure companies in North America and a leader in the renewable energy. NextEra Energy owns Florida Power & Light Company (FPL), which is the largest electric utility in the United States. In January 2019, NEE acquired Gulf Power, an electric utility engaged in the generation, transmission, distribution, and sale of electric energy in Florida and one...

In the past few years, solar panels have made vast improvements in terms of costs and efficiency so that nowadays many homes can afford to install them on rooftops and save money. However, when the sky is overcast or other circumstances prevent sunlight from reaching the surface of the earth, this otherwise valuable energy source cannot be harnessed properly. Now (2020), a way to circumvent the intermittency of solar energy has been...