Can solar make a ‘green’ difference?
Can photovoltaics scale fast enough to make a significant difference to the environment as a green energy source? This was a question posed by Raffi Garabedian, CTO of First Solar, during a panel discussion on ‘green photonics’ and solar energy at Photonics West. Whether photovoltaics can make a difference as a green energy source is unclear, said Garabedian. It was pointed out by the panel moderator, Stephen Eglash, the executive director of the Energy and Environment Affiliates Program at Stanford University, that while China might be investing heavily in solar power, it is also investing in coal power stations to meet its energy needs. Homer Antoniadis, the global technology director at DuPont Photovoltaic Solutions, added that in India, the price of solar panels is too high for the country to adopt solar power fast enough to make a difference to its carbon emissions. However, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Germany has found that, in recent years, the cost of electricity
generated from renewables has become comparible with that from conventional plants. It predicted that, by 2030, the cost to produce electricity from photovoltaic and wind power will be less than fossil fuel plants in Germany. The overriding need is for higher efficiencies. Antoniadis noted that, because the cost of solar panels is so high, efficiencies have to be improved substantially to reduce the cost of solar energy. Antoniadis said crystalline silicon panels with relatively low efficiencies of around 15 per cent make up the majority of photovoltaics active today, and he stated that crystalline silicon will be the dominant class of solar cell over the next five years. However, he added that other technologies will have a role and will operate alongside crystalline silicon. Cadmium telluride, it was noted, is extremely cheap to produce and is excellent for large-scale installations. Garabedian predicted that there isn’t going to be one single product that will meet the world’s photovoltaic needs.
Optical interconnect project to benefit exascale data centres
System-embedded photonics technologies for next-generation exascale data centres have been demonstrated as part of the EU-funded ‘System Embedded Photonics in Access Networks’ (SEPIANet) project, which concluded at the end of 2013. The project resulted in the first successful demonstration of system-embedded planar glass waveguide-based optical backplane and pluggable optical interconnect technologies, with the work presented at the Opto 2014 conference during Photonics West. The SEPIANet project was coordinated by Xyratex, a provider of data storage technology based in the UK, in order to develop technology solutions for embedded optical architectures in access network
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head-end systems. This would allow a significant reduction in power consumption and an increase in energy efficiency, system density and bandwidth scalability in future exascale data centre architectures. The SEPIANet consortium is comprised of Xyratex, Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration (IZM), ILFA Feinstleitertechnik, TerOpta, VI Systems and Conjunct. VI Systems, a German developer and manufacturer of components for optical communication, developed a 1,300nm VCSEL (vertical cavity surface emitting laser) for the project, which it displayed at its booth. Fraunhofer IZM also hosted a demonstration of this joint accomplishment.
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