The process of adding impurities on purpose is called doping, and when doped with phosphorus, the resulting silicon is called N-type ("n" for negative) because of the prevalence of free electrons. N-type doped silicon is a much better conductor than pure silicon. The other part of a typic...
The basic idea of hydropower is to use the power of a moving liquid to turn a turbine blade. Typically, a large dam has to be built in the middle of a river to perform this function. A new invention is capitalizing on the idea of hydropower on a much smaller scale to provide electric...
Today, large amounts of marine plastic debris drift ashore on ocean currents. The amount is said to be as much as 3,000 tons per year. When Mr. Allen learned of this, he came up with the idea of recycling and molding the plastic debris that had washed ashore into the handles of kitc...
Because the amount of gases produced by plasma plants is relatively small when compared to coal or oil-fired power plants, the power generators in plasma plants are smaller and less efficient (larger generators require much more gas). Coal and oil power plants use the same processes as plasma...
hole pair. They'll simply pass through the cell as if it were transparent. Still other photons have too much energy. Only a certain amount of energy, measured in electron volts (eV) and defined by cell material (about 1.1 eV for crystalline silicon), is required to knock an electron ...
This measure is used by panel makers to report their manufacturing capacity, sales, and backlog of orders; by installers to report their total completed or booked installations; and by yieldcos to report how much power their facilities can generate, how much power they generated and sold in ...
Another major con is the high initial cost, especially if you're going completely off the grid. Solar power is the cheapest form of renewable energy, but still four times more expensive than traditional sources. How much do solar panels cost for a 1000 square foot house? The number of ...
to focus and concentrate the sun's radiation onto a single tower-mounted receiver. Like parabolic troughs, heat-transfer fluid or water/steam is heated in the receiver (power towers, though, are able to concentrate the sun's energy as much as 1,500 times), eventually converted to steam an...
Bloom’s fuel cells can generate as much as 60 kilowatts of electricity each and can be stacked together almost like Legos. Four of the cells can power a Home Depot. AEP will purchase up to one gigawatt of Bloom’s fuel cells, but only has a contract for 100 megawatts now. Sh...
isestimatedto use just under 1,300 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity; about as much power asconsumed annuallyby 130 US homes. To put that in context, streaming an hour of Netflix requires around0.8 kWh(0.0008 MWh) of electricity. That means you’d have to watch 1,625,000 hours to ...