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  • Single Crystal Perovskites — Emerging Family Of Solar-Absorbing Materials Paves Way Towards More-Efficient & Potentially Cheaper Solar Cells

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    Single Crystal Perovskites — Emerging Family Of Solar-Absorbing Materials Paves Way Towards More-Efficient & Potentially Cheaper Solar Cells

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    February 2nd, 2015 by James Ayre

    While perovskites have been a mainstay of solar energy research for some time now, the purest form of the material — perfect single crystals of perovskite — had never been investigated very deeply.

    That’s changed now, though, with the release of new research findings from the University of Toronto + the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.

    Perovskites single perfect crystals

    The new research utilized a “new technique” to grow rather large, pure crystals of perovskite — and then studied the way that electrons move through the material as electricity is created from the light.

    “Our work identifies the bar for the ultimate solar energy-harvesting potential of perovskites,” stated Riccardo Comin, a post-doctoral fellow with the Sargent Group. “With these materials it’s been a race to try to get record efficiencies, and our results indicate that progress is slated to continue without slowing down.”

    Here’s an explanation of the work via a recent press release:

    The team used a combination of laser-based techniques to measure selected properties of the perovskite crystals. By tracking down the rapid motion of electrons in the material, they have been able to determine the diffusion length — how far electrons can travel without getting trapped by imperfections in the material — as well as mobility — how fast the electrons can move through the material.

    In recent years, perovskite efficiency has soared to certified efficiencies of just over 20%, beginning to approach the present-day performance of commercial-grade silicon-based solar panels mounted in Spanish deserts and on Californian roofs.

    “In their efficiency, perovskites are closely approaching conventional materials that have already been commercialized,” explained Valerio Adinolfi, a PhD candidate in the Sargent Group and co-first author on the paper. “They have the potential to offer further progress on reducing the cost of solar electricity in light of their convenient manufacturability from a liquid chemical precursor.”

    Beyond solar energy applications, the new research has potential implications for the field of lighting solutions. The applications in lighting would be essentially just the opposite of this one in solar energy — send electrons through a slab of perovskite crystals, and enjoy the light released, rather than the other way around. This application will depend upon it being demonstrated as being economical of course, something that certainly isn’t a guarantee.

    Associated/complementary work being done through the Sargent Group is focusing on colloidal quantum dots.

    “Perovskites are great visible-light harvesters, and quantum dots are great for infrared,” stated lead researcher Professor Ted Sargent, of The Edward S Rogers Sr Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. “The materials are highly complementary in solar energy harvesting in view of the sun’s broad visible and infrared power spectrum.”

    “In future, we will explore the opportunities for stacking together complementary absorbent materials,” chimed in Dr Comin. “There are very promising prospects for combining perovskite work and quantum dot work for further boosting the efficiency.”

    The new findings were recently published in the journal Science.

    Image Credit: University of Toronto Engineering

    Keep up to date with all the hottest cleantech news by subscribing to our (free) cleantech newsletter, or keep an eye on sector-specific news by getting our (also free) solar energy newsletter, electric vehicle newsletter, or wind energy newsletter.

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    Tags: perovskite solar cells, perovskites, University of Toronto

    About the Author

    James Ayre ‘s background is predominantly in geopolitics and history, but he has an obsessive interest in pretty much everything. After an early life spent in the Imperial Free City of Dortmund, James followed the river Ruhr to Cofbuokheim, where he attended the University of Astnide. And where he also briefly considered entering the coal mining business. He currently writes for a living, on a broad variety of subjects, ranging from science, to politics, to military history, to renewable energy. You can follow his work on Google+.

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  • I bet you’re sick of hearing all the spin about climate change. We are too. ACF
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    Victoria McKenzie-McHarg, ACF Unsubscribe
    5:21 PM (3 minutes ago)
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    Hi NEVILLE

    I bet you’re sick of hearing all the spin about climate change. We are too.

    Shock jocks on soap boxes. Government doublespeak. Big polluting companies funding ad campaigns and sweet-talking politicians at expensive dinners.

    It doesn’t stop. And this year, with a global climate meeting in Paris, there will be more spin than ever.

    But 2015 feels different. There’s new momentum. Charged by people power, countries around the world are finally taking steps to tackle climate change.

    Just last year 51,720 amazing people took action with ACF on climate change to hold the government and big polluters to account. Thanks for being one of them.

    We have a strong campaign planned for Paris and beyond. Stay tuned – we’re hosting events around the country to discuss this year’s strategy on how together, we can turn this around.

    Will you share this graphic on social media to start spreading the word?

    In Paris in November, world leaders will meet to make decisions about cutting pollution and tackling climate change. Each and every country must take action.

    But right now, the Abbott government is taking us backwards. In just one year, Australia has:

    • Slid from 11th to 39th for clean energy investment
    • Killed the law that made polluters pay
    • Tried to take climate change off the global G20 agenda

    We want a government that stands up for our communities, not one that is the puppet of the big polluting companies.

    This year, we’ll show our politicians we want a clean and safe – not dirty and dangerous – energy future. And we’ll do whatever it takes to make it happen. Together, with you and hundreds of thousands of other Australians, our voice can be louder and more powerful than any ad campaign.

    We’ll organise in our towns, suburbs, workplaces, schools and communities to work together to build the pressure for politicians to put our communities and our future first.

    We’ll demonstrate that even if our political decision makers aren’t ready to lead, we are. And we expect that leadership from the people we vote for.

    It’s time for action.

    Will you share this image on social media to spread the word?

    Thank you,

    Victoria

    Victoria McKenzie-McHarg
    Climate change campaign manager
    Australian Conservation Foundation

  • You stand up. You win. GET UP

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    You stand up. You win.

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    Darren – GetUp!
    1:51 PM (23 minutes ago)
    to me
    Dear NEVILLE,

    When Campbell Newman called the Queensland election with just three weeks notice it didn’t leave our movement with much time to react. But in true GetUp style, more than 600 people stepped up, and by the time polls opened in Queensland on Saturday we couldn’t have been more ready.

    So much was at stake.

    Campbell Newman’s neo-liberal agenda was stark: sell off public assets to fund infrastructure for Indian mining magnate Gautam Adani’s plans to build a mega coal mine; bulldoze next to a turtle breeding wetland; and start industrial dredging in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.

    By Friday we had 150,000 ‘How-to-Vote for the Reef’ cards based on each party’s commitments, ready to be handed out by a staggering 600 GetUp member volunteers.

    Due to the strength of our numbers, Labor responded with solid Reef protection policies. And we’ll be holding them to those commitments.

    The LNP responded with a dirty and desperate attempt to silence us and cling to power: a Supreme Court injunction against our ‘How-to-Vote’ cards. In record time GetUp members funded a crack team of lawyers to fight back, and the Judge effectively threw the LNP’s claims out of court, saying there was “no serious question to be tried”.

    What we’ve shown each other is that when we believe in our ability to create real change, against the odds, we can win. And it doesn’t end in Queensland.

    The election result means the Federal Government is left trying to fast-track a plan Queensland no longer wants. Today, they’ve put their approval of Abbot Point on hold, pending talks with Queensland.

    But Adani have already claimed that their plans for Abbot Point will be going ahead, regardless of who’s in power.

    Are you ready to take this on? Our movement achieves amazing things when we get prepared, work together, and engage expert support from lawyers, strategists and creatives.

    Can you become a Core Member by making a small regular weekly donation, so we’re prepared for the next big fight?

    In it’s first term, the QLD LNP passed new voter ID laws to make it harder for people to vote, crippled the anti-corruption watchdog and weakened donations laws to facilitate large anonymous political donations, including from mining companies. It was clear they were willing to do anything to retain their hold on power.

    But GetUp is a grassroots movement, funded by people like you and over 32,000 people like you. That’s where our power comes from. Each other.

    When we pull together by turning up on weekend to volunteer, share hard hitting messages with our friends and family online, or make small donations, we have massive impact.

    What does that look like?

      • People Power. 600 volunteers present at 74 polling booths in 9 marginal electorates on the day of the election. Thousands of members chipped in for a series of TV ads exposing the Newman Government’s terrible track record on Reef protection. These ads aired on prime-time in key marginal electorates in the run up to the election. They were so powerful The Australian ran a panicked attack-piece against us.
      • Voting Rights. The Newman government passed ‘voter id’ laws despite there being no real evidence of voter fraud in Australia. The laws would likely prevent many Indigenous Australians, new immigrants, young and elderly people from voting. GetUp teamed up with a group of lawyers and set up a Voter ID Hotline for voters who were turned away at the ballot box for not having ID, or had any trouble voting to ensure every Australian has the right to cast their vote.
      • Solar Power. Working with our friends at the Australian Solar Council and Solar Citizens we supported events and activity across seats in inner city Brisbane and regional Queensland. We also supported two ‘Save Solar’ forums with local and national MPs and candidates.
      • Renewable Energy. Our Renewable Energy Target video screened at highlighting the economic opportunities from renewables and was strongly received by local families, solar workers and business owners hit by the Newman government’s attacks on solar and the Renewable Energy Target.
      • Exposing Broken Promises. In collaboration with The Wilderness Society, other environment groups and unions we supported the TV ad campaign of Chris Davis, an ex-LNP member who quit parliament in protest at his government’s “betrayal” of Queenslanders last year.
    • Exposing False Job Claims. Working with Environmental Justice Australia and The Australia Institute, we challenged Adani and Premier Newman’s oft repeated false jobs claims for the Carmichael mine and Abbot Point development, resulting in media stories in the Herald Sun, Courier Mail, Advertiser, Daily Telegraph and elsewhere.

    If we can achieve this much at a state level with such short notice, imagine the amazing things we could achieve at a Federal level by 2016 and beyond.

    We’ve got a plan to harness the power of GetUp’s 800,000 members, starting sooner and going bigger than either of the major parties. But to make it happen, we’ll need to double the number of Core Members who chip in a small amount each week to help GetUp build power for the long term.

    Become a Core Member to help us achieve our shared vision of a more progressive Australia.

    Once more, for being a part of this. Thank you. What we’ve achieved together is truly extraordinary.

    To the future,
    Darren and the whole GetUp team.

  • [New post] QLD 2015 – what happened to the preferences? BEN RAUE

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    [New post] QLD 2015 – what happened to the preferences?

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    The Tally Room <donotreply@wordpress.com>
    2:04 PM (7 minutes ago)
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    New post on The Tally Room

    QLD 2015 – what happened to the preferences?

    by Ben Raue

    The final polls of the campaign all told the same story – the LNP leading with 52% of the two-party-preferred vote over Labor. This is certainly not what happened – in the seats where Labor and the LNP came in the top two, Labor has polled just over 52% of the two-party-preferred vote so far.

    But when you look at the primary votes, they aren’t far off. All three polls that produced a 52-48 figure had about 41% for the LNP and 37% for Labor, which was only off by 1% from the actual figures.

    The problems came in estimating preference flows. Most, if not all, pollsters rely on actual preferences from the previous election to estimate how minor party and independent votes will flow, rather than asking people how they will preference.

    Yet the pool of preferences in Queensland at this election was quite different. At the last election, Katter’s Australian Party polled over 11% of the vote, and made up a majority of the pool of minor party preferences. At this election, a majority of these votes belong to the Greens, thanks to KAP’s declining vote and focus on a small number of seats.

    Unlike in federal elections, the ECQ does not conduct a two-party-preferred (2PP) count in every seat. Indeed, the ECQ has now taken down the notional 2PP count for most seats, and we’ll have to wait for the final distribution of preferences to get the official seatwide figures, and the ECQ will not publish notional 2PP figures by polling place.

    You can only calculate a 2PP in a seat where the top two candidates are Labor and LNP. The AEC refers to these seats as “classic” electorates. At the moment, there are 77 seats where we have a Labor vs LNP count for most of the votes counted so far, with a 78th count being undertaken in Gaven. Out of the remaining eleven seats, there are four others where we will eventually get a Labor vs LNP count, but not until we get the final distribution of preferences, since the ECQ conducted a two-candidate-preferred count between other candidates on election night.

    So at the moment we can only compare preference flows in the 77 classic seats to the 71 classic seats in 2012 and the 83 from 2009.

    Year Classic seats Labor preferences LNP preferences Exhausted
    2009 83 32.01% 20.58% 47.40%
    2012 71 26.97% 22.08% 50.95%
    2015 77 46.59% 14.34% 39.07%

    What we’ve seen is a significant increase in Labor preferences, and a decline in LNP and exhausted preferences, even compared to the last Labor win in 2009.

    While part of this change is likely due to the decline of KAP, that doesn’t explain the whole picture. Even in strong Greens seats where KAP was a minor presence in 2012, you see a similar trend.

    In the inner-city seat of Mount Coot-tha, the preference flow from minor parties to Labor has increased from 45% in 2009, to 54% in 2012 and is now just under 75% in 2015. Most of these votes come from the Greens, and allowed Labor to win the seat despite being 10% behind on primary votes – normally such a feat is not possible under an optional preferential system.

    Ben Raue | February 3, 2015 at 1:00 pm | Tags: Queensland 2015 | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/ppI95-6rT

  • Our Best Chance Yet !! Save the Reef 350 org

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    Our best chance yet!

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    Moira Williams – 350.org Australia moira@350.org.au via list.350.org 
    1:04 PM (3 minutes ago)
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    Dear friends,

    Right now we have one of the best opportunities we’ve ever had to stop the world’s largest coal port being built on the Great Barrier Reef. But we need to act fast.

    It looks almost certain that the ALP has won Government in Queensland, following Saturday’s historic election which swept coal-loving Premier Campbell Newman out of office after just one term.

    Click here to tell the ALP to say no to devastating coal projects on the Reef today!

    Under Newman, plans to build one of the world’s largest coal port at Abbot Point, in partnership with Indian mining giant Adani, were racing ahead. Abbot Point would provide a gateway for coal companies to unlock nine new mega coal mines in the Galilee Basin that would triple Australia’s carbon emissions and devastate the Great Barrier Reef.

    While the ALP have stopped short of saying they will cancel these projects all together, they have made some strong promises on the election campaign trail. These include:

    • Banning the environmentally-damaging dumping of dredge spoil in the Great Barrier Reef & internationally-significant Caley Valley wetlands
    • Cancelling taxpayer-funded subsidies to co-fund the billionaire-owned private rail line connecting the Galilee Basin to Abbot Point
    • Prohibiting dredging of the Reef unless Adani can demonstrate these projects stack-up financially (which we know they can’t).

    You can be certain that Adani and their cronies will be getting in the ears of the ALP right now so it’s crucial that we act immediately to make sure the incoming Government hears our voices over the money and power of the fossil fuel lobby.

    Call on the incoming Queensland government to say no to projects that would destroy the Reef and cook our climate.

    It’s hard to overstate the impact that these new mines will have on the climate. If the Galilee Basin were a country, the carbon dioxide produced from burning this coal would make it the seventh dirtiest fossil fuel burner on the planet. This is “make or break” for the climate.

    If the ALP lives up to its commitments, these projects could be delayed indefinitely — which would give us more time to convince global financiers that they are a bad deal. We have an opportunity to get a real commitment from this new Government and take a major leap forward in protecting the climate and our Reef for good.

    Send a message to the ALP today and tell them to put an end to these projects before it’s too late – the climate and our Reef depend upon it.

    For a brighter future,

    Moira for the 350.org Australia team

    PS: Spread the word on facebook here

    350.org is building a global climate movement.You can connect with us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and become a sustaining donor to keep this movement strong and growing.

  • New post] QLD 2015 – could Pauline Hanson win?

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    [New post] QLD 2015 – could Pauline Hanson win?

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    The Tally Room <donotreply@wordpress.com>
    7:12 PM (19 minutes ago)
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    New post on The Tally Room

    QLD 2015 – could Pauline Hanson win?

    by Ben Raue

    TLDR – Yes, she could, but it’s going to be close.

    On Saturday night, it was a minor story that Pauline Hanson had polled quite highly in the south-east Queensland seat of Lockyer, winning 27.3% of the primary vote, ahead of Labor but 6% behind sitting Liberal National MP Ian Rickuss, who polled 33.7%.

    Because Hanson didn’t run in 2012, the ECQ on election night conducted an indicative two-party-preferred count between Labor and the LNP. This meant we didn’t have any idea how preferences would split between the LNP and Hanson, who is running again for One Nation.

    Late this afternoon the ECQ started posting results of a new two-candidate-preferred (2CP) count between Hanson and Rickuss, and it has Pauline Hanson leading in the count.

    There are 32 regular booths in Lockyer, in addition to a variety of prepoll centres, and postal and absentee votes. So far, 2CP results have only been released for five booths, which all are favourable to Hanson.

    While Hanson so far has polled 27.3% across Lockyer, she has polled 34.1% in the five booths where preferences have been distributed. The LNP’s vote is 2.2% lower in these five booths, and the Labor vote is 3.6% lower.

    In addition, there are large numbers of postal, pre-poll and absentee votes, which should favour the major parties. These votes are likely to strengthen the LNP position.

    But what would happen if you took the preference flows from these five booths and applied them to the remaining primary votes that have been counted so far?

    In short, the result would be extremely close. Preferences so far have flowed 26.5% LNP, 43% Hanson and 30.5% exhausted.

    This would result in Hanson polling 11,262 votes, and Rickuss polling 11,238 – a gap of 24 votes.

    Ben Raue | February 2, 2015 at 6:12 pm | Tags: Queensland 2015 | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/ppI95-6rJ