Search results for " Solar"
showing 10 items of 958 documents
Empowering Photovoltaics with Smart Light Management Technologies
2021
The daily Sun supplies the continents of the Earth with four times more energy than humanity consumes in a year. This enormous potential of solar energy to generate clean energy is therefore driving great efforts to replace conventional and unsustainable fossil fuel consumption that damages our climate and our environment. Solar photovoltaic (PV) is emerging as the fastest growing renewable energy technology in the world, yet its share to the electricity production currently is less than 3%. While coal and gas remain key to electricity production, the climate crisis demands a fast transition to a carbon-neutral energy system. In the year 2019, the PV industry produced solar panels with a ca…
Exergetic and exergoeconomic analysis of a renewable polygeneration system serving a small isolated community
2014
A great interest has been arising in the last decade for the sustainable supply of energy and fresh water, also due to the rapidly growing demand from developing countries. Facing this demand by traditional technologies and fossil energy sources implies evident difficulties and risks, because of the scarcity and high cost of fuels and their relevant environmental impact in terms of local pollution and global warming emissions. Then, the efforts of researchers have been focusing on alternative solutions, either based on the use of renewable energy sources and on innovative plant schemes for the combined and efficient production of several energy and material flows. In this paper an innovativ…
A novel solar trigeneration system integrating Photovoltaic/Thermal collectors and seawater desalination: dynamic simulation and economic assessment
2013
This paper investigates the integration of renewable energy sources and water systems, presenting a novel solar system producing simultaneously: electrical energy, thermal energy, cooling energy and domestic water. The polygeneration system under analysis includes photovoltaic/thermal solar collectors (PVT), a multi-effect distillation (MED) system for seawater desalination, a single-stage LiBr-H2O absorption chiller and additional components, such as storage tanks, auxiliary heaters and balance of plant devices. The PVT produces simultaneously electrical energy and thermal energy, at a maximum temperature of about 100 °C. The electrical energy is delivered to the grid, whereas the thermal …
Sphinx measurements of the 2009 solar minimum x-ray emission
2012
The SphinX X-ray spectrophotometer on the CORONAS-PHOTON spacecraft measured soft X-ray emission in the 1-15 keV energy range during the deep solar minimum of 2009 with a sensitivity much greater than GOES. Several intervals are identified when the X-ray flux was exceptionally low, and the flux and solar X-ray luminosity are estimated. Spectral fits to the emission at these times give temperatures of 1.7-1.9 MK and emission measures between 4 x 10^47 cm^-3 and 1.1 x 10^48 cm^-3. Comparing SphinX emission with that from the Hinode X-ray Telescope, we deduce that most of the emission is from general coronal structures rather than confined features like bright points. For one of 27 intervals o…
Acid versus base peptization of mesoporous nanocrystalline TiO2 films: functional studies in dye sensitized solar cells
2005
We report an analysis of the influence of acid/base conditions employed in the synthesis of TiO2 nanoparticles upon the performance of dye sensitised photoelectrochemical solar cells fabricated from these particles. The functional properties of the TiO2 nanoparticles in these devices are investigated by potential step chronoamperometry, transient laser spectroscopy, and photovoltaic device characterisation. We find that base peptization conditions employed in the sol–gel fabrication of the TiO2 nanoparticles result in a reduction in film electron density under negative applied bias, correlated with slower interfacial recombination losses and a higher device open circuit voltage.
Sensitizer exchange dynamics in air and solvent filled semiconductor nanocavities
2010
Multiple dye binding sites and their exchange in equilibrium in air and solvent filled sensitized titanium oxide nanocavities were identified by 2DIR spectroscopy. Binding geometry and flexibility may influence electron injection efficiency of solar cells.
PV effect of fullerene/poly(3-hexylthiophene) blend sensitized by phthalocyanine having infrared absorption CT band
2008
An attempt was made to extend the photosensitivity spectral range of fullerene/poly(3-hexylthiophene) blend to NIR region by adding extra electron donor — hydroxygallium phthalocyanine (GaOHPc) with a strong and wide intermolecular charge transfer (CT) band around 830 nm. Multilayer cells of ITO/PEDOT: PSS/6 GaOHPc/P3HT: C61(CO2Et)2 have been prepared by spin coating with vacuum evaporated Al or In top electrodes. Significant photosensitivity of the cells was in 370–900 nm spectral range. However charge carrier photogeneration efficiency was 3 times higher for illumination in P3HT absorption band as compared with the GaOHPc CT band at 830 nm. But when GaOHPc was mixed in the blend forming P…
The effect of ISM absorption on stellar activity measurements and its relevance for exoplanet studies
2017
Past UV and optical observations of stars hosting hot Jupiters have shown that some of these stars present an anomalously low chromospheric activity, significantly below the basal level. For WASP-13, observations have shown that the apparent lack of activity is possibly caused by absorption from the intervening ISM. Inspired by this result, we study the effect of ISM absorption on activity measurements (S and logR'$_{\rm HK}$ indices) for main-sequence late-type stars. To this end, we employ synthetic stellar photospheric spectra combined with varying amounts of chromospheric emission and ISM absorption. We present the effect of ISM absorption on activity measurements by varying several ins…
Correcting the effect of stellar spots on ARIEL transmission spectra – II. The limb-darkening effect
2021
This paper is part of an effort to correct the transmission spectra of a transiting planet orbiting an active star. In Paper I (Cracchiolo et al. 2020) we have demonstrated a methodology to minimize the potential bias induced by unocculted star spots on the transmission spectrum, assuming a spot model parameterized by filling factor and temperature. In this work we introduce the limb darkening effect, therefore the position of the spot in the stellar disk and the impact parameter of the transiting planet now play a key role. The method is tested on simulations of planetary transits of three representative kinds of planetary systems, at ARIEL resolution. We find that a realistic treatment of…
The GAPS programme at TNG
2020
Understanding stellar activity in M dwarfs is fundamental to improving our knowledge of the physics of stellar atmospheres and for planet search programmes. High levels of stellar activity (also with flare events) can cause additional variations in the stellar emission that contaminate the signal induced by a planet and that need to be corrected. The study of activity indicators in active stars can improve our capability of modelling this signal. Our aim is to understand the behaviour of stellar chromospheres of M stars, studying the more sensitive chromospheric activity indicators, characterising their variability and on finding the correlations among these indicators to obtain information…