Apple has filed a patent for a full range of media players with integrated touch sensor solar panel surfaces. The recent design change for the iPhone from a metal backside to a glass back would allow for an internal double-sided solar panel. This makes it obvious that Apple is moving in the direction of integrating [...]

Solar Power is having a dramatic impact on the foundation of the Toledo economy with a confluence of industry, academia and government. While like so many other manufacturing hubs if the US, jobs have been lost en mass, the solar power industry has helped mitigate these losses as it’s proving to be fertile, green ground [...]

Japan’s cool new solar sail spacecraft has fully deployed its sail and begun generating power through its embedded solar cells, according to a press release by Japanese officials. The solar sail, named Ikaros (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun), has hopes to become the first successful space mission propelled solely by the light [...]

Masdar, a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala investment company, will join two European companies, Total and Abengoa Solar, in spending $600 million on a new solar plant in the desert 75 miles from the city. With a capacity when it comes onstream in two years’ time of 100 megawatts, “Shams 1″ will make only a [...]

Professor of photonics at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, Michael Graetzel, won the Millennium Technology Prize of $1.07 million for his invention – dye-sensitized solar cells, which he calls “Graetzel cells.” “The constraint of solar energy has traditionally been its price. Graetzel cells provide a more affordable way of harnessing solar energy,” [...]