The system is based on a paper thin the outside of the bag, it’s a flexible solar panel. It charges a battery pack located inside the bag.

Place the solar panel towards the sun to collect energy (window, home, car, café, walk/bike around). The battery pack will hold the sun’s energy for several days.

Here the screen shot of the user manual available here:

The battery box will keep its charge for a few days if not used. The battery box will take about 6-8 hours of full sun to completely charge.

If the battery box is fully charged, you can get one full charge or more of your device depending on its size.

Technical Details:

• Selectable output voltage of DC 5.2V, 6.2V, 7.2V.
• Internal battery is 3.6V, 3600mAH.
• FCC certified and CE approved.

Solar Panel

• Output is 7.2v, 300mA.

Albuquerque-based SkyFuel LLC unveiled a new solar thermal reflector system in Colorado on Oct. 10 that, for the first time, replaces glass mirrors with a polymer-based solar array.

They inaugurated a 100-meter array that sports parabolas made with the “ReflecTech” mirror film, a metalized polymer that can be laminated to aluminum sheets.

ReflecTech is actually more reflective than the best glass mirrors currently available, yet it costs 50 percent less.

Unlike photovoltaic, concentrating solar power uses massive solar reflectors to heat fluids to create steam for turbine generators.

From the website Reflec tech solar

ReflecTech® Mirror Film is a highly reflective, glass-free, polymer-based film for concentrating sunlight in solar energy arrays. ReflecTech® Mirror Film also has applications for concentrating photovoltaic systems, and other emerging CSP technologies such as linear Fresnel reflectors. All of these solar applications require the use of reflectors that have high reflectivity across the solar spectrum, are durable for many years in outdoor environments, and are low in cost.

Interesting news from Market Watch – Given the size, population, resources, and level of technology development in the United States, the US solar market is believed to be the most underexploited in the world. The US solar market has experienced fantastic growth over the last five years.

As part of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the U.S. Investment Tax Credit provides another eight years extension for commercial and residential investments.

Trends in solar thermal power revolve more around mandates and financing than technology, thus the ITC provides the necessary financial support to ensure the growth of this emerging technology.

Within the solar market, solar thermal (concentrated solar power) installation is expected to surpass those of solar electric (photovoltaic). Research indicates that utilities firms are looking at solar thermal as the preferred alternative energy technology.

Solar thermal energy presents a more cost-effective way to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and meets the renewal portfolio standards (RPS) that call for a certain percentage of renewable energy by a certain time.

Standing to the online report available here

U.S. Southwest has the highest amount of sunshine and open land, resulting in numerous suitable sites for solar thermal power plants. According to Abengoa Solar, U.S. southwest can support over 11TW of solar thermal, which is enough to support a capacity of more than 6 times the current electrical demand in the United States.

In the southwestern United States, the cost of electricity from CSP plants (including ITC) is about 13–17¢ per kilowatt-hour, meaning that CSP with thermal storage is competitive today with simple-cycle natural gas-fired power plants. The U.S.

Department of Energy aims to reduce CSP costs to 7–10¢ per kilowatt-hour by 2015 and to 5–7¢ per kilowatt-hour by 2020, making CSP a competitive alternative to fossil-fuel-based power sources.

The House approved the energy tax credits after rejecting them only a week ago. The tax credits will go to businesses and residents who invest in renewable energy, from building and operating solar and wind power plants to installing small-wind turbines on residential properties.

“By passing this bill, Congress has finally given the solar energy industry ‘policy certainty’ that will attract investment, expand manufacturing and lower the cost of solar energy to consumers,” said Roger Efird in a statement. “This will allow companies like mine to move forward with expansion plans to serve the growing U.S. market.”

The bill the House approved Friday calls for investment tax credits for solar developments for eight years. And unlike the current tax-incentive program, the new one will allow utilities to take advantage of the incentives. The bill also includes production-tax credits for renewable-energy power plants that already are generating electricity. The legislation extends the production-tax break by one year for wind and by two years for solar, biomass and hydro power.

Source

Researchers have created a new material that overcomes two of the major obstacles to solar power: it absorbs all the energy contained in sunlight, and generates electrons in a way that makes them easier to capture.

Ohio State University chemists and their colleagues combined electrically conductive plastic with metals including molybdenum and titanium to create the hybrid material.

“There are other such hybrids out there, but the advantage of our material is that we can cover the entire range of the solar spectrum,” explained Malcolm Chisholm, Distinguished University Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemistry at Ohio State.

Sunlight contains the entire spectrum of colors that can be seen with the naked eye — all the colors of the rainbow. What our eyes interpret as color are really different energy levels, or frequencies of light. Today’s solar cell materials can only capture a small range of frequencies, so they can only capture a small fraction of the energy contained in sunlight.

This new material is the first that can absorb all the energy contained in visible light at once.

The material generates electricity just like other solar cell materials do: light energizes the atoms of the material, and some of the electrons in those atoms are knocked loose.

Continues here