In what seems one of the most unlikely collaborations in recent history, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced that it was working with Abu Dhabi to test the effectiveness of specialty solar photovoltaic (PV) coatings designed to prevent moisture and dry dust adhesion, which leads to cementation.
The DOE currently runs 21 national laboratories dedicated to any number of renewable energy and energy-efficiency advances. The alliance with Abu Dhabi, a member of the United Arab Emirates (a consortium of seven oil-producing nations, or emirates, along the Persian Gulf) is less surprising when one considers Abu Dhabi’s involvement in Masdar City, a planned “green” community being built and funded by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, a subsidiary of Mubadala Development Company.
When Masdar is completed, say designers from Foster and Partners, a UK architectural firm, it will rely entirely on solar energy and other renewable energy resources, and exist as the world’s only zero-carbon emissions, zero-waste city.
The DOE/Abu Dhabi partnership is less unlikely when one considers the problems Abu Dhabi is having with solar power in its futuristic, carbon-free city. Because, while Masdar’s level of solar insolation (5.9, or among the world’s highest) is superb, its most recent solar venture, the Shams 1 concentrating solar thermal (CSP) power plant is outputting less than investors expected as a result of dust particles.
This dust leads to the cementation problems on mirrors at Shams 1, billed as the world’s largest CSP facility, and will eventually have an equal impact on solar PV installations planned for Masdar City as well.
The same problems—dust cementation and moisture—face solar PV manufacturers worldwide, so the DOE and Abu Dhabi are working together to overcome them with specialty PV coatings developed at DOE labs and currently being tested at Masdar City, which supports its own clean-tech cluster.
Photo Credit: Shenli Leong via Flickr CC
