Obama Likes Clean Solar Energy ! !

According to an AP Report
 
          White House will again going to use the aid of solar energy ! Solar energy , which is most precious but costless energy  ! ! one of the most easily usable well efficient energy !! So The President of USA thought something about it !!

       In This spring solar panels will installed in the White House and this energy will use to get Hot  water and for further electricity ! ! 

 Here comes the sun : White House to go solar ! 

                There were solar panels in white house , They had been installed by the order of president Jimmy Carter in 1979 and drove them to the White House

But , When Ronald Reagan became president, he had the panels removed in 1986 because of some political problems ! here we dont going inside it !! 

So after too many years The present president Obama has been decided to get the solar panels over the white house's roof !! to prevent global warming and to provide better healthy environment !! 

    SO I must have to say that  " YES WE CAN " 

NEW in space: Astronomers detect distant solar system with five planets

Astronomers working at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have discovered a planetary system 127 light-years away that contains at least five planets that orbit the star HD 10180 at distances that follow a regular pattern much like our own solar system.

"We have found what is most likely the system with the most planets yet discovered," said Christophe Lovis, lead author of the paper reporting the result. "This remarkable discovery also highlights the fact that we are now entering a new era in exoplanet research: the study of complex planetary systems and not just of individual planets."

The team of astronomers used ESO's 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla, Chile, for a six-year-long study of HD 10180 located in the southern constellation of Hydrus (the Male Water Snake). The astronomers detected the tiny back and forth motions of the star caused by the complex gravitational attractions from five or more planets. The five strongest signals correspond to planets with Neptune-like masses - between 13 and 25 Earth masses - which orbit the star with periods ranging from about 6 to 600 days. These planets are located between 0.06 and 1.4 times the Earth-Sun distance from their central star.

"We also have good reasons to believe that two other planets are present," says Lovis, adding that one would be a Saturn-like planet and the other would be the least massive exoplanet ever discovered, with a mass of about 1.4 times that of the Earth. The smaller planet is believed to be very close to its host star, at just 2 percent of the Earth-Sun distance. A year on this planet would last only 1.18 Earth-days."

The newly discovered system of planets around HD 10180 is unique in several respects. With at least five Neptune-like planets lying within a distance equivalent to the orbit of Mars, the system is more populated than our solar system in its inner region, and has many more massive planets there. Additionally, the system probably has no Jupiter-like gas giant. In addition, all the planets seem to have almost circular orbits.

Using the new discovery as well as data for other planetary systems, the astronomers found an equivalent of the Titius-Bode law that exists in our solar system: the distances of the planets from their star seem to follow a regular pattern. "This could be a signature of the formation process of these planetary systems," says team member Michel Mayor.

LOOKING TO LEAVES FOR SOLAR TECHNOLOGY ???

• A leaf is constantly building new photosynthetic reaction centers to replace those damaged by oxygen and sunlight.

 

• Scientists are experimenting with ways to apply the same principles to building solar energy cells.

 

• This new technology could yield a system that's highly efficient, can self-repair and works well under low light conditions. 

 (this contnet is fully provided by Rachel Ehrenberg, Science News, credit to them)

Plants may hold the key to better solar technology

A new technique may one day lead to solar cells that bring themselves together like a molecular flash mob and repair damage they sustain during the rough business of turning light into electricity.

The research lays the groundwork for cheap, self-repairing solar cells with an indefinite lifetime, a team reports Sept. 5 in Nature Chemistry.

"It's a man-made version of what nature does," says nanocomposite expert Jaime Grunlan of Texas A&M University in College Station. "This really looks like ground-breaking seminal work; I've never seen anything remotely like it."

The sun's rays can be brutal, even for a leaf that's harvesting them. When photosynthesis is going full blast, a leaf is constantly building new photosynthetic reaction centers to replace those damaged by harsh oxygen species and other destructive molecules generated by intense ultraviolet light.

So rather than trying to make solar cells that are extremely durable, the team decided to take a literal leaf from nature's book and go the route of self-repair, says chemical engineer Michael Strano of MIT, who led the project. He and Stephen Sligar and Colin Wraight of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, along with other colleagues, designed a system where damaged parts could be easily replaced.

The researchers began with light-harvesting reaction centers from a purple bacterium. Then they added some proteins and lipids for structure, and carbon nanotubes to conduct the resulting electricity.

These ingredients were added to a water-filled dialysis bag -- the kind used to filter the blood of someone whose kidneys don't work -- which has a membrane that only small molecules can pass through. The soupy solution also contained sodium cholate, a surfactant to keep all the ingredients from sticking together.

When the team filtered the surfactant out of the mix, the ingredients self-assembled into a unit, capturing light and generating an electric current.

The spontaneous assembly occurs thanks to the chemical properties of the ingredients and their tendency to combine in the most energetically comfortable positions. The scaffolding protein wraps around the lipid, forming a little disc with the photosynthetic reaction center perched on top.  These discs line up along the carbon nanotube, which has pores that electrons from the reaction center can pass through.

Adding the sodium cholate back into the mix disassembles the complexes. But filtering it out again brings them right back together.

"The idea that it happens reversibly and at will is quite amazing," says Strano. "It approaches what happens in biology -- forming a huge amount of order with the flip of a switch. It's kind of like taking puzzle pieces and throwing them up in the air and them coming down assembled."

The complexes eventually lose power, but they are easily revived, says Strano. The research team disassembled the units and replenished the photosynthetic reaction centers. Four such replacements over the course of a week kept keeping the complexes humming along.

"This is very nice work -- the procedure they've got, the control they have over the system," says biochemist Mike Jones of the University of Bristol in England. "It's simple, it's very nice."

The units can't compete with silicon-based solar cells in use today. But silicon-based solar cells reached their current level of efficiency only after decades of research and development, says Jones. Similar investment in this new technology could yield a system that's highly efficient, can self-repair and works well under low light conditions, he says.

What's more, the main ingredients for these solar cells might one day be easily extracted from plant material, says Strano, perhaps even from garbage biomass. "We could turn waste into an organized product," he says.

DOE gives $8.5 million to grid infrastructure projects !

While not a very sexy topic in realm of politics or green tech news, electrical grid infrastructure is a critical, maybe the critical, component that could make or break a successful U.S. switch to using more renewable energy sources.

Perhaps that's why the Department of Energy announced Tuesday it's giving $8.5 million to four electric grid projects in the final stages of completion.

As part of the Solar Energy Grid Integration Systems (SEGIS) program, from which the money comes, the DOE funds will be matched by private funds from contractors for four chosen projects.

Including the DOE funding, the four projects will total $20 million.

"Projects were selected based on the highest likelihood of commercialization of reliable products that will best enable and accelerate the integration of solar PV technologies into an intelligent electrical grid," according to a statement from the DOE.

New Jersey, which recently garnered attention in August for its Offshore Wind Economic Development Act, is home to two of the DOE-funded projects. That's significant because the biggest criticism of the New Jersey offshore wind push is that the state does not currently have the infrastructure to make offshore wind work, and some fear the cost to update could be passed on to corporate and residential electricity consumers. While this round of DOE funding is directed toward solar infrastructure integration, it could be a signal that the federal government may also be willing to fund similar projects for offshore wind with regard to transmission lines and grid connectors.

Petra Solar South, Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G), and the University of Central Florida have partnered to develop modular inverters that are designed to be built and installed with little cost. The line voltage inverters have communications and smart grid capabilities that allow energy generated from a solar panel to be directly integrated into a smart grid system. It's particularly useful for New Jersey, which plans to install more than 200,000 photovoltaic solar panels from Petra Solar onto existing utility poles and tie them directly into the electricity grid.

"The second New Jersey program to get almost $3 million in DOE funding involves the installation of 100-kilowatt Demand Response Inverters (DRI) with circuits designed by Princeton Power. The company claims its inverters, which were derived from military technology, can convert power with up to 98 percent efficiency in some cases. The project partners include First Energy Corp, International Battery, Center for Power Electronics Systems, Process Automation, and Tectonic."

Florida Solar Energy Center of the University of Central Florida, in conjunction with SunEdison and others, has received the DOE funding to implement inverters for both residential and commercial photovoltaic solar systems, and also smart grid power controls.

The fourth project is in Oregon and includes among its partners PV Powered, as well as Portland General Electric. The roughly $2,400,000 in DOE funds will go toward implementing smart grid communication technology, including distribution management systems for utilities that can work with solar energy sources