Technology Terkini

As manufacturers work to drive down the cost of solar power, refining solar cells and panels to make them more efficient is only half the story. Another option is to incorporate newer electronics into the panels that could boost the power output of photovoltaic systems and make them easier to design and install.
Suntech Power, the world's largest maker of crystalline-silicon solar modules, based in Wuxi, China, has announced partnerships with Santa Clara, California-based National Semiconductor and other solar electronics makers to develop "smart" panels that would give the most power possible even if other panels are underperforming due to damage or to sunlight being blocked by shade or debris. This kind of system is useful because in conventional photovoltaic systems, one panel's performance affects the output of the whole system. "We think smart module technology is a clear path for the future," says Andrew Beebe, Suntech's chief commercial officer.

Solar manufacturers are finding it difficult to eke out additional increases in how efficiently crystalline-silicon solar panels convert sunlight into electricity--so solar innovation has shifted to back-of-the-panel electronics. "Every incremental power advantage brings down cost per watt, and electronics are where the improvements are going to be," says Matthew Feinstein, a research associate at Lux Research.

National Semiconductor's power-optimizing device is already on the market. Tests on customer installations have shown that it can squeeze 25 percent more energy from a photovoltaic system, says Kevin Kayser, a marketing manager at the company. Independent tests by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Photon International have demonstrated power gains from arrays as high as 39 percent.

Solar modules operate at various current and voltage levels. Panels are traditionally strung together in a series, and their combined DC power is sent to a large inverter. The inverter does two things: it converts the power into grid-ready AC electricity, and its control circuit constantly searches for and sets the operating voltage and current levels for all the panels based on the total power output of the array. But if one panel's current drops because of shade or debris, the inverter lowers the current of all the other panels, bringing down the array's power output. "Ten percent shade on the array means a 50 percent power loss," Kayser says.

National Semiconductor's power optimizer does away with the central control circuit in the inverter, instead placing a separate control circuit behind each panel. This allows the optimizer to wring the most power from each panel. In addition, Kayser says, while some power-optimization products either increase both current and voltage or decrease current and voltage, theirs can increase and decrease both current and voltage, squeezing out even more power.

Microsoft will unleash the PC's latest trick on the world next year, according to reports

The Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) isn't a familiar topic to most casual computers users, but those familiar with its history recognize it as one of the PCs worst examples of burdensome legacy code.

Back in 1979 the BIOS were cooked up to provide compatibility for IBM clones. Due to legal issues they had to be designed through a bizarre process -- reverse engineering of IBM's code, and then re-design based on a specification produced by the reverse engineering team (as opposed to simply directly using the reverse-engineered code).

The results worked, but were hardly outstanding examples of firmware engineering. Today the primary role of BIOS in PCs is to load the Windows operating system's boot loader, in effect starting the OS load process, but modern BIOS retain much of the same ancient legacy code of that original BIOS -- and its many rough edges. And what was an ungainly code to start, only became worse with time -- BIOS' difficulty in handling new types of hardware like USB peripherals is a key factor in why PCs often take a half minute or more to boot.

But the days of BIOS are about to come to an end, as is their weak performance. Microsoft reportedly plans to force adoption of a new PC firmware interface called Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) in 2011.

Microsoft is rumored to be coming out with the successor to Windows 7 next year, dubbed "Windows.NEXT". That successor, like the Windows 7/Windows Vista will support UEFI, but it reportedly will go a step farther, scrapping BIOS support and forcing OEMs like HP and Dell to adopt UEFI.

While UEFI is primarily the work of Intel, the world's biggest CPU maker, it is Microsoft which largely controls when UEFI mass deployment will become a reality. Motherboard makers will also play a key role, by deploying motherboards with flashed support for the new tech.

In a recent interview with BBC News, Mark Doran the head of the UEFI forum, the organization tasked with developing and deploying the new firmware technology, comments, "At the moment it can be 25-30 seconds of boot time before you see the first bit of OS sign-on. With UEFI we’re getting it under a handful of seconds. In terms of boot speed, we’re not at instant-on yet but it is already a lot better than conventional Bios can manage, and we’re getting closer to that every day."

The extensible nature of this new interface helps ensure that it will be capable of dealing with whatever new PC expansions hardware makers can dream up in the next three decades.

Between enabling faster boot times and paving an easier path for new hardware, UEFI may greatly enhance users' PC experience by doing away with a tired three-decade old interface. Even if they don't know their BIOS from their kernel, that's something most users should be able to appreciate.