Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Solar Panels As Building Clothing

Posted by michael on from the well-dressed-skyscraper dept.

Makarand writes "A Canadian company is developing a flexible solar-power generating material that can be draped over any building. This will allow buildings with curves and complex shapes to use solar panels. The new material is made of silicon beads, each acting as a solar cell, placed between two aluminum foils and sealed on the sides with plastic. The manufacturing process for the silicon beads can use waste silicon from the chip-making industry. The material has an overall efficiency of 11 per cent which is comparable to the performance of conventional photovoltaic cells. The material looks like blue denim and architects might love to work with it."

6 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. Clothing by JWizard · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How long until we can start wearing these/powering laptops with them ?

  2. But the question is the cost by jj_johny · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Solar power stinks on two accounts today.

    1. The panels are only usable in some applications due their overall effeciency (quoted as 11% for this stuff) that you can only use it in very sunny places.

    2. The cost per kilowatt hour is still not compariable to some very environmentally unfriendly stuff.

    So its nice that they have stuff that the architects like for curved surfaces but for the rest of us with smooth flat roofs and commercial buildings with flat sides and roofs, it would be nice to get some panels that have higher effeciency and have lower cost per kilowatt hour.

  3. Clothing. by Ayanami+Rei · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How will you power your wearable computers, palm pilots, pacemakers even? Blue jeans and denim jackets that generate electricity. This has potential, because as we all know, denim never goes out of style.
    I wonder what the care instructions will say...

    --
    THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
  4. I want a solar sailboat by jakedata · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Make me a sail out of this material and I will cruise when it is windy, sunny or both. Just throw some kevlar into the substrate. Or use carbon fibers instead of aluminum for the interconnect.

  5. Re:These will be cheap until we say they are dumpi by linuxdoctor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Nonsense!

    Canada's lumber is cheaper because the lumber industry spent tens of millions of dollars on new equipment and research into better harvesting techniques that don't decimate the forests. The US lumber industry is still stuck in the 1950's with labour intensive harvesting techniques and equipment.

    Canada has more trees, not only because we're a much larger country, but also because we replant the forests after they've been cut. We've been doing that since the 1960's. The American Lumber Industry keeps spending their money on lobbying the governments instead of replanting the forests and modernization.

    Canada's so-called dumping of forestry products in the US is simply crass politics which have nothing to do with reality. It is the US's imposing of the tarriffs that are illegal

    Despite all the crap from Americans about free enterpirse and free trade, the US is the world's most tarriff protected nation. As long as the balance of trade remains positive for them, they are happy. As soon as a foreign country, such as Canada, reverses that trend, up go the tarrifs.

    What ever happened to NAFTA, you ask? Obviously it's nothing but smoke for the American government since they still slap tarriffs on us. Only now with NAFTA we can prove that they are illegal.

  6. Mounting Angle of Solar Panels by Gerry+Gleason · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Of course, the 'optimal' angle varies throughout the year, but there isn't much drop off for relatively small angles. Doesn't mean they don't work, just less energy is gathered.

    The article isn't explicite about this, although they do say something about the round beads helping to gather the sunlight. The implication is that these are a lot less sensitive to variation of the incoming angle of the rays, which not only gives you the flexibility to put them on more surfaces, but also means the efficiency is higher in the morning or evening than conventional panels.

    Now, what I want to know is how hard is it going to be to mold these into the deck of a boat? And is the coating durable enough to take walking on it? I guess the top protective layer could be epoxy for good abrasion resistance.

    This is realy cool, particularly if you can make it cheaply enough. So what if you can't get above the 11-17% range of efficiency if you can easily make a much larger surface. Further, you might be able to create more complex circuits than just an array of photovoltaic cells, and really give the whole concept of wearable computers a boost. Active matrix displays would be nice.