Slashdot Mirror
Solar Panels As Building Clothing
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."
"Oh darling, that bue material is just so to die for"
How long until we can start wearing these/powering laptops with them ?
...mobile phones and wearables like mp3 players.If the material isn't too stiff to be used in clothing that is.
Sweet! now i can have my solar power without the not-so-hot looking (i.e., arguably ugly) panels! My wife and I have thinking about solar for a couple of years now, but the look of the panels have kept us away (or at least undecided).
This might make our decision a lot easier!
Looks like Levi's headquarters could get a facelift
But really, blue denim look, could look really cool if used correctly, but just how efficient is if if we put it on the walls of buildings instead of the roof, where most of the sun hits?
http://www.spheralsolar.com/
Somewhat old really. July 17th they announced this and their 20 megawatt pilot plant came online October 31st it looks like.
GameTab.com - Game Reviews Database
I have to admit I have not read the article, but there again who does, but
1) How strong is it, yeah sure denim-like is fine for cowboy(neal) but when it is stuck to your roof in a force 8 gale how strong is it.
2) Again on strength what is it's ability to function when damaged. Is it like fibreglass that can split if the hard external case is broken. What % damage can it take before it needs to be replaced repaired.
I know this sounds like a whinge but this stuff is only cool if it works
--My sig is bigger than your sig--
The fashionable building, that is.
"Does this make my delivery bay look fat?"
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
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.
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
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.
I just know my wife is going to want, no _need_, Levi stonewash solar panels with a hipster fit.
Damn fashion.
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Interior decorating your home in style?
This could be a great boon for people that want to move to solar power but need something less obtrusive due to neighborhood covenants and the like. Of course that is assuming that you could get approval from your neighbors to have a blue roof.
This could also be useful in the automotive industry I would think. No longer would cars have to be designed to fit to a solar panel. The possibilities are out there!
While a good idea, it's probably not a cost-cutting one. It will probably take a decade of the energy savings revenue to offset the initial cost of draping your building with the material.
On the flip-side, Levi's could start selling "hot pants"... just don't get caught in the rain while charging your cell phone in your pocket...
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Slashdot has a way of posting news, but no backup information sometimes. Or maybe I am the only one who actually reads the articles.... Here is an overview of the technology. Here is a link to the company making this product, speral solar power. Not much in great detail about the strength of these products, other than "very strong" or "stronger than regular solar cells".
Blah Blah Blah.
As someone now employed in photovoltaics, I have to ask you this. Most commercially-available solar panels of the silicon variety are derived from purified sand. Pure silicon does not exist naturally, so silicon dioxide (duh, sand) is broken down and refined into ingots. How is this environmentally unfriendly?
If you're talking about GaAs-panels (cells), they are dirty, I'll grant you that. They are not, however, at all popular. The largest makers of PV are Kyocera, Sharp, RWE Schott Solar and Astropower. None, as far as I know, are selling exotic PV cells or modules in any numbers. They're expensive, and the current technology offers enough benefits to outweigh the point of bothering with fancy stuff.
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Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
This tech is much older. Take a look at this article (note: it's a .pdf file). I first read about this stuff in 1993. Texas Instruments started developing this 1983 (yes, that's two decades ago), finally abandoned it and licensed it to someone else.
... by the Dew of Mountains the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning
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.
Rather OT; but the WTO has ruled the US tariff against Canadian lumber is in violation of international trade rules (http://www.partnershipforgrowth.org/)
Not that the US ever listens to what international organizations ever say if it doesn't benefit them...
As the bloke below points out, Lomborg's argument on cost is very much relevant and explains a great deal of the slow uptake in the industry over the last few decades. This being said, however, worldwide usage of PV technologies (excluding in toys like solar calculators and whatnot) has easily demonstrated 25% growth rates year-on-year for the last few years or so (Ispra report, June 2002, European Commission Joint Research Centre; also at PVNet).
Of course, when you start from nothing, anything sounds impressive. However, in Europe we have around 6% of total energy consumption coming from renewable sources. Less than everyone aside from the petrol industry (and even these guys are heavily invested in renewable energy) expects, but still, you have to start somewhere...
PS: No idea why the http://www.pv-net.net link doesn't work, so I've just included it in plaintext
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Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
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.
Score:4, Informative???? The first link points to siding which has nothing to do with solar power, or Spheral Solar Power, Inc.. The second link points to a picture of a denim apparel factory in China.
If you want to learn more about the product, go to the company's web site.
From what I know of Spheral Solar, they have yet to release any such products on the market. However, another firm, Iowa Thin Film Technologies (http://www.iowathinfilm.com) has been doing this stuff for years. The modules utilize amorphous silicon on a polymer substrate, pressed out through a cool roll-to-roll manufacturing process. Most of ITFT's products are integrated into portable electronics, but they do have large scale building materials used in tents and other devices. According to their web site, their stuff is so flexible it can wrap around a Coke can and continue to function.
As for powering laptops with this stuff, good luck. Laptops suck an enormous amount of power that only the really high-end (gallium aresenide, gallium indium) modules can even begin to touch. Of course, according to ITFT's pictures from this year's CES, they do have a recharge system for cell phones and PDAs.
What do you dope it with? How long do those cells last in direct sunlight? How long will the plastic sheeting encasing these particular cells last?
Can you make electricity which costs 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour yet? Don't forget to add disposal costs. When you can do that, your photovoltaics will be competitive with nuclear power and sometimes natural gas.
Are we being honest here? Anyone who covers their building with solar cells right now is doing it more to make a statement than to get power. If that statement is one of self sufficiancy, great and more power to them. If the statement is "environment friend" the speaker is ignorant or dishonest.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
For those too lazy to visit the site, this is not a soft cloth. It is two layers of metal foil covered in silicon beads topped with a clear plastic film. Strength should be much higher than mylar and it can be bonded to pretty much any other base material; metal, plastic or glass.
It also comes in multiple colors; the website shows brown spanish tile versions. I've no idea if there's a performance hit for aesthetics but at this point I don't care if it's 5% efficient if people start using it. That's still up to 50 watts/m^2 of pollution free power that wasn't there before.
To properly compare this to normal PV panels, go look at a nice glass enclosed mall. Pay attention to the heavily reinforced angled glass skylights. You'll see lots of angle iron in very particular shapes to keep things solid. That's the kind of crap you have to do with glass-substrate PV. Then there's the whole "cracked by hail" thing to deal with. This stuff may lose a couple of beads but it won't shatter and if the insulating material's good, it won't short out.
This will amount to architectural facade; build your normal structure then bolt this stuff on. The weight will be far less than architectural concrete. From the design it could quite possibly be cut and shaped in the field; a massive bonus to construction. No special order components. Order a couple of spare sections of it and cut/sand to fit.
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
Boron and phosphorus. Basically the doping materials make the current feasible.
... it lasts for similar periods. What you really need to worry about is delamination, which comes from the adhesive you stick in between the cells and the glass coming apart. Again, we sell ours for a guaranteed 20 years, which is standard in the industry, so replacement costs on the part of the consumer or installer are a moot point.
There are installations extant for the last 20 to 30 years, still producing electricity.
My company makes modules (no, I'm not interested in advertising it here, so no names) guaranteed for 20 years. This is against weather damage. We use tempered glass tested by firing half-inch steel balls at a distance of 2-3m at 15m/s to hold the cells. (No damage, by the way) The plastic sheeting, or polyvinyl fluoride (Tedlar, by DuPont -- OK, I'll concede the point here), is a derivative/related material to Kevlar
Electricity is still too expensive compared to non-renewable sources, I will freely admit this. However, I think you need to get out of the US-centric mindset: Japan has by far the highest level of PV installations, currently about half the world total. Africa finds it an economical alternative to nonrenewables. I don't think either region would do it just to make a ecological statement, do you?
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Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
Solar shingles with a 20 year warranty. Available today.
I don't know about the rest of the country, but our household budget electric bill averages $82 bucks a month. 20 years, 240 months, that's $19,680 for 20 years of electricy. This site above has a $10K and a $22K system.
Now if you subract the cost of a new roof the deal looks even better. Raise the value of the property, if you live in a sunny area you can even get paid for feeding energy back into the grid. After all a whole roof solar panel that even has some shade functionality would be pretty productive.
Why aren't these at least being put on more new homes?? What a selling point.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
One issue in it's favor is the faddish aspects of 'green building'. Lots of clients want to think that they have a 'green building' but don't want to spend the money or make the compromises required. Slapping some of this on your facade would go a long way - you can see it, point to it and say 'look, green building.' A lot of more effective systems aren't as easily understood or are out of sight.
The biggest down side is the reality of building roofs/skins. Water penetration is the biggest thing that makes architects sweat and loose sleep. Leaky roofs are the biggest source of lawsuits for architects in the US. Roofs undergo massive thermal expansion ranges (for a building product) and are exposed to the weather and physical abuse constantly. I expect a roof to last for decades with minimal maintenance. Anything that claims to be a water-tight roofing surface has to be tested and proven before I'm going to specify it for a project. As with all roofing products, it's not just the stuff that shows up on a truck at the site, but the experience of the roofers who install it and the complete roofing system as installed that is critical.
Of course, you could put this stuff up as an 'outer skin' over a real roof/cladding system, but then you're paying twice for a roof/skin.
A lot of faddish materials have come and gone. They get installed in some buildings, fail in a few years, get ripped off and replaced with something proven. In the end, this stuff has to prove itself over the long run as a high quality building product before it's going to be used extensively. It will be judged on its price vs. performance like anything else.
As we all know, major technological advances in the computing field are all driven by the pr0n industry...so imagine what a current-generating fabric would be used for.
At the very least, it ought to convince people to produce efficient wearable computers. You know that the guy in jedi-robes must have a pimpin' CPU... but the model who's almost in a bikini might be highly optimized *wink wink*.
OK, I'll make it easier for you. Find yourself some solar cells that make electricity for less than the rate the power company will sell it to you.
I wasn't claiming I could. But that you were doing a comparison of electricity at a third the rate I pay and that's a unreasonable comparison.
*You* may think that the added costs in nukes aren't warrented, but the fact remains they are there and thus must be the compared value. But you admit this yourself, so there's no point in flogging that one further.
Your comment about disposal costs being included isn't quite accurate, you refer to nukes, but I was referring to gas, coal, hydro. Those environmental costs aren't at all included as much of the interesting waste goes into the air, but they do exist.
PV power generation is 25-30 cents an hour now, so it's still considerably more expensive than your utility bill, but if all the costs of conventional power generation were on your bill it would be a much closer comparison.
I think we largely agree though. Don't buy solar to save money, buy it if you have other motivating factors.
In what way is it terrible? It is what it is. How good are you at converting photons into electrovoltaic potential with your skin?
;)
It supplies a certain amount of power on average from a certain surface area. It'll be sufficient for some needs, insufficient for others. Beyond that, it doesn't have to stand alone anyway - it can simply reduce your use of mains power, not replace it. It's still a win, and once installed it lasts damn near forever.
If you think this is inefficient, you should really take a look at the crap in your house you can't power with it - your incandescent lights, TV set, refrigerator, hair dryer, computer. Is the problem really in supply or demand?
Another point people seldom make is that absorbing solar energy on the outside of a house saves cooling costs. At least 11% of the energy that would be absorbed as heat is instead being borne away as electricity. That's actually not a bad insulator (though dedicated solar heating & cooling schemes can do far better).
Personally I think wind power is going to achieve commercial success before solar power does, but this material is still a notable milestone. I played with silicon solar cells when I was a kid, and the one thing they were above all else was rigidly fragile.
According to this document, nuclear fuels can be extended by about 30% via reprocessing, which is useful but hardly makes nuclear power "renewable". Common sense and the Second Law of Thermodynamics say that you can't get something for nothing -- you have to keep shovelling new energy into the system.
"Appropriate Technology" will ruin us. Listen to the engineers, they still believe in a better tomorrow.
Their "better tomorrow" isn't better enough. I want a tomorrow where our energy sources never run out (at least, not for billions of years) and nuclear materials do not find their way into the environment or into the hands of people who would use them to kill. The best way to accomplish this (at least until fusion reactors are viable) is via non-nuclear renewable technologies.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.