MIT Making Super Efficient Origami Solar Panels

ByronScott writes "Could the next solar panels be in the shapes of origami cranes? They could be if MIT power engineering professor Jeffrey Grossman has his say. Standard flat solar panels are only optimized to capture sunlight at one point of the sun's trajectory — otherwise they need automated tracking systems to follow the sun. But Grossman found that folded solar cell systems could produce constant power throughout the day sans tracking and his new designs are up to two and a half times more efficient per comparative length and width than traditional flat arrays."

Comments

Interesting but expensive

[mcgrew]

It's an interesting, nerdy endeavor, but less practical than automated tracking systems; the expensive part of solar is the panels themselves. From TFA: His new designs are up to two and a half times more efficient per comparative length and width than traditional flat arrays.

If solar cells were free, than this would indeed be more efficient, and if there's limited space thay MAY be more practical.

Re:Interesting but expensive

[goombah99]

Looking at the slides more carefully, I think there's some substantially strange assumptions being made. Notice that he starts from completely random and non-symmetric shapes and these are evolved in genetic algorithms. the results he shows are all highly symmetric. some have 3 C4 rotation axes.

this makes no sense to me. the suns seasonal variation and arcs do not illuminate the ground symmetrically. So it is hard to see why it would evolve to a symmetric structure.

so there have to be some assumptions here the article is not exposing. like enforcement of symmetry.

Baloney!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a certain amount of sunlight incident on the earth surface, app. 1.2KW/m^2 times the cosine of the suns angle from the normal, on a perfectly clear day.

Just covering the earth surface with solar cells will catch all that power, minus a small amount of extra reflection at low angles.

There is no way to improve total power beyond that.

Only if solar panels are very expensive compared to their supporting structure does it pay to align them in a way that the Sunlight is hitting them normally (at an right angle).

There are three ways to optimize then:

a) fixing them in a position that faces the sun at an right angle during the time the sunlight is strongest, i.e. around noon. For that purpose, you can just mount them at an angle of app. 30 on a south-facing roof

b) actively tracking the sun

c) use mirrors to enlarge the effective respective cross-section of the panels

Before sensationally claiming a 140% improvement over existing configurations, you need state your design objectives. If it is active panel area, then origani-like mirrors may help - but TFA does not mention mirrors

If it is "comparative length and width" of the real estate used, as the article states, there is nothing to improve on flat panel.

I suspect this is just a bad writeup of a theoretical paper showing off some genetic design algorithms - don't hold your breath waiting for these concoctions to appear at your local Home Depot anytime soon!