Looks like my old employer , CSIRO, may have done something useful
Can anyone think of a way of using flexible solar panels?
BTW Manmade solar panels are 15% efficient, plants are 30%.
Solar panels require a battery to store the trapped energy… plants have builtin biochemical storage .
Solar panels last about 10 years. Plants are self regenerating.
Materials mined to make solar panels and batteries are polluting, finite and sometimes dangerous. Plants require only water and fertilizer.
This is a step in the right direction
Plant materials are superior to metals
When will we get the first carbon- based computer?
How about creating clothing, or a vest, that can keep our smartphones charged, wherever we go? My first thought was using this technology to fabricate tents, but that was already mentioned in the article.
I’m no designer, but I can see this technology being used to produce portable power stations that can be set up anywhere during a disaster. Just look at how the face of the disaster recovery effort here in the Southeastern U.S., following the two hurricanes, could have been changed if we already had this technology working in the real world.
Ernie
Its a shame they cannot provide enough power to recharge a car, even a bicycle is not yet available. Limiting the distance coverage by either transport system.
Yes a solar panel, flexible or not, is about 15% efficient. A plant leaf is about 30%efficient. We are missing something.
Put the fabric on the phone case?
I wonder how much fabric would be needed to charge a phone?
There are solar powered calculators, why not phones?
I was thinking more like a shirt, jacket, or vest made with the flexible solar panel integrated into the fabric, and something like the magnetic charging systems we currently use, perhaps built into a specific phone pocket.
What do you think?
Ernie
I have no idea how large a panel you need to run a phone.
Neither do I, but I suspect that my back should be big enough for the task, unless I’m keeping my phone working overtime 24/7.
I have 40 panels on my roof, generating several MW in a sunny month. They’re fixed. Wearable panels move. Not nearly practical.
At what cost will you get a return on the investment in your lifetime ?
Does it generate a lot of heat underneath
How do you stock the over production or do you sell it on
An engineer here said they stop producing at a set temperature so not effective in summer
There is discussions here about installing, i suggested just to heat the pools, but they have bigger ideas
They work in the Australian Summer.
If there is a cutout temperature it must be more than 50 degC
How do they fare in the snow and ice?
I never liked rooftop installations… put it on the ground on a frame.
They have only been up two and a half years. They’re pitched so snow will slide off pretty easily, but we haven’t had much more than a skiff of snow for the last three or four years. Very little winter in western Oregon.
I was told efficiency drops from 40 * but to be honest I did not understand the equation he gave at the lecture. We have conferences every year in the village and several have agreed with this theory. But have not checked the measures
OK it tails off. No such thing as a cutoff in the real world.
So roof is a bad place… a steel roof in Australia in Summer is hot enough to fry an egg.
Solar panels are better on a frame on the ground
A friend of mine built workshops on her land with solar panels as the roof structure with the idea of renting workshop space but then could not get any takers as in summer it was just too hot. She made enough from the panels not to worry about cost but i was surprised just how ot it was.
Local supermarkets are putting these structures over the parking space, drivers love it for the cover, the supermarkets run the store with the electricity generated.
The idea in our village is to create parking for 40 cars and then use the power to recharge electric cars, but we have all sorts of issues with that. Cost of installation and making the village open access for recharge, plus in summer we dont have enough spaces for visitors … it will happen but not quickly.
Do the panels emit heat?
or are they just poor insulators?
Neither. They’re aluminum and glass/plastic sandwiches, mounted on frames about 15 cm above the roof. Alternatively, they’re hung on frames between posts in a ground array. They neither emit heat nor insulate anything. The photoelectric elements create voltage and feed it to the rest of the distribution system.
My guess is that there is an upper limit of heat they can survive without warping, but that’s just an amateur guess.
They are black panels so dont just create electric but heat just from being a black surface.
Try your own panels bet you cannot touch them during the day just from the heat.
Think solar showers in camping, they are black plastic bags that absorb heat from the sun.
If you think global warming, we stick a black panel to get sunlight to convert to electric, heat us a bi product. Basic science, reflectors (silver) absorbing black. After we cover fields with these panels we are bound to get more heat.
Its the same in physics, you convert one thing into another generates heat. There is a law but cannot remember which one now.