Printed Solar Cells at MIT
The Solar Energy Industry has become mainstream as an alternative way of producing energy. For what might become available in the on coming years we need to have a little look as what is happening in the research Laboratories.
Rooftop Solar Panel
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been busy working on Printed Solar Cells. Using carbon based dyes the team have made advances that can be made as easily as printing out a letter on a sheet of paper. At the current time the efficiency of the cells is extremely low with being only able to convert between 1.5% to 2% of the light available into electrical energy. That level of generation cannot compete with silicon based photovoltaic solar cells.
These printed cells do have the possible advantage of being cheap to produce and having more versatile applications. If you look around and anything device or cover that is colored is most likely using some form of dye. Now if that dye was an energy producing dye then all those devices could be energized.
This opens up endless possibilities for the use of solar power that only limited by your imagination. Clothing and fabric is an obvious example. Shades and coverings like tents and umbrellas could be powering up and offering energy without adding anything to the weigh. Your cup of coffee could be using the energy to keep you drink warm right down to the last sip.
Moving up a scale the materials that your house is made off could be adding that little bit of extra free energy to your power needs. Or road markings along the highways could be powering intelligent roads. What ever the use may be designers will no doubt try to integrate this idea into every product to add that extra bit of functionality to any product.
These will not replace high power and more sturdy solar panels and for large energy production they will still rule.
Electric vehicles are going to be driving quietly up and down our roads soon and these would be an ideal candidate for solar dye’s. You’ll still need to charge up regularly but the extra energy might just get you a few extra miles each day. It might not seem a lot but it is free.
If the efficiency can be improved and the world was full of energy producing dye covered product then they would generate an extremely large amount of power. Those little trickles if somehow storable or connectable to the grid is all energy that is free to produce and doesn’t use fossil fuels.
The only problem left is what color to choose.
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