Printable Solar Panels / Cells – A Primer.

Posted on September 6, 2018 by Mike — No Comments ↓

Printable Solar Panels – at some point it may be possible to use a simple desktop inkjet printer to print your own solar cells. We’re a while off that yet, but with great advancements in the technology over the last couple of years, let’s take a look at what the future holds for printed solar cells!

Printable Solar Panels

We wrote last week about the University of Newcastle and their foray into printed solar cells – today we’re going to take a bit of a deep dive into the situation and see where we can expect this technology to go in the next few years.

The University of Newcastle are reporting that their latest tests in Newcastle brings them “about two years” away from launching their product onto the commercial solar market. Leading the charge has been University of Newcastle physicist Professor Paul Dastoor, who created the electronic inks which are used to print the flexible solar panels.

The process is According to the ABC, semi-conducting ink is printed on a transparent plastic sheet for the first layer, and then layers are printed on top of the other, until the cells are about 200 microns thick. For reference, human hair is around 50 microns. After that, a “top contact layer” is done again, reel-to-reel, using a technique known as sputter coating, according to Professor Dastoor.

They estimate the cost of their modules at less than $10 per square metre which is extremely cheap – the main problems are the efficiency of the printed solar panels and ensuring there’s enough space for them as it’ll take quite a lot of room on a roof. They use a lot of plastic to manufacture as well so looking at ways to recycle the waste of printed solar cells is extremely important. For that reason, in six months Professor Dastoor and his team will pull the printed solar cells off the Melbourne roof they’re currently on and investigate ways to minimise environmental waste.

Printed Solar Cells | University of Newcastle

Posted on August 30, 2018 by Mike — No Comments ↓

The University of Newcastle has been able to deliver printed solar cells at a production cost of less than $10 per square metre. They are now powering a Newcastle business and showing results in the wild. Amazing steps forward for solar technology, and in our own backyard! How long until we can print solar cells at home using inkjet printers?

Printed Solar Cells – Breakthrough Technology

University of Newcastle physicist Professor Paul Dastoor has created electronic inks which are used to print the flexible solar panels – offering “unprecedented affordability” and could help solve the energy crises in New South Wales and Australia-wide.

“We are changing the climate, we know it’s because burning fossil fuels and we have to shift to renewables, even if leaders in Canberra can’t understand that,” he told AAP via the Bega District News.

“This technology has the potential to be enormously scalable … it’s fast, it’s low cost and doesn’t require anything special.”

The team are able to print hundreds of metres of solar cells at the Centre of Organic Electronics at the University of Newcastle. If a commercial scale printer were obtained, this could easily be upgraded to kilometres of cells.

“The low cost and speed at which this technology can be deployed is exciting as we need to find solutions, and quickly, to reduce demand on base-load power – a renewed concern as we approach another summer here in Australia,” Professor Dastoor said.

Printed Solar Cells via Paul Dastoor of University of Newcastle (source: newcastle.edu.au)

Around 200 square metres of the printed solar panels has been installed at an industrial site owned by logistics company CHEP in Beresfield, near Newcastle.

This is a fantastic step forwards for solar panel technology People who are wanting to install solar into a rental property or those who don’t have access to a roof (apartment solar) will be licking their lips at the possibility.

According to Wikipedia, these printed solar cells have a few main drawbacks:

The efficiency of inket solar cells is “too low to be commercially viable”
Indium is a rare material and could be gone in 15 years.
The ink needs to be weather resistant and can survive harsh conditions.

It looks like the efficiency of Dr Dastoor’s printed solar panels is around 2-3%, but at only A$10 per square metre when manufactured at scale, it looks like these modules are certainly commercially viable, even if they’re not the most efficient cells in the world.

In six months they will remove the test panels from the CHEP roof and have a look at recycling the material. Professor Dastoor and his team will also run some statistics on how well the printed solar was able to perform. We’ll keep you updated!

If you want to learn more about flexible solar panel tech, please click here.

Flisom’s Flexible, Thin & Customisable Solar Panels

Posted on September 21, 2017 by Mike — No Comments ↓

PV Solar panel tech company Flisom AG has unveiled a range of new solar panels in Switzerland – they are 98% thinner and lighter than currently available conventional solar panels. The jet black modules are fully rollable and customisable and will be a fantastic choice for a range of applications where the old panels wouldn’t have been suitable. Although more expensive than mass produced panels, the solar panel technology and manufacturing process is improving rapidly and it’s really exciting to see these live in the market!

About the Flisom Solar Panels

Flisom is located in Dübendorf, Switzerland, and was founded in 2005. The privately held company has been developing and manufacturing PV thin film solar cells for over 10 years now and are leaders in their field. Since 2013 they’ve been developing proprietary manufacturing equipment and components using a ‘roll to roll’ manufacturing process which replicates the CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide solar cell) solar tech on an industrial scale. This results in thin, flexible, highly efficient (up to 50x power to weight ratio compared with silicon PV) panels, even when compared with traditional crystalline silicon solar cells.

Flisom, along with their research partner Empa, achieved a world-record efficiency of 20.4% in a flexible CIGS solar cell – they are pioneers in commercialising this technology which was previously far too expensive to be viable for business.

According to Flisom the new panels can be as light as 160 grams per square metre, in comparison with standard solar panels which can be up to 15kg per square metre. They’re also ultra-thin (as in under 2mm per cell).

Flisom CEO Rahul Budhwar said: “We’re also offering this technology as a platform, which means it can be customised for the needs of different applications and products so you can embed them or custom create this for exactly the way that application needs solar – rather than taking standard blocks of large panels.

We’ll keep an eye out to see some case studies of Flimsom solar panels out in the wild and be sure to kepe you updated on how they go!

Audi solar roof on electric cars.

Posted on August 28, 2017 by Mike — No Comments ↓

Automobile giant Audi are partnering with a Chinese solar panel manufacturer (AltaDevices, a subsidiary of Hanergy) to offer thin, flexible solar panels to a panoramic car roof. The Audi Solar roof will be used to power various in-car amenities like air conditioning or seat heaters. Just speculation on our part but there’s maybe even space for a second energy storage in the car to power other things like USB – it wouldn’t have enough draw to actually start the car but it’s an amazing step in the right direction!

Car Solar History

We have already seen cars with solar panels as far back as 1991 with the Mazda 929 – and the Prius has been including solar panels for years, with the 2017 Japanese and European versions of the Prius Prime (formerly the Prius PlugIn) also directly powering the car and boosting fuel efficiency by up to 10%. Electrek.co note that “Theoretically, your Prius Prime could fill itself up with only the sun at the airport parking lot on a 10 day trip.”

Audi Solar

According to CarAdvice, Audi are hoping for the first prototypes of their solar powered car to be on the road by the end of this year. It the tech does what they hope it will they’ll include their car solar panels in future electric vehicles, with later versions even able to charge the car’s main battery.

The cells are being manufactured in California by Alta Devices, who are an American subsidiary of Hanergy, a Chinese PV solar specialist. According to the Alta Devices website, they procude the “thinnest, lightest, and most flexible solar technology on the market”. It’s 110 um thick, weighs under 200 mg, and is flexible enough to fit around a 40 mm cylinder.

Click below to take a look at a video showing off Alta Devices’ flexible solar panel technology – can’t wait to see how this works for Audi solar cars and what other application they have in the coming months.

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Printable Solar Panels / Cells – A Primer.