Scientists have been looking at ways of producing cheaper solar panels and one of the ways found is using a technique using inks. Read here.
These inks could be printed or painted on to surfaces to make almost any surface a solar panel. When the ink can be any colour or clear then solar panels could be painted everywhere. At home as paint on the outside of your house, your sheds and outhouses. On your car as body paint and the outside of your caravan, not Jeremy Clarkson’s of course, and if this is efficient enough then it could power an electric car for significantly more than the current limits of the batteries. I can even see your clothes being dyed with this ink to provide power to mobile phones and PDAs.
At the moment the solar panel systems out there, using the current technology, take up several square feet are any decent size is expensive. Too expensive for the power generated to make it viable for ordinary people to buy for home use. However, solar power is used quite a bit on boats. Boats tend to sit for long periods of time so that being trickle charged is viable and the most the power is used is to start the engine, power some running lights and power bits of kit such as radar, sonar, navigation and radios for a few hours. If you had ink on the entire boating surfaces, even sails, then you could even have viable electric boats. Tankers and container ships have massive amounts of unused surface area.
For the cost of the smart meters they are going to force on us they could improve solar cell efficiency, make them cheaper by economy of scale and supply panels to reduce our electricity usage. Now that would give more benefits than smart meters. First an economy boost in the green sector, second an improvement in panel efficiency, thirdly a actual reduction in power usage. Instead they will spend our money on ways for them to control our energy usage as they see fit. Not that I believe they should do either of these things and should just leave us alone.
Portable power
Scientists have been looking at ways of producing cheaper solar panels and one of the ways found is using a technique using inks. Read here.
These inks could be printed or painted on to surfaces to make almost any surface a solar panel. When the ink can be any colour or clear then solar panels could be painted everywhere. At home as paint on the outside of your house, your sheds and outhouses. On your car as body paint and the outside of your caravan, not Jeremy Clarkson’s of course, and if this is efficient enough then it could power an electric car for significantly more than the current limits of the batteries. I can even see your clothes being dyed with this ink to provide power to mobile phones and PDAs.
At the moment the solar panel systems out there, using the current technology, take up several square feet are any decent size is expensive. Too expensive for the power generated to make it viable for ordinary people to buy for home use. However, solar power is used quite a bit on boats. Boats tend to sit for long periods of time so that being trickle charged is viable and the most the power is used is to start the engine, power some running lights and power bits of kit such as radar, sonar, navigation and radios for a few hours. If you had ink on the entire boating surfaces, even sails, then you could even have viable electric boats. Tankers and container ships have massive amounts of unused surface area.
For the cost of the smart meters they are going to force on us they could improve solar cell efficiency, make them cheaper by economy of scale and supply panels to reduce our electricity usage. Now that would give more benefits than smart meters. First an economy boost in the green sector, second an improvement in panel efficiency, thirdly a actual reduction in power usage. Instead they will spend our money on ways for them to control our energy usage as they see fit. Not that I believe they should do either of these things and should just leave us alone.