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Researcher has developed low-cost solar panels that could make solar energy more affordable and could completely change the renewable energy market. Cheap solar panels cost $10 per m².
A physicist from Australia is leading a project that promises to be a pioneer in the field of renewable energy. It is a new type of low cost solar power panel which the developer claims could make solar energy more accessible for everyone. In the month of May 2022, Paul Dastoor, professor at University of Newcastle, used printed organic solar cells to power monitors and screens at an exhibition in Melbourne.
Low-cost solar panels are being installed in an area of 200 m²
Less than a millimeter thick and secured with double-sided tape, the cheap solar panels, which could change the renewable energy market, have a texture similar to a bag of potato chips, and can be produced for less than US$ 10 per square meter, or around R$50 in current dollar exchange rates.
Dastoor has been in the technology for over ten years, however it has now started to develop a 200m² solar power plant, this being the first commercial application of its kind in Australia and possibly the world.
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According to the inventor, the low cost and speed with which this technology can be installed is exciting, given that it is necessary to find solutions and quickly mitigate the demand for base load energy, a renewed concern as Australia approaches another summer.
Os cheap printed solar panels, for now, are not as efficient as those based on silicon and degrade much faster. However, the physicist points out that its low production and installation costs made the technology competitive. The commercial installation was completed in one day by just five employees and an industrial-size printer, which can produce hundreds of meters of product in just one day.
MIT researchers develop ultra-light and thin solar panels
In addition to the low-cost solar panels developed by the physicist, a team of engineers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have developed solar cells made of ultralight fabric that can quickly and simply transform any surface into a source of electricity.
The panels are extremely thin, and despite being much lighter, they have the capacity to generate up to 18 times more energy per kg. These new ultralight solar panels are developed with semiconductor inks, generated through printing processes, theJust like Dastoor's cheap solar panels.
The main advantage of these thin and light solar cells is that they can be applied to different types of surfaces, however, the disadvantage is their enormous fragility. So, to solve the problem, the engineers used a specific type of fabric, which is light but quite resistant.
Panels weigh only 13 g/m²
Weighing around 13 g/m², the fabric commercially called Dyneema, was the best option according to the engineers, since this fabric is composed of highly resistant fibers.
In the process of assembling the new solar panels, the engineers added to the solar cells a glue curable by Ultraviolet rays, just a few microns thick, making the cells easily adhere to the fabric, generating an ultralight solar structure, however with a mechanical very robust.
MIT engineers used nanomaterials in the form of inks suitable for graphic printing. In the process, the researchers coated the structure of the solar cell, applying a few layers of electronic materials onto a releasable substrate, prepared just 3 microns thick.
