NewEnergyNews: STREAMLINING SOLAR/

NewEnergyNews

Gleanings from the web and the world, condensed for convenience, illustrated for enlightenment, arranged for impact...

The challenge now: To make every day Earth Day.

YESTERDAY

THINGS-TO-THINK-ABOUT WEDNESDAY, August 23:

  • TTTA Wednesday-ORIGINAL REPORTING: The IRA And The New Energy Boom
  • TTTA Wednesday-ORIGINAL REPORTING: The IRA And the EV Revolution
  • THE DAY BEFORE

  • Weekend Video: Coming Ocean Current Collapse Could Up Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: Impacts Of The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current Collapse
  • Weekend Video: More Facts On The AMOC
  • THE DAY BEFORE THE DAY BEFORE

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 15-16:

  • Weekend Video: The Truth About China And The Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: Florida Insurance At The Climate Crisis Storm’s Eye
  • Weekend Video: The 9-1-1 On Rooftop Solar
  • THE DAY BEFORE THAT

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 8-9:

  • Weekend Video: Bill Nye Science Guy On The Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: The Changes Causing The Crisis
  • Weekend Video: A “Massive Global Solar Boom” Now
  • THE LAST DAY UP HERE

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 1-2:

  • The Global New Energy Boom Accelerates
  • Ukraine Faces The Climate Crisis While Fighting To Survive
  • Texas Heat And Politics Of Denial
  • --------------------------

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    Founding Editor Herman K. Trabish

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    WEEKEND VIDEOS, June 17-18

  • Fixing The Power System
  • The Energy Storage Solution
  • New Energy Equity With Community Solar
  • Weekend Video: The Way Wind Can Help Win Wars
  • Weekend Video: New Support For Hydropower
  • Some details about NewEnergyNews and the man behind the curtain: Herman K. Trabish, Agua Dulce, CA., Doctor with my hands, Writer with my head, Student of New Energy and Human Experience with my heart

    email: herman@NewEnergyNews.net

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      A tip of the NewEnergyNews cap to Phillip Garcia for crucial assistance in the design implementation of this site. Thanks, Phillip.

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    Pay a visit to the HARRY BOYKOFF page at Basketball Reference, sponsored by NewEnergyNews and Oil In Their Blood.

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  • WEEKEND VIDEOS, August 24-26:
  • Happy One-Year Birthday, Inflation Reduction Act
  • The Virtual Power Plant Boom, Part 1
  • The Virtual Power Plant Boom, Part 2

    Sunday, October 17, 2010

    STREAMLINING SOLAR

    Irish Startup Ready to Print Solar Cells, Harvest Low Light and Drive Efficiency; SolarPrint’s cells can be turned out fast and cost-effectively, and can generate energy from hazy sunlight for BIPV or in well-lit rooms to charge wireless smart devices.
    Herman K. Trabish, October 12, 2010 (Greentech Media)

    “When you are travelling around the world,” said Mazhar Bari, CEO and co-founder of SolarPrint, “you suddenly realize, ‘Where are the bloody solar panels?’”

    That question led Bari, an Irish citizen with Pakistani roots and a physics degree from Cambridge, to explore dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) technology. DSSC is “part printable, part liquid,” he said. Potentially, DSSC could be less expensive than traditional solar cells -- and hence more ubiquitous -- if the manufacturing and technological nuances could be mastered.

    SolarPrint effectively has eliminated the liquid part of DSSC and replaced it with nanomaterials and printing. This means that all of the active elements of SolarPrint's cells, not just part of them, are applied through printing.

    “There are many components in the cell. One layer is called the electrolyte layer.” As a liquid, that layer is “terrible,” Bari said. The efficiencies are adequate, he said, but “lab time is crap and it cannibalizes the materials in the cell.” The SolarPrint process replaces that liquid with a printable electrolyte paste made of smart nanomaterials, carbon nanotubes, graphene and ionic salts. “And it’s a fully printable device.”

    Roy Horgan, Business Development Director and co-founder, argues that this reduces the company's cost to less than a quarter of those associated with traditional processes.

    click to enlarge

    That said, dye-sensitized solar cells remain a tricky technology. Others have tried and come up short. Mass manufacturing is not easy. Worse, the cells tend to break down over time. Since consumers buy solar cells to last for 30 years, reliability is a big issue.

    Bari, Horgan and their team believe that SolarPrint’s unique way into the marketplace will be through their technology’s ability to capture low or diffuse light levels both indoors and under overcast, early morning and late evening outdoor conditions. “Dye solar cells work very well indoors,” Bari said. “The voltage doesn’t drop like crazy (like silicon) and it is able to produce reasonable power in indoor light -- four or five times higher than silicon.”

    The SolarPrint cells are more efficient because they are based on a rounded nanotech structure instead of the angular crystalline structure of silicon materials. Electrons excited by light have to hit the crystalline structures “at the right angle” to generate electricity.
    With the curved surface of a nanostructure, “the angle of absorption is much larger.”

    “One day, the whole world will be covered in dye solar cells. That’s our vision,” said Bari.

    These capabilities make the SolarPrint cells ideal for supplying power to the wireless indoor sensors that will progressively make buildings smarter and more efficient. “The benefits of this technology,” Bari said, “are quite fascinating.”

    click to enlarge

    In essence, the ability to power wireless sensors from indoor light makes the SolarPrint technology as much a part of the energy efficiency industry as of the solar industry. The reliability of dye cell-powered sensors, uncompromised by the limitations of batteries or capacitors, will allow the sensors to serve a much wider variety of functions. This will create higher levels of building efficiency and more energy savings.

    SolarPrint's competitors in dye cells include Dyesol, EPFL, G24i, Mitsubishi and Peccell. Other next-generation solar cell developers, including Konarka and Plextronics, are working on organic photovoltaics.

    SolarPrint now has a small manufacturing facility in Dublin that is capable of making proof-of-concept cells and is ready to expand into full production as soon as funding becomes available. “Our focus is very clear,” Bari said. “We want to manufacture, produce, focus on commercial applications and find new applications. That’s where we can add value.”

    “The skepticism is in companies’ ability to deliver,” Horgan added. “If we’ve done something different,” he said, “it’s an absolute focus on producing commercial products and materials that can be reproduced at a cost.” The SolarPrint process is “fully printable screen printing that can be produced in high volume,” Horgan said. “It’s a commercial approach.”

    click to enlarge

    “There are far too many chemists in this industry,” Bari joked. “What this industry needs is more engineers with an applied approach,” he added more seriously. “In the next five or ten years, that will change.”

    Horgan explained that in service to the company’s preparations to bring their product to the marketplace, they have gathered a group of experienced experts from “across the globe” that includes “eight PhDs” and they are adding an average of three staff members every two months.

    Like Horgan, Bari emphasized the readiness of the technology to come to market. “With technology, you spend an enormous amount of dollars to improve it. At some point, you’ve got to say, we now have something that’s reasonably OK, let’s bring it to market. In parallel, we continue R&D. We continue to improve,” Bari said. “But at some point you’ve got to come out and put your neck on the line and say ‘Let’s go for it.’”

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