Solar Panels For Homes

Currently, most solar technologies are delivered via silicon crystals, whose highly refined nature and relative scarcity make them expensive components in the solar process. This makes the end-product equally expensive, and cost is one of the factors limiting the use of solar panels to generate energy.

Plastic, or polymer, solar cells are relative newcomers to solar technology, but their potential advantages – lower cost, lighter weight and greater flexibility – promise to sweep the solar industry, once sourcing and manufacturing are refined.

Polymers are plastic-type substances, usually made from petroleum. Organic plastics, typically represented by such products as amber and shellac (or tree sap), may soon be available from cellulose, or food products like corn, making organic polymer solar technology not only inexpensive but environmentally friendly; i.e., disposable.

Konarka Technologies, Inc., recently announced that their flagship product, Power Plastic®, was rated at 6 percent efficiency. This may not seem like much, but solar panels currently in use rarely boast more than 12- to 14-percent efficiency, and polymer cell technology is still in its infancy.

For Konarka to achieve 6 percent with its flexible organic based photovoltaic (PV) solar is truly an important milestone, as co-developer Dr. Alan Heeger of the University of California (Santa Barbara) notes.

“This progress gives us confidence that we are on a technology pathway toward the vision of high efficiency, low cost ‘plastic’ solar cells.”

Heeger, one of the co-founders of Konarka, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000. He and his colleagues at UCSB are currently focused on issues related to the fundamental electronic structure of polymer solar cells, and hopes in the near future to bump that efficiency rating to a full 10 percent, which would make it highly competitive with silicon-based solar.

Another discovery, from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, promises to improve polymer solar material by substituting a silicon atom (or a crystalline) for a carbon atom in the backbone of the polymer. Eventually, says UCLA researcher and co-author Hsiang-Yu Chen, solar cells may be as thin as paper, attachable to any surface, and colored to match different applications.

Imagine hanging a solar panel alongside your deck or patio that looks like a Van Gogh!

About the Author:

Cooler Planet is a leading solar resource for connecting consumers and commercial entities with local solar Installers. Cooler Planet’s solar energy resource page contains articles and tools such as our solar calculator to help with your solar project.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Solar Cells – Plastic is In, Crystal is Out!

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